The Art Corner: Getting Spiritual with Dialectic
A conversation about poetry, hip hop, spirituality and Islam.
*Here are some optional additional ingredients to make this reading time one of pure dedication, for the sake of slowing down. Use one of them, all of them, or none at all.
This month’s art corner guest has chosen this song to accompany the piece.
Light a blue or white candle and some incense if you have it.
Make a coffee with cardamom, and enjoy the ride.*
The other day, I got sad. As I do often when I am, I went to my favorite garden in Barcelona and sat on a bench under a tree. In this garden, there are two gigantic Platanus trees. As I sat looking at them I pondered the inevitability of growth; how if you survive, it means you have grown because anything that stops growing starts to die.
The possibility of growth and transformation should be permanent in our language and minds, especially in the face of obstacles, so that we can deal with them in a joyful manner. Not economic growth, which is how capitalist thinking measures it, but a growth that is rooted in humility and a constant strive to do better while being grateful for what has been achieved.
That same afternoon, I met with Dialectic in the Art Corner. He is fiercely active in proposing new poetic narratives within the hip hop scene, and about spirituality and Islam. I sensed a strong presence and an obvious tenderness in him. “One of the more calming thoughts that I have is that there is an infinite amount of possibilities in terms of what can happen in your life,” he said to me, almost like he had read through my heart.
“I don’t know why we’re like that, but humans always tether towards negativity,” he said. Through music, poetry and spirituality, Dialectic works to let the light in. His social media presence is poetic and political, his narrative brings philosophy and religion to the table in a way that is very conscious of systemic issues.
Born in the US and living in Canada, Dialectics is a poet, rapper and aspiring lawyer who reflects on systemic issues with tenderness. In his music, he deals with themes like iconoclasm, reparations, redistribution of power, racism and social justice. His journey to hip hop started with spoken word. His style reminds me of the lyrical mastery of Immoral Technique made poetic, the softness of Tupac’s lyrics, with a pinch of the jazzy calm soul that Loyle Carner brings. His Muslim heritage is very present in the lyrics and samples -his song Stolen, for example, features Urdu poetry from the revolutionary Pakistani poet Habib Jalib. Dialectic is made of multitudes influenced by the lives he has lived and seen.
“It’s about going back to the source of your existence.” he said “There is a concept in Islam that says that before the world was created, all human souls were together in one place. The Sea of Souls.” So before we were born, I asked, we were all together? “Yes, exactly”. I told him that the word religion comes from the word relegere meaning to go through again (in reading or in thought), to tie back together. “I don’t think necessarily that one religion is right. Every religious practice is grounded in the same sort of idea of worship.” I nodded, even though I am not religious I consider myself to be a spiritual person, and ritual and practice are the ways in which my spirituality manifests. I call it God in a new dress.
One of the things that intrigued me about Dialectic’s narrative was the way he spoke of Ramadan as an anti-capitalistic and poetic practice. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. When I spoke to him, Dialectic was fasting.
“I like to think of this month as a process of mental decolonization as we grasp at the very roots of our innermost selves and untangle the webs they weaved to recover our actual being. This month provides sustenance not only for the body but also for the soul and our spiritual connection to our history and this earth,” he said in one of his Instagram posts. I asked him to expand on his thoughts during our conversation.
“We think of ourselves as machines. And that ingrains this idea in yourself that you are not enough, that’s what capitalism does. One of the most basic tenets of it as a cultural phenomenon is convincing us that we’re never enough,” he told me.
To go back in, I say often, is a revolutionary act. If I think I’m not enough, I said, “as a result, you have to constantly push yourself to prove your worth,” he finished my sentence. Looking through the transcript of our conversation I witnessed and found tenderness in the way two human strangers can understand each other so deeply.
”It’s very anti-capitalist in that way, that we’re abstaining from food and water. But at the same time we’re supposed to have this inward trajectory, where we’re looking at ourselves and trying to be better people,” he said. Differently from a cold capitalist narrative, Ramadan teaches to find that betterment within yourself and not outside.
“We think of ourselves as machines. And that ingrains this idea in yourself that you are not enough”
When speaking about his first days of fasting, Dialectic explained that no matter how much time he has been following Ramadan, they are never easy. “Your mind is constantly under attack,I need food, I need water. But then, you realize the immense willpower that we have, unknowingly.” I wonder also how much fasting, and therefore needing to tend to our own bodies more carefully, results in not forcing ourselves to do too much, but slowing down and resting, I told him.
Dialectic looked up as if thinking intensely, and shook his head up and down. Even in his art, he said, he has learned that constant production and output are not the ways he wants to do things. “I like to take my time with it, to feel it out, letting the concept and words come to me. I don’t like pushing it anymore”.
Somehow, we began talking about infusing joy in life, and how rest and self-care are fundamental aspects of it. “Society thrives because people have time to think, to rest, imagine,” he said. This reminded me of a recent conference I attended about rekindling imagination in capitalist societies and how important space was for this. The simple act of having space for thought.
Imagination plays a huge role in activism, he told me a quote: “we’re planting seeds for trees that we may never sit in the shade of.” This reminded me about the conundrum of the activist, how many forms of activism are driven by imagining other worlds and working to achieve them whilst knowing you may never see the results. This is a practice that is devoid of ego.
“I think women are far more sophisticated at taking care of their heart.”
When I asked him about the talks he has done, he told me that mostly it is women that he finds in these spaces.“I think women are far more sophisticated at taking care of their heart.” I let this beautiful phrase settle in. For men, it is a job that needs a lot more effort, for they are conditioned to suppress emotions. Dialectic tells me that growing up with his mother and sister helped him counter this. He quoted one of my favorite philosophers, Cornel West, saying “Justice is what love looks like in public. And tenderness is what justice looks like in private”.
We both agreed that finding spirituality is a way to learn to take care of your heart. In one of his recent posts, Dialectic quoted a beautiful passage by Khalid Latif:
“The deepest poverty that is experienced by people in the West is a spiritual poverty. This is not a part of the world that people leave their homes to journey towards in order to find themselves — for that most people still head eastward. People come here to find wealth and material gain, not meaning and purpose.
The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but when the acquisition of the former comes prior to the cultivation of the latter, we find then systems and structures like those that are built around us. In the midst of it all, our sense of humanity dies over and over again for it’s not possible to live without a heart. And there is no heart present where there is spiritual poverty.”
Thank you for reading this month’s Art Corner! This is a monthly column, follow Virginia on Medium to get this in your email when it comes out, or follow her work here. This is a passion project made a reality by New Media Advocacy Project.
You can follow Dialectic’s work on his Spotify and on his Instagram Page.
