Reading at InsideStoryTime

I will be reading from my book at InsideStoryTime on August 19th, 2014.

MASKS AND MASQUES at La Movida Wine Bar & Community Kitchen, 3066 24th St., San Francisco, on Tuesday August 19th, 7.30-9.30 pm, will feature Richard Kadrey (The Getaway God), Novella Carpenter (Gone Feral), Lee Foust (Poison and Antidote), Makram Abu-Shakra (Interplay), and Melissa Dodd. MCd by James Warner (All Her Father's Guns).



InsideStoryTime.com

I will also be part of a Memoirist panel at the LitQuake 2014 festival. Stay tuned for more information.

Finalist at Indie Excellence Book Awards

This has been a positive month for my book Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality. In addition to receiving Honorable Mention at two book festivals, I was a Finalist at the 2014 National Indie Excellence Book Awards in the Spiritual category.

Interplay Received Honorable Mention at Two Book Festivals

Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality received Honorable Mention at the Paris Book Festival and San Francisco Book Festival this month.

I gave the following speech at San Francisco Book Festival on May 17th, given the request to speak briefly about why I wrote the book and the journey writing it:

"Before writing Interplay, I devoted much of my free time to making music, art, and fiction. What especially interested me in my creative endeavors was developing the art of poetic obscurity and enigma craftsmanship. Over the years, I accumulated experiences that were quite intense, and the insights harvested from these experiences came with an ever-increasing desire to share them with others, which became the primary impetus behind writing this book. And taking on this project was an excursion from my usual, mystery-seeking self because the nature of the book demanded explaining things in an accurate and straightforward fashion. This was contrary to my artistic nature and I detected a growing sense of inner dissonance or rebellion. It seemed like the closer I got to articulating my deeper insights, the more this rebellious side wanted to not necessarily negate my ideas, my expressions but shroud them in mystery, as if acting as a protector of difficult truths. This...unexpected interplay, which is documented in the book, led me to develop a form of intellectual thinking that did not temper the inner dissonance but embraced it."

Images from the festival:

Book Release - Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality

Posts have been infrequent here because I've been busy writing my book Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality and preparing for its release. The bulk of this blog so far can be described as an early rough draft of the book. Ideas are relatively underdeveloped here, and I invite the reader to turn to the book instead of exploring preceding posts.

Going forward, I will provide excerpts from the book and expand on the material. I will also offer new angles on the book's key concepts that present them in a more general light. In contrast, the book is largely autobiographical and the ideas are tied to personal experience, presented in the order they were conceived. Both styles of writing come with benefits and can be seen to be complementary.




Synopsis

Driven by the pursuit of inspiration and breakthrough experiences, musician, artist, and writer Abu-Shakra explores the inner terrain and develops a spirituality centered on attaining higher states of mind.

Interplay shows the benefits and risks of intensely energized, minimally disciplined spiritual development and emphasizes evoking the balancing process directly from life’s experiences.

Weaving memoir with fiction, discussions on art and music, and unique observations on the nature of reality, Interplay traces the author's progression from skepticism to groundbreaking revelations on synchronicity, mysticism, and the process of initiation.

Format: Softcover
Purchase Link: http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-8041-7

Format: Hardcover
Purchase Link: http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-8271-1

Format: eBook
Purchase Link: http://www.amazon.com/Interplay-Artists-Approach-Spirituality-ebook/dp/B00G4I2YX8/

Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Interplay-Approach-Spirituality-Makram-Abu-Shakra/dp/0741480417

Advance Praise

"As a story of spiritual transition and transcendence, this is a book that will be of great interest to many people. Open-minded readers will find a great deal to ponder." --BookIdeas.com

"A dynamic and thought-provoking account of one man’s spiritual and artistic evolution....This book acts as a challenge to skeptics and a heartfelt appeal to the open-minded....[Interplay] serves as a powerful treatise on spiritual discovery and provokes thoughtful introspection in regards to one's spirituality." --San Francisco Book Review

"Devotees of art and spiritual exploration will find much to contemplate in Interplay. Weaving various art forms together with spiritual and psychic exploration cannot help but motivate those who wish to use their own art as a means to awakening." --ForeWord Clarion Reviews

"In every stage of his development—both spiritual and creative—this musician/artist/fiction writer/philosopher creates a complex "palette" of perspectives. Beginning with this multiplicity he strives to reach a simplicity that retains the original rich complexity, much like the miraculous harmony that comes of mixing the color on a palette....the reader will return again and again to "Interplay" in search of anchor points, synchronicity and synthesis in one's own spiritual journey." --BookReview.com

The Green Dragon

Someone in the bar was advertising green dragon smoke. I, once dragon slayer, having battled the proliferating heads of an all-pervasive hydra, let the words "tonight, I shall find your dragon" slip from my lips. Perhaps it had already subsumed the bar; a subterranean rhythm was apparent.

I was conversing with a group of friends and casual acquaintances. I was aware that the mirror archetype was especially strong this evening, that my personality was being acutely influenced by those around me. A subtle vision surfaced, depicting a panel of mirrors, a grid whose limits were unsure. I kept a part of my attention on the vision, to ensure its proper harvest.

As time progressed, I detected movement in the mirrors, like the edge of a curtain playing in a breeze. I suddenly realized what moved was the wing of a dragon. The vision unfolded; I was flying into the dragon's mouth.

Having been absorbed by a mirror, I witnessed another panel. I could imagine--but not see--that the two mirrored panels between which I was positioned extended their reflections infinitely. I kept moving, smoothly passed through one panel after the next, until I traversed the dragon to completion and exited out its tail.

I saw shards of light bounce about the space of a rectangle with dizzying complexity. The vision ended in an energetic frenzy. I opened my eyes. I was back at the bar, but on which side of which mirror?

The Fade Out Room - New Album Release

The Fade Out Room has just been released on the Test Tube netlabel. This is a sonic tale of wading through dimensions. Downloads are free under the Creative Commons license and can be found here. From the album description:

We think that fans of The Caretaker and Gutta Percha will love this.
Following are some words from the artists explaining their work:

«M A S (aka Makram Abu-Shakra) and Travis McAlister are two musicians who used to play in various improv bands together during the early 90's in Southern California. Roughly a decade after they went their separate ways, a visit to Travis' home in Portland, Oregon led to a recording of mostly improvised music, which was to serve as the raw material for a project of careful craftsmanship that took three years to complete.

The result is an exploration of the warm, organic, and faulty sounds of vintage instruments, as well as an attempt to seek out (or invent?) an ambient side of early music genres such as old school jazz and the dream-like reverie of early black and white cinema. This is done from a minimalist musician's perspective which repeatedly strives to return to a core, abstract expression. As such, there is a dynamic interplay between structured melody and pure sound textures.

One has a sense of layers being peeled back to reveal deeper meaning, underscored by a recurring tendency towards sonic diminution and the fading out to silence. Hence, the name "The Fade Out Room".
The exploration of varying musical styles gives a sense of transparency to the album or an unfolding of dimensions, the shifts in the music at times resembling the soft peeling or shedding of layers to reveal more essential expressions.

The instruments played in The Fade Out Room include an optigan, an assortment of bells, various synths, a music box, and a plastic trumpet.

Makram Abu-Shakra was born in Lebanon and is now based in San Francisco. He is also an artist and a writer. Most of his work can be found here. Look for his first book to be published sometime in the next six months.
Travis McAlister was born in California and frequently performs live in Portland, Oregon. He is a member of Nequaquam Vacuum and The Krebsic Orkestar. He has earned a reputation of being a multi-instrumentalist and he also builds his own musical instruments.»
- test tube

Thus Spoke the Eye - Part II