Some Lebanese female singers facing static mental plateaus

Part of the series Perceiving complexity

The main psychological notions I am using here are detailed and explained in the series Perceiving complexity. In this article I write about how I see some Lebanese female singers deal with the issue of static mental plateaus. The relation between the mental fluidity and the static plateaus appears to have a long history in the Middle East. The dynamics that create this issue are noticed in their basic unfoldment as early as in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The man is too despotic with his static mental plateaus as control of the situation. The coherence of such plateaus is based on the female responsibilities in facing the raw reality perspective, which decrease for the man the level of complexity he needs to take in consideration and thus enable some organization. The woman needing to put up with such a despotic man does not want to challenge the situation through the overall meaning created by his static plateaus. This would mean partaking in his organization based on him dominating her and enframing her in a static imagery (she can’t find a way to develop an organization of her own in that psychological environment).

But still, she is using those static plateaus for cognitive orientation in life. Her approach is to develop her own expertise in thinking from the point of view of the raw reality to the point she can set the tone in how the mental plateaus develop. If the man thinks he is so great through the control exerted with those mental plateaus, the woman has her own initiative to think that he is great. Her version about his greatness unfolds from the point of view of a grassroots raw reality perspective.

In the classical human gender relations, the woman is too overwhelmed by the complexity supposed by that perspective and is dominated by the man. The Middle Easter women cultivated the expertise in thinking from that perspective to the point they can turn the tide and set the tone themselves about the man’s self-image (in that ancient epic, Enkidu is the self-image developed by women for Gilgamesh, more about this in the part 12 to part 17 of Perceiving complexity). Some of the women worldwide can do this to some extent, but in the Middle East it got “political” early in history. The man’s self-image developed by the woman is not so much seeping in the man’s own self-image as it is usual worldwide. It is too much of an alternative self-image as a personal initiative and organization of the woman.

Given the level of expertise in working with the raw reality perspective such an alternative self-image supposes, it provides much more vibrancy and the man tends to like it. Only that he may act like Gilgamesh in the epic, namely rather loving Enkidu than being interested in the woman. The woman leaned too much on the concept of a masculine self-image in order to be able to develop an alternative one. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh about Humbaba, the part of this alternative self-image out of the man’s control, they need to kill him and they succeed.

When the woman learns about this, she retreats her support and Enkidu dies. This is when the man learns that it was an illusion to imagine that the mental plateaus in his mind really have a hard consistency, Enkidu as his alternative self-image was based on a much more grassroots use of the raw reality perspective with much more immersion in its complexity than the classical masculine thinking is aware.

This creates the pathos of the Middle Eastern men about the perishability of the static mental plateaus they are used to think with, like ya’aburnee (“you bury me”), referring to the difficulty of accepting the idea of the death of a loved one before yours. Or wuquf ‘ala al-atlal (“stopping by the ruins”), a motif in the Arabic poetry about the pain experienced when finding the remnants of the encampment of a friendly caravan.

Moving on to our present times, I want to write about how I see some Lebanese female singers face this issue. First, Najwa Karam. By the beginning of her career she had a rather depersonalized public presence, like a clear distinction between what part of her artistic talent she really has her own coherent relation with and what part she does not have. She appears herself like a sideline spectator watching how her artistic expressivity unfolds from the depths of her mind. Of course, most likely she worked a lot to hone and improve her skills, but it feels like she was watching herself with amazement her own artistic expressivity in the idea that “How are the psychological processes unfolding, how does this happen?” See these 1994 videos: Law Habaytak (translation), Wrood Eddar (translation), Elala (translation).

I notice then the 1998 Maghroumeh (translation). A more personalized feeling, now she really has to face what is going on with her as a woman in the human gender relations and the whole personal status and psychological organization and sense of meaning that derives from that.

Then the things start to change. The 1999 Kif Bdawik (translation) feels like finding a relevant personal stance to the pathos of the Middle Eastern men about the perishability of the static mental plateaus. “How could I heal you when I want someone to heal me?” “How could I be a medicine and a doctor to your injuries while I already have enough on my plate?”

My interpretation of this change is through an Altaic prism where there is more awareness about women who end up seeing things from a masculine approach that does not know how to deal well with the fluidity of the raw reality perspective (I notice something similar here too, but without such consciousness, hence I find illuminating the Altaic perspective with much more awareness around these aspects). This is a masculine perception that really takes in consideration the raw reality perspective, hence it really is relevant for women and they may end up thinking too from its point of view.

In the Altaic mindset you have a more direct perception of such inner processes and you can have a more direct perception of what is going on in such situations, like in Ezledem-tabalmadım of the Tatar singer Damira Saetova. The two women flanking the man are his anima, the two men flanking the woman are her animus. The lyrics are about how the protagonists are looking for each other but they don’t meet, he is looking for her in the town (the world of classical static mental structures), she is looking for him in the fields (the world of the fluid raw reality perspective).

He senses the raw reality perspective, but he cannot find relevant psychological processes to relate to it. His anima kind of mirrors his perceptions, which makes the two women flanking him rather pensive. Real life women growing up in such environment end up themselves like this, and they may just live their lives under the spell of this situation. An idea would be to be introspective and pay attention to what is going on in your inner world, like in İstanbul Ağlıyor of the Turkish singer Gülay (the barely visible man is her animus).

Bul, eyde, minem hatın of the Tatar singer Ayrat Imaşev can give an example of a man who can make the difference between the static plateaus and the fluid raw reality immersion. He likes the real life woman, but after a while he notices how he entered in an mental plateau disconnected from her, it is all a cinematography in his mind. Then his anima understands too the situation and helps create a favorable emotional environment to start a raw reality connection.

An example of a woman who is facing what is going on with her lover and/or her animus, Kunelem belen sine ezledem of the Tatar singer Vildana. First he appears normal, but when she really faces this imagery she notices something does not correspond with her inner perceptions. When she lets unfold what the deeper perceptions show, he is barely clinging to a log to not drown.

It is important to pay attention to the real psychological situation of your anima/animus to see how you can relate to it and what to do about it. Thus you can have a better idea about why you are attracted to a certain type of people and what you can do about it. My impression is that something like this happened with Najwa Karam, maybe a real life situation with a man with that Middle Eastern pathos about the perishability of the static plateaus. Something that actually resonates with her (her own animus being like this), but all her life up to that moment she tried to not get involved with that side of her, hence the rather depersonalized public presence. And now she sees the real life man unfolding like this, triggering her own inner resonance.

All those years living on the sideline of herself came in handy with the experience accumulated around these issues and now she feels she has a coherent and authentic point of view of her own about this state of mind (if you just reject the issues of your anima/animus, you solve nothing, you just avoid them and they will keep coming back in your mind, you need to take them in consideration with empathy and see what what you can do). The respective state of mind does not feel anymore like the only psychological option by default as it feels for men with such pathos, she did the hard work and she actually can unfold a point of view really representative for herself. Other music from the same year, like Rouh Rouhi (translation) feels like a more relevant self-expression, you feel that someone is expressing herself there.

In 2001, in Ana meen (translation), she further explores this new perspective, it appears like an immersion in the fluid depths of the human psyche, at times she has an expressivity like a distillation of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history. She has herself her own relevant connections to the depths of her psyche that unfold her artistic creativity and that feel authentic for her. This is the kind of good quality appreciation one can have after living so many years with mental structures felt as rather unrepresentative for their real sense of self.

When wondering what does this say about her sense of self, “who am I? If they ask me who I am, I tell them I am you, I am from your ribs” (referring to the Abrahamic religious story that the woman was created by God from the man’s rib). This may not resonate well to politically correct people, but if you really want to be authentic with yourself, you need to take in consideration the depths of your personality, which were honed in the long human history.

The Western politically correct approach is not much different from the Communist one of creating the “new man” that I experienced in my childhood in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Both these approaches will turn into the laughing stock of history, it is important to take in consideration what is the human psyche and the human social structure based on. There are serious problems there, but only if you take them in consideration you can do something about them. This concept of the “politically correct new man” is ridiculous and without practical effects.

In this particular case, her discovery of this valuable psychological perception is something honed by the Middle Eastern women in the distant past and it provides such a polished expertise in working with the fluid raw reality perspective that the feminine “I am you” turns an inexperienced man into a sideline psychological annex of the woman. Yes, normally both the man and the woman should have their own lives and their own personalities. But the human psychology is so much based on what happened in the human past that you cannot just create a “new man”. Yes, you can make changes, but for that you need to really assume responsibilities about who you are and take in consideration the current situation.

From a masculine perspective, this “I am you” can be rather dreadful, given the expertise and mental liberation the woman has in this case. But nevertheless it is important to face the human psychology and see what to do with it. I don’t find a coherent “new man” outside of it.

This Middle Eastern polished feminine expertise is about women who did not want to partake in classical masculine static plateaus, they felt this would enframe them and make them lose their real sense of self. This valuable expertise in turn made the men feel how those static plateaus are not so static and stable as they imagined. Lacking other psychological alternatives, this made such men sad and elegiac about the perishability of their mental structures.

Middle Eastern women growing up in such an environment may end up thinking from this perspective and they can find their way out like Najwa Karam. And, when they find their way out, they discover again that polished expertise of working with the raw reality perspective. This perspective was developed in times of female subordination, this is how it was shaped, this is how it appears in the mind. Let’s see what to do from now on. For women like Najwa Karam it may not be such a priority to do something right away, as it does not look like a disempowering situation, on the contrary.

In such case, once you realize how your psychological legacy looks like, I see the modern concept of the emancipated woman as valuable and necessary, to let the woman realize she can have a responsible life of her own. The women may realize what a valuable psychological expertise they have, but some of them still continue to use it in the classical gender relations framework, by using the man’s responsibilities as an umbrella in facing the unknown of real life (which kind of looks like a problem and a limitation for Najwa Karam too, as you will see in the further development of her career).

The world now follows too much some simplistic extremes: in the West you can see people who lack psychological depth and they imagine they can just create a “politically correct new man” as they please. In these mostly Asian cultures I write about, there is a depth of perception about the human nature, people are nervous about the simplistic Western approach and they find easy refuge in a simplistic modern reinterpretation of traditional values. I find good a combination of psychological depth with modern awareness that you can have a responsible approach to that depth. And it is not necessarily that the Western people lack depth, it is rather that they permit some poor quality public figures seizing the public scene with simplistic supposedly modern approaches to life (the same as in many of these other cultures I write about some poor quality public figures seize the public scene with simplistic modern reinterpretations of traditional values).

Back to Najwa Karam, another aspect specifically about her is that, when compared to the typical Middle Eastern feminine vibe in using this expertise, her rediscovery is not just a simple return, since it appears that she had to convey to her animus, to make it understand how the fluidity of the raw reality perspective is a natural environment that makes sense in itself and thus to make possible the mental passage to the natural unfoldment of this perspective. This seems to be the vibe in songs like the aforementioned Kif Bdawik. In this sense, her rediscovery of the full-fledged expressivity of the raw reality perspective is not just a return, it takes in consideration how an inexperienced masculine mind sees such a fluidity as elegiac and how it can be conveyed to such a point of view the normality of this fluidity.

Further on, after bathing in the depths of the mind in Ana meen, two years later, she comes up with such a vibrant music, like Saharni (translation), Shou El Manea (translation). And her public presence is so expressive and naturally confident, it is not anymore about a woman paying attention how to impress while not very sure what the others think about her. She tackled those static plateaus that can be dreadful for women and keep their entire lives wondering what the others think about them. She learned how to relate to them and fluidize them and thus keep her feminine point of view.

In the next years, she produced music about a fluid psychological perspective deeper than the classical static plateaus and able to fluidize them, with disoriented men slowly entering with their minds in that fluidity. See Shou Hal Hala (translation), Bawsit Abel El Nawm (translation).

Sometimes she enters herself in a mental plateau, like in Lash7ad Hobak (translation). In this case she entered in a mental plateau exactly with the idea that she appears to have a personal expertise about the mental fluidity and creativity. She is supposed to amp up the man’s creativity, but the video is rather lackluster, it lacks her usual psychological guidance into the mental abyss of the raw reality perspective.

Not that it is necessarily a bad think to experience such a static plateau. Some people tend to avoid thinking too directly about what is this mental fluidity about in order to not enter in such mental plateaus. But you need to study what it is about and face the possibility of such plateaus and study even these plateaus themselves to understand more about the whole situation (I had to go through that myself to discover the aspects I write about in the series Perceiving complexity).

The song itself is in fact good, it is the video ending up in a plateau. This live interpretation at the Arab Star Academy does it more justice. The Syrian singer Sarah Farah is also notable here, with another nuance of feminine take on how to fluidize the static plateaus, work with them and have a confident feminine public presence.

It is still a problem when you really settle in a mental plateau, like in this 2018 El Layli Laylitna (translation). It feels like “I have such success, let’s do a great production”. The result is so poshlost (a Russian term for banal human behavior lacking substance), lacking direction, she is not working with that mental abyss, she is watching the viewer with uncertainty in her eyes, do I impress you or not?

I don’t see the mental fluidity as a constant fight against mental plateaus, it is more like learning how it is a life in itself. From a position like this 1998 live in Paris interpretation of Khayarouni, when you find yourself with such a direct and authentic expressivity of that mental abyss, how are you going to deal with this? This interpretation feels like “I am just a normal person, yet I have such an authentic expressivity when I let it unfold” (of course, most likely she worked a lot to hone and exercise her expressivity, this should be reminded too).

Some time after this interpretation, she had herself a psychological immersion in that abyssal perspective in the period like in the song Ana meen and this reformed her personality into such a sparkling public presence. Here too it appears the question, how are you going to deal with this? Now you have psychological power that can face self-confidently that of the men. This also means that you can enter like a classical man into mental plateaus. And, probably for a woman the elephant in the room may be to what extent you still have a thinking process oriented towards masculine organization. The same as for men the elephant in the room may be the extent they base their organization on a raw reality perspective with some feminine sources. If you are aware of this, you may naturally slide into doing something about it.

Let’s move on to Nancy Ajram. She is more along the coordinates the Western women are used to think with (maybe more those women who find refuge in the vocal, strident side of feminism). She does not have much innate perception that it is not good to assume directly classical masculine projection of power, as this will disadvantage the woman down the line. She does not have a reaction like that of Najwa Karam by the beginning of her career to not enter psychologically into that area. See Ah W Noos (translation), the man courts her, by the end of the video he offers her a seat on his motorcycle, life would be much easier for you if you accept a subordinate place in my organization. She is like, dude, you don’t seem to realize that I have my own capacities to move and shake things.

The car that subsequently appears with older women in the back is like the feminine experience she got from her female ancestry and the environment of older women she grew up with. She can unleash that fluid thinking that is much more powerful than his flimsy motorcycle. No problem with the value of the fluid thinking, but if you consider that this expertise you have can make you automatically strong as in a classical masculine plateau of projection of power (as she flaunts at the end), then you miss the point.

This fluid thinking was developed to tackle the static masculine plateaus with fluidity and do something about their projected power. If you imagine you get a plateau of power of your own with this, then you end up like Nancy Ajram in Fi Hagat (translation) or Enta Eyh (translation). She has herself a psychological investment in a sense of self like a plateau in which you feel in control of the situation, but she is not really thinking in masculine terms of power. And when things get more complex like in a real relation in which the senses of self blend (not just exploratory approach like in Ah W Noos), she finds her fluid expression blocked. She has things to say, she would want to process them in the manner of a simplistic classical plateau in which she invested herself, but they are too complex for that.

Najwa Karam had a more clear approach, no involvement with static plateaus as a sense of self (which can appear as the first easy choice), she rather had a depersonalized public presence like a spectator to herself than a static sense of self. And then she managed to develop a sense of self around the psychological expertise of the fluid thinking, something to represent her authentically. With this she does not seem to have mental blockages in relations with men, on the contrary, the men tend to follow her leads.

She enters in mental plateaus, but it is more like the men do, it does not block her life, it does not affect her overall expression. She has control over those mental plateaus the same as the men, while Nancy Ajram finds herself with no psychological control over them when in a blending of senses of self with the man. She is also stuck in simple perceptions about men, like in Ya Tabtab (translation), she sees the man with an overwhelming and indisputable strength, she is simply mentally blocked when it is about facing the man.

I am not necessarily saying this in the sense that Najwa Karam is the way to go, this is only in the sense of this is how she managed to do something about the situation (which also made her the most successful contemporary female Arab singer, as aside those poshlost mental plateaus she tends to have substance and direction in what she sings). After all, there are serious things to improve in her approach too.

There is something valuable in the way Nancy Ajram expresses the basics of the classical feminine situation, but I see it valuable only as an expression of the situation, not as just living such a situation. This is increasingly unsustainable in the current direction the humanity is taking with increased literacy and knowledge. Women should be more participative, but many of them are simply mentally blocked and the refuge in the complaining feminism that sounds like “man, solve my problems!” is not a solution.

It feels like the man should take care and think what to do about the woman’s situation and at every turn of the road he should find out how to handle the curve while keeping the appearances that the supposedly modern woman drives her own car by herself. This goes nowhere, as this kind of woman will never face the unknown of real life in this manner. Of course, this is not about “never lean of each other” (it is normal to lean from time to time), but about an overwhelming mental blockage in facing the unknown of life exactly because of keeping the appearances that you can handle the complexities of real life if you have decisional power of your own.

Maybe they should realize there is an entire psychological world that can be explored, the normality and the vivacity of that mental abyss, beyond just the focus on the man as a total plateau of stability. This is not about “I should not focus on the man”, since the negation of something means you still orientate your mind around that something, which turns into poor quality feminism. Maybe it is about the simple question “who are you”? From that basic expressivity of the femininity what would you want to do with your life? This is not about rejection of gender relations for a quick construction of a new simplistic identity, but as a focus on the unknown of the self (and from this, if you are interested in gender relations, better approaches can stem too).

Nawal El Zoghbi is something in between the two previous singers. The same as Najwa Karam she realizes she should not just step into classical static masculine plateaus as projected power in social life, but the same as Nancy Ajram she is contemplative and just immersed in the fluidity of the feminine perspective. See Habeit Ya Leil (translation), with the good quality expertise in working with the raw reality perspective, she has such a direct frontal view of the thinking processes the classical feminine approach to this perspective supposes. A fluid plurality of thinking threads of herself watching like in a cinema what is going on in the “meaningful world” organized by men, where they unfold another fluid plurality of thinking threads of herself.

Najwa Karam went through the Middle Eastern masculine elegiac approach to this fluidity, managed to express how this fluidity makes sense and this gave her an organizational base of its own in the raw reality perspective, as in Ana meen. She is not just watching like in a cinema, she can unfold that complexity in a coherent organization of itself, which fluidize the plateaus of the men and, if the latter want to keep the pace, they need to take in consideration the fluidity.

Considering the Earth-Moon allegory from the series Perceiving complexity, Nawal El Zoghbi watches from the Earth her thought threads on the Moon, with the Moon as the “normal world”. Najwa Karam has a coherent psychological organization that can make the Earth a normal point of view in itself. Ana meen has a different take than Habeit Ya Leil, it is about how that mental abyss makes sense and it can be coherent in itself.

In Wala Beyhemeni, another video of Nawal El Zoghbi with an analysis of her image in the “meaningful world”, I find valuable the way she is sometimes watching the camera with a gaze that can keep the mind open to what is really happening, without drawing any conclusion, without settling in a mental plateau. She is caught in the static “meaningful world”, but nevertheless she keeps that raw reality vivacity in her mind. This can be very valuable, Najwa Karam tends to lose sight of this aspect, she is psychologically powerful enough to fluidize other people’s static plateaus and thus be in control of the situation, but then she enters herself in new plateaus (which do not bother her too much, as she has the overall control of the situation, it is not like in classical femininity).

Moving on to Diana Haddad, here it is more about a masculine perspective on her music. Some years ago I found this video, Shater (translation), the song on the surface did not look anything special to me, but it nevertheless had something really relaxing about it, especially for the Jewish side of my masculinity that has a continuous anxiousness about the complexity of the world.

Who is she? I looked for other songs of her, I found also interesting this Lagaitek (translation). The lyrics are about a man in love with a woman already engaged, but for me it was rather relevant a vibe of that Middle Eastern pathos about the perishability of the mental plateaus, about not feeling like investing myself in a love relation because, even if it would stand the test of time, still death will put an end to it. A feeling that it is all in vain, nothing lasts.

The singer assumes this, but it has a way to take this masculine point of view and really immerse it in that dreadful perishability. A masculine mind usually only hovers around this feeling. This immersion really faces it and it has some unexpected psychological nuances that can open the mind of a man to unexpected perspectives about assuming responsibilities about this situation, finding that you can have a coherent and valuable organization even in this situation. This mental organization is too unexpected for a masculine mind, one of those situations that otherwise I wouldn’t have known where and how to start.

The valuable part here is how she can translate to a masculine mind how and where to start to make some initial bridges to other ways of thinking. This is another example of a Middle Eastern feminine endeavor that can come up with new ideas of psychological organization when growing up in an environment with men too blocked mentally because of the awareness of the complexity of the raw reality, seen too much as a dreadful mental abyss. It is different from that of Najwa Karam and thus it can give the idea that there can be many approaches and lots of things to find out.

Najwa Karam looks like she had a separation in her mind between the mentally blocked masculine stance and her feminine point of view. The mentally blocked masculine stance was the “normal” psychological organization she probably grew up in, this giving that impression that she was like a spectator to herself in the initial part of her life. Not so much a spectator like in Habeit Ya Leil of Nawal El Zoghbi, where the woman finds her mental fluidity in the masculine organization and has personal involvement and personal satisfactions in that organization. Her own sense of self is invested in the masculine organization in that video.

At Najwa Karam there was not much of such personal investment, maybe the masculine environment was too blocked in facing that mental abyss, she took this herself seriously, which was blocking too much the feminine self-investment in the masculine organization. In time she grew her own organization that found out how to make some psychological bridges for that blocked masculine stance towards the coherence and the normality of the raw reality perspective (an organization that still leans in some aspects on the classical masculine organization of the world, while it is content with the background control of her own life, like in Ana meen).

From what I could find out, Diana Haddad was a tomboy in her childhood, thus a different approach than that of Najwa Karam. I can’t figure out more details to write about her apparent psychology like in the case of Najwa Karam, only that she is more solidary with the masculine point of view and thus she can make mental passages for a masculine mind that can give a start in realizing how aspects of the raw reality perspective make sense.

The mental passages made by Najwa Karam are about dismantling the classical masculine organization in a way a masculine mind can follow and immersing it in a stand-alone manifesting raw reality perspective. The focus is on the manifestation of the raw reality perspective, that of Diana Haddad is about how to really translate a masculine mind into this. But this solidarity with the masculine mind should also take in consideration that the man really is some other person, see Ya Bashar. At the end of the video, she is kind of comfortable with her son in wheelchair. She has also some songs with openness to face the unknown of real life, in which it seems at times to unfold a feeling of some direct immersion in it, as in Ya Saykeen Al Thain.

More about these topics in the series Perceiving complexity.