.: The Red Brick – Dubai College's Student Newspaper :.

Art is the mirror of a culture and its world view. This statement applies no less perfectly to the art of the Islamic world. Islamic Art represents the Muslim outlook on life, their spirituality and the universe as a whole.

The Muslim belief is of one God – ‘Allah’. He is the All Knowing, Most Merciful and the Loving. The beauty of this simple belief of one Higher Being brings the Muslims together in harmony. This has given Islamic Art its sensational spiritual nature.

In Islamic Art, tessellated shapes are frequently used to symbolize this harmony. Muslims are thought to work together or fit together, similar to the shapes in the patterns. As if to send a message that following Islam is easy and balanced.

The Qur’anic calligraphy found in the mosques is an important aspect of Islamic culture because of the Muslims’ profound love and respect for Allah and the Qur’an. The arabesque and calligraphic character of the words reinforce this spiritual atmosphere the art projects.

History of Islamic Art
Islamic architecture and decorative arts are alive from all over the Islamic world, from North Africa to Asia. Islamic Art can come in the forms of architecture, embroidery, decoration and jewellery. Nowadays the Islamic patterns and designs are also translated onto rugs as well as pouches.

“God is Beautiful and Loves Beauty” –said by the Prophet Mohammed (sallallahu alaihi wasallam) some 1400 years ago.

The United Arab Emirates
As a Dubai resident we are surrounded by Islamic artwork and not only gain appreciation towards it but for the artier ones among us- inspiration. Islamic artwork really portrays this peaceful and truthful nature of the religion. It evokes what it is really about; harmony and balance. From the stunning architecture of the Jumeirah Mosque to the rich dark blue calligraphy found on ornamental plates in bazaars, we always feel rather spiritual when admiring Islamic Art.

By Yasmin Adib

Within D.C, there is an abundance of talent. Round every corner is a boy or girl who could very well grow up to be a world leader, a talented musician, an artist or a sportsman. Without exception, one extremely talented student within our school is Rob Miller: a fantastic singer, guitarist and songwriter with a unique style who deserves to be heard. Rob is extremely humble about his talent which makes him all the more special and he was kind enough to talk to the newspaper about his original songs and his feelings towards music in general.

How old were you when music began having an impact in your life?

I must have been about 13 and a half because, for Christmas, my parents and I went half and half on a new guitar. I started off with having some lessons but didn’t really take to them so I decided to teach myself. I focused on looking at learning the basic chords and things like that and then for the harder pieces, I watched the artists playing on YouTube videos so that I could pick up the music that way.

Was there something in particular that influenced you to start?

Can’t say that I am sure what influenced me in the first place but I had always had it in my mind that I wanted to play an instrument and the guitar appealed to me. My neighbor had a broken, 3 string guitar and you could say that I just really enjoyed the instrument even when it was broken like that.

You have already made so many positive steps towards getting yourself heard. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Touring and performing for live audiences?

Well obviously I would love to tour and get the chance to perform my songs in front of people but I think my music will stay as more of a hobby and an interest- performing at open mics and such. It’s up to people to decide how good I am but I’m not counting on anything like that and I’ve never been sure if I’m quite good enough. I doubt I’ll ever stop playing because it’s my way of unwinding and having fun but my music hasn’t influenced my decisions about Universities or anything. I have my own recording equipment so music facilities didn’t play any major part in my choice.

Those who know you are aware of your love of Newton Faulkner- any favourite songs by him?

A pretty impossible question but I would have to say at the moment, the final track on his new album called ‘I’m not giving up yet’. I think it’s special because normally he uses loads of different instruments on his album like strings and bass and such but this song is just on acoustic guitar which makes it work so well. It’s just such a meaningful song and has a great vocal spectrum which actually makes it quite hard for me to sing.

You have a big fan base within Dubai. How many are there exactly?

On YouTube, I have just over 250 following my music and then on Facebook, over 500. It’s not as much as other YouTube artists but I am very pleased with the support I get from people both in and out of the school community.

What is your new C.D made up of?

It’s made up of my own original material, so, songs where I have written the original music and the words. I am planning on releasing a cover album but that would be for free. It would be a good way for people who don’t know me to hear what I can do for free and then decide whether or not they would want to spend the money on my original work. It’s also because I wouldn’t feel right making money from songs that other people have written.

What is your favourite song that you have covered?

I recorded the duet ‘Falling Slowly’ with Tara Mehranzabad which was really good fun and we put in lots of different things like piano and strings, so I would have to say that was my favourite.

And what about your songs; do you have a favourite?

Out of my songs, if any it would have to be ‘Love Song for No One’. It’s probably because I just had a lot of fun doing it. It was played with me on Guitar and Dylan Price on Drums and it started off as a bit of improvisation and just ended up sounding really good.

Rob’s C.D has been released. It’s called ‘Good Enough’ and can be purchased on Amazon and there is no doubt that he has what it takes to affect people with his music and this is not the last we have heard of Rob Miller.

Lily Schuck

Theatre review – A Halloween night out

Plot

Eil Marsh House stands tall, gaunt and isolated, surveying the endless flat marshes beyond the Nine Lives Causeway, somewhere on England’s bleak East Coast. Here Mrs Alice Drablow lived – and died – alone.

Young Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is ordered by his firm to travel up from London to attend her funeral and arrange her papers. At first Kipps is quite unaware of the tragic secrets which lie behind the house’s shuttered windows. He only has a terrible sense of unease. And then, he glimpses a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black. Who is she? Why is she there? He asks questions, but the locals refuse to talk about the woman in black, or even to acknowledge her existence at all. So, Arthur Kipps has to wait until he sees her again, and she slowly reveals her identity to him – and her terrible purpose.

Years later, when Kipps chooses to tell his story, he approaches a theatre producer who creates a performance of this story within the play itself. Therefore ‘The Woman in Black’ is almost a play within a play where scenes constantly swap between rehearsals and the performance.

Review

While dressed up children crowded doorsteps and the less zealous Halloween enthusiasts rocked the night away at the Kings of Leon Concert, I was queuing up at the Madinat Theatre ticket booth, spending all my money on watching a show that frankly I had never really heard of. The one thing I knew about ‘The Woman in Black’ was that it was ‘scary’ or meant to be at least. But to be honest with you, I was sceptical about how a play starring two men working with a minimalistic set could possibly impact an audience so much as to leave them ‘shaking with fear’ as claim the quotes on the programme. Even some films fail to truly terrify viewers and they have the advantage of cinematography, gory special effects and tantalising real life settings. I deemed it impossible for two men on a stage to possibly create their desired effect on an audience.

I don’t think I could have been more wrong.

When first stepping into the theatre I was already encapsulated by a false sense of security, the lighting was warm and luxurious, caressing the hustle and bustle of laughing people dodging others in the aisles, excited for the horror filled spectacular still to come. It was not long before the whole theatre was dark and the audience were caught dead in their seats.

As soon as the actors spoke, their talent emulated from within them and they engaged every member of the audience through every line they spoke or action they took. Even throughout the long silences I was gripped, suspended with curiosity and tension as their ghost story was slowly unravelled before my very eyes.

The tone at first was humourous, where the light hearted relationship between Mr Kipps and the theatre producer instigated modest giggles among the audience, driving them into a sense of reassurance that was soon to be shattered by the latter stages of the play. Their chemistry and presence stole my focus, especially when actually role-playing Mr Kipp’s story. I was so concentrated in their actions that I almost failed to notice the third member of the cast hovering right behind me. Black, everything hidden but a white, ruined face and decrepit eyes. The Woman in Black.  Her subtle presence was eerie and hardly acknowledged in Act 1 which made her that much more mysterious and frightening. She could be anywhere and you could be completely unaware of it.

Act 2 brought horrific surprises, and although I sat still and shaking in my seat, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the action in front of me or block my ears when terrible screams and sound effects pulsed throughout my body. The actors were so convincing in their parts, maintaining this despite the fact they had to multirole that I felt so connected to the story, and found it hard to imagine that the Woman in Black was just a regular person with costume and make up.  The set was cleverly manoeuvred and designed as there was no point where the audience saw stage crew come on stage and change the set. To the viewer’s perspective it seemed to just appear as if from nowhere. This is true of the child’s room which the Woman in black haunted, where a rocking chair seemed to rock repeatedly by itself without any visible form of human interaction.

Not only did the direction and actor’s performances in the play completely stagger the audience, but the twists and turns in the story left us frozen in our seats and strongly impacted by the terrifying atmosphere surrounding us. In my case this fear even managed to follow me home that night, despite my scepticism from before, and my dreams were haunted by screaming children and a woman with a white wasted face.

Lucie Turner

It’s a funny thing, but you mention “creative writing” and you can almost see people’s faces fall. I’m not sure what it is- I mean, proper grown-up writers with their names under columns and on the dust-jackets of shiny hard novels don’t get this kind of stigma- but it’s definitely there. You dance? Amazing! You can paint? Paint me something! You can play the flute? How pretty! You write? … and the faces fall and in the awkward silence you can hear their brains whirring as they try and think of something to say.
Maybe it’s because people are scared of bad writing. But when there’s so much of it about (most of the best seller lists seem to be full of badly-written, fast-paced, well-plotted dross) you’d think people might have become immune to dangling clichés, both in construction and plot. You’d also think people would be more willing to read badly-written, fast-paced, well-plotted dross written by somebody they know rather than a stranger. Not at all- though the theory seems to be that if somebody at an editing house/ press office thought it was good enough to stick into print and sling a hard cover at, it’s good enough for me. And like I’ve said- it isn’t. It really isn’t. You can do better than that yourself. But you try, and people will give you that funny look again. (Try it. It’s got a lot in common with other looks- the look that JC people give you when you say you go to DC. The look someone might give you if you owned up to a keen and pressing interest in collecting odd and esoteric objects.)
Maybe it’s because writing is such a solitary thing. You can’t write together- well, you can, but it’s hard to get anything good out of it. Most collaborative writing smacks nastily of School Project- and most of those that require me, at least, to sit down with somebody else and WRITE end up with me and the somebody-else having a stand up row or a sit down gossip, and neither way do we get much done and down. But writing’s boring to watch. A great deal of writers haven’t got a lot to say off the printed page and written word; and a great deal of writers would rather write than talk (that’s why they’re not actors). And people tend to avoid people who are into solitary pursuits. Saying that you, by choice, sit on your own with a pen-and-paper/computer/typewriter /whatever floats your writerly boat is like announcing to the world you’d really rather sit on your own with a pen-and-paper/computer/typewriter /whatever floats your writerly boat THAN TALK TO THEM. Yes, we know that’s not true- but I’m writing an article about creative writing and you’re reading it. Probably on your own. Probably on a computer screen. You can kind of see where they’re coming from. So we’re going to have to do something about that, too.
Maybe it’s because people are scared of the horribly emotional cliché of the Teenage Writer; laboured rhyming couplets that don’t scan and don’t work as a poem. Yes, there’s a fair few bad teenage writers- one quick drag of the internet finds more bad teenage writing than you could ever hope to need- but there’s a fair few amazing teenage writers at all. Though to classify these writers as teenage is demeaning and ridiculous- nobody ever calls Keats a teenage writer (though some of his work definitely fits the stereotype- laboured rhyming couplets that don’t scan- and I may be risking near death from the English department for typing that) and he died at 25. Vast chunks of his poetry were written in that teenage bracket, and he isn’t alone. It’s the job of this little quarter of the magazine (eighth, sixteenth, maybe even 32th now, in these busy busy technological days) to weed out the bad, and fill it with writing above and Keats. Writing that will defy the stereotype. Writing that will change the minds behind all those looks.
So let’s start now. If you’re in the creative writing section, chances are you’ve got a passing interest in creative writing. So we’re going to do this together. What are we going to do? We’re going to, in Dubai College at least, attempt to change the way people look at creative writing. So that means: writing something people want to read, making it less solitary and getting rid of the cliché of the Teenage Writer. Is this even possible? Can we do that? In the words of Barack Obama and Bob the Builder, YES WE CAN.
And here’s how. I’ve never run something like this before, but here’s how I imagine it should go. Write the next line to this story. Or two lines, if you prefer. As much as you like, up to 100 words. Send it to me. I’ll pick the ones I like best, adhering strictly to the No Teenage Writing and No Bad Writing theories. The techie people will put it on the website. We should in theory end up with a work of artistic and sociable genius. So heigh ho, let’s go…
The day I fell down the cellar steps was the first day of the rest of my life. If I hadn’t fallen down the cellar steps, my head going bump bump bumpity bump on every single stair, my whole life would have been completely different-

…and off you all go. There may even be prizes for anybody who gets something up here (I say prizes. We have no budget as such, so it will just have to be the everlasting love and respect of the editorial board and maybe some chocolate if you’re lucky).

Ella Risbridger