En journalist i New York gjorde en profile på mig!
Jag vet inte hur många som varit med om något som detta, men det är sjukt häftigt. Det är första gången någon har researchat och skrivit en omfattande artikel om mig. Hon intervjuade mina vänner, poeter sm jag känner och släktingar och skickade idag det färdiga resultatet. En del fakta är fel, men artikeln i sig är otroligt smickrande och riktigt bra skriven. Jag ville gärna dela med mig av den.
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Just Because He Can
My words freeze when spoken, not reaching your ears. Emil Brikha’s lyrics saturated the small room, half-filled with men and women at the Bowery Poetry Club for the Urbana Poetry Slam last Tuesday evening. I lit fires under those words, letters, and sentences, hoping the smoke signals would get your attention. All eyes were on him. His arms moved in mechanical swats, his pointed fingers painted invisible lines across the darkened room. And so I picked up those words, sharpened them and threw them at you screaming. His smooth tone pierced—a contradiction to his small stature. The dim spotlight illuminated him; the room was quiet. PLEASE LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU.
Emil performed The Wordbox, a track from his third album Spoken Words and Unheard Thoughts, during his thirty-minute performance as the Urbana Poetry Slam’s feature poet on October 10th. This performance was his fourth in an eight show US tour and a highlight—it was the first gig he booked, nurturing the idea of others.
Emil stood upon the stage—a few feet from a row of scattered tables. Har Bor Karlek, the Swedish phrase, in black across his white t-shirt. A woman’s voice projected from the audience, “I like your shirt. Tell them what it means.” Emil looked out, smiled. “Death to America.” A laugh. “No, it means ‘love lives here’.”
The Urbana Poetry Slam’s host introduced Emil as a Swedish rapper/hip-hop artist by way of Iran. Yet Emil corrects him when we meet four days later, in Union Square. The sun hits him hard and he stretches out along the worn, speckled steps—first shedding his long sleeved shirt, then t-shirt, remaining in a gray tank top. Emil was born in Iran to an Iraqi father, Aschour, and Iranian mother, Janet. In 1981, when Emil was two and his brother, Aril—five, the family moved to Sweden. Both his parents had worked for Swedish companies and had become enamored with the country’s politics; even when the rest of their extended family was relocating to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Emil’s memories are of Sweden—it is where he has lived for 25 years. He speaks fluent Swedish (he also speaks English and Assyrian). His family lives there, he completed high school there, has spent his life there, yet he does not call it home. “I’ve lived there all my life and I’ve been here for a month and a half but I feel more at home here. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve lived there or how good the Swedish I speak. It doesn’t matter because of the way I look.” When he speaks he looks directly at you. His stare, a bit unnerving at first, is warm. Emil has eyes the color of lacquered wood, several shades deeper than his skin and the charcoal shadow that grazes his cheeks, chin, and jaw line. “Being American is a state of mind, it’s not a physical attribute and I like that,” Emil says.
Emil’