Poet of the Fortnight #13: ddavidd (Dec 20 - Jan 3)

Ddavidd, known to some as Frank, has been randomly selected through a private sign-up as our 13th Poet of the Fortnight (PotF)! Ddavidd lives in Canada and has been on PnQ off and on for many years. He is a well known member of PnQ. With this account, created in March of this year, he has submitted 145 poems and been given a win or honorable mention by the weekly contest judges no less than 22 times. He is also a significant commenter on poems and on the forums.

Please welcome Ddavidd to his own special thread, and be sure to read his latest poem posted just below:

----
The Distance (Senryu)

Time is the distance
between the perfection and
the perfection lost.
----

Ddavidd, please fill out this public survey when you find time. You can pass any question/prompt in this thread, just write "Pass." I will ask 10 questions total throughout the next 2 weeks, and members of the community are encouraged to participate by asking questions of their own. Here's the survey:

Real name:
Meaning behind your PnQ name:
Birth place:
Languages spoken:
When you discovered PnQ and why you joined:
Favorite poet(s):
Book you are currently reading:
Song you last listened to:
Inspirations for writing:
5 truths about yourself:

what are some hobbies outside of writing?

¹) What is your favourite quote, why?
²) of the poems you've submitted which is your favourite or which is the one you're most proud of, why?

Look forward to your replies

What's your biggest fear?

Sorry guys for late respond: Some computer problems.
Thanks, Jane kindly for the nice introduction.

Real name: Afshin is my given names, and Aria they called me, Ashe, they know me in Canada
Meaning behind your PnQ name: Ddavidd is a name I chose in 2007 when the fresh breath of people like Abby, sibyllene, yourself, Nico started to dominate the main board. I had so many other names and characters that I created, but this one stuck.
I born in Iran but since 1988 am fugitive of my country
Languages spoken: I speak Persian and English. I write poetry in both extensively.
When you discovered PnQ and why you joined: I think it was around 2003. This site was just opened and I was immediately a member. Later I forgot my password. I opened another account in 2004. Around 2005 I started to get to know Maple tree( Sunny those time), Bob Shank, .. And one or two times got to dialogue with Jeniss

Favorite poet(s): My favorite poets are those I often use their picture in my profile: A. Shanloo, Paul Eluard, Federico Garcia Lurka, Pablo Neruda, so as Emely Dic kenson, Walt Witman, Wiliam Blake, Dylan Thomas, in the English side.
Book you are currently reading: Being and Time by M Heidegger.
Song you last listened to Something from Tchaikovsky
Inspirations for writing: could come from many things: Reading other's poems or listening to music. Also visual thing such as nature when she wants to tell you something.
5 truths about yourself:
I very often cry, Watching movies, clips, war clips... tender moments
I see beauty in all religions, even nonreligions like Marxism. Use to be a Mormon
I am a good cook.
I use to be physically fit, ( mountain climbing) really fit but now I am a little fat
I am a practitioner of ancient spirituality: Sufism. Toltec...

Momentum hunting. In the daily life, I have observed, there are brief moments that the curtain would go aside and you can see the bare aspects of things. Though you only notice them when you are ready, not expecting, but ready. I call this habit of mine: Momentum hunting.

Thanks, dear hiraeth for participating

1) Maybe this one because they stole it from me: "I do not believe in any religion because I believe in God!"

It is the longest poem I've written, " The Galaxy of Whites" in Persian, "Purple Dragonfly: and "The Jazz" in English.

Thanks, dear Em for wonderful questions.

A Shamloo once said

My biggest fear of all is to die
in the land where
the gravediggers' wages
excel the price of the man's freedom.

Thanks, beautiful Noura for participating

ddavidd,
How old were you when you left Iran?

You’ve lived several places. What was the one place that really “spoke” to your inner being the most and why?

Do you still post on YouTube?
If so, have you posted you reading your own poetry? (I ask because at one point you posted a friend reading your poetry).

Have you ever been to Texas?

I was around 20
I like Greece's island. but the most magnificent place was Grand Canyon , and a city nearby named Sedona.

Do you still post on YouTube? - Not really. My friend past away and I loved his voice on my poems. But after he left didn't feel the same.
I think I go there sometimes. I have quite a few recite ( of my poetry) left from him that my older sister wants to edit and put music on them, but she can not find time in two years.

I went in and out ( crossed) but never really traveled there, though I love too.

Thank you so much, dear Larry, for the questions.

Hi frank, among other titles :)
Good to see you here.

Are you a believer in astrology? If so, what is your thoughts on 'star-signs'?

Michael :)

When did you start writing? Do you still have the very first thing you ever wrote? (English or not)

What inspires you most?

I have seen signs and facts here and there. The reason why might be far stretch for the human mind until now, but something out there in space corresponds to every individual life detail.
'star-signs' sometimes crazy accurate
You know that European astrology comes from Iran. It matches Persian calendar completely.

Thank dear Michael for your question

Unfortunately, all of my beginning works in Persian are destroyed by my ex's negligence (long story). I was around 16 when I started. What inspired me was that I was always the best writer in every class but after a while, poetry was more easy, more accessible, and economically friendly. My Persian poems are pretty good due my mastery of the language.
It was 1994 suddenly started to write in English here and there. Nothing really serious.I quit for ten yes, now I really like writing in English.

Thank you, sweet Poetess, for your question

Hi ddavidd :-)

What job do you do? Do you love it or is it just a job?

=^.^=

Part time constroction, parttime student.
It is hard but keeps you in shape.

Hi, kitty. Love to see you around

ddavidd, Sorry i have more than one question...what is your earliest happy memory growing up? What is your greatest love in life and biggest fear?
Best wishes Milly

Hi Frank, nice to see you as Potf. What is a typical day for you like? What part of Canada do you live in? Aside from classical music, what other types of music do you like? You said you were a really good cook, what types of dishes do you make?

Hi, Frank! I love Pablo Neruda as well.

What is your favorite poem of his, and why?
In your opinion, what makes Persian poetry unique?
Is there a poem in PnQ that has left a really lasting impression on you? What is it and why?

Thanks. :-)

¹) What does poetry mean to you?
²) What is your favourite quote and what does it mean to you?
³) If you could go back in time would you? And which era (think that's the correct word) would you go back to and is there a specific reason for this?

Mor the better dear Milly
I did not have a good childhood. But all the memory from those times are Happy. I remember we had chickens and gees in the yard But after I found they were disappearing to our lunch and dinner table, I got sick so bad. I was one week in the bed and after that we never had any animal in the house, thanks to my mom. It was then when I learned their only purpose of living was to end up in the kitchen and that saddened me to no end. So this is a good memory for me because I stop slaughtering in my house when I was only five and had no say.

I few times fell in love, no success story though.
I have some liking for some poems that with them I fly.
My biggest fear is being wrongly accused of a heinous crime which I can not prove my innocence. It is a kind of recurring nightmare.

Thank you so much dear Milly for participation

A typical day: Waking up, going to school, (it takes two hours to get to downtown Toronto from where I live) going from this class to the other.
Days I do not go to school: house chores: cleaning and cooking, or going to work. I know it sounds boring unless you feel like me because simultaneously I live a dream world a world brimful of magics.
I live in RichmondHill Ontario, North of Toronto.
I love Jazz, also some other music I like Adel, Lara Fabian, Queen, Pink Floyd...
Most of the food I cook I invent them as I go along. But I can make some traditional Persian, Greek, also some Italian and eastern European a little here and there.

Thank you so much, sweet Brenda, for your questions.

What is your favorite poem of his, and why?
Pablo Neruda. There is a love poem that starts by something like: Take the bread from me, take the water and air, but never take your smile away from me. And the other is the one he wrote for the assassination of his best poet friend Federico Garia Lorca, in Spain by the soldiers of the Fascist and ferocious dictator: Franko

In your opinion, what makes Persian poetry unique?
Persian poetry is so rich but one can not enjoy it as much as when reading them in the original language. Their dependency on the language is overwhelming. But recently they became very popular due to the spiritual and celestial messages of poets such as Rumi and Hafez. Omar Khayyam was well known from last century due to Edward FitzGerald's translation. Hafez Is very well known to Germans, because of Goethe's famous tribute to him. Even though he only read a bad translation of them, he still fell in love.
Also, we have strong contemporary poetry as well

I like quite a few very strong pieces in here but I can not say which ones. Every poet has highs and lowes

Thank you so much dear Liz for your wonderful questions.

¹) What does poetry mean to you?
Poetry is like oxygen I gasp. Sometimes the air of mundane concerns is so stale for me so I use poetry as the source of fresh air.

²) What is your favorite quote and what does it mean to you?
Mabe this one from Immanuel Kant:
"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."

³) I am not a fan of past but the world before my father passing away was a kinder world, and I was happy.

Thank you so much, Sweet Em, for wonderful questions.

what are you studying?

I am studying Philosophy Part-time but as you may know, Philosophy is never part-time

you mentioned toronto? uft? ryerson?

U of T downtown
I guess you go there too.

Hi ddavidd :-)

What's the most precious item you possess and why? (I don't mean monetary value)

=^.^=

If you were stranded on a desert island what 3 items would you most likely have with you? And which items do you wish you could have taken?

What's one thing in the world you wish you could change and why?

What's your favourite time of year?

I would need a knife a bowl and a lighter. What else do I like to Have? Pen and some paper, shot gun, blanket....camping equipment's

In the international scale: Armies. I would get rid of them. All of them are bad, the bigger ones are worst.
In personal level, I would like to ease my final problems. Love to play an instrument professionally. I wish I could dance professionally.

Spring when blossoms strike . In my culture the year starts with trees wearing their colorful dresses.

Thanks sweet Em for your questions. You are lovely

I do not have any item of value except my many many books. I am so comfortable around them even though I am not good at reading them nowadays. Other thing I can think of, is my father's ashes that I still keep, waiting for a good opportunity to go somewhere significant to scatter them. But I am not traveling very much these days.
Mabey a knife that an Indian chief has given me when I was in Navajo's field.

Thanks sweet Kitty for supporting

Hey Ddavidd! Time for my first round of questions. It seems appropriate to ask a few philosophy questions for a student of philosophy :)

Question #1: Why are people often confident in beliefs that can’t be proven?
Question #2: At what point is a technologically enhanced human not a human anymore?
Question #3: Why do we create art?

These are ontological question and you can relate them to philosophy but a psychiatrist or a scientist, or an average wise man could relate to them as well.
I know some little of philosophy and always had a philosophical out view about the world and that is why I chose to study in this stage of my life. But I do not confine myself in anything even in philosophy. I've solved some of the philosophical queries, poetically (at least for myself) . Also my philosophical view is very much affected by the "New age" movement. Haha the funny thing is that "New age", is almost opposite of philosophy and being a thinker. According to Krishnamurti: they are to release ourselves from the strain of thinking and free ourselves to the spontaneity and gut felling. Rumi said: "The legs of reason is wooden and a wooden leg would always wobble."
Question #1: Why are people often confident in beliefs that can’t be proven?
The systematic logical expedition to explain the world, and everything together is a fallacious system by its nature. We need the logic (the system of premises and conclusions) to base our thinking. we classify world in to the arrays of concepts. But those classifications are not real. We abstract the nature in order to understand it. In order to understand them we recreate them in our mind. We learn the functions and durability of the material to make proper tools in order to manipulate the natural curses of things, such as rivers by building dams, ... We categorize everything to special and temporal. But time and space are not separated, they are only in our mind as two entities. The universality of objects only exist in our minds.
So, if we are looking for a definite answer, nothing is definite. Our explanation of everything is subjected to change. Look at the simple light, in conventional physic light was a straight reflection and with that we were able to calculate so many things and create cameras and binocular out of that assumption. Then we learned the light do not move straight, but it is a vibration of electromagnetic fields. And then again, we realized that light is made of elementary particle named photon. Three different idea which all are true (to the certain extend) about the same phenomena. All the previous scenes and explanation shift erratically to even opposite, in every now and then and adjust themselves to the new understandings. And what was sometime taken for granted, suddenly become wrong and ridiculous, but the fact is even the dumbest view of the world has some merit to it, therefore someone still attached to it is some part of world. It is like mirrors; every mirror no mater how concave or convex or corroded or crooked, still somehow reflect the truth.

Question #2: At what point is a technologically enhanced human not a human anymore?
I am not sure we can answer this question epistemologically: that if the technology or the knowledge that brings forward the technology could affect the humanness indefinitely. Of course, we are still under the threat shadow of nuclear war. We can see how modern war technology threatens the lives of human being. We also see how computer brought us more together and annihilated us in the same time.
I think there are always danger in technology, specially when the world is divided drastically by nations and religions... and also by those who dominate and those who only fallow. Nowadays some people among us have the capability to press THE button whenever they want. That is the biggest danger on its own, that there are people amongst us who have the mean to destroy the humanity.
But your question also could mean if we become so technologically advanced, that we turn to the machines ourselves and start to observe and view the universe as a machine does. My answer to this is : less likely. We become more like machine, disciplined and precise and organized, but some how we always manage to protect our humanity in general. We create different cultures and believes as we go on and become more enhanced. But humanity by the nature is the final cause and can’t be affected infinitely by subordinated cause such as technology, in the final analysis.

Question #3: Why do we create art?
This is a very hard question to answer because tabs on the very psychological aspect of human cognition of the world. There are two major strand of cognition one is scientific and technological and the other is emotional and artistic. They both are very important and vital for the survival of our species but unfortunately the pragmatic brave new world has put less emphasis on the emotional aspects and undermines the artistic exploration of reality for the mare reason that it does not result on tangible productivity and consumable goods in the market societies. So, Artist specially poets are out casted people. It is hard to represent your art and survive by only being an artist, unless you are well-known (and then you can even produce an urinal as a piece of art and no one would challenge you.)
Some people even believe that artists are parasites, they only consume the products of other's endeavors. But that is not true. All our psychological behaviours and patterns, our ethics, vices and virtues, aesthetic recognition of color, sound an emotion are carved and chiselled by the artist. Leonardo Da Vinci influenced the human psyche as Albert Einstein did.

So we see the world and we react to it emotionally. Our emotions are also in the process of discovering and exploring the world, like our intellects do in science. A physical body is combination of all the physical mass organs and physiological sophistications of those masses functioning together. There is an unseen aspect of our existence that is connected by our psyches directly to art , to aesthetics, harmony and recognition of feelings, reacting to colors, sounds, words, tones. We are constantly searching for beauty, whether physical or inner. We connected with such a delicate senses, with emotional aspect of the world, through artistic exploration, individually, even as a regular man, or by studding variation of arts. Every single individual tries to artistically discover the world around his/her. We all versify, paint, act, sing, and then connect our little streams to the main bodies of water of those artist who explore the real world of emotions for us and unroll them like carpets on our path.

Thank you Jane for these wonderful questions.

What are the three essential of being a happy creative artist?

As being an artist according to you what changes, and what remains?

Do you ever set limits to radically increase your creativity?

What are the three essential of being a happy creative artist?
There are no numbers in essential and essential in numbers. Sometimes three, two, one or nothing at all, sometimes innumerable things. I mean one never could foresee how many. No matter how many, you have to conquer them all.
So artists dive into paints, intonations, words, pictorial affects, and go as deep as they are able to go . They print their, either ocean, or, skin deep souls, on the surface or in the profundity of currants accordingly. Artists are those who go deep. so deep that every on can see them. beep is like height, the higher you go the more people can see you.
The "HAPPY" part is not the case either ( at least for me). Before you pain you can not feel clearly, you can not reach out as far. Only a torn out body would reach out to things beyond... So you have to choose between comfort and keen feeling that direct you to different relationship with object. . In order to see things clear, one must hold on to the raw and exposed-nerves connection with the truth and reality, even, more often, they are opposite things.
To be creative artist is the cause not an affect. One becomes creative only when one is a creative artist, when one has something to say . Nature is way stronger than us. We can not impose our wills against inspiration, inspiration only has the power of choice. When it comes though we know we are only a host, we have seen or come near to see something, that that we have become inspired like that as a reward.

Thanks Naazz for wonderful question. The you used in this few lines, are only general you and do not mean any particular person.

As being an artist according to you what changes, and what remains?

As a person Or Identity nothing much would " CHANGE" ( unless you are famous)
few ways one cloud answer this wonderful question
What changes in me as an ego, yes if i am praised, I become charged, fulfilled, gratified. As a real human being, nothing, just the realization of that that now I have a great responsibility: to essence, to truth, to right.knowing that the one who connected you who has given you the gift of inspiration, wants you to connect too, specially to the souls of others. That is why art always is exhibitionist. It is its burden , its debt.
What "REMAIN" is only you. If you are pure gold you come back intact, whole. Your head is the same big, your vision of yourself is still humble and thankful

Do you ever set limits to radically increase your creativity?

One could increase ( perhaps RADICALLY if s/he feels like it) his/her studying, reading, practicing, training, but one would never be able to predict or foresee or INSEMINATE , creativity.
I could feel better here and there, more creative in that park, riverside,... I could put myself in the position that the inspiration might come to me, I could beacon it with my acts, my trained eyes, and prepare myself enough to be ready when it strikes.
But when it strike, one is not stoppable. If one set a limitation , it means one's passion goes only so far, it is manageable, it is a rain, it is not flood,
Every artist experiences a rang between: sometimes striking like an incessant fireball, and , sometimes just a faint sparkle.

Thanks dear Naazz for your wonderful questions.
Bring it on. ask any question you want. I know you You have so many questions. Because you have wondrous eyes.I like them. Here is the chance. I have the time and mean to answer any hard ( or easy) question. I wish someone to ask me t introduce ddavidd and the difference we have. Me ad (ddavidd) a character I created 10 years ago