I have been thinking about my choreographic project… how to choreograph something about non-violence….
I was chatting with a colleague at work and she told me about her trip to Israel with her mother. Her mom had gotten ill, and they had taken a pilgrimage. When I was a young teenager my grandparents took my family with them to Israel for a week.
We went to a place called Yad Vashem (which Fani is reminding me means ‘hand of god’.) Yad Vashem is Israel’s Holocaust Museum/Memorial. The last room I was in was a large dim room, with a candle burning in the ground. When I left the room, it was back into the bright middle-east sunlight. My grandfather was on the far side of a small open plaza. It was the only time I saw him cry.
image of Yad Vashem
He fled Germany in the late thirties, and met my grandmother – who had fled Austria – in New York city. He lost many friends, and some family.
He felt so bad for surviving.
I told my colleague this, and we also talked about the woman who cut my hair last week – who was Palestinian. I felt this flare of embarrassment when I identified myself as jewish to the hairdresser.
We need to stop blaming other people for violence. It’s important that we accept the challenge of opposing violence. I’m still not sure how to go about it, but I think a way for me to address non-violence would be to create some dance that asks us (the dancers) to stop blaming others for violence.
I remember when I first read the following poem, by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918.) Owen spent the entirety of his ‘adult’ life fighting in World War I, and died in the final days.
This poem describes being in a gas attack, and watching a friend die in front of him. The phrase Dulce Et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori translates roughly as, ‘How sweet and just it is to die for the motherland.’
Dulce Et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro Patria Mori.
I’ve been talking with some fellow artists about how to approach my next choreographic project… I’m trying to figure out how to tackle the subject of non-violence. I don’t want to make a cute little suite of dances. I know I could do that. But I want something more whole. I want the message to be in each dance, in each part, not to have the audience have to read the whole in order to get the message.
I find in non-violence a very personal means of relating to the world. But I don’t want to do, like, ‘the autobiography of gandhi’ in dance. I don’t want to use text to make the meaning apparent, or song lyrics. So I know what I won’t be doing…. Possibly un-relatedly, I watched the Presidential debate between Obama and McCain.
I noticed that Obama has capitulated to McCain’s sense that ‘security’ is something that can be bought with war. One of the things that is so brilliant about Obama’s ‘refusal to support the war’ speech is that it expresses the understanding of a need to protect through through avenues other than the military. Including the military, but not limited to it. Obama is now just fighting about who he’d talk to, instead of fighting the bigger point – how do we make our country safe? He would win that one. I know a lot of people are waiting for him to lead us there.
Today was listening to Sting in the car on the way back from getting my oil changed…. I always liked this song, and believe that this war – in iraq, and ‘on terror’ are not winnable wars. We cannot protect ourselves by fighting them. I wish Obama would get back on message. I think he could do good, good things, but not if he becomes like Kerry, and Gore.
A lot of people have noticed that democratic candidates when they go to the general get soft. Gore, Kerry — they seem to think that to win the middle, they have to act like the middle. They’re wrong, as the Republicans have shown. The Republicans have been very effective about staying Republicans but being the better choice for the middle. They don’t pretend not to have faith. Democrats need to not pretend not to have ideals.
We need to ignore them more. Not affirm their judgement when they act like they’re mature, and we’re silly children – unrealistic.
What is the ideology that sets us apart? Or, what is the ideology that sets us apart that we can win on? Off the top of my head:
1. Security is about more than military
2. The future requires us to invest not in bailouts, but in development – energy independence by all means necessary
3. Don’t give money to people who don’t need it – no taxbreaks for wealthy
4. Country needs all of us – tolerance is what makes america great, what we are founded on
No-one is really prepared for the job of president. But I trust Obama to make more right decisions than the 78 yr old crab-apple tree and his town idiot sidekick. And I trust him because of his ethical/moral sense. Obama is powerfully intelligent, moral, and idealistic. Would some democratic staffers PLEASE figure out how to let him let people know that?
