Get your own Free Home PageWorkshop Report 4
Dear friends,
Here is a fresh issue of the Workshop Report. During my absence from the list since July, the list has changed a lot. I have been receiving digests but had no time for reading. So, essentially, I lack behind the changes. Unfortunately, I have to go back to my lurker status immediately. This situation will remain so until Christmas.
Let me wish the old and the new on the list all the best. I hope you will find the Report worthy of reading.
Thanks.
Anwar Al-Ghassani
alghassa@cariari.ucr.ac.cr
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Workshop Report 4
Number 4, September 24, 1995
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N E W S, C O M M E N T S, R E F L E C T I O N S ----------------------------------------------------------------------
This Music Is Killing Me!
I am hearing the instrumental introductions composed by the late Egyptian composer Muhammed Abdulwahab for the long songs of the late Egyptian singer Um Kalthum. This music is killing me. I will allow myself, just for the sake of analysis, to brand Western classical music as "rational" and this music as "emotional."
Nonsense? Maybe. But let me express what I feel upon hearing this music: It is killing me, slowly; time passing; years flowing; no control of anything; defiance - my spirit is indestructible; everything is reachable; happiness is here. You saw the miracles of life and saw death, and experienced ugliness created by humans; my dear creature, you are nostalgic. So what. Repeat what millions of people have discovered before: joy and pain go together. They don't exit separately unless we are naive and think we can have pure joy (yes, in the art, maybe.) But art is not life.
Colossal structure of fine details, this music is not pretentious, it is rather modest. History is yours, times of humanity in one experience, given with the general theme of this music: love. Remember, the stories/ myths about lovers in Iraq: he/she died of love. They would love and die. Intensity of emotions! Myth or reality? No, there was something real you saw and somehow experienced yourself. Who knows? No, this music is telling you about that love. It is about love, every love.
The muddy streets and alleys in Winter in Kirkuk, and you, pressed by the burden of life, had a "dream" of pure love. You know, without that illusion of attaining some day that severely-felt longing for love you would have been nothing. The bright days of Spring in the fields around Kirkuk, the abandoned stone mills, the railways, solitude under the sun, humming sounds, water arriving at the dry river. And early in the evenings you felt the intensity of life given to you, the eternal gift. Now you face the danger that you will become a pattern, a model, an example of something, limited for ever: Oh, no fear, my child, this music is so volatile and tender, it will preserve you: a changing creature, always renewed in spirit. It will nourish your inborn sense for freedom. It will be present when you reflect, when you push your way forward, softly in the light of the day, when you feel you are fading away, and when you come back uttering vague words: your voice a jingle, resounding glass.
Is this music emotional? Only? What a home, this music! It maintains me alive.
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T R A N S I T I O N S
The People of this Century
In general, people of the first half of the 20th Century, portrayed by the arts, literature, and in some poetry, look weary, dramatic, destructive, stewing in their own juice, irrationally consuming their energies, health and time. They are presented to mean tragedy but they are not tragic. They seem to be caught in endless miseries (wars, for instance), the result of stupidness, lack of sense for good organization, and ignorance of problem solving techniques. Although somehow touching, they are essentially boring poor souls. Is this the result of the failure of the arts, or of the defects of the 20th Century civilization?
People of the nineties of the 20th Century, portrayed by the arts, by the mass media, and somehow in novels and poems, look less weary, undramatic, rather naive, with no genuine tendencies towards inwardness and reflection. They have a rational and technical -less philosophical- sense for the preservation of their energies and health. Also, their attitude towards time is practical, neither romantic nor nostalgic, somehow ahistorical.
At times, they seem as if time and history - as related stories and/or organized memory - have no value for them except as past extension of the phenomena they are experiencing today. They don't want to overload their present with this past, let alone seeing the present through the past. Although their lack of sense for tragedy should be seen as something positive, the lack of genuine interest in the tragical is in itself tragic because suffering and pain worldwide are increasing.
The miseries of the recent past are still alive in memory. More miseries are created. The people of the nineties do take notice of all that and they are better informed, yet they seem not to bother too much about it. More and more instantaneous information is available, but the people are becoming more and more negligent and self-indulgent. Contemporary human beings possess less-developed and less-distinctive profiles compared with those of recent times. In general, they are naiver but more accessible than their ancestors.
Global TV
A playful world, proud of its toys and games. Interesting, how Stone Age dumbness is giving way to lightheartedness and wit. However, global TV is also destructive, in many aspects.
History of Torture
Frescaroli, Antonio (1972): Historia de la tortura a traves de los siglos. Barcelona: De Vecchi.
This book, "History of Torture Through the Centuries" appeared originally in Italian in 1970. It is a valuable historical survey of the torture industry.
Two years have past since I bought it at a secondhand bookshop in San Jose and I haven't finished reading it yet. Of the poem I wanted to write about torture I have only few lines. This is the kind of book you never finish reading. I don't mean technically, you can read it in one day. I mean, it is a book that will keep reminding you of a nightmare: human beings causing suffering and inflicting destruction on other human beings, nature, objects and themselves. What is the mystery behind so much crimes throughout history? Is this a consequence of human beings becoming selfconscious at some point of their evolution without being able to cope with their new mental and emotional states, or is it rather the lack of selfconsciousness that converts humans to perverse creatures? .................................................................
M E T H O D S A N D T E C H N I Q U E S
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* Correspondence
B. T. Murtagh: " ... I meant that I was hungry for writing, for techniques and critiques and the joyful exchange of ideas." (On Writers list)
My reply: "That's it, the joyful exchange of ideas. That's what I meant by humor when I commented Bill Lantry's remark on Proust. I congratulate you for this wonderful idea which I think should be developed into a full-fledged method of handling literary matters on this list." (i.e. Writers list)
Michael Jackson in b/w
The TV presentation of Michael Jackson's "Scream" in b/w is in essence the reduction of music and voice to graphics. It is not a song but a show of graphics. Singing, an art, becomes another art, a new one, an art of pseudo drawing.
Out of the profuse elements of voice, sound, effects, body positioning and movement, a strict economic selection is made. The script exits only as a bare-bone, a rough outline. The volatility of the composition elements, their unpredictability doesn't allow the realization of a too detailed predefined script. There is almost absolute room for manoeuvring.
The accelerated rhythm, rapid, sharp, and abrupt cuts eliminates the tale, no story is being told. The scriptwriter liberates himself from the obligation to maintain a sequence, a story. This gives additional liberty to treat the composition elements as graphical elements. The presentation is converted into a drawing, and by reduction, the sounds we conventionally call music are converted to graphical elements.
Do we possess so much freedom in poetry?
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P O E M
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(It was in June/July that B.T. Murtagh and I exchanged messages on the so-called " ~!@#$%^&*()_+ ", language, a sort of an invented language, the language humans are born with. I called this language my mother tongue. This is not Arabic which I learned after my birth or some other language I command now. It is my mother tongue, the oldest. During that exchange I sent B.T. a stanza of a poem I wrote in this language in 1992. Here is the complete text of the poem, written originally in Arabic letters but not in Arabic words. Here is the text written in English letters:
(When reading, please relax and let the sounds come to you freely. Don't force them into any pattern and don't try to discover meaning in the text. Should I say the form is the message? Perhaps, though this seems silly, because if you rediscover this language, your first, the one you were deprived of, you will "understand" the poem.)
Poem
sarsa ila istaroy
takhtai bial isrobatu
ida bror afzi raluh
ida bath asfir
yaraf khouhi lai infar suko
*
istral istral alous tinan
sau lotla brus afilla
suradu dhanbou
marawas khouz istral
samkru lumar abas
*
sadakh mlour istraf
yahsarmi khalfou sabas
wa klassou sarmana silalim
habsina arbas takharsal
sarlu sarlu sarlu
*
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Anwar Al-Ghassani
Dec. 13, 1992
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From "Unveiling the Voice" 1993
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R E M I N I S C E N C E S
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Sitt Adawiya (*)
My aunt and Sitt Adawiya worked in the same school in Kirkuk. My aunt was the director and Sitt Adawiya, a Turkoman, was one of the teachers.
When I was thirteen or fourteen years old my aunt used to send me to Sitt Adawiya with some messages, tell her this or that. I used to take my bicycle and go to her house at the bank of Al-Khassa Su, Kirkuk's river, violent and full of water in Winter, empty and dry in Summer.
One day I arrived at Sitt Adawiya's house with a message from my aunt. I went in and found her in her room, preparing herself apparently to go out. She had a perfume bottle in her hand, the kind of French perfume which came in dark violet bottles. A soothing warmth radiated from her. Her healthy face was slightly rosy. Adawiya was in her late twenties, an active person with a particular way of speaking rapidly. She spoke kindly to me as she always did when I came to her with a message. And as usual, she asked me about my school and praised my achievements. My aunt must have been telling her about me. I was a shy boy. I always felt uneasy when someone praised me for some work or achievement.
She kept passing her finger on the mouth of the perfume bottle, moistening it and passing it to her ears, neck or dress. Then, out of sudden, she extended her arm towards me and passed her perfumed finger on my hair. After that, she continued perfuming herself while talking to me as if nothing has happened. But for me, that movement was unusual. It had some secretive and very personal meaning, it meant, as I will discover later, not only a gesture of tenderness but a complete and full recognition of my person. I felt so uneasy. I felt warmth in my face. I must have turned red at that moment.
Years have passed since then. But I still recall that gesture. A decade ago, remembering Sitt Adawiya, I began to understand why she passed her perfume over my hair, and what her gesture meant to me.
I keep this reminiscence as a gem, my secret wealth. I go back to it every now and then, or when I face hardships. I just uncover it for an instant, get a glimpse of its beauty, hide it again, and leave it until the next time. It gives me freshness and renews my energy.
My aunt lives in Kirkuk. She is now retired and over seventy. I know nothing about Sitt Adawiya. Next time when I call my family in Kirkuk I will ask about her whereabout. If she is still alive, I will send her a letter. Oh, dear God, how could I have neglected these people for such a long time. Yes, I know, the tyranny, the wars, the lack of communication...
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*) "Sitt" in Arabic is a word/title used when addressing women.
It precedes the first name and expresses both respect and certain distance.
It is used in spoken and written forms to address professional women (initially
for school teachers, now for all professionals), women of a certain social
position and rank, and elderly women. Sometimes men speak of Sitti (my
Sitt) when referring to their wives and mothers. "Sitt" is not
equivalent to "Sayyida" (Mrs.) used to address married women.
"Sitt" is used to address both married and single women.
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RECENT PUBLICATIONS
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- On the Road to Maskat. In: Nazwa magazine, No. 3, June 1995. Maskat, Sultanate of Oman. (The poem appeared in Arabic on a full page with a color photo of an Omani landscape.)
- Pen International, quarterly magazine of International Pen, will publish two of my poems: "Gardens" (1989) which I translated to English and "Lieutenant Salah Jamil" (1995) written directly in English (both were posted to Writers and to Crewrt-l in this year.) Pen International receives UNESCO support and is edited in London by Pen's English Centre of which I am a member.
I received a letter with this news from Jane Spender of the editorial board. This is a very important event for me. It is the first time that I will have my poems (of which one was written originally in English) published in English by a prestigious international magazine. -----------------------------------------------------------------
Anwar Al-Ghassani
alghassa@cariari.ucr.ac.cr
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Please send remarks and comments either to: alghassa@cariari.ucr.ac.cr
Selected items of Workshop Reports are translated to Arabic. and published
in Arabic media.
Code: WR92495\Disk:Workshop Reports 1\File:WR-4\ 2330 words
(C) Copyright 1995 Anwar Al-Ghassani
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