The Unavowable Community

Image by Louviere and Vanessa.

Arve Henriksen – Opening Image

In Blanchot’s “The Unavowable Community”, he said, there is an effort to separate the term of communism from the politic use of it, this term so wrongly used (and abused) in history. Communism comes from community and the idea that a man finds a meaning only when in touch with the community, whenever a man shares a common space with someone else. Sometimes this shared common will have to remain quiet, far from speeches or intellectualisations, to be fully preserved. Because once you start talking about it, you are simplifying the truth of it and stealing its real meaning.

Blanchot uses a beautiful example: the language of lovers, that is created in a silent complicity between two bodies who learn one from another without having to say much. And how whenever someone tries to translate this into verbal language it loses its beauty, it sterilises its meaning, turning something unique into something vague.

And so that’s why I love silence, because it can only contain truths. Words can translate our world but there’s a point where it reaches an end. Yet it’s not sad to meet these limits, because it’s only in this way that mistery will be safe.

[Arve Henriksen - myspace]

bye-bye

Photo project by iamaustin

Billie Holiday & Lester Young – When You’re Smiling

My grandmother is saying goodbye. She’s as strong as all her family put together but she’s already 92 and thinks life’s counting down. So she’s trying to smile. And to give back to life all that she’s learnt and fight. Because, she says, there’s no need in taking all the wisdom to the grave.  So she’s becoming a real life activist. Among her 22 grandchildren and 15 grandgrand children, I’m one of her main targets, to spread her words on useless sadness and the benefits of optimism. So she touches my legs, in disguise, whenever I argue with my dad, or makes a fake smile to turn my blank face into something else. Sometimes she holds my hand and talks talks talks, while growing deaf. And so I get to like old people more than those of my age. It’s only that this sense of finiteness makes them more fragile and, at the same time, deeply alive.

cursi!

Shirley MacLaine and her daughter by Allan Grant, 1959

Nellie McKay – Ding Dong

sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc

Real

Image by Ananda Serné.

Arborea – Beirut

Today I feel the presence of a few, some closer than others in reality but so dearing to me, in one way or another.

Thank You so much. There’s no need to say names, You already know it.

[Arborea - myspace]

Suna no Onna

Eroticism and claustrophia, hand in hand.

Suna No Onna, a film by Hiroshi Teshigahara (1964)

Éloge de la Fuite

Image by Ananda Serné.

Life in Paris was a sweet and endless nothing, which I adored. It’s only that you can’t keep postponing. For that’s what I love to do. Procrastinating, and filling the gaps meanwhile. I said to myself I’d not write here anymore, but I may not be reliable, after all. Today I felt the urgency to come back, even if I can only write whenever I’m down. Greta once said: there’s something we maybe have in common: a certain pleasure of  “depression”. That sentence was quite devastating at the time, probably because it’s true. I find in sadness some beauty that I can’t tell. Meanwhile, Andrea recommended me to read Henri Laborit, so it all headed one direction. Accept. And yes, to escape is part of me, and it may not be the devil I always expected it to be.

“Quand il ne peut plus lutter contre le vent et la mer pour poursuivre sa route, il y a deux allures que peut encore prendre un voilier : la cape (le foc bordé à contre et la barre dessous) le soumet à la dérive du vent et de la mer, et la fuite devant la tempête en épaulant la lame sur l’arrière avec un minimum de toile. La fuite reste souvent, loin des côtes, la seule façon de sauver le bateau et son équipage. Elle permet aussi de découvrir des rivages inconnus qui surgiront à l’horizon des calmes retrouvés. Rivages inconnus qu’ignoreront toujours ceux qui ont la chance apparente de pouvoir suivre la route des cargos et des tankers, la route sans imprévu imposée par les compagnie de transport maritime. Vous connaissez sans doute un voilier nommé “ Désir ”.”

Henri Laborit/ Éloge de la Fuite.

Dreams That Money Can Buy

Today I dived into John Cage’s world.

Without help of any explanation and too many misteries unsolved.

Dreams that money can buy, by Hans Richter and music by John Cage.

My room is white

Image by Ruth Asawa.

Mia Doi Todd - My room is white.

Did I ever tell you that the closer we got, the bigger distance I could feel in between us? You’re that kind of boy, and I’m that kind of girl too. We are not sure, not even on our own.

So that’s what I said. The dreamers in the bed, and the endless white space in between. So if I was afraid of darkness, now I am of light. White can be hostile.

[Mia Doi Todd - myspace]

My Name is Lisa Kalvelage

Ani DiFranco (Pete Seeger’s cover) – My name is Lisa Kalvelage

“My name is lisa kalvelage, i was born in nuremberg
and when the trials were held there 19 years ago
it seemed to me ridiculous to hold a nation all to blame
for the horrors that the world did undergo

a short while later when i applied to be a gi bride
an american councilor official questioned me
he refused my exit permit, said my answer did not show
that i learned my lesson about responsibility

then suddenly i was forced to start thinking on this theme
and later when i was permitted to immigrate
i must have been asked a 100 times where i was, what i did
in those years when hitler ruled our state

i said i was a child, or at most a teenager
but that only continued the questioning
they’d ask where were my parents, my father, my mother
and to this i could not answer a thing

a seed planted there in neurenberg ‘47
started to sprout and grow
gradually i understood what that verdict meant to me
when there are crimes that i can see and know

and now i also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt
once in a life time is enough for me
no i couldn’t take it for a second time
and that’s why i’m here today

the events of may 25th, the day of our protest
put a small balance weight on the other side
and hopefully some day my contribution to peace
will help just a bit to turn the tide

perhaps i can tell it to my children 6
and later on, their own children
and at least in the future they need not be silent
when they’re asked, where was your mother when

my name is lisa kalvelage
(i wonder, where was my mother then)”

Lyrics by Pete Seeger,
inspired on anti-Vietnam activist Lisa Kalvelage.

_______________________________________________

“Lisa Kalvelage was a German immigrant from Nuremberg who moved to the United States when she was 22, just after theSecond World War. Upon her arrival, she was repeatedly asked what her parents, friends, and teachers had done tostop the atrocities of the Nazi regime. The questioning had an effect on her: when she began to see atrocities beingcommitted again, this time during the Vietnam War, she took action. She and her friends engaged in civildisobedience to try to stop a shipment of napalm and to raise consciousness about the issue.” [Democracy Now]

2

Picture: Chadwick Tyler.

Red House Painters – Katy Song

You always meet someone twice, he said. How beautiful to believe it may be true. Cos tonight I’ve missed you and you came to embrace me like the first time you did. Out of the blue, your strong body and your gentle hands. Tonight it wasn’t so, but I know if I saw you for a second time, oh, I’d cry, cry, cry. And I’d smile.