Bahman 22 - What a sad day, what a glorious day!

First of, being Persian, distressing times make me write poetry:

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Why I Have Hope - 2


The outcome of today's turmoil be damned
tomorrow a boy and a girl, who have just met
will make love in the empty house of a friend



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But what a turmoil to wake-up to! If you want the up-to-datest, here's some good bloggers to check out:

http://homylafayette.blogspot.com/
http://www.sidewalklyrics.com/

Caller to ePersian radio: Their celebration ceremony went to sh**! I saw security forces take a foreign journalist away. They took his notebook and everything and drove him away. The police is patrolling the streets and stopping anyone they can get their hands on. Ahmadinejad was giving his speech and just a few hundred meters away, the people were fighting security forces.

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In the Netherlands we're getting ready to protest 17.00 - 19.00 local time in the Hague, Amsterdam and Groningen. I'll post some pictures later tonight.

Art and Executions

If you're an Amsterdam reader of my blog, you might be interested to know that today between 16.00 and 20.00 we'll have the opening of the exhibition "Green Timeline". The exhibition is the visual diary of an anonymous demonstrator, a thorn in the side of this regime. She has walked the streets of Tehran in many demonstrations. She has shouted "Allah-o Akbar" till her voice became hoarse, she has spraypainted slogans and "V" signs on walls in the middle of the night. And all this she has recorded in her own unique way to show the people of Amsterdam.

If you cannot make the exhibition today, send me a mail so I can put you on my mailinglist and let you know what days the Mezrab / Art Cage exhibition space is open. Mails go here: sahand@sahebdivani.net

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In other news: today might be the day 9 political prisoners are executed on Enghelab (revolution) square. http://persian2english.com/?p=5849

Yesterday, in a gut reaction the the first to hangings last week I wrote the following poem. It's still quite raw and unedited:

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What Hangs there?


Imagine a kite tangled
up in a tree

rudely awakened from the dream
of flying

what hangs there?

when that, which was the beloved,
seeps out through numerous pores

looks back and thinks

"it is a strong rope that
carries all that shame and does not
break"


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Pablo Neruda

There's so many happy things I want to talk about: Musicians I've discovered, projects I'm working on. I want to talk about friendship, sexuality and romance. But who can talk about these issues when the world is burning? Or maybe it's talking about these issues that will heal the world, I'm not sure. At any rate, here's what Pablo Neruda wrote not so long ago, when it was the civilized west slaughtering its brothers and sons.

I'm Explaining a Few Things

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!

The Poem

by Jiri Mordecai Langer (1894 - 1943)

The poem
that I chose for you
is simple,
as are all my singing poems.

It has the trace of a veil,
a little balsam,
and a taste of the honeyof lies.

There is also
the coming end of summer
when heat scorches the meadow
and the quick waters
of the river
cease to flow.

Lucya Por Favor

A few years ago I met and spent a day in Barcelona with Lucya, a beautiful Italian artist. We were supposed to be together for only a little while, but I ended up playing my tar for her in the Ramblas and on the stairs of a church behind a fish market. She painted for me and cooked for me in her little shared appartment as we discussed life, art, death and madness. We never met since, it was the perfect day never to be repeated: her one visit to Amsterdam co-incided with my band's tour in Eastern Europe. I am very happy to see that she still produces beautiful pieces of art which she posts on her artblog:

http://www.artifolio.com/lucyablu

Here's the poem I wrote for her:

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Lucya por favor,

draw me the new man
draw me the new man as you would like him to be


give him four arms

two for him to play you music with
one for him to write you letters

and one, perhaps, to hold behind his back
in his hand holding a small present


draw the new man a mouth
if you want him to tell you stories
or sing
whisper sweet nothings in your ear as you sleep

or if you want him to be quiet

draw him no mouth


give the new man strong legs
as many as you can imagine

the new man will want to
jump and
kick and
swim and
run from ocean to ocean
before the sun sets

but Lucya,
por favor,

do not draw the new man eyes

to drown you in.

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Poem of the week

In 1985 Paul Simon released the album Graceland, featuring black South-African musicians and Singers. This was during the Apartheid years. When the album became a hit a magical thing happened: for anyone listening to the songs the black South-Africans stopped being a colour, a race or a statistic. They became human beings with the same spectrum of emotions, hopes, desires and pains as the listener's.

The songs celebrate the cultural differences between us: the way the rythms are played and the melodies are constructed are typical to that part of Africa. The songs also united us more than ever. One could rationaly oppose Apartheid, but now the heart would also cry out "how can you let the people who made such beautiful music suffer so much?".

I grew up in Amsterdam with very little reading material about the struggle of my parents in Iran. Ofcourse they would tell me about their lives, but some aspects of their past I only understood after reading the books of Milan Kundera and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. It doesn't matter so much wether you fall in love or lose a friend under Latin American Junta rule, a Communist dictatorship or the reign of the Shah of Persia. As I absorbed these stories I started to care about the struggles of the people I read about. The fall of the Eartern European dictatorships are also a victory in my life, and give hope to the people of Iran.

The way to save this world is very easy. Listen to the songs of all the people in the world, read their books and poems and they, having shared their stories with you, will be your friends. In return offer them your jewels: the stories your parents and grandparents told you when you were small, the works of your great poets, the melodies that comforted you when your heart was broken.

The following poem was written 32 years ago by the Mexican writer Octavio Paz. It is true to this day.

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Primero de Enero (January first)

The doors of the year open,
like the doors of language,
onto the unknown.
Last night you said:
tomorrow
we must draw signs,
sketch a landscape, hatch a plot
on the unfolded page
of paper and the day.
Tomorrow we must invent,
anew,
the reality of this world.

When I opened my eyes it was late.
For a second of a second
I felt like the Aztec
on the rock-strewn peak,
watching
the cracks of horizons
for the uncertain return of time.

No, the year came back.
It filled the room,
and my glances could almost touch it.
Time, without our help,
had arranged
in the same order as yesterday,
the houses on the empty street,
the snow on the houses,
the silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still sleeping.
The day had invented you,
but you hadn't yet accepted
your day's invention,
nor mine.
You were still in another day.

You were beside me,
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among the appearances.
Time, without our help,
invents houses, streets, trees,
sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, anew,
among the hours and their inventions,
and lingering among the appearances
we'll testify to time and its conjugations.
We'll open the doors of this day,
and go into the unknown.