The Glass House

Is a documentary shot in Iran by Melissa Hibbard and Hamid Rahmanian. It breaks my heart.

For the trailer go here.
For clips go here.

My Projects

I'm not so good at promoting my own projects. Probable because I believe whatever has quality finds its way to people anyway. This is something you might enjoy seeing though:

- Daphne took this amazing picture during a jam at our cultural cafe "Mezrab":

http://bp3.blogger.com/_L86fZhu-eaY/Rzr96k4xqGI/AAAAAAAAAME/vgDbBYdgn4Y/s1600-h/mezrab2.jpg

If you want to receive mails about Cafe Mezrab activities write me a line at cafemezrab@gmail.com and I'll add you to the list.

- Some nice technicians shot this video during a soundcheck before a show of Babak-o-Doestan.



More Babak-o-Doestan can be found here: http://www.myspace.com/babakodoestan

Digital Revolution

If we are serious about political and social change we have to embrace all the technologies available to us. Especially in a country like Iran where the state has a monopoly on education, media and most cultural events in the public sphere. Creative use of new media and technology was instrumental in getting rid of repressive regimes in Indonedia and Serbia (have a look at these interesting but dry articles on the spread of internet and its role in the revolutions of Indonesia and Serbia Serbia ), but even in the west the world is changing fundamentally: in a time that newspapers suffer from poor sales and ad-revenues one important reason for Obama's victory was his supporter's embrace of new media like blogs and Youtube.

One man who understands all this (and more, I'm struggling to catch up with him) is Arash, a Persian blogger in Canada. In his great blog he posts about current events in Iran, and especially things that happen in Iranian cyberspace. For instance, check out his recent post on the creation of the new digital police in Iran: http://kamangir.net/2008/12/18/new-digital-police-to-establish-in-iran/

So there you have it. If there's a new revolution on the way it will present itself in small messages delivered to your computer with hip music and slick animation.

Go East

It's time to interrupt our social and political commentary with some music. And for this we go east again.

My last gig with Caspian Hat Dance was at the Roots festival in Amsterdam. It had always been a dream of mine to be part of the great line up of world music artists performing in the Oosterpark once a year. A band who played at the same day was KAL - A Rock-n-Roll Gypsy band from Serbia. Here's a laid back tune of them called "Komedija".



In 2000 the Russian submarine Kursk, the largest attack submarine ever built, perished after suffering an accident. No one on board survived, but in his last hours Captain Lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov managed to write some notes and letters. This song is based on what he wrote to his wife:

Social Commentary

My friend J. (non-Iranian) spends significant amounts of time in Teheran and other parts of Iran for a project he's doing. From time to time he writes an insightful observation, so good it's a shame not to share it with you all. Here's what he wrote when we were discussing internet filtering in Iran (which he has to deal with every day):

The Iranian government Internet firewall is mostly just stupid – it's implemented with all the subtlety of an anti-porn public library filter [which it may, in fact, be], with a few political sites thrown into the list. Plus, they nix all the social networking sites like FaceBook and YouTube, etc. – they also kill a lot of the "left-wing" press in the US like Salon.com, the Seattle PI, Huffington Post etc – but they let through most of the "mainstream" press like the NYT, Washington Post, and Israeli press, for example, like the right-wing Jerusalem Post and other such things.

There's really no sense that can be discerned to it – mostly I think they just don't know what they're doing. More than anything, I think this government is just out of touch with the rest of the world and extremely self-conscious. Which would make it an accurate reflection of the society as a whole, except without the social niceties.

I mean, the psyche of the government seems disconnected from the population until you watch the way people drive here. In fact, I'm starting to think that the Iranian government is following a pattern similar to most of the Iranian governments going back into history – that is to say, authoritarian, illogical, inefficient, corrupt, paranoid and unreasonable. When people get fed up with it there's some sea change, and then everybody starts to fall into the old pattern again. Hasn't it always been like this? A country of pleasant, disappointed people, never quite living up to their potential and always worried that other people think they have small penises, or that Arabs have larger penises, or whatever? It's what Israel would be if Israel were actually 5,000 years old, less geographically avaricious and had better manners and food culture. Ironic Republic.

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Another nice (and not quite flattering) view of Teheran can be seen in the pictures of Reza Nadji. Warning, the pictures are brutally honest and can break the heart of anyone remembering the Teheran of the seventies: http://www.rezanadjitehran.com/

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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Human rights news links.

- A few days ago the office of the Iranian nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi was closed by the government. Read the full story here:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-ml-iran-human-rights,0,3937225.story

- Greece is burning, but luckily it makes for great pictures. Click away:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_greek_riots.html

- Here's a link to a PBS documentary episode about former Jihadis in Rehab. Quite surreal, very interesting and extremely important in the years to come. Have a look:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/from-jihad-to-rehab/introduction-from-jihad-to-rehab/3834/

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And not quite human rights news, but here's a link to the pictures of last weekend's performance of my former band Caspian Hat Dance:

http://picasaweb.google.nl/simonvanrooijen/BalkanGypsyNight20December?feat=email#

All for now kiddies