I am going to ignore all these popping news about who is protesting where, burning what, threatening whom. I am going to think of the man in this video, who plays a red violin, quite awfully if I may say so, but quite beautifully i shall say so, in the ruins of perhaps an abandoned village, in a mountain in north of Tehran which in most likelihood awaits the ugly monsters of developers to wreak havoc to it and turn it into stunningly beautiful marble floored and granite facaded apartment complexes, that are to be occupied by a new-rich of lowest intellects and highest complicity, who has perhaps ascended through a thick rope of connection to the ruling elite in Iran, while acting like a poor populist stinky bearded tuna melt in the oven of the grand leader!
Last time I was in one of such super luxe apartments--with a 270-degree view down Tehran--the host, the Basiji-looking director of some important research center in Iran (who embarrassed us when he exhibited his scientific inadequacy to our foreign academic guest) greeted us with bare feet (no socks) ... We were offered a great dinner while listening to his wife talking about the great sacrifice they made to leave Europe to go back and serve Iran; and then we learned the purpose of the dinner was not to discuss futures of scientific collaboration, but to guide his child (a semi-drop out with miserable GPA) get admission to a Western University ...
For now, I am going to ignore all that and just keep this image in my head, this moving painting, as my friend describes it.
16 comments:
I like it.
He doesn't use a Western scale, as mostly every young Iranian musician in the West does. That's cool in my book. And I find his handling of the instrument itself to be something of a local adaptation. Also cool.
Thanks Naj,
Pirouz
Pirouz, I haven't the SLIGHTEST clue about violin; it is an instrument that hurts my ears. Glad you like it. Please feel free to write more about what this old man is doing. I just started crying when I saw this!
Lovely video! I certainly understand your sentiments, Naj...and my compliments on your magnificently indignant venting-rant, especially the grand finale of the last sentence in the first paragraph - lol! All in one breath? I thought I had a talent for vulcanic moral-indignation invective myself, but you beat me 10 to 1! Btw, we have similar fauna here - context less different than might appear at first glance i.e. it's not who you are/what you know but whose donkey is pulling your haycart... with same damaging end-results, so I know just how you feel.
Parvati, I have been writing my little fingers off this whole weekend; just as if my paper was not due; I just got stuck on communicating with other bloggers who started by calling me names.
I don't know why people keep calling me names, just because I don't support sanctions, because I don't support war with Iran, because I don't support a grand revolution and blood bath on the streets of my country!
The world is such a freaking blood thirsty place!
Naj, yes indeed - I'd just been reading those discussion threads you were posting on. You stated your reasons very clearly, and won not only support but respect - but as political passions with a touch of paranoia are running so strong, a couple of posters misinterpreted your more cautious "lesser-evilist" attitude. I don't think their stance is due to bloodthirstiness though, more to the classic "if you're not with us 100% that means you're agin us 100%" thingy plus probable underestimation of very real perils and potential traps?
Re that alleged-military letter again: rightly or wrongly, I'd read its message essentially as a warning - issued with a touch of deliberate ambiguity from quarters either inside or contiguous to the armed forces - saying essentially "IF-and-only-IF you pursue a certain extreme-repression course, there are many people in the armed forces who at that point would feel morally-obliged to confront you (so please reflect..!)", not as a declaration of firm intent/desire to drag the country into bloody turmoil/civil war, which as every sane person knows is the most agonizing and barbarizing fate a country can suffer. There's a lot of shadow-play going on, a lot of chess-moves and counter-moves, pressures and counter-pressures... in that context such a "shot across the bows" could make sense? But all we can do is guess... and hope for the best. What I do see as potentially dangerous is if it gets read by the more hotheaded components of the protest movement as an invitation to extremize their own strategies, counting on army intervention "when push comes to shove"... urk! But others will no doubt take care to head 'em off... no lack of very bright people around.
Many thanks for the '79 revolution-photos link. Of course all revolutions are violent and bloody; as the present one is being, as ours was (without the photos to prove).
I hadn't realized that Kurds played a part in the '79 revolution and were apparently a political force. Are they still active in your politics?
I guess I thought that the Kurds were mainly northern Iraq and Turkey dwellers.
Ah, this may amuse you, Naj: Time Magazine had been doing an online poll to select its Person Of The Year 2009, Iran Protesters were WAY ahead of all other competitors with hundreds of thousands of votes and 92% favorable rating, followed by Steve Jobs at 46% Obama, Nancy Pelosi etc all with less than half the Iranian democracy movement's votes. But then when the 5 finalists were declared today... poof! NO trace of Iran Protesters' candidacy in the finalists list - all those hundreds of thousands of readers' votes had been "vanished" into thin air!
How come? Well... rumours are that Time has booked itself an exclusive interview with Ahmadinejad - so guess it doesn't want to offend his delicate sensitivity?
Small world, eh?
Full story just been posted by Josh Shahryar:
Hey TIME, WHERE IS MY VOTE?
Ok it's just a routine bit of cheap n' sleazy minor-politicking skulduggery compared to the tragedies that have been piling up elsewhere, but ... bleah all the same. Time to watch your lovely "red violin" video again to refresh my heart and mind.
Hi Pav,
yeah this vote was funny; you could vote gzillion times!
And if I recall, Obama was after Iranian protesters.
At some point I found a little internet application that told you the "impact-factor" of some key-words ... and believe it or not, Iran was VERY LOW on the list. A great majority of the world (or America) doesn't care about Iran; even though Iranians like their Israeli counterparts like to get a lot of attention ;)
Goatman,
Kurds are a "major" minority in Iran too; they have been demanding cultural recognition; and fair play and participation in running IRan and benefiting from IRan--their LEGITIMATE demand has been treated with cruelty BOTH before AND after revolution.
What they want is simple: right to educate their children in their language ...
Re Kurds - I totally agree, all peoples should have the right to preserve, transmit and cherish their own language culture and traditions.
.......
"...even though Iranians like their Israeli counterparts like to get a lot of attention ;)"
Lol - never quite seen it put like that before but .. * click *... yeah I bellieve you're onto something ;)
....
Re bloodthirsty-whatevers infesting the planet with schemings from horrific to downright absurd - "dunno whether to laugh or cry" category - here's another pearl for your contemplation:
Free Anatolia From Centuries of Turkish Occupation
- sounds almost high-minded put like that, right? But take a look at the "small print":
The only solution to this problem is to send them back where they came from. However, majority of modern population of Anatolia though are Turkish speakers, and believe that they are Tuks, but in reality they are of Armenian, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Semitic origins.
Therefore a genetic mapping requires to establish as to what percentage are real Turks, which should be returned to their own homelands. Number of the distinctive features of a Turks, are: short, fattish (stocky), short neck, flat nosed, and narrowed-eyes - and most importantly of low IQ and bad-tempered.
Lol shouldn't really be laughing at such hyper-racist burblings but some of that last bit sounds uncannily like a certain Turkish kid I went to school with at the international school here - especially the short fattish and bad-tempered part - I disliked him and he disliked me, he was spiteful and vulgar and I'm hot-tempered when provoked so we ended up having an epic fight that almost got both of us expelled! Other Turks at that school quite OK though and some very bright and extremely pretty girls.
Nevertheless, at the opposite extreme I'm not exactly going to sign up as a Grey-Wolves lovin' Pan-Turanist either - but this is about as far as I'm prepared to go myself.
Re: Parv,
Your speaking of genetic derivations of peoples and their geographic placement with others of their kind would make (and has probably made, for all I know) a nice Sci Fi tome on the end results of such an arrangement.
We here in US consider our country "melting pot" and, although others may enter and prosper, they must abide by a common language of communication. They do not, however have to abide by a common religion, which may prove to be a problem in the end with radical islamists moving in to destroy and seek martyrdom by killing others!
We should only hope for a future of like souls living together on this planet; helping each other and learning from the experience.
"At some point I found a little internet application that told you the "impact-factor" of some key-words ... and believe it or not, Iran was VERY LOW on the list. A great majority of the world (or America) doesn't care about Iran; even though Iranians like their Israeli counterparts like to get a lot of attention ;)"
You are such an irritating pessimist.
"At some point I found a little internet application that told you the "impact-factor" of some key-words ... and believe it or not, Iran was VERY LOW on the list. A great majority of the world (or America) doesn't care about Iran; even though Iranians like their Israeli counterparts like to get a lot of attention ;)"
You are such an irritating pessimist.
"Your speaking" - not me speaking, just quoting a Facebook link!! - "of genetic derivations of peoples and their geographic placement with others of their kind would make (and has probably made, for all I know) a nice Sci Fi tome on the end results of such an arrangement."
Dunno much about Sci Fi tomes do know a bit about European history and geography: IRA, Northern Ireland, Scottish independence movement, Balkans wars, ETA, Caucasus conflicts, Nagorno-Karabach conflict, Flemish vs Walloons thingy in Belgium that v.recently resurfaced and almost split the country in two- any of that ring a bell?
Also going a bit further back, re Anatolia=Turkey in particular: fall of Constantinople, Ottoman takeover of Byzantine territories, Greek war of independence, forced Turkification, Armenian and Greek genocides...?
Here in Italy there was until very recently (decade or so ago) a South Tyrolese secessionist movement- German minority up by our border with Austria - that used to blow up both electrical pylons and police stations. Also still-sharp reciprocal resentments and exchanges of accusations between Italians and Slavs around our North-Eastern border-zones about who ethnic-cleansed/warcrimed who during and after WW2. Bad-feeling sometimes takes the form of spats with Slovenia or Croatia about fishing-zone limits or use by us/them of "wrong language" names for certain towns in official documents... driven by lotsa tetchy bad-memories stuff.
And as though that were not enough, we currently also have a delightful middling-sized (by Italian standards) rightwing party in Berlusconi's govt. called the Northern League. Its ideological platform - far as I can make it out ? - is that:
1) the people of the part of the country where invading germanic tribes (mostly Lombards = Lombardy=Milan region)settled around 600 AD amongst the local italic-and-celtic-amalgam population immediately after the military fall of the western half of the Roman empire are somehow genetically/ civilisationally "superior" to the population of the mostly non-germanic-settled rest of Italy ... so should be independent/ semi-independent from them/us to avoid being exploited by us lazy inferior italo-greco-etruscan nogoods.
2) Nevertheless, according to the Northern League - as fallback platform - ALL Italians as-such are in any-and-every case "superior" to worker-immigrants from outside the EU, who should therefore be systematically beaten up and kicked out - especially-but-not-only if muslim... but they don't like christian or atheist ones either, especially if from african or asian countries.
This Northern League party currently has several ministers in our national government, if it walks out the government falls - so it has considerable pressure-power. At the local level it's been increasing its electoral support in its key regions (map)- which just-happen to include some of Italy's richest industrial and commercial zones.
So as you can see, all that "who came from where when and did/does what to whom" stuff remains ...politically very sensitive here, could become literally explosive so must be faced and reasoned with can't just be ignored... unfortunately. :(
Which is why I posted the facebook link: the reasoning's as sinister as that of our effin' Northern League - i.e. aggressive-type revanchist ethno-nationalism with potential ethnic-cleansing implications presenting itself with a smiley-face on Facebook. Lots of that kind of stuff around, of all kinds of origins... including Turkish versions.
...
The US was populated very recently by assorted settler-immigrants from across the seas so it's "foundational" situation's a bit different from ours I'd say? Some attitudes/tensions/issues in common, but many differences.
What they want is simple: right to educate their children in their language ...
Not just that their brother in Iraq said that before they given that.
After 1991 clearly Kurd plan is Kurdistan State along Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran.
This is the dream, with US game in ME.
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