Events, Updates, News and More
It’s a Friday full of sweetness and sadness for me. I leave in a couple of days and I am spending this lazy Friday visiting friends to say goodbye … until we meet again. Everything about the city seems magical today. The mountains are glowing white, circled by grey clouds. The streets are calm and people are out and about.
Tomorrow is my last day of training. The actors from Khost, Baghlan and Herat are going to perform two short Forum Theater plays for a limited audience of friends and colleagues. At the core of both stories is the question of whose decisions are respected? Who has the power to make a life choice, and who doesn’t.
This week was a long week with lots of prodding and pushing. We were telling stories about oppression, personal experiences of oppression, something simple, clear. I started by asking them to make a frozen body sculpture of one such experience. After the activity, we spoke about what they were showing. It turns out no one made an image of something from their own life! They made images from other people’s lives, images from stories they heard, or things they saw. They were finding it hard to access those personal stories, without compounding them with others.
Through struggle we bring forth the ripened fruit of a changed tomorrow. We never stand still; motionless as life breezes by. We move in the wind. Sometimes with it, Sometimes against it. Ever changing, we remake our reality. This past week I have been changed by the fortitude, brilliance and endless capacity of Afghan artists.
After the latest barrage of bad news and cynical commentary on Afghanistan I was conflicted about returning – scared that this time I’ll really encounter all the awful things the news tells me I’ll encounter. I was nervous and doubting myself. Hopelessness was pushing in. But I have insisted on life; choosing to believe in the particular truth that comes from observing and interacting with real human beings. People with histories and futures not portrayed in the mass media.
So here I am, in the middle of it all. The snowy mountains watch over me, the sun bright in the sky. Soaking in the goodness of Kabul I come back to life, back to reality.
What waits for me? Girls walking to school, men and women waiting on a corner for taxis, vendors calling out their wares, a herd of sheep.
It’s spring and the trees are budding with fresh life. Yes, that’s what I’m met with in this city of dusty dreams; pulsing life. Text messages come in from colleagues to tell me they miss me. I fall in love all over again.
Yesterday was Jumm’e the day of rest and Zabi, the cook and houseman, took me on a walk of the neighborhood. Not much was happening today, the streets are quiet.
We pass through a small street with a stall selling straw, another selling chopped wood for the bukhari (a little metal stove used to heat the house in winter), a stall with a machine which looks like it bats down cotton, a prolific bread shop, and some auto repair shops.
One street was filled with tailors’ shops, kind of like a mini garment district.
No bunkers here. No hiding from life. No retreating nor surrender. Only life, transformation, movement.
Cynicism and hopelessness is dealt a mortal blow by people’s will to create their own futures. Ooooh yes, I’m back, and the reality of being here resurrects my faith in positive transformation. I suppose it’s right on time for Easter and Passover. Coming out from the dark, transcending oppression, reveling in life.
On Sunday my advanced workshop starts. I am excited for the actors to take the lead and explore how these techniques help people to articulate their hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow.
From the theater’s stage to life’s stage – they can’t stop and won’t stop … so neither will I!
So while you are eating that matzoh or painting that egg, remember life is growing here. There is freshness and green and much goodness to come.
More soon … K
P.S. – tell a friend about this work. We need people to have images of life in Afghanistan, rather than death.
Full of JOY! I feel like I’m walking on clouds, slowly climbing higher and higher till I reach my cruising altitude. I am preparing to go back to Kabul for a month of trainings and am thrilled to see my work build on itself. The first two groups I trained are coming back and I will be offering them new cultural tools for community engagement, collective problem solving and local healing. After this advanced workshop, a few members will stay with me to co-facilitate a brand new training with 3 new groups!
It’s that time of the year again. Spring is creeping up on us, new shoots are poking up from the ground and festivals of regeneration and re-birth are taking place around the world. In my ancestral part of the world, South and West Asia, the festival of Holi, (celebrated in South Asia) and Norooz (celebrated in West Asia), are coming up this month. Holi is March 8, Norooz is March 20th. Both feature fire, a meditation on righteousness and lots of color.
(This was supposed to be a post about my upcoming events this month and next. Click here to see what’s happening. I hope I can see you before I’m back in Kabul in April.)
What does “artist as leader” mean? What does it look like in our world? So often there is so much confusion about the role (and significance) of artists in our society. I have been forced to think about this since the passing of Whitney Houston. I’ve been plagued with feeling stupid for crying over the death of “an entertainer”, a Hollywood persona. I’ve been embarrassed to speak with much feeling about her death, afraid to be perceived as being ridiculous and shallow.
Yes, really, I'm talking about Whitney.
But what I have come to understand is that I was both mourning the loss of a brilliant artist who’s voice moved millions, and the loss of an artist who was struggled with her own sense of self worth in this contradictory society.
Hello, we're really important. Illustration by Luba Lukova.
The oppressive elements in society needs us to suppress our creativity in order to maintain the status quo. To send this message, artists, those who have dedicated their lives to art and creativity, are targeted. A friend of mine said that artists need to live in water deep enough to drown them. And that is what society does. It submerges the creative in all of us.
The messages that are broadcast in our society about artists are that we are irresponsible, stupid, drug addicts, mentally ill, have questionable morals; and that art is frivolous, a diversion, not serious work, it’s only for some people, it’s stupid, and can’t pay the bills. In order to maintain the status quo, we need artists to remain on the fringes of society, barely visible, always teetering on the brink of poverty and irrelevance.
These messages get enforced from a very early age. Imagine an adult asking you, with pleasure, if you are going to be a lawyer or a dancer when you grow up; what about a firefighter or a painter? From a very young age, we are steered away from art-making as a life choice. The marginalization of the arts and of artists means that art-making as a life choice is extremely hard to accept. We all, at some point, have suppressed our own creativity and locked it away in order to live in the “real world”.
Illustration by Luba Lukova.
Artist’s being marginalized goes hand in hand with the suppression of creativity in society. Creativity is powerful. And that brings me to my main point: art and creativity are the most powerful forces we have for liberation.
Art can bring people together. We don’t even need tospeak the same language.
Art can make a way out of no way. When people are living in oppressive situations, artists can help imagine a way out. The fight for another world has to imagine that the impossible is possible.
Artists never stop questioning. Creativity means to use your senses to engage in a process of inquiry.
So let the artists lead us. Let us recognize that they already do!
(This was supposed to be a post about all my upcoming events … but please click here for that info. Hope you can make one or two events.)
Since returning from Kabul last month I’ve jumped back into NYC life with both feet! Now I find my schedule full of speaking events and workshops from February through March! If you will be in NYC on any of these dates, please come to one or more of these events. I’d love to see you. And as always, please forward this to anyone who you think would be interested.
I love this time of year since its often the only extended break I have to reflect on my life, gather with people I love and appreciate the small, simple moments of grace from the year gone by. The lights we burn on Yalda, Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa are all rooted in primal symbolism and full of references to the light of human goodness triumphing over fear and confusion.
The burka. It is such an emotionally charged, unique piece of clothing. For me, focusing on a thing rather than the real issues of sexism and women’s oppression doesn’t make sense, and foreign obsession fn the burka often stinks of exoticism and othering. So I’ve never commented on it nor have I spent much attention on it … until my last night in Kabul.
Today is the holy day of Ashura where, in Islam, believers mourn the death of Imam Hussein, the prophet Mohammed’s grandson. Imam Hussein was fighting a great oppressor and on this day he and his entire family and followers were massacred and left in the desert of Karbala. This story is most important to Shi’ia Muslims a they believe Imam Hussein to be the rightful successor to the prophet Mohammed. Sunnis also believe this day to be sacred and attribute other reasons to the observance like the day god forgave Adam.
Three to four in the afternoon is my favorite time of day here in Kabul. The lazy light of the sun shines on the hills and mountains and brings the small features and crags into relief. The long shadows add depth and contrast to street life, coloring the already colorful people and places with ink blots slashing over the golden rays.I always dream of walking up the narrow streets and steep stairways that lead up to the tiny homes that crowd the hills rising up throughout Kabul city.
Hello Kabul! Hello mountains. Hello kindness. Hello community. Hello learning. Hello growing. Hello change. I feel so full of joy and gratitude to be here and do what I love. It’s been such a busy week and I can’t believe that already I am half way done! I am finding out that being the sole facilitator and workshop coordinator is pretty time consuming but I promise to send more updates.
Art imitates life, life imitates art … but what’s the deal with pepper spray at WalMart? It’s the theater of the absurd in overdrive. I sit here next to the pot bellied stove in my guest house, calm and distant. I don’t mind the distance from this facet of life. Though I do remember when I was here in late September, I had such longing to be part of the Occupy movement in NYC. Funny how things change.
I’ve been back in NY for two weeks now and am so pleased that I got to see the last of the fall colors. When I arrived, reds, yellows, browns and greens were still bright and shocking. Now, many of the leaves have fallen – and the colors faded. When I left New York in October Zucotti park had just been occupied and the movement, which seemed to appear from nowhere, bloomed and blazed. In the two months between, something important has begun.
There’s no way around it. I can’t hide, pretend it’s not happening, close my eyes. I have to have to face it -the project has come to an end. Well, my part of it has come to an end and now the young students are tasked with carrying on the work and moving it forward. I have learned a great deal by spending these 6 weeks in Kabul, listening to people, observing life, understanding daily struggles, seeing entrenched attitudes and thinking about all of this in light of how art and culture can be used to educate, build community, and inspire change.
This last week has been filled with performances for NGOs and community spaces throughout Kabul. We often have 2-3 per day which makes for hectic and fun times. So far we’ve performed at schools, orphanages, for the National Police force, a community center for widows and orphans, the Kabul women’s prison, and in the garden of a women’s rights organization.
