Notes

Our lunches and dinners are getting ever more elaborate and expansive — last night, Group A made fesenjoon, served with salad, and sides of stir-fried brussel sprouts and broccoli, and garlic-sautéed mushrooms, before finishing off with a nectarine crumble (and not a cheeseboard in sight!). Lunch today was venison, with a side of beans, and a potato and leek salad. And the return of the cheeseboard. We are all eating far too much. And drinking ridiculous amounts of coffee. But it’s all to fuel some serious thinking — and subtle changes in the way we are beginning to approach the readings. Today, ‘class’ was held in the garden behind the kitchen-cafe. As the sun arced over the sky, its heat seeped slowly into our discussions. There’s a lot more going on, undercurrents gaining strength, changing direction on a sea still calm. Responses to questions are slower, more careful, deliberate. Follow-ups keep pace, probing gently, not to promote a personal view nor to push a professional stance. Ahmad both directs and manages these deftly. There is a distinct sense of the boundaries of ta’rof, a form of Persian politesse, being recalibrated. We are more honest about not understanding assertions we are hearing, but it is accompanied by cues both verbal and non-verbal that we are open and willing to listen more actively and thereby seek clarity about new, and unfamiliar positions as we seek to integrate those ideas with our current worldviews. The first reading, ‘The Real Work’ by Wendell Berry inspired and bored in equal measure. For those of us at a sense of loss, ‘no longer know[ing] what to do’ or ‘which way to go’, the realization that we may ‘have come to our real work’ or ‘our real journey’ was profound. For those of us perhaps less lost personally and professionally, these observations were obvious and expressed with greater poetry elsewhere. We all agreed, however, on the last line, ‘The impeded stream is the one that sings.’ The next reading, ‘Trying Out One’s New Sword’ by Mary Midgley put forward strong arguments against moral isolationism — the idea that ‘the respect and tolerance due from one system to another requires us never to take up a critical position to any other culture, that we can never claim to say what is good or bad there.’ Using an example from classical Japan of a samurai who could only test the efficacy of a new sword by wielding it, ideally fatally, on an unfortunate traveler, Midgley posed three questions: 1. ‘Does the isolating barrier work both ways? Are people in other cultures equally unable to criticize us?’ 2. ‘Does the isolating barrier between cultures block praise as well as blame?’…

The strategy Today I left behind the fear and concerns of the things I didn´t want to find, because at the time I faced them, that big monster that my imagination had created, faded. Instead, it became something more human, more tangible, more kind. That kindness is surrounded by a sense that everything that surrounds us is subjective and depends on the different angles. And, since time is also subjective, these angles become momentary and not definitive. A step to the right, a step to the left or a step a little bit forward changes that perspective from the one I had a few seconds ago. Looking for the path we need to find a strategy to move is sometimes a conscious strategy but many others it is an unconscious one. The important thing is the fact of looking for a path. Is this honest? At least it is valid to try to handle the cards that you have in your hand in the best possible way to find the path for yourself. “When we judge something to be bad or good, better or worse than something else, we are taking it as an example to aim at or to avoid. If we really couldn’t form opinions of this sort, we´d have no framework of comparison for our own policy. We couldn’t profit by others insights or mistakes. Without judgments about our own actions.” Trying out one´s new sword by Mary Midgley.

I’m not in a position to tell you how to drink your soup, said the ColombianI will eat the Marco Polo sheep, the honorary Tajik decidedI don’t want to offend the local code of hospitalityAfter all, dead is dead, and the living must take care of the living I’m triggered by your idea that Honesty is TruthThe offensiveness of dictating your self-perception, and buttressing it with the threat of personal offenseThe idea that you can be – in that fragile space of trust between us – whatever your self-image dictatesAnd rather than being allowed to interpret, I be obliged to accept, But you can’t be what you’re not. Much as you may want itStrive hard, to be what you ‘seek’ All the rest is Eat, Pray, Love and aspirational self-help.

Strategizing manipulation Inside the Grillemont castle, even on a sunny day presents itself with a coldness hard to redeem even with a hat, woolly shawl and 3 layers of clothes. We are all now used to this temperature, where at first seemed impossible to sit through. A detail where now if gone would take out the familiarity of the place we have come to call home. Our morning sessions began. “…The mind that is not baffled is not employedThe impeded stream is the one that sings”– Wendell Berry The poem, for me, seemed repetitive on how our mind honors “time or energy” with how we question our decisions. Due to this constant reminder, my mind turned off towards the full poem. It frustrated me that again to show concern of thought my mind had to be consumed or baffled as it stated. Maybe like the cold that we had become accustomed to, the reminder and practice of streamlining thoughts would no longer prove to be a task. There is much that we can easily dismiss, as it is repetitive or cliche, but as Ahmad Kiarostami pointed out – “The obvious is never told, therefore it is forgotten”. Now that truly resonated – how in so many occasions I have let the obvious go, an obvious that could have shown compassion and interest. We were back at Truth, it seems to somehow go hand in hand with authenticity. For whenever we aim to see that truth, we look at what’s authentic, separating any influences, conditioning, nuances, and accents that have come forth through in our individual practiced cultures. I thought back to the Zagros mountains, the Bakhtiaris, what our survival instincts generated, our acceptable cultures, who I formed into then and who I am now. How each reality presented itself with its own set of protocols (culture), and if I changed within each culture does that then make me inauthentic? Would I be then manipulating those who have not seen me in other cultures? “She learned from the brief exchange that the way men were able to accept women in politics was to associate them with motherhood. … She began to see that her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence, she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers…” – Kristin Downey “Birnbaum and Finkelstein’s work has provided a new model for attack politics in this era of global division. …’It always helps rally the troops and rally a population when the enemy has a face’ Birnbaum explained.” – Hannes Grassegger The two excerpts above were taken from two articles, each highlighting individuals that strategized their goal, potentially ‘manipulating’ their associates in the process of reaching that goal. The first a woman whose…

The uncomfortable I get up thinking about how incredible the mind is and how it generates these great stories about the future particularly, about circumstances that have not happened and that we imagine how they will be. Normally my mind generates tragic scenes. Scenarios almost like in a horror movie. My deepest fears. I continue to see every corner and find more details. Details that begin to give me flavors, colors, smells. Many times they are not pleasant to experience or even to know that they are there. “Although I had been writing against public flogging ever since it began, I wanted to watch it. I might go back to my typewriter and condemn it, but I did not want to miss the spectacle. This was an unpleasant Discovery to make about myself. A sorrowful, angry disgust with myself and the country l lived in thus became a future of my life”Sand and Foam by Kahlil Gibran But the mind is also capable of complicating a single detail to its fullest expression. So I must look at the detail to find answers or should I go to the essentials? To find the essence you have to go to the detail but to see the detail you also need to know the essence. As Desmond Tutu says in No Future Without Forgiveness this third way of life: “was consistent with a central feature of the African Weltanschauung- what we know in our languages as Ubuntu… It speaks of the very essence of being human.” The idea is to search for simplicity. For the essence…

How Honest are we with the Truth? In all my time never did I think of the differences, always believing naturally they go hand in hand as to be honest is to be truthful. Yet as our discussions took forth amongst this unique group of 9 individuals, I began to examine their distinction. That yes honesty can be derived from the truth but it does not mean that what one is being honest about is the Truth. “The fifth time when she forbore for weakness, And attributed her patience to strength…” Khalil Gibran There is an honesty to one’s self with where we stand, what we take in and its effects, but it can be far from the truth. The Truth just is, it cannot be subjective. “Reality is bigger than all the facts…”. Fayaz Alibhai continues to explain after our reading from Anwar Iqbal’s squeamish FIFTEEN LASHES. A very detailed account of the flogging in Pakistan which naturally triggered accounts of stories friends once told me back in Iran. Throughout Iqbal’s meticulous description of sound, environment, mood, and actions, which I believe illustrated the scene so intimately; he honored the facts and was honest. Yet the question which was pointed out – how truthful was he to the accounts, his authenticity (the subject of our courses here in delightful France)? To be me, I thought, how much more truthful can he be? “Although I had been writing against public flogging ever since it began, I wanted to watch it. I might go back to my typewriter and condemn it, but I did not want to miss the spectacle. There was an unpleasant discovery to make about myself. A sorrowful, angry disgust – with myself and the country I lived in — this became a feature of my life.”Anwar Iqbal This one honest discovery at the end of all the facts which stemmed from reality seemed to then encompass the whole piece in an authentic envelope. Self-Realization, honest to oneself, almost vulnerable in where Iqbal stood in a position to the flogging. Thus where do we stand with ourselves? The essence of what we all come to in our quest to accomplish, as Ahmad pointed out. How honest can we be with the complexities that we face as to keep our realizations authentic? Can this understanding be simple? Simplifying situations in words has always been one of my hardest tasks. The one way I try to put this in practice is through respecting all the elements that give me that collective experience, as to better grasp its influence so I can (hopefully) be honest with its effects. Being respectful doesn’t mean I will agree but to witness with minimum judgment…

Today we read the following articles: “No Future Without Forgiveness” by Desmond Tutu, “Fifteen Lashes” by Anwar Iqbal and “Sand and Foam” by Khalil Gibran. One question that we ruminated about today was around the idea of “personal essence” or personal touch that we brought to our work. I realized that I had no one consistent way of expressing myself and that in fact, I often find that I had vastly different ways of expressing my essence across the multitude of disciplines that I work in because the nature of technology and film and the audiences in each are so different. However, upon further prodding, I found that one aspect of consistency I bring to all projects is compassion. I think that this quality allows others to feel safe enough to express their own vulnerabilities and strengths and weaknesses which adds richness to the output of what we create collectively. In “No Future Without Forgiveness”, Tutu explains how he was able to create a transition from apartheid, given all of the complexities and limitations that existed. He was able to take something so complex and complicated and simplify it enough in order to allow the country to move forward, as gracefully as possible. While he arrived at his conclusion after weighing other options, he acknowledges that what had occurred was unprecedented in many ways, and he had to think through the many possible scenarios for all parties involved. This article and Tutu’s perspective on the matter forced me to ask many questions about how other countries can use a similar framework when dealing with such complex transitions. For instance, how do we fairly move forward from a social construct in a nation that allows for injustices and human rights violations? I agree with a key line from the article: “To forgive is the best form of human interest”. It seems that without forgiveness, we are only pushed backward or toward neutrality, but never forward.

How can we honor and acknowledge our own histories in relationship to other’s histories? To understand one’s self we must also understand ourselves in parallel with others, from the individual experience to the collective experience. We must expand the spectrum through which our history has been told. What would happen if we transformed our focus to one which includes the other without suppressing the difference? When the difference is understood and respected without coercion we can endeavor to resist assaults on marginalized people, their environments and the cultural heritage that they carry with them. There is a profound difference between preserving history and curating it. What stories are you being told? And through which lens are they being filtered?

Although it’s only our second day, I feel as if we have all known each other for a lifetime. The format of our schedule balances between our discussion groups and our own time allows us to continue aspects of the group conversation one-on-one with each other. The grounds of the Chateau de Grillemont are miles from the nearest town and I am relishing in the silence and limited WiFi and cell phone reception. The lack of being inundated with the frequencies of the grid is tangible for me. Today we discussed three pieces from our reading. The first, a poem from Kahlil Gibran titled “Sand and Foam” quickly veered from its content into a discussion of the author and his controversial history. I wondered aloud to the group how we might have reacted to the content had we not known the author and it opened a discussion on the topic, comparing it to other examples where we have to question the writings, music, and films of so many disgraced icons. The second piece was an article by Anwar Iqbal, a Pakistani actor, and director who was an apprentice newspaper reporter in 1977. His piece “Fifteen Lashes” offered a raw and graphic account on witnessing his first public flogging during the military coup of Pakistan at that time. The third was by Desmond Tutu titled “No Future Without Forgiveness” which looked at the fascinating process of creating a new Constitution for South Africa after the fall of apartheid and how to deal with and punish the perpetrators of such a horrific system. As I get to know my fellow residents, I’ve realized an interesting point today that connects us all. Each one of us communicates in more than one language and has either traveled extensively or has lived somewhere other than their homeland. Fayaz is of Indian descent but grew up in Kenya; Gelareh is Iranian but also grew up in U.A.E and Toronto; Tara is Indian/Tajik but raised in America; Yasmeen is of Iraqi descent but raised in Chicago; Iason is Greek but speaks many languages and has lived throughout the Middle East; Estephania is Colombian but lives in Barcelona; Taha is Iranian but lives in Paris; and Ahmad is Iranian but lives in San Francisco. Acknowledging this connection between all of us, I then saw that all the authors in our readings also traveled extensively. Is that the way to authenticity? To become a true citizen of the world and to find a career or calling that not only allows but demands traveling to places not always by personal choice is for me, definitely what brought me to my authentic self. And here I am. Though I am an…

It’s tempting to sleep in another half hour. I’d slept at 1.00am the previous night, thinking and writing, longhand, about Day 1. But I’d committed to a morning walk during a wifi window earlier that evening, and sans connectivity now, at 7.15am, there wasn’t a way of reneging. I bargained with myself in that peculiar early morning combination of lucidity and stupor. I yielded. Twenty more minutes. Enough time, it turned out, to make it for the walk with Tara and Yasmeen at 8.15am returning for a quick coffee and a couple of slices of toast before getting down to the business of discussing the readings for Day 2. We started with ‘Sand and Foam’ by Kahlil Gibran, with him ‘Seven times…despis[ing his] soul’. Even as it evoked for many of us the seven deadly sins, there is much about keeping up appearances here, about pretense, pride, and making excuses. All of us have. Many times. Personally and professionally. Is remembering and then revealing the truth an honest act? And is it meant to be redemptive? Or are such insights calculated moments of vulnerability, strategic and expiatory? Much discussion follows about Gibran’s life, and the extent to which authorship and positionality affect (or should or should not affect) the content. It was almost inevitable segueing to the present time by invoking the life and music of Michael Jackson. Wagner would have been another fascinating, historical, example, but we didn’t get there. The second reading, ‘Fifteen Lashes’ by Anwar Iqbal is a distressing read for several of us. A ‘big public flogging show’ in a maidan between Rawalpindi and Islamabad arranged by General Zia ul-Haqq, it is ‘a form of punishment which in Pakistan owes as much to an inherited British colonial tradition as to the penal code of Islam.’ What is the function of such detail, such gory observation? Does it make it real? Does it validate a report? Is it perhaps a proxy for authority? And why, despite its particularity did it remind some of us of the violence of drug cartels in Columbia or of lynchings in the American south? Maybe it’s because the most powerful, universally relatable stories are those expressed through the details of a particular context. They are true (one might say authentic) to their roots, growing as well, flourishing even, when transplanted afar, as in their native soil. Some of this Geertz-like ‘thick description’ was evident in Day 1’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’. But there are other, filmic, congruences of such graphic narratives – any Tarantino film, The Stoning of Soraya M, which I still cannot bring myself to watch, or Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, which come every Easter, I feel an inexplicable…