Topic: Raving
Sunday night, as my reward for finishing marking essays without pulling an all-nighter involving gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair and many bitter comments about attention to important details like using citations and doing so correctly (and yes, I will shut up about the marking soon, I promise), I went to see I Know I'm Not Alone, which is a remarkable little film. And I want to be clear that when I say 'little', I say it because it's a movie that doesn't have grand pretensions. It's all about small but important moments. It's about ordinary people and their lives. It's about the difference that small groups can make and are making. It's about relating to people as people - hearing their stories, sharing in their lives. It's heartbreaking and uplifting and challenging.
Michael Franti, a hip-hop/funk singer/songwriter (whose music I've just started getting into), took a break from his work with his excellent band, Spearhead, to travel to Iraq, Palestine and Israel with a few friends to find out what it's like to live under military occupation. Franti is interested in individual stories. He takes risks to reach out to people: traveling outside secure areas, performing his outspokenly political music for US soldiers, bringing together small groups of people who might not ordinarily interact. He wanders around playing his guitar, and builds a rapport with people whose language he doesn't speak by writing a catchy little song with one lyric: 'habibi', which means, basically, 'my dear friend' in Arabic.
Franti absolutely succeeds in putting a human face on the conflicts in Iraq and Palestine/Israel. I was particularly struck by the clear intention to produced a balanced portrayal of the people on both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli state doesn't come off well (particularly where the land grab of the wall is concerned), and neither do those who support suicide bombing, but the Israeli and Palestinian people are not demonized. In a particularly brave moment for everyone involved, Franti and his group, along with some Palestinians from a town near the wall, have an intense conversation with some Israeli soldiers they had argued with earlier in the day. Both sides discuss their fears, where their fears come from, and how much they don't like the wall. It's tragic to see how the systems and structures that these people have been shaped by separate them from each other, but encouraging to see that, even if only for a moment, some communication can take place across that gap.
I saw it with Ro, and all we could talk about afterward was how much we wanted to drop everything and go somewhere and do something. And yes, I took deep breaths and reminded myself that, in theory, once all this research and writing is done, I will be in a better position to do that something. I might even have a better idea than 'something' about what I want to do. But I don't know. Franti says he wanted to make a movie about the way people cope with the stresses of occupation, a movie about 'friendship, humor, art and music'. And those are seriously missing from what I'm studying, which makes me wonder whether I'm going about this all wrong - am I learning too much about ways to 'help' people that don't really consider their humanity, or mine? Have I learned too well to see people as problems that need solving? Where's the heart in what I'm studying? It strikes me that we've got the 'head' covered around here, but we're seriously lacking in soul.