I’ve never had any similar experience, but I can well imagine myself feeling exactly as she says she did, given the context that she describes. I am conscious as I read it, though, that we are still talking of a country where the official line is that paying for sex is bad and that lap-dancing is only allowed because it’s “not really sex”, which doesn’t fool anyone. This attitude inevitably means that the people currently engaging in the activity (clients as well providers) are those who tend to trangress socially acceptable norms of behaviour more easily (although it appears that there are so many of these that it is a norm in itself, a factor which must be considered). They are therefore likely to be more cavalier about abuse and violence too.

Making the entire industry illegal means that the society does not provide any rules or sanctions for conduct within the industry and also does not allow the development of non-official social guidelines of the non-snigger variety that could guide people and provide social pressure for appropriate behaviour. Every accepted non-sexual industry has evidenced exploitation. Governments have instituted rules and policing to curb unacceptable behaviour within these “respectable” industries, rather than shutting them down altogether because of abuses. If abuse and exploitation, rather than the industry as a whole, were strictly and severely policed, couldn’t sex become normal too? Is it possible that people who can’t contemplate this are the ones who believe that sex itself is evil, dangerous and dirty (although they use words like “private” and “sacrosanct” as euphemisms for these terms) and who would actually prefer that everyone has as little of it as possible, even within the “legal” area of marriage?

What if paying for sex were more mainstream, and sexual facilities were available for both sexes, and industry standards were high and policed? Could this mean that everyone could take care of their sexual health as they do of their physical fitness (going to the gym, doing sport, etc.)? Is it possible that then people would not have to feel anxious, guilty, dirty, threatened or unsafe for their interest and engagement in sex? Is it possible that people could have more fulfilling marriages and lives where they can focus on intellectual and emotional companionship and interesting, productive work, without having to deal with the constant distraction of sexual incompatibilities and dissatisfactions? Is it possible that then people could get on with the businesses of educating, creating, working, governing, resolving conflicts, home-making, etc. without paying too much attention to what people wear or who they’ve slept with? Could sexual activity just become acknowledged as something that everyone does in some form or another and that there’s nothing too remarkable about it? Could this defuse the high sexual tension that arises from the constant frustration experienced by most people and which leads to our media being clogged with material about perceived sexual misconduct and our governments grinding to a halt every time a leader is found to be doing what a very high percentage of people do or want to do anyway? In this regard, the recent NYT article In Most Species, Faithfulness is a Fantasy, is relevant.

The sci-fi show Firefly has a powerful, attractive, courtesan character, a “Companion” who is highly respected in a highly regulated industry and is an accomplished and intelligent woman. Of course, this is far away in the galaxy and in time, but could it be a healthy ideal?

Tia Azulay 19Mar08
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

The other thing is the little essay-in-a-booklet called On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt which I picked up at a bookstore this morning. He argues that despite various consciously or unconsciously held postmodern positions on the possibility and accessibility of truth, most of us rely on our ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood in very practical ways in our everyday lives. He equates truth here with fact. For instance, no matter how skeptical you are about truth, you’ll probably give your actual name and address when filling in an application for something. In other words, you’ll tell the truth about the fact and you and the contracting party will rely on the accuracy of those details. If they prove false, the whole thing won’t work (at least not for long). Practically, truth is essential to large parts of our lives, and our trust in others and, most importantly, in ourselves, depends on it, so communities couldn’t function without it. Communities do sustain a lot of “bullshit and lying” too (apparently the subject of a prior essay by the same person), but we can navigate this if we have some ability to tell the difference between truth and falsehood (and most people do). Those who hold to falsehood as truth are crazy. Every time someone tells us even a white lie, perhaps in order to protect us, and we believe them, we enter into a world created by their words that is different from the real world experienced by those not exposed to the lie. Every time we do this, we become a little crazy and our trust in our own ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood is damaged.

My thoughts aren’t quite formulated yet, but I think where they’re going in pulling these two stimuli together is that the whole attempt to “eliminate” prostitution is based on a falsehood because it’s out of touch with reality (facts). This would lead to the conclusion (not new, but still shocking) that the church is a liar because it refuses to tell the truth about the way things really are (labelling all prostitution “sin” is not “telling it like it is” for everyone). Ergo, the church makes us crazy.

When truth is an ideal, it has little practical use, because it doesn’t relate to facts, or worse, tries to deny them. One could argue that it isn’t truth at all, just something that wants to be.

Postscript: Just read this really funny, outraged and outrageous response to the Catholic Church’s new seven deadly sins, by Grant Walliser in the Mail & Guardian: Catholics modernise their mumbo-jumbo. Worth a read for further thoughts on reality, truth and crazy-making.

Tia Azulay 13Mar08
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

Armed with our recent exploration of the text, four of us then went to see the current production at The Maynardville Open Air Theatre. Setting (beautiful green open air stage), set and costumes (Italy, 1943), and acting were all great, or at least, interesting, and it all seemed to be adding up to a very enjoyable evening, until a peculiar epilogue was tacked on to the end of the play and spoiled it for me.

It was bad enough that after Gratiano’s final words (which should have ended the play), “Well, while I live, I’ll fear no other thing/So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring”, Portia and Bassanio suddenly used an interchange that should have been spoken earlier in the play, weakening the dry comic effect of Gratiano’s words without enhancing the final spoken scene at all. But worse was to come. Before the audience could respond with the applause that had already, at least in my case, been interrupted once, a little mimed morality play was suddenly inflicted upon us. It depicted Shylock being forced at gunpoint by the Nazis to wear a yellow star under some rapidly unfurled Nazi banners.

In a discussion this morning, I realised that I hadn’t even noticed that there was a Catholic priest in that final mime, because I was so offended by the reek of “political correctness” that I couldn’t concentrate on details at that point! It wouldn’t have made any difference if I had though. I was simply appalled by the grossness of the Holocaust imagery—the unfurling of Nazi flags and the guns pointed at Shylock and the yellow star, etc. These strange tacked-on bits so ruined what had until that point been a very good performance that I found myself unable to applaud at all.

I am of course aware that much of the action in any Shakespeare production is only “in the text” by implication or interpretation, but this odd added epilogue emphasized one strand of meaning in the text to such an extent that the ambivalence and complexity of the human interactions showcased in the play were annihilated in favour of the one anti-anti-semitism message. The hypocrisy and selfishness of all the characters and their inability to exemplify the highest ideals of either religion, or, said another way, the inadequacy of either religion for the task of overcoming the worst aspects of human nature, were completely lost.

Shylock is, of course, a victim of the Christians’ disgusting prejudices, but he is also a pretty nasty character in his own right—neither his own daughter nor his servant like or respect him. The law that he claims to exonerate him of wrongdoing in his unreasonable demand for a pound of flesh is not the Law of G-d but the law of the state. The Bard leaves one in no doubt that none of the other characters are perfectly lovely either. The apparently righteous Antonio shows very selective love and generosity (towards Christians only, rather than to his “neighbour” or his “enemy” as Christ exhorted); Bassanio is as interested in Portia’s fortune as he is in her face and her virtue, and less in her than in his “friendship” with Antonio; Portia is a blatant racist and spoiled little rich girl, is most interested in making the best of the bad deal her father has left her, and shows very little mercy to Shylock immediately after her “quality of mercy” speech; the Christian society endorses slavery, etc.

On reading the play, and seeing it in other productions, I’ve never been in any doubt that Shakespeare was extremely subversive and did not unquestioningly accept the prevailing attitudes of his day. The prominence given to the Jew and the woman Portia in terms of number of lines and quality of poetry makes this clear, and the careful development of situation to the point where Shylock is psychologically pushed over the edge makes one sympathise with him despite his meanness. Although in the final few lines Shakespeare apparently restores the Elizabethan “natural” order by making the three male lovers heads of their new households again, their real authority is very much in doubt because it is so clear that their fortunes are dependent on the wealth and the wit of their women. Shylock’s forced and therefore insincere conversion has left a bad taste in the mouth and the moral authority of the “Christian” state has therefore also been brought into question. The only real act of love has been that of Antonio towards Bassanio in risking himself for his friend, but that relationship has strong homoerotic overtones, so this particular self-sacrifice (commitment to suicide?) would not officially be sanctioned by Christianity…. It’s all deliciously complex and I really was extremely disappointed by the crassness of the ending of this particular production. For me, it negated both the outstanding job done by some of the actors, particularly Jeremy Crutchley as Shylock, and the apparently accurate and sensitive interpretation of the text by the director until that point.

Er, sorry, Mr Sargeant, but that’s really how I felt—intellectually insulted (and assaulted!). But good stuff, until that final scene… I had to wonder whether a producer or a funder made you do it…

Tia Azulay 14Feb08
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

If you’ve ever longed to explore well-loved poems, or to discover new ones to delight in, with a receptive group, here’s a possible model that you could adapt for your own experience (the poems we shared are listed at the end of this post):

Theme

We’re a diverse bunch in terms of culture, countries of origin, languages, religion, age, etc., so “Season’s Greetings” means different things for each of us, but at this time of holidays and festivities families and friends generally come together and individuals look forward to new growth in the New Year. I therefore proposed the following theme for the evening:

“To celebrate the season and who we are in it by sharing a poem that connects with a positive aspect of our own heritage“

By “heritage”, I had in mind the following very wide definitions found via Google:

• inheritance: any attribute or immaterial possession that is inherited from ancestors; “my only inheritance was my mother’s blessing”; “the world’s heritage of knowledge”
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• the culture, property, and characteristics of past times
  wells.entirety.ca/glossary.htm
• the characteristics, traits and monetary gains of a family passed from one generation to the next
  www.rootsweb.com/~minnkota/dictionary.html
• cultural legacy or tradition passed on within a community from one generation to another
  www.indianahistory.org/programming/immigration/glossary/index.html
• things from the past, such as buildings or works of art and literature, or the natural environment, considered as an inheritance for today’s population.
  www.westberkshire.org.uk/glossa-h.htm
• the set of all things, places, and ideas inherited from the past which are of special significance to the collective life of a community, including both natural and human-built elements.
  www.p2pays.org/ref/03/02426/primer10.html

I was also intrigued by this definition, as I thought it might well contain the essence of poetry too:

• today’s perception of a pattern of events in the past.
  www.stile.coventry.ac.uk/cbs/staff/beech/BOTM/Glossary.htm

As an example, I explained that I have English, Irish, Scottish and Lithuanian Jewish blood, and I’m connected by birth and culture to South Africa, Israel and the UK, and by my religious roots to Christianity and to Judaism, giving me quite a lot to choose from. I promised to look for a poem that really resonates with me…. and I found a lovely one, which I’ll include at the bottom of this post along with a list of the other equally wonderful ones that were shared.

Process

Reading poetry is a meditative act—we seldom “get it” on the first reading or hearing. A poem communicates on so many levels — visual (images), musical (language sounds), rhythmic (metre and rhythm), narrative (actual and implied story), content (intended and imputed meaning), etc.— and each reader or hearer is predisposed to respond first to one or other of these levels according to temperament, culture, reading habit, education, etc. A single reading thus seldom provides more than a brief and tantalising scent which we must follow by re-reading or re-hearing to truly sink our teeth into its satisfying pleasures.

So I proposed that we’d each read our chosen poem, and then direct some or all of the others in the group in a re-reading of it.
If the original poem was in a different language, and the reader could speak that language, then s/he’d read it twice, first in Japanese or Hebrew, for instance, and then in English. The English translation must be poetic, i.e. lending itself to being read as a poem, rather than simply a literal or prosaic translation.

I asked everyone to bring enough copies of their chosen poem for each person in the group. In the spirit of the festive season, I suggested that we consider each reading a gift: first, a gift from the individual to the group in the initial reading of the poem, and then a gift back to the individual from the group as we gave the poem back in the way s/he requested.

This “giving back” was the reader’s opportunity to hear their poem read by one or more of the others in a sonorous voice, or a soft one, or in a sexy foreign accent, or by a chorus, or in counterpoint, as the group used the voices, accents, tone, attitudes or pace requested for each line or stanza. I explained that this could range from simply asking one person to read the entire poem, to involving the whole group by using them as a chorus, or alternating male and female voices, or British and foreign accents, or asking each person to read a different line in turn, or asking some to hum or drum in the background, etc.

As it turned out, we didn’t do anything too exotic, as most people chose simply to request a reading by one voice, or a few different voices, one for each stanza or line, but there were a few sung versions too, including one wonderful spontaneous rendition of a prayer-like poem as a gospel song, and finishing up with a hearty singalong of all the verses of Auld Lang Syne — a poem which is simultaneously one of the best-known (in terms of its global reach) and one of the least well-known (in terms of its actual words) songs in the world.

Approach

Most of the people who come to our literary events are neither Shakespeare nor poetry buffs. However, we don’t allow spectators. Everyone participates, so that no one is ever in an exclusively “observing” role (which may be felt by the others as the role of critic). The ethos is experiential rather than analytical, with space given to comments by anyone on any aspect of any poem that interests them, but with more emphasis on the individual’s response than on academic analysis. My view is that critical training and a knowledge of poetic tools are very valuable, but that they should enhance and inform the individual’s response to the poem, because the individual already has an instinctive response to the poem before the analytical mind is brought to bear on it. If this is ignored, poetry’s vital connection to the heart is cut off and the poem loses its power for that person.

After so much Shakespearean poetry (because, of course, all the plays are poetry), I thought that a poetry evening would be a lighter, simpler event where we’d have a bit more time to chat without the pressure, however enjoyable, of getting through an entire play in the evening. Well, it was simpler for us as hosts, especially because I didn’t spend the usual number of hours on part allocations, but I was surprised at the end of the evening when some people seemed amazed that they had enjoyed it so much, saying that they had been really nervous about it. We discussed the anxiety about “performance” and getting it “right” (both in rendering and in interpreting), that is the appalling legacy of poor poetry teaching at school. I remembered the students I tutored at university who seemed to walk into the seminar room primed with fear and/or loathing of the genre before they even saw the poem of the day. I mentioned that I had just last week met a man who had told me that he didn’t like poetry as he’d had to learn hundreds of lines of poetry as punishment, and one of our group immediately concurred as he had had the same experience. Personally, I think that this is a literary crime that is almost unforgivable—to rob a child and the adult s/he will become of the instinctive, natural joy of poetic experience by burning into their young minds an association between poetry and punishment!

I hope that our occasional poetry evenings will go some way to healing these wounds and freeing people to reclaim poetry as their rightful inheritance—an opportunity for emotional identification, aesthetic pleasure, quieting of the mind, raising passionate spirits or, simply, for joy.

Catering

In celebration of the season, we greeted everyone with mulled wine and hot mince pies as they arrived shivering from their respective journeys, but apart from that we kept it simple so that no one had to spend time in the kitchen throughout the evening. We simply had a gorgeous spread of cheeses, pickles, crudités, hummus, aubergine salad, patés, breads, biscuits, cherries, etc. that was available buffet-style, along with a drinks table, throughout the evening, as we normally do for the Shakespeare readings. We did take a short break for an official “dinner” slot as well, but in general people nibbled and sipped throughout the evening and the poems were sufficiently rich that the occasional crunching of a carrot-stick disturbed no one.

The poems

The following are the poems that were shared. Each was a unique and yet appropriate response to the theme and I would love to give them all in full, but I don’t have time to research the provenance of each for copyright purposes, so I’ll just give links where I can find them, and provide the texts of those that are probably in the public domain. Please let me know if you have any alternative information about copyright for any of these.

• The Song of an Exile by W. Hamilton
• Sea-Fever by John Masefield
• My daughter looks at me by Karen Gershon
• Dangerous Love by Yehuda Amichai
• Loving God, there is no other help but thee by Olga Brenda Cumming (nee Scott)
• Several Japanese haiku, translated by Hikaru Kitabayashi
• Pine tree by Leah Goldberg with an extra stanza by Achinoam Nini (Noa), translated by Eyal Azulay
• Sweet Jesus by Irene Kyffin
• Take me under your wing by Haim Nachman Bialik, translated by Eyal Azulay
• Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns

Tia Azulay 17Dec07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

Take me under your wing

Take me under your wing,
Be to me a mother and a sister,
Let your breast shelter my head,
Be a nest for my lonely prayers.

In the merciful time, at twilight,
Bend your head and I’ll tell the secret of my torments:
They say there is youth in the world –
Where is my youth?

And another secret I will confess:
My soul has been seared by a flame;
They say there is love in the world –
What is love?

The stars deceived me,
There was a dream – but it too has passed;
Now I have nothing in the world –
I have not a thing.

Take me under your wing,
Be to me a mother and a sister,
Let your breast shelter my head,
Be a nest for my lonely prayers.

(1905)
Haim Nachman Bialik (9 Jan 1873–4 Jul 1934)
Translated by Eyal Azulay from the original Hebrew version

Pine tree

Here I will never hear the cuckoo’s sound.
Here the tree will not wear a snowy turban,
But in the shade of these pines
My whole childhood is revived.

The rustling of the needles has been and gone;
I will call “Homeland” to a snowy wilderness,
To the greenish ice enclosing a mountain stream,
To the lyrics of a song in a foreign land.

I remember those snow-capped mountains
And a song on F.M.93
Oh my darling, I have grown with you
But my roots… on both sides of the sea.

Perhaps only the migrating birds can know,
When they’re suspended between earth and heaven,
This pain of the two homelands.

With you I have been planted twice.
With you I have grown, pines.
And my roots are in two different landscapes.

Lyrics: Leah Goldberg (1911 – 1970)
Music and middle verse in English: Achinoam Nini (Noa), September 1993
Translated by Eyal Azulay from the original Hebrew version

The modern chandelier in the middle of the room at the Geneva Press Club provided such a focus. I noticed that its many bulbs created a concave meniscus as they seemed to yearn towards the floor, reminding me of Le Corbusier’s marvellous human-friendly wooden ceiling in the chapel at Ronchamps. My first thoughts about it were simple, and the frame that suggested itself for simple thoughts was haiku. What emerged then was this:

Shining Chandelier

Shining chandelier
Strains downward hoping to see
Reflections in me.

Shining chandelier
Strains downward hoping to see
Glow echoed in me.

Shining chandelier
Strains downward hoping to see
Light sources in me.

Tia Azulay 17Nov07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

But then, there’s Shakespeare, and poetry.

The weekend before last, we held a reading of Antony and Cleopatra. It was a fantastic evening, with twelve readers gamely taking on the 56 or so roles between them. Before we launched in, we had the privilege of an introduction to the political context of the Roman world of the Mediterranean by a group member keenly interested in Roman history. This brief survey of the times added great interest, helping us to understand the characters’ motivations and the enormous personal and political stakes for which they played, as well as clarifying that Shakespeare had squashed actual events that spanned several years into what appears a much shorter period in the play.

Our Cleopatra was passionate, petulant and powerful right to the end, and Antony’s gorgeous voice keenly reflected the conflict between his own passions for love and for honour, and between his rationalizing and his rational mind as he yearned both to lose himself in Egypt and to lead again in the Roman Empire. Octavius Caesar came across as intelligent and dangerously calculating under a veneer of courtesy and honour. Cleopatra’s maidservants, Iras and Charmian, were suitably langorous and lighthearted (at least at first), to convey Egypt’s exotic sensuality and hedonism as opposed to the militant, ambitious demands of Rome.

It’s a long and very complex play, with a vast number of scenes, some only a few lines long, taking place in Egypt, in Rome, in Sicily, in Athens, on the battlefield, etc. Messengers are of great importance in a scenario as vast as this to carry the story from scene to scene and to assist the audience with the understanding of the transitions. Our Messenger (we had one person reading all of them) bravely dusted himself off after the various rejections and beatings which seemed to be his unfortunate lot as he brought unwelcome news again and again!

Of course, it’s easier to relate to this number of scene changes when one sees them on stage, as visual and musical settings help to orient one. I’ve never been so grateful for the clear and confident reading of Stage Directions! It seems strange to beginning readers that we should “waste talent” on reading Stage Directions out loud, but we have found that this contributes enormously to the framing of each scene and to the rhythm of the reading. The person reading the humble Stage Directions with clarity and confidence subtly facilitates and “contains” the reading for the others. It’s so effective that I now try to allocate one reader to Stage Directions for each Act, with that reader reading no or very few other parts during that Act if possible. In fact, I would have a single person read all the Stage Directions for the entire play if I weren’t afraid there’d be a mutiny, because of course we all want to feel the motivations and speak the poetry of at least one character as well!

To do something a bit different and slightly lighter over the festive season, we’ve decided to hold a poetry evening next. In the spirit of inclusion, as so many different cultures are represented in our group, we’ll each read a poem that is connected in some way to an aspect of our heritage, and then direct some or all of the others in the group in a re-reading of it (besides being a lot of fun, this is a way to absorb the meaning and atmosphere of a poem that is at first strange to one — it’s very seldom that one truly “gets” a poem on first reading. Well, I think the best poems keep on giving one new stuff every time one goes back to them, of course!) The date has yet to be decided, but I hope there’ll be a write-up of a happy poetic evening soon!

And still on points of light… see my next post for a light poem about light that I wrote last weekend at a writer’s workshop in Geneva.

Tia Azulay 22Nov07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/theo_hobson/2007/10/deliver_us_from_dawkins.html

I think Commenter Taliesin20 summarizes Hobson’s motivation succinctly:

Being one of those who think that anyone who still believes in sheets and blankets cannot possibly comprehend the true meaning of heaven, I’m enjoying the rare delight of being with the majority on this one!

I’d be careful about suggesting that all advocates of religion feel personally threatened by people who don’t share their faith (unlike Hobson who clearly believes that atheists are all of a kind and all out to get him), but the above analogy certainly seems apt to the content of Hobson’s rant.

Tia Azulay 01Oct07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

The article Global Population: From explosion to implosion? by Koïchiro Matsuura, Director General of Unesco, in yesterday’s Mail&Guardian, addresses the population explosion and asks whether it might turn into an “implosion” due to the demographics of age and childbearing and their different impacts in the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. It’s important to read, and not too long or too hard (because statistics always have a slightly numbing and distancing effect, I think, as opposed to personal stories that engage one’s empathy but are therefore sometimes very draining).

The best part about it, for me, is the conclusion, which clearly shows a way forward by focusing on priorities for action. Essentially, it’s one priority — education to develop “knowledge societies” that have the expertise and knowhow to solve their problems, but within that, the first priority is basic education for women and the second the development of a culture of life-long learning for all:

What’s great about this for me is that it’s reinforced my thoughts about where best to spend money that I’ve earmarked for charity (and probably also some that I hadn’t, as I reflect on just how important this is). Education, education, education. Particularly for women. Particularly for those women where knowledge and competence will make the greatest difference in their and their families’ lives. Educating the most disadvantaged girls and women could have a profound effect on the population balance and also enable increasingly more people to look after themselves. It’s in everyone’s interest, even that of those who still don’t care.

Tia Azulay 28Sep07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay