The Band's Visit

I got Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass from the library because I heard Robert Bly tell a story about going to Hafiz's grave in Iran. While he was there, he noticed a steady flow of school children arriving to sing songs to their beloved poet. Bly's comment: what would it be like if school children made pilgrimages to Walt Whitman's grave to sing songs? (It's at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, NJ - Andy checked.)

I was happy to re-discover in particular his Song of Myself where he sings the praises of the physical body and spirit because it gave me words to describe a movie I just saw. It is The Band's Visit. It is a 24 hour story of an Egyptian military band stranded in an Israeli settlement. They had been invited to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center, but had ended up in a town with "no, no Arab culture center here, no Israeli culture, no culture at all" as the Israeli cafe owner tells them. It is truly a Song of Humanity. I hope you get to see it.

It has been a couple of weeks of cultural expansion for me, I think. Last night Paul Farmer spoke in a crowded auditorium to 1500 mostly students at Duke University. He is an infectious disease doctor and anthropologist whose story is told in Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains. When I read the book several years ago, I was struck by his reference to the "long defeat" that privileged people need to get used to when they throw their energy into working for oppressed people; how we can't rely on "success" to keep us motivated. In his quirky, brilliant talk, Farmer gave the students (and us) food for the brain and for the heart.

Spending 5 days walking in the Appalaichan mountains, cooking on a fire and talking with dear friends, I kept thinking about how integral culture is to change . That we are in the midst of Earth-shaking change seems like a truth that will prove itself in hindsight. And perhaps it is the same with culture - will we look back and notice how/where the stuff of being human shifted and changed? Really, I wonder about the hows and whys of our own changes contribute to something that might keep us alive, might build cultures that bring us together... I know that there are myriad ways big and small that nourish and build the kind of strength that living alive and whole - respectfully - demands...

I would like to know what you are thinking.