Dialogic One: Walking the Line OR The Global Subject

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Dialogic One: Walking the Line OR The Global Subject

This piece was performed along with Dialogic Two (see previous blog post) for a select audience at the Channing Murray Foundation, Winter , 2004. This blog post includes a slide show of the items I made as backdrops. I produced a sound piece for this which includes music and spoken one liners from people I knew who are bilingual. I asked the question, “What is the power of language?” and asked them to answer in one sentence, half the statement in English, our shared language and the other in the language they speak besides for English. Some people spoke their answer in three languages. The results were quite beautiful, hearing intonation and meaning take form in this way. The sound piece is not included in this blog post because of the necessary permissions.

Detailed stills of the performance are forthcoming.

Thank You!

Dialogic One: Walking the LIne OR The Global Subject

origins            displacement

the cracks the fissures the economic the education the immigrant memory longing belonging desire

deep the loss lostculture language….by those forced to flee..or who look to a new world because of

oppressive conditions at home at hope or who need to travel to earn a buck

structure mobility class

as the subject of globalization has come to be of critical importance in the twentieth/twenty first century, I feel it is important to address the fracturing which happens, as people move from culture to culture, language to language. We move, in this world, some with more means and choices than others, there is always something left behind, some things we carry with us, and some things we carry only parts of. Like my mother’s piles of beautiful heavy, gold jewelry,  her dowry in Iran, carried with her to the United States, never sold, not even in the leanest of times, now in the hands of her children, after her death, who wait for the right day to wear it, WE WHO MOVE around the earth, are parts of a story, speak through fragments of a language, are as often out of context as we are in context.

Nevertheless, our wholeness is here, always with us, to the left of our right hands and to the right of our left eye. With this piece I look upon the shards of my linguistic identity, with a view to the positive. As a child I encountered a great deal of difficulty and confusion in my dual language life. In my teenage and adult years, it has been very hard to reconcile the different identities, desires and sense of community, my triple cultures require of me. at times these differences brought me to opposite sides of the same question when making life choices, coming to very different solutions as a dutiful Persian daughter and an independent American woman. in time, as I had the opportunity to belong in more cultural contexts, I found that participation in language or culture could be a choice. this helped me to reframe my languages and cultures of origins in a different kind of understanding. While it is still difficult for me, more and more, I allow myself to move between these world, where so many meaningful occurances have happened in such  different contexts, with greater ease, more, and more, as understanding mends these spaces together, the picture pieces of my life become whole. as I celebrate my ability to choose how to navigate these worlds through my identity, I feel I am no longer constantly walking the line between worlds and languages, and I welcome the  new worlds that I will enter.

we don’t communicate by what we say but how we are

we Are everything we are in every moment.

ChooseBeing

In space

How do we dare?

How do we dance to this?

i have decided not to be surprised by gifts

and look

for the joy that is there

please peace

peace