go to What is Saloni M? page go to Articles page go to News page go to Projects page go to Contributors page
go to Index page
go to Projects index
   

2003 - Saloni M swims East

 

photo: Michael Reynolds


Matt Hetherington

Matt Hetherington was co-convenor of ‘The Gertrude St Readings’ at the Builders’ Arms Hotel (1999-2000) and was co-editor of the Australian section of the first World Haiku Anthology. Additional web publications include Divan Online Poetry Magazine, OutOfOrder, and The Muse Apprentice Guild. Other than poetry in the usual journals and magazines, ‘spoken word’ pieces appear on the compilation CDs Going Down Swinging 2000 and Poetry for Peace. He also writes reviews and critical works for Cordite and The Program as well as a regular column on the poetry of the dead for Deadline magazine, which is the publication of Overload Poetry Inc. He was also recently editor of Love & Fear: A Poetry Anthology (La Trobe University), which was launched at Artary Project Space, and MC at the ‘Spoken Word and Music’ Event at the Inaugural Darebin Writers' Festival.
You can email Matt.


 

Notes on Barbarianism

(For Paul Bowles)

"Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures […] They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents of those who created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another."
  ~ Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History". In Arendt, Hannah (ed.), Illuminations (trans. Harry Zohn). London: Fontana, 1992, p. 248.

+++

Earlier last century, the piece of music of mine that has been included in the performance part of this latest Saloni M might well have been called ‘barbarian’. This term would have been used derisively, to indicate minimal employment of melody, a ‘basic’ harmonic structure, and the use of ‘primitive’ or ‘monotonous’ rhythms. "Memories of Attar" does indeed contain these qualities, but it is worth keeping in mind that a native of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Morocco (the Berber land which inspired the piece) might well consider much of our own pop, country and western, and ‘classical’ music as lacking in rhythmic complexity (i.e syncopation), soulfulness, and healing qualities. Evidently, music serves different functions in different societies, but we Westerners – all practising our own form of cultural imperialism to various degrees – would benefit profoundly from even greater exposure to the musical traditions of other cultures. Let us become less barbarian by becoming more like those foreign strangers….

+++

"Truths which are no longer interesting turn into lies."
  ~ Isidore Isou. In Marcus, Greil, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. London: Picador, 1997, p. 341.

+++

We also make truths into lies by being uninterested in them, and even on essentially Christian terms, we should be far more interested in, for example, the needless deaths of millions, than in the blatant lies of commercial entertainment. To express this engagement non-passively, what we interest ourselves in is a choice which indicates a value judgement (and not merely an aesthetic one) which partakes of the social world, since all ‘culture’ can ultimately be divined back to the human being. Or to put it another way, to BE INTERESTED is to CARE.

+++

"...because we find the others / Deserted like ourselves and therefore brothers."
  ~ George Oppen. Quoted by Paul Auster, "Private I, Public Eye". In Auster, Paul, The Art of Hunger. New York: Penguin, 1997, p. 118.

+++

Seeing the other as an inferior can only be remedied through humility (respectfully putting oneself on the same level) and compassion (feeling the suffering of the other as one’s own). Essentially, this is to recognise (to understand again) that we are all one of a kind, but also one humankind.

+++

"Asked what he would say to the parents of Iraq children who could well die in the war, [Prime Minister] Howard replied that international decision-making was about taking risks. ‘Well they wouldn’t be dying if their President [Saddam Hussein] had respected international opinion.’ "
  ~ Quoted in The Paper, March 2003, p. 6 [From Channel 7 Television interview].

+++

According to an Arab legend, the dunes of the Sahara were formed by Allah throwing down grains of sand from the sky as punishment for the telling of lies; the sands will only disappear on the day that human beings once again become sincere.

+++

"What we from our point of view call colonisation, missions to the heathens, spread of civilisation etc., has another face – the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry – a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological representatives of our true nature."
  ~ C.G. Jung, "America: The Pueblo Indians". In Jaffe, Anelia (ed.), Memories, Dreams, Reflections (trans. Richard and Clara Winston). London: Fontana Press, 1995, p. 277.

+++

We, too, want to take sides, and of course the right one. But when there is not an other that one is opposed to, one can learn from oneself, and from that other great teacher: those who would oppose themselves against us and whom we are supposed to hate and fear. Jesus himself taught that we need not live in terror: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies" (Matt. 5:43 f.)

+++

"Riding on their imperial horses,
Flying like kings,
Thinking that they’ve understood everything.
Do they not realize that even birds fly?"
  ~ Tashi Rabgyas, Ladakhi Buddhist scholar, angered by tourists, 1980. Quoted in Norberg-Hodge, Helena, Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh. London: Rider, 2000, p. 91.

+++

True revolution is not begun in neighbour-hatred and fear. Revolution begins at home.

+++

"When men say, ‘The new song has the most attraction’, it may be thought that we are talking not about new songs but about new ways of making them, and so new ways might seem to be given approval. But new ways are not good, and those words are not to be taken as saying that they are. We have to keep new sorts of music away from us as a danger to society; because forms and rhythms in music are never changed without producing changes in the most important political forms and ways…"
  ~ Plato, Republic 424. In Richards, I.A (ed. & trans.), Plato’s Republic. London: Cambridge University Press, 1966, pp. 71-72.

+++

The Berbers of Morocco took their name from the term Barbaroi, which the Phoenicians used collectively for those foreigners at the time they knew as Libyans and Ethiopians. It might be useful for us to ask ourselves what terms we use for those outside our borders, and whether or not silence itself is also a way of judging them, and ultimately ourselves.

+++

"If you / I hesitate to speak, isn’t it because we are afraid of not speaking well? But what is ‘well’ or ‘badly’? With what are we conforming if we speak ‘well’? What hierarchy, what subordination lurks there, waiting to break our resistance? [...] We have so much space to share. Our horizon will never stop expanding, we are always open. Stretching out, never ceasing to unfold, we have so many voices to invent in order to express all of us everywhere, even in our gaps, that all the time there is will never be enough. We can never complete the circuit, explore our periphery: we have so many dimensions [...] The sky isn’t up there: it’s between us."
  ~ Luce Irigaray, from "When Our Lips Speak Together" (trans. Carolyn Burke). In Signs, 6:1 (Fall 1980), p. 75.

++++++++++++


© Matt Hetherington 2003.

back to index of artists/performers 2003 - Saloni M swims East page


 
go to Index page