Art & Apathy Shoot – Honor Killing Me Not So Softly
I’m in Israel now – been here for a couple of days. We’ve done one interview and one concert shoot so far. Its so similar and so much different at the same time. The stories I am hearing are changing me. I heard in detail about an honor killing of a young Muslim woman in a few towns not far from Jerusalem, where I am staying. It was so hard to hear, to comprehend that an unmarried woman, who got pregnant, was okay to kill. Her family killed her and buried her, without a death certificate. The family told the local authorities and doctors not to get involved. They never confirmed who the man was who got the girl pregnant but accused the man who employed her. He and 14 other houses were burned down by the town’s population. They literally came as a mob and threw Molotov cocktails through windows. The Israeli police would not let the Palestinian authority (this happened in the West Bank area) through for 3 hours and a woman who is working on this film almost lost her house and family’s business. Much of the destruction could have been stopped if not for bullshit.
At the same time, there is such beauty here, but there is so much blindness. It parallels the lack of compassion for the “other” going on in the US. I understand for the first time, truly, that there are groups of people who truly believe other groups are sub-human and disposable. In being able to get outside of my own head and trauma, I can see that my problems are something I can understand as not the most horrible thing EVER, that there is much out here that is far worse. And anger and frustration, as the Dalai Lama says, only cause more anger and frustration. I’ve been angry and frustrated and lamed by my own myopic view of the justice I believe I deserved. The foot stomping and pouting I now feel unworthy of what I’ve learned in life so far. That kind of behavior, that is our leaders, our businesses, our wars, our hates, our fears. I am not greedy for someone to apologize to me, to make it right, so I can stop being stubborn. That will never happen and it will never happen for millions of other people, but I can do something about that – I can tell the stories that may shake people and give them a look at the hearts of other humans and all creatures, and see how we are all of value, we are all connected.
I just woke up from a dream. Today, we interviewed a filmmaker whose service in the Israeli army killed his ability to paint, to feel. He traveled and worked in NYC – working for Moishe’s Moving – which showed him that attitudes are easy to export. At the same time, near the end of the interview, I got stung by a yellow jacket. I’ve never been stung – I’ve avoided bees and wasps, etc, since I was a small child. Well, it hurt, but not as much as I dreamed it would. I’m not allergic (we wondered about that) and the pain drifted quickly. We came home and I slept for a few hours. And this is the dream:
I am on location – in Israel or somewhere else in the world. There is a group of people preparing, near a university. We are staying in dorms and there is an older, white haired woman, who pushes my buttons and makes me so angry. At one point she makes me so angry I lose my temper and hit her with an upper cut into her eye. It feels sickly satisfying for a second and then I am ill and feeling guilt. The woman is unconscious. I may have killed her, but I doubt it. I feel cynicism creeping in, stubbornly trying to justify this aggression. People around me are angry but mostly shocked and concerned for the woman. The heads of the crew tell me simply I must go home. I’ve ruined my chance to shoot a film because I lost my temper. The woman is stoic and I get a sense of justified martyrism from her. At the same time, there is another me, the me dreaming, watching this and feeling very sad and very ashamed. I know this is about my mother. And its not about my mother. Its about my rage and my ability to make that leap from angry to violent. I know if I had not punched my mother back when I was 21, she would have hit me. But I am ashamed of hitting anyone. It is no longer interesting to me to make violent statements – how I can protect myself and be very vicious if needed. I know that – its easy – its terribly, horrifyingly easy.
The nature of humanity is not completely good or evil. Its completely confusing, beautifully complex, depressed, depraved, greedy, needy, loving, longing and terribly incomplete. Sometimes I think we try too hard to make things perfect.
:) melissa
