Review    

"A Venetian Barge under a Siberian Sky", review of an opera by Andriano Banchieri

by Elena Frolova, Russia.
Translated and summarized by Sasha Radin, The Netherlands / U.S.A.

The Novosibirsk International Christmas Festival of the Arts always entices lovers of music. This time it began with a collection of musicians and minstrels from the ensembles "Insula Magica" and "Martellovy Golosa" singing to the crowd outside.

After 20 minutes of performance, the actors in medival guise invited everyone to come into the philharmonic hall and to settle more comfortably. It's hard to say which was more colorful -the highly theatrical opening or the late arrival of the guest harpsichordist from France.

The 'Barca de Venetia per Padova’ (Barge from Venice in Padua / decline' -pun on the last word), was written by Adriano Banchieri in the genre of Italian madrigal comedy. Choral composition based on a comical song is typical of the madrigal. In the subject matter of this piece, of everyday life in Venetian times, partly grotesque, partly satirical, laced with touches of folk comedy, Banchieri took from the heart of tradition. There were the rehearsals of the 'beginner singers' and the skits in which gentlewomen and cavaliers sing about each other's beauty or the beginning scene where everything seems as if it would fall apart with a real fight in a barge.

Banneri masterfully combines numerous theatrical scenes (19 in all) through the genre of the madrigal. The whole piece was interspersed with music by F. Caroso and the composer Banchieri himself, where the acts included pantomime and dance. The 'Barge' is its own world with its own characters, personas, their temperaments and perceptions of things and situations. It is if you like, a miniature, 'Decamaron' with colourful characters such as the boatman (Ilja Decamaron), the oratio (Aleksandr Baev), the chorus director (Igor' Tiovaev) and others.

The costume designer, Elena Velizhanina, added more color and freshness to the production. She both designed and made all the costumes for this second project with the ensemble, 'Insula Magica'. The first project was the puppet performance, 'The Play of Daniel'.

According to the director of 'Insula Magica', Arkadij Bourkhanov, the intention of the piece didn't really work as intended because 'Barca' (Barge) used Italian slang in a distinctive way, and so some of the word combinations were not clear for the audience.

'Barca' also deviated from the genre. For example in breaking with tradition where the roles should be filled by actors while the musicians stood behind the screen only producing the music. Here musicians were also actors.

We must give the musicians their due who have made 'theatre in theatre' in their own way. Afterall each one of us felt as if we were a participant in the performance. "Homo ludens om", (humans at play) if you will. The roots of the production come from the distant (400 year old) past, but as shown, the ways are influenced by a contemporary urban audience, and the 'sold out' sign in the hall was the best indicator of all.

Artist Profile:

I am a choreographer who uses and gives workshops in a movement technique known as Contact Improvisation. Here the emphasis is on contact with other performers and the ground -to touch points, rather than on moving through the air. There isn't a main dancer with minor dancers but all the performers are equal in they way you work together. The idea is not to grab a wrist to make a particular movement, but to take and limb along or to move against a limb in such a way that the other dancer can move along or away. In this way there is a lot of freedom, not only to improvise but for various performers to move with and against each other.

...Contact improvisation is a mix of theatre and movement so it is not accurate describe it as dance or theatre. The focus is on exchange rather than form. Another aspect of Contact Improvisation is the idea of always learning as well as teaching. I attend various workshops and give these as much to learn as to teach. It is a dance form that is always developing.

Other aspects of my choreography is the dramatology of the moving image and the idea of theatre as an extension of video. For example the piece "Magister Ludi", began with an actor's presence being only visible on the television monitor on the stage. Later when the actor sits in a wheelchair, his face is filmed and shown on the television monitor above the wheel chair. Projection and projected image are in a sense dislocated and change their roles. The video is sometimes part of the theatre like a prop and sometimes active like an actor....

I was brought up in Bolzano in north Italy, by a German mother and an Italian father. Then I worked as a furniture-maker for small businesses for 11 years. I saw a performance by a local Jethro Tell-like rock group, where some pantomime was involved and then approached them and they invited me to join them. It was crazy, because I was shy and had no background nor training.

After two years of doing these pantomime performances I decided to devote myself to theatre and so at the age of 27 I moved to Milan in 1985 to study dance, theatre, voice and circus technique.

Another big change was adjusting to an irregular income. After my first year of part-time study, I got a job as a butler in a soap opera for a local television station. After two years of this, the bright lights damaged my vision so now I need to wear glasses, and I stopped this work...

I enjoy working with semi-professional theatres best where the people I work with often have full time work in completely different fields. I enjoy the challenges of working with people from many different backgrounds along with my own ideas. My choreography isn't just about dance but more about issues where I often work people with diverse artistic or physical abilities...

...The project I am working on currently is inspired by the text Loflied der Zofheid by Erasmus (a philosopher from Rotterdam). A main theme is political dishonesty and half-truths. For this piece handicapped people will be the main characters - we often think handicapped can only mean limited or particular ways and I want to explore this half-truth.

Artist Profile:

I am currently completing an MA in devised performance, at the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London, which has motivated me to extend and further develop my ideas regarding my own practice.

My work ranges from multi-media performance to photography, drawing, installation and paintings. The pieces featured here were part of my degree show, on a BA Fine Art (painting and printmaking) and Dance course. The exhibition included works on paper and tracing paper and two installations.

My work deals with explorations of our self-identity and our degrees of attachment or detachment from self. It refers to graphology and its analysis of character by the use of handwriting as a visual metaphor for an individual statement and a unique expression of personality a personal mark, which no one in the world can replicate.

The paintings are intended to be sites on which to meditate. Fields of repetitive calligraphic writing that appear distinctly, as well as merge into the flooded ink background to provoke thought in the viewer.

" Free thyself from the fetters of this world and loose thy soul from the prison of self"

Excerpt from the Persian Hidden Word nr. 40 by Bahá'u'lláh

This text from the "Hidden Words" of Bahá'u'lláh is one of those used in the work. The repetitive obsessive writing of these quotes symbolises a reaffirming of self that simultaneously contradicts the meaning of the words being written...

This piece developed the theme of layered text in my work by projecting enlarged lettering shapes painted on windows onto a mural of handwriting. The projected image moved across the space according to the position of the sun, only covering the exact area at a certain time of day. Sensors responding to viewers entering at either end of the corridor triggered floodlights positioned outside, adding another layer to the image...

Artist Profile:

I have lived and breathed music. My dad was a professional jazz pianist and both my brothers play guitar. I'm the oldest, so I feel that's at least one good influence I had on them! My grandparents sang in choirs. Grandpa and several of his brothers (who were all blind - I have very poor eyesight myself) were piano tuners. Grandma played music-hall piano in pubs, and several of my uncles play as well. When our parents had parties, other musos would turn up with their instruments and a full-on jam session would develop. They were mostly professional players, so the standard was very high. Our holidays would often include going to jazz festivals - I have fond memories of sliding around on freshly talcum powdered dance floors. Music was all around me as a kid and I just took it for granted...

I was fascinated by the hippie culture coming out of San Francisco, and peace, love and alternative lifestyles just didn't fit well in the suburbs. So I dropped out of school, got into drugs, sold my electric guitar and moved into a 'crash-pad' in the city with an old acoustic 12-string that somebody gave me. I was brought up a Catholic (though I wasn't interested in God at this stage) and maybe my 'Catholic conscience' gave me a predisposition to the values of the 'love generation'. It wasn't long before I was listening to Bob Dylan, Donovan, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills and Nash,...

After some time, I became aware of a niggling dissatisfaction that wouldn't go away. No matter how stoned I got, or how crazy our latest stunt, or how nice my love life, it was never quite enough. I'd been getting into poetry and we used to have candlelight readings of Kahlil Gibran, Rabindranath Tagore, James K Baxter and others, and it was quite beautiful. But I was aware that, though we held these high ideals, none of us managed to live up to them very well. There had to be something more. I'd also chanted Hare Krishna, done a little TM, yoga and such like, but these philosophies - attractive though they were - didn't resonate with me either.

It wasn't till I really began to wonder about 'life, the universe, and everything', and became interested in God and decided to follow Jesus, that it occurred to me to write some songs of my own.

...(M)uch of my writing over the last 25 years (I've recorded 11 albums, and written over 250 songs) has been drawn from my relationship with Jesus and the inspiration I got from reading what He has to say. However, my writing's by no means all 'religious', and I hope that my craft now displays more depth and subtlety. Sometimes we use our art as propaganda, and that's usually not good for the music or our message. These days I mostly write 'secular' material, but I think my values find their way into my writing, either openly or by inference.

In addition to playing electric and acoustic guitars, I play bass, mouth harps, rowan lute, and percussion, and dabble with keyboards and other odds and ends. I've worked as a recording engineer and producer, done a fair bit of session work, and performed a number of times on television and radio. I've also published a book of poetry, and written articles for various magazines.

I've written poetry for longer than I've written songs, but I never expected to publish any of it. I guess I mostly thought of writing as a cathartic release. I started using one or two poems as part of my concerts, and people kept coming up afterwards and asking if they could get copies, so eventually I decided to put a collection together. It's called "Perhaps..."

...One night some friends and I were watching a documentary on TV about street kids and glue sniffing. One of the kids interviewed was a young Maori girl, Pania. After the program, somebody said to me: "You ought to write a song about that". I decided to write from the perspective of where I was - a middle class person watching poverty on TV. For me there was an added poignancy, because I lived only a couple of blocks from the graveyard (mentioned in verse one) where Pania and her mates slept.

This song regularly reduces people to tears and seems to strike a chord with everyone, middle class suburbanites as well as at-risk youth, and may well be my most performed song.

I saw your face on my TV
Your problems seem so far from me
I find it hard to conceive
That some children sleep in cemeteries...

Excerpt from the song, Pania

...If we're honest about ourselves and touch on things that are common to humanity, our audiences are drawn into our performance and closer to us. There is, however, a fine line between artist vulnerability and the bleeding heart self-indulgence that only serves to embarrass an audience. I'm not sure, but maybe the distinction lies in gentle understatement and a lightness of touch.

...Sometimes
I crawl into myself
Like an ostrich
I pretend I'm somewhere else
But you
You see through my disguise
Through my silence
Through the clouding of my eyes
Well I should've known that I
I could never hide from you
'cause your love sees right through me....

Music is powerful stuff! I used to do a lot of busking in downtown Auckland. One lunchtime, a man approached me and told the story of how he'd been in a bar nearby and had spoken with a young guy who'd started talking about me. It seems that this kid had walked into a store right beside my busking spot and begun shoplifting. However, he couldn't help but hear my voice wafting through the door, and my lyrics (including the occasional hint of Jesus) eventually got him so convicted that he put the merchandise back and decided not to steal any more...

...For the last ten years I've mainly played music with my wife, Brenda Liddiard. Brenda is a fine songwriter and mandolin player, and we make a complimentary team. We've gigged extensively throughout New Zealand, Australia and England and recorded three collaborations, as well as supporting each other on our various projects. As a matter of interest, in 1999 we did 126 gigs, and - in the course of three tours - slept in 58 beds (not counting our own). We play at festivals, churches, folk clubs, house concerts, cafes ... all sorts. Whenever it's practical, we work unplugged (no mics), as intimate as possible. The Proverb says that "two are better than one" and Brenda and I have been enriched and had our fields of influence and have ended up with a wider audience. This has, for instance, brought more ecology awareness (a strongpoint of Brenda's) into Christian circles and a spiritual perspective into the folk scene.

At the moment I have no regular work but am doing bits of lots of things - gigging, guitar teaching, writing, organising tours, house-husbanding, study. All these things are interesting and worthwhile, although most don't pay well. But we always get looked after! We have a website. The address is; www.kiwilink.co.nz/~hippies. We currently have two albums available (CD only): "Heart Attack" (1996) and "Millennium Hippies" (1999). Both cost NZ$26 within New Zealand or NZ$30 overseas. I'm currently working on a solo album for release later in the year. If you'd like to contact us, our e-mail is hippies@kiwilink.co.nz.

Artist Profile:

Thaya Whitten

, painter, pianist, Canada.

Thaya Whitten graduated from Hood College, Frederick, Maryland, U.S.A. with an Arts Degree in 1949 and has spent the past fifty years painting and continuing her studies....

She has participated in numerous exhibitions; conducted a number of workshops and seminars; been on several national tours; taught many art and painting classes; published art book reviews and has paintings commissioned by both public and private sectors. She has paintings in several private collections throughout Canada and the United States.
Thaya's art and music are interconnected in a unique way. "I have often said that my piano is my landscape painting and my painting is my music."

...Since she is primarily kinesthetic, her fingers seem to "carry" the messages back and forth between the piano and the painting. With background and training in both classical and jazz, she has conscientiously explored the interaction between music and art since 1982, when she did a major piece of work on Noel Knockwood, spiritual medicine man to the Mi'kmaq people.

Poems

A S   I   W R I T E   D O L P H I N S

are leaping, all in one direction, hundreds.
in a phalanx swift & sure, streaking
under the water brown as seals leaping
neatly briefly through a ruff of white
S H I E L D I N G
T H E   B O A T


from the book of verse and images Tender.

by Joanna Margaret Paul,
Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Microscopic detail of the skin of the
Oreuster occidentalis, a starfish of
the Sea of Cortez
by Carl O'Kelley, U.S.A.

Middle Age
From six to six and in between
The dailing grind is grinding mean.
‘Twixt bed and office, house and work,
I’m little more than maid and clerk.
Visions of inspired prose
Vanished as I coiled the hose;
And poems meant to summon souls
Withered while I buttered rolls.
Alas, how many artists-to-be
Are thwarted by reality.
Thus evolution cries “Enough!”
For, after all
Who’d read the stuff?

by Susan McLaren , Venezuela.

Clone 2000

I’ve suffered enough to tango.
When I win the Super Lotto I’m taking
lessons and buying a Clone 2000
to show what I might have been
if my genes had dealt a better hand.

This model’ll need DNA enhancements:
superstretch, big hands and feet
for basketball and media contracts;
perfect pitch, soundboard, and diaphragm
garnering La Scala, options at the Met,
all the Bowls; sensibilities, component
parts, refined like Buenos Aires nights;
a brain with more convolutions
and gray matter than Los Angeles.

And my new soul? - doozy, a corker,
a knockout, runway quality.

from Millenium and City Lights, page 11.
by Cal E. Rollins, U.S.A.

Leaning on another world
by Miriam Bargetze, Lichtenstein.

“being says:”
“i thirst for freedom
and the burden of wisdom
there’s no way out
that’s the way i am!”


So
Spricht
“das sein”
“ich bestehe aus dem dursten
Nach Freiheit
und dem belastet sein
met weisheit
mir ist nicht zu helfen
also bin ich!”

by Hans J. Knopse, Germany.

Say It
If I can’t say it
then who am I,
so here I am I try.

Lord, Lord.
Your companionship is everything
it really is
not just a pious ideal
nor imaginary
a vain appeal
but real and true and near.
What more is there to say?

Rob Altork, U.S.A.
Excerpt from an eight verse poem.

Towards Unity, painting,
by Änni Langenhorst Blackmer, France.

Haiku
The string of life
lost in the knots of small things:
living tragedies

R.K. Singh, India.

Article:

The Creation of Symbols

Interview between the visual artist, Hervé Constant, and the psychotherapist Madelyn Freeman, November '98, London.

MF: We have been discussing the process of artistic creation and I made the point regarding the rational and non-rational functions. Hervé‚ would you reiterate your views on how the creation actually comes into being?

HC: It is a mixture of rational and non-rational, which sometimes comes through directed intention and sometimes - after a while - through the process of creation; that is to say, through something I don't actually possess or direct. This aspect feels strange and timeless and can result from having thought a great deal about a particular work, over a long period of time, but sometimes it comes through a sudden instinct. For me, it is a slow process and I need to do a lot of work to derive even a small amount of good painting....

...Very often symbols are derived in response to a theme that I am working on or they can appear as a reflection of specific past events that relate to an emotion. Symbolic representations can also result from studying the things that surround us. Symbols work on different levels, such as representing objects we relate to directly, or as things that are hidden from us. Symbols can unsettle or confirm in us certain social values. Symbols have been with us for a very long time and their application is a natural one. Everywhere you go - to the shops, cinema, on highways or simply in the street - symbols surround us. They can lead or direct us, make us purchase goods, fight each other, make love to each other.
As an artist, I can choose which symbols I want to use in order to direct my mind and make certain thoughts explicit...

HC: It is true that one can be driven since many of the symbols used are derived from the unconscious, but my feeling is that often one makes a definitive and personal choice as regards which symbols are painted. Certainly one chooses the colour that re-informs or reconstructs an expression. The 'Magician' card in the Tarot, for example, exemplifies for me what is still exciting about engaging in the creative process. I am now in my late 40's and the unknown is why I still feel a child-like excitement about the work, since there is a certain alchemy about it. It is because there is something that still surprises me, something that I don't know....

HC: There are many different levels involved in achieving this. Sometimes one starts only with colour in order to balance tones, adding black or white, to give weight to a picture.

Certain colours become like a symphony of tones, each with their own different strengths and values, such as passion, despair, coolness or quiet dreaminess or absence. On the whole colours have their own language - whether they express spiritual or reposing values, confidence or anguish - which is why I wanted to change some previous works. As one grows older, one perceives the same things differently, so that the meaning of colours will vary. Tenderness, for example, the kind a person experiences early in life, will become a different experience in an older disposition. Enthusiasm, as time progresses, will not have the same value or meaning.

After the colour process, a line or figure might begin to appear, not especially to illustrate or represent something but rather to exemplify certain feelings, thoughts or emotional sensations. This is where it becomes a certain kind of search, into the depths of oneself, in order to reach the unconscious or one's own primitivism. It becomes a search for one's inner truth. I think that perhaps we have lost the real creativity belonging to our true nature, our real self. ry often symbols are derived in response to a theme that I am working on or they can appear as a reflection of specific past events that relate to an emotion. Symbolic representations can also result from studying the things that surround us. Symbols work on different levels, such as representing objects we relate to directly, or as things that are hidden from us. Symbols can unsettle or confirm in us certain social values. Symbols have been with us for a very long time and their application is a natural one. Everywhere you go - to the shops, cinema, on highways or simply in the street - symbols surround us. They can lead or direct us, make us purchase goods, fight each other, make love to each other.
As an artist, I can choose which symbols I want to use in order to direct my mind and make certain thoughts explicit...

Article:

Letters of nearness: love, mysticism and ghazals

by Alison Marshall, New Zealand.

I sought to gain Our union everywhere; I scrawled letters of nearness on all earth.

-- "Ode of the Dove" Bahá'u'lláh

....I associate learning with being in love, or with being committed to, or caring about, something. I have always been a sensitive person. On a Myers Briggs assessment, I come out an INFP, which means in practice that I am stuck in my head theorising about feelings and relate to the world accordingly. Perhaps because I am feelings based, I am also naturally straightforward with others about my inner life.

This usually put me out of step with society. I learned many counselling skills from a close friend who was a therapist, but I did not want to become a counsellor. I was too much of a philosopher for that. I had studied philosophy at university and was good at it, but found the Western philosophical tradition dry and academia too narrow for me.

...In 1998, some life-changing events took place. I had a mystical experience that lead me to realise that reality was a partnership of intellect and heart. One did not rule the other, they needed each other and worked together for truth.

I suddenly realised that I had been using my intellect all along, but hadn't been aware of it...

...A little earlier, just before the fast of 1998, I decided to commit myself to creating a meaningful devotional life. I was inspired by the example of my dear friend, Terry Culhane, who taught me that the Bahá'ís were in desperate need of Mashriqu'l-Adhkars in their local communities...
... Then I noticed a church close to my office and it suddenly occurred to me that it was there for praying in: why wasn't I using it! I began going there regularly, and so began my new mystical journey.

Over the following months, I had experiences I had never imagined possible. At that time, again inspired by Terry's example, I'd developed a special interest in the mystical writings of Bahá'u'lláh. In particular, I loved the "Tablet of the Houri" (Lawh-i Huriyyih) and "Ode of the Dove" (Qasidiy-i Varqa'iyyih). Both of them contain passages in which Bahá'u'lláh speaks to The Houri (the Being who brought him the Revelation in the spiritual world) with words of love that I had never expected to hear from a manifestation. I had thought it was beneath manifestations to talk to women like that because in the 'real' reality the Intellect still ruled the heart. So Bahá'u'lláh's expression of intense desire for The Houri was a bit bewildering, although not unwelcome.

All I knew was that this was Bahá'u'lláh talking, and that in itself made it all right. The Tablet of the Maiden (http:// www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/houri.htm) struck me because of the way Bahá'u'lláh and The Houri spoke to each other. I couldn't believe the tenderness of it. After reading it over and over, it dawned on me that this was the way women and men ought to talk to each other.

By revealing the tablet, Bahá'u'lláh was giving us an example of ideal communication. The tone of the voices started to ring in my head and I noticed them changing the way I spoke. The other important thing about the tablet was the caring nature of The Houri. She was all heart, but Bahá'u'lláh didn't treat her as silly for being that way, he loved it!
In fact, the whole tablet demonstrated that she was his crucial support system. She was the reason he coped with humanity's rejection of him. I began to believe that my femininity and feelings were an indispensable part of creation.

The Ode of the Dove (http:// www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/ode.htm) captivated me because the poetry revealed intense emotion. It is probably the first mystical poem I climbed into. One of my favourite lines was: "My joy refined the daylight's clarity" (verse 90).

I thought, 'gosh, Bahá'u'lláh is so in love, his perception of the world around him is heightened by it, just like mine is!' And I liked the way, at the height of the drama, he stood up for himself and effectively said to The Houri, 'I know what I experience, don't you try to tell me I don't love you completely!'

If I had limits, they appeared from Thee;
If I had traits then they derived from Thee.

(verse 89)

And then he goes inside himself, as if he has reached the end of what he can endure and is ready to expire:

I call on thee, life-spirit, to depart;
within Me, no part is left of the whole.
Transcendent spirit, climb down from thy throne;
for thee, My stigma is no source of blame.

(verses 94 and 95)

I recognised that place inside myself. I go there when my back is against the wall. It's interesting that at that point she stops criticising him and starts encouraging him. I think God is like that. He knows when I am pushed to the limit, and that's always the point at which things change.

Towards the end of 1998, another important event took place - I discovered Sufism (Islamic mysticism). I had wanted to learn about Sufism because it was the next step in my personal study of the Faith. I started reading Corbin's "Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth" (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990). It's difficult to explain, but I related immediately to the mystics' religious experience. I got very excited. They talked about the spiritual world as though it was a real part of their lives on a moment-to-moment basis. They argued for the existence of the imaginal or spiritual world, which we read using our inner selves; that is, our imaginations, hearts, minds and so forth.

The movie "What dreams may come" shows how this works. This imaginal or spiritual reality exists alongside the physical reality and it gives our everyday life meaning. The Sufis believed that their dreams and visions occurred in the imaginal world and looked upon them as a vital part of their spirituality. Dreams had always been important guides for me. I had relied on them to inform me of work I needed to do on myself.

Reading that book was like becoming a Bahá'í again. I realised that there was a long tradition devoted to questions I was already dealing with, and there was much to learn. A big part of the attraction was the philosophy. It was Islamic philosophy this time. It didn't waste its time proving the existence of God - it flew! It was a magical combination of philosophy, logic and the examination of reality; of feelings, love and relationships; and dreams and imagination and their interpretation in the self. The other exciting discovery was the intimate connection between Sufism and the Bahá'í Faith. Most Bahá'ís know that the Faith is derived from Islam, but don't appreciate the debt it owes to the mystical dimension of that religion. So not only had I found Sufism, but I had also found a way into the heart of the Faith. All those years of thinking that I was crazy because I never fitted anywhere, and then I find my home is the heart of the Faith and that I am a mystic!

I was overjoyed to discover that the heart of the mystic's experience was being in love. The mystic spends her energies devoted to understanding and enhancing that experience. Many people look at being in love as an embarrassment we experience in courtship, but then we get over it and get on with real life. This is not how the mystics see it. For them, it is the heart of the religious experience. That is not to deny that there are other expressions of religion, such as formal study, but the mystics would argue that love is the reason why we do things. It gives religion meaning. This state of love looks to the objective observer like a life of self-imposed pain. It is intense, dramatic, overwhelming and devastating. But such is the experience of those who do not regulate their emotions in order to conform to social etiquette. The mystics often used the analogy of being drunk to describe the ecstatic feeling they experienced....

....Who is the beloved? Ultimately, the beloved is God, but because we cannot have a direct experience of God, the beloved is the divinity we experience in creation; for example, in Bahá'u'lláh or in other people. 'Abdu'l-Bahá tells us in his "Commentary on the Islamic Tradition 'I was a Hidden Treasure' "
(http://Bahá´í-library.org/provisionals/hidden.treasure.html) that there are five loves: the love of God for God; God for creation; creation for creation; creation for God; and the individual for his or her self. But he also tells us that these five loves are one. This can be confusing.

For example, Bahá'u'lláh says we should have only love for him in our hearts: "Hast thou ever heard that friend and foe should abide in one heart?" (Persian Hidden Word nr. 26) We think this means we cannot love people, we must love God. But no, the various objects of love in our lives are like the manifestations. There are a number of manifestations, but we are asked to look at them from the point of view of their one Reality.
T he same is true of the many objects of love in our lives. Whether it be the people we love, with varying intensities and in varying situations, or God or Bahá'u'lláh, they are all objects of the one Love. From a subjective point of view, they all take us to that sanctuary of the love of God in our hearts.

I decided to write about my experiences of love too. I had never written poetry before, but was driven to do it. My inner life was so intense that I had to express it somehow or go mad. Someone had said that putting one's feelings into a poem gives them a reality independent of oneself, and this seemed to be what I needed to do. I was also struck by the courage that shone through in Bahá'u'lláh's example.
Despite being surrounded by enemies, he still had the courage to write intimate poetry. Moreover, I believed that Bahá'u'lláh's writings about his beloved were at the heart of reality and, as such, were the "hidden" of the manifest Revelation.
They were the spiritual reality upon which the Revelation was based. It occurred to me that my "hidden" was similarly the pole of my spirituality and that I should follow Bahá'u'lláh's example and courageously speak of it. I draw on this idea of the "hidden" in the second ghazal that I discuss in this essay...

...Gradually, I found myself using the language of poets I had read, especially Bahá'u'lláh, and using the terms and concepts that I had learned from my study of mysticism....

...Hardly believing I could do it, I attempted my first ghazal. The ghazals I had read were all translations and many did not attempt to capture the metre and rhyme of the original. So the 'ring' of the ghazal in my head was different to the 'ring' in the original language. However, I liked the refrain ("radif") at the end of both lines of the first couplet and every second line of the others and tried to reproduce it.

I was encouraged by Gene Doty's essay (www.umr.edu/~gdoty/poems/essays/ghazals.html),
in which he coined the term "free verse" ghazal.....

....Ideas were coming at me in all directions and the words almost put themselves together. I showed the poem to my dear friend Mark, and he was very excited and talked me into submitting the poem to The Ghazal Page (http://www.rollanet.org/~gino/ghazal-page/index.html).

He told me that the poem did not belong to me but to humanity and that I had a duty to let it go. I trusted his judgement and sent the poem off. It felt like I was giving away my soul. You can hardly imagine my astonishment when Gene said he wanted to put it up!

Through the veil of love, the beloved's face is a long
way from the beauty of the one for which she longs.

Shamed by her wretched state, she cowers before the thought
of him; he sees her through it, she can't hold it for too long.

It "bestows the nourishment of beauty without measure",
and that is a food she has not been used to for long.

If you glance at me, Wild One, I will die. Come
now! Produce the bloodstained hands in which I belong.

Hold this moon to you; impress your spirit's sweet form
on the waters of this melted soul, for which you long.

He is the curved wave of her breast's soft form. It is the lover's
humility that is the beauty for which the beloved longs.

Foolish ones! Reign from the poverty of your heart. Break
your covenant with fear; no need to bring arrogance and pride along.

Go now, Zaynab, and beg his heart be kind to me.
It is the gateway to heaven, and the passage through which I long.

Parts of the poem are derivative of Rumi. I was very influenced by him at the time. I was working through some of his theories on love and was finding a number of applications for them in my life. The opening couplet, for example, is from the Rumi quote found in the Seven Valleys (p. 16):

Love is a veil betwixt the lover and the loved one;
More than this I am not permitted to tell.

I was perplexed by this. At the time, I was aware that my image of my beloved was nowhere near the reality, in the sense that no matter how much we try, we can never have an image of God or a true image of another person. I accepted that the love in my heart was the creator of my image of my beloved and, in that sense, was a 'veil' from the real thing.
But it was not a veil that I could rid myself of because it was built into the structure of creation. Also straight from Rumi is the idea that humility is beautiful.

"It is the lover's humility that is the beauty for which the beloved longs."

...The idea is that love experienced subjectively is a devastating experience. The Sufis refer to it as "ruin". I have tried to capture this in thesecond couplet. Usually, we resist this feeling of degradation and shame because it is like being naked. But from the point of view of the spiritual beloved, that humility comes across as beauty. A person who is experiencing love has a face that shines, and the beloved has the eyes to see the lover glowing. The word "shame" came from Bahá'u'lláh's "Ode of the Dove", where he describes this pathetic feeling in himself:

I waken thee, My heart: thou must depart;
thou hast no honor in this realm of shame. (verse 96)

In fact, the experience of love as ruin is fundamental to mysticism. A person in that state will experience many times over an inner death of self, which the Sufis call fana' or annihilation. This is the point where mysticism becomes magical and powerful. If you let yourself pass through that 'death' process, although at the time you believe yourself to have lost everything, you find on the other side that you have gained a new world.

This is illustrated in the ‘Valley of Knowledge’ in The Seven Valleys by Bahá'u'lláh, when the lover finds his beloved on the other side of the wall. It is a trick of perception. If you have the courage to let yourself pass through this inner death each time your journey leads you to it, you discover that it is the path to achieving your soul's aspirations, and rather than being a place of defeat, it is in fact a place of power. In effect, you transcend the set of circumstances that appears to defeat you to reach another that appears to favour you. Reality changes when your perception of it alters.

The impossible proves easy, you realise that there is no such thing as defeat or death because God is the All-Merciful, the All-Loving, the All-Powerful. But if you resist the fana' experience by creating a false self out of denial, you lock yourself into that set of circumstances that appears to defeat you. You think that reality is something to fight and control and believe you are keeping evil at bay by standing up for what's 'right'. But all you are doing is standing in the way of your own growth. You become mean and inflexible and never learn that reality is something in which you can relax, explore and play...

Article:

The Arts as Pathways to Global Unity

by Mona Khademi, U.S.A.



In his old age, Charles Darwin wrote that if he had his life to live again, he would have made "a rule to read some poetry, and to listen to some music at least once every week.

" (Roy Shaw, The Arts and the People, London: Jonathan Cape, 1987, 21. )

He believed that artistic experience enlarges and refines our "repertory of feeling."

...Art is one of the world's greatest unifiers, it transcends cultural barriers and serves as a creative means of communication that helps people better understand other cultures. Art reminds us of our common humanity.
Bahá'u'lláh, wrote that

The source of crafts, sciences, and arts is the power of reflection. Make ye every effort that out of this ideal mine there may gleam forth such pearls of wisdom and utterance as will promote the well-being and harmony of all the kindreds of the earth.

(Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh , Comp., 72.)

.....How can this sense of common identity be reinforced throughout the world? One way is through international exchange programs that make the arts available across borders. As countries become increasingly interdependent, they need to foster the study of other cultures to ensure that their citizens learn not only to tolerate their neighbors but also to appreciate their differences. Cultural and arts exchange programs are especially needed in countries characterized by racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity....

Examples of Arts Cultural Exchange Programs: Three Art Exhibits

Here I will give examples from three major exhibitions that were held in Washington, D.C. between 1990 and 1997 and which then traveled to major cities. The exhibitions were: Dream, Myth and Reality: Contemporary Art from Senegal; Building Bridges: Israeli and Palestinian Artists Speak; and Panoramas of Passage: Changing Landscapes of South Africa.

Each exhibition will be discussed together with its ancillary and educational programs.

1. Dream, Myth and Reality: Contemporary Art from Senegal: Feb-June, 1993

The exhibition containing a selection of 68 works by 50 Senegalese artists was a survey of contemporary art from Senegal and an example of the vitality of Senegalese contemporary culture. It traced more than seventy years of Senegal's artistic heritage....

The press release for this exhibition stated, "Although the works represent a wide variety of styles and show some Islamic and Christian influences, all are African at the core."

(Traveling Service Press Release for "Dream, Myth and Reality," Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C., 1994. )

Senegal is rich in Sufi culture. Wars, migrations, and French colonialism has made Senegal rather cosmopolitanism. According to the exhibition catalogue, Senegalese reverse-glass painting is a popular urban art adaptation that originated in Persia and found its way to northern and western Africa via trade routes emanating from a medieval Italian city.

Senegalese history, myths, customs and beliefs are expressed by the artists in characteristic designs and vibrant colors, evoking "those of the sunsets, the sea, the countryside, [and] the fabrics worn by Senegalese men and women as they go about their daily lives."

(David Barrows, "Meridian International Center - Dream, Myth, and Reality," Washington, D.C., InTowner, Apr. 1993.)

Informative labeling of the artworks gave insight into the cultural, spiritual and intellectual sources that had inspired the artists. The cultural events around the exhibit included a Senegalese dance performance, and lecture by the Ambassador. School tours dealt with Senegal's history, the slave trade, cash crops, clothing design and traditional art. 11 One day of the exhibition was devoted to the theme of Senegal with various Senegalese community organizations presenting their Senegalese food, glass painting, hair braiding, gold jewelry, music and dances, among other activities.

2. Building Bridges: Israeli and Palestinian Artists Speak

:
April-July, 1994

This exhibition included approximately 50 works by six Israeli and six Palestinian artists. T he group of Israeli and Palestinian artists met in 1982 and created a joint exhibition on the theme of peace, "to see if a new language of understanding could be forged among their people to emphasize the role of culture and art in building bridges of understanding between peoples."

( Anne Bendheim, "Building Bridges: Israeli and Palestinian artists collaborate on exhibition,")

Some of the works related to religious themes and some were political, but most of the work was highly abstract. Fifteen years after they began, the twelve artists continue to exhibit together, sometimes even to paint on the same canvas....

...The artists wanted their works to be seen in both political and artistic contexts. In the exhibition brochure they state that, by exhibiting together in Israel and abroad, the artists have "sought to reshape the relations between the personal and the public, between the political and the artistic."

( ibid )

The exhibit was complemented by a variety of cultural programs, including a concert series, a film on Jerusalem, a storyteller, interactive performances by a dance group, an "Evening of Poetry" and visits to the exhibition. Eight of the twelve artists participating in Building Bridges came to the U.S. for the opening and gave several presentations to different audiences. The exhibition provided a framework for organizations at each venue to design special educational and cultural programs. These included an exhibition of children's art, "Peace Around the World for the Holidays"; a singing performance at the museum by children's groups from a synagogue, a mosque and local Catholic and Protestant churches; a lecture on the exhibition by the museum's chief curator; and a panel discussion entitled "Islam, Christianity and Judaism."

3. Panoramas of Passage: Changing Landscapes of South Africa

Oct. 1995-Feb. 1996

The exhibition included 110 works by eighty artists, giving a wide variety of artists' impressions of historical events from the colonial period to the present. The South African show was timely and provided one of the first overviews of the art of that country to tour the United States during a "time of enormous political and social changes."

(Charles Dee Mitchell, "A light on 'dark' nation: Works display both old and new South Africa," Dallas Morning News, Mar. 30, 1996.)

The project began just before the 1994 free elections in that country.
The exhibition's ancillary programs in Washington, D.C. included a lecture by the South African ambassador on the "New South Africa," about the culture, history, economy and future of the country. An evening of dance and music from South Africa was also arranged by the embassy.

The exhibition attracted many people wherever it traveled. The educational programs attracted the largest number of school groups. They attended a one-hour lecture on the background and history of South Africa. When the exhibition was shown at a university, the university brought in professors specializing in African art for a panel discussion. The exhibition received positive reviews in the local media, which commented that history and cultural consciousness, and democracy and reconciliation were among "the many themes of history, politics and culture coursing through the visually brilliant, often seductive, gritty and intellectually loaded exhibition."

(T .Owen McNally, "South African art embraces hope for reconciliation," Hartford, CT, Hartford Courant, Jan 26, 1997, (G) 1 and 4. )

The impact of the three exhibitions has been as varied as the themes and countries they represented. Through Panoramas of Passage, artists enabled Americans to better understand not only South Africa's past and present, but its hope for the future.

(William Wilson, "A Connection to Land 'Panorama'," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 4, 1996. )

...The collaboration of Israeli/Palestinian artists influenced the opinions of people who saw the exhibition and participated in the ancillary activities about the conflict in the Middle East. Seeing and hearing both sides of the issue brought focus and clarified some misunderstandings among the two groups...

...As evidence of the show's success, Jewish and Palestinian communities came together both during and after the exhibition...
...Talks, conferences, and seminars organized by the leaders of the two communities have continued since the exhibition.

The South African exhibition, to cite another example, attracted blacks, whites, and interracial school groups when it was shown in Washington, D.C. and on tour. The tour leaders explained the positive steps that have been taken by the South African community and how difficult it has been to establish peace and change prevailing opinions. Comparisons were made with racial issues in the U.S. The experience, thus, helped to increase understanding of race relations.

The creativity of Senegalese art served as a reminder of the rich contribution that African culture makes in an increasingly global culture...

Article:

Scripture as Literature: Sifting through the layers of the text : PART 3

by Franklin Lewis, U.S.A.

Likewise, in the Lawh-e Ra'is, where Bahá'u'lláh describes a puppet show he viewed in his youth, in which all the pomp and glory of the material world and all the important personages were laid to rest in a box by the puppeteer at the end of the show, the conclusions he draws from this event may be shaped somewhat by the Oshtor-nâme, traditionally attributed to the famous Farid al-Din `Attâr (d. 618/1221),1 who describes a Turkish puppet player folding all the puppets into the box of tawhid, or Divine unity, after the performance. Also from the Lawh-e Ra'is is this quotation from the poet Sanâ'i (d. 525/1131): "The sage Sanâ'i has said:

Take counsel, all you more blackened than counseled!

Take counsel, o you whose beards begin to whiten!

According to the modern edition of his collected poems (Divân), the second hemistich of this poem is somewhat incorrectly quoted in Seven Valleys (`ozr ârid "seek forgiveness" is given rather than pand girid "take counsel," though it has little change on the overall import of the verse).2 Sanâ'i was received as a mystic and homiletic poet by the later literary tradition, though he also wrote much profane poetry, as well...

....Perhaps the most interesting work of Bahá'u'lláh, at least insofar as genre studies are concerned, is his Hidden Words (Kalemât-e maknune), a work of rhymed prose composed/revealed in 1274/1858 while Bahá'u'lláh was in Baghdad. Though conceived as an organic unity, Kalemât-e maknune consists of short independent ethical and mystical counsels, 71 in Arabic and 83 in Persian. This book was originally known by the Bábís among whom it circulated in manuscript form as the Sahife-ye Fâtemiye (The Book of Fatima), thus identifying it with the Twelver Shi`i tradition of the moshaf Fâteme (scroll of Fatima), a series of inspiring thoughts supposedly whispered into the ear of Fatima by an angel to console her upon the death of her father -the Prophet Muhammad. The scroll of Fatima was believed to be handed down by the Imams from generation to generation along with the weapons of the Prophet. Of course, we do not now possess any such text, if it ever did exist, so that we have here a curious case of intertextuality with a non-textual text, or more precisely, the apocryphal tradition of a text. Thus the name -"Hidden Words."...

Excerpts with revisions from an article printed in Bahá'í Studies Review volume 7, to be found at: http://Bahá´í-library.org/bsr

Short Story:

by Kathleen Hite Babb, Japan / U.S.A.


Excerpts from        

S H A K U H A C H I

She stared out of the plate-glass window into the midmorning haze, sensing only the movement of the heavy machinery that propelled the ferry across this segment of the Setonaikai --The Inland Sea. She was oblivious to the tiny isles parading by, dressed in their calico colors heralding yet another season of hibernation. The sight had grown pale from familiarity, since it was there almost daily for her over the past five years. Yes, the recent typhoon had changed the face of the countryside, but even that was now too commonplace to make the view any more worthy of interest...

...Never once when contemplating this long-term move to Japan had she suspected she'd be sacrificing anything more than her job. Cameron loved it here, but then he was the Japanese scholar. He read the language, spoke the language; he lived and breathed Japan. And she was here for him. But how much had she lost because of it? She stopped thinking about it years ago, it was just too painful. And slowly over time she stopped thinking altogether. It had been inevitable. She had what she called 'peripheral' social contact, since her conversations could only be as deep as her superficial knowledge of the language would allow. Mental stimulation was a luxury well nigh nonexistent because of the communication barrier, and because information in English was so hard to come by.

Every so often Cameron would remark, "Why don't you learn more Japanese? I mean really sit down and study it? That would solve all your problems, you know."

She couldn't explain to him that fluency wasn't really the answer. The social circles of housewives preoccupied with children or college girls on the hunt weren't particularly appealing...

...His response was sincere behind it's formal politeness: "Is that so?"

She was encouraged and went on. "I played the flute." But she didn't really want to talk about herself, her mind was on his instrument.
"Is the shakuhachi difficult? I hear it is."

He handed it to her to try. She couldn't produce a solid tone from it. The fact would have been an insult had they both not found it amusing. Together they laughed out loud.
He then took it, and placing it to his lips, blew across it, demonstrating. "Try again."
The blowing made her giddy, but she finally succeeded in eliciting a faint tone.

"That's a good start,"
he said, honestly impressed, and pleased.

She stood at the door for a moment, not knowing what more to say. "Shitsurei shimatshita. O jama shimashita." I've been rude. I have interrupted you. She bowed and started to leave, but stopped.
"Do you think your master would teach me? I know music---well, not that music, but I...I know rhythm. I would learn quickly."
"I can't say, of course. But I don't see why not. He has another foreigner who studies under him."

"And does this person speak Japanese?"

"The gaijin? Yes, excellent Japanese." Seeing the change on her face, he hastened to add, "But music is universal, words aren't so necessary---it's the feeling, the spirit. If you are sensitive to it, that is all that matters."

She understood only half his words, but suspected she knew what he had said, and her hopes rose for a second time. Yet by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was feeling dejected. How could she speak to the master about her wish and in return comprehend his reply? How could she possibly swallow her pride and have Cameron accompany her as translator? It would be embarrassing. She'd feel like a little kid that had to have Daddy arrange everything. She couldn't do it...

Photographs and Illustrations of work by:

Jacomien Souverijn, The Netherlands, Fuad Izadinia, South Africa, Mor Gueye, Senegal, Mark Sadan, U.S.A., Barbara Casterline, Japan, Herve Constant, U.K., Ryoszo Morishita, Japan, Myriam Bargetze, Lichtenstein, Jawa Al-Malhi, Palestine/Israel, Anni Langenhorst Blackmer, France, Jessy Rahman, The Netherlands, & Mehboob Shaik, India, Arnon David, Israel, Derrick Nxumbo, South Africa, Inge Kölle, Germany, Keith Eldridge, Canada, Chris Reid, Australia, Kouhyar Rowshan, Australia, TBA, Australia, Carl O'Kelley, U.S.A., Terry Eichler, Australia, Edward Woodman, U.K., Thaya Whitten, Canada, Bill Skuce, Canada, Alex Samyi, Austria, Janita Appa, U.K., Beth Yazhari, U.S.A., Jacqueline Wassen, The Netherlands.

Translations, editing, co-ordination by:

Sasha Radin, The Netherlands / U.S.A., Kathleen Babb, Japan, Alison Marshall, Aotearoa / New Zealand, Steve Marshall, Aotearoa / New Zealand, Sonja van Kerkhoff, The Netherlands.