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Something to think about...
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| Clovis |
Ewan Pearson's latest Groove Column
| quote: | Groove Column: on disco defiance (October 2009)
Today at 12:56pm
In a restaurant in Beirut, Laila and Carma have ordered me a feast; Halloumi and figs, unpasteurised goats cheese, tabbouleh, saj with yogurt and thyme, more houmous than even my friend Simon (who would sell his soul for a mashed chick-pea) could eat. I’m here to play a great party called Cotton Candy. My generous hosts tell me some DJs are afraid to come here, put-off by the periodic instability of the Middle East. Stuffing another delicious piece of cheese into my mouth in the sunshine, I can’t think why.
I was woken by an explosion at 8.30am. As I shook myself conscious I heard the rain sheeting down, realised “thunderstorm” and fell back to deep sleep. Laila had a different reaction; she remembered summer 2006 when Israeli air-strikes hit the airport (tourism is the major industry here and so destroying the airport a simple way to cause economic difficulty) and other civilian infrastructure in retaliation for Hezbollah missile attacks on northern Israel. Returning to bed was not an option.
In the West we casually talk of “living in the moment” or “seizing the day” but our prosperity and security is such that we have little idea what “now” really means. The worst we have to fear is accident, sudden illness or economic downturn. Compare life in somewhere like Juarez, Mexico. One of the major drug-routes into the US, a brutal turf-war between the cartels and state law-enforcement agencies has resulted in the world’s highest murder-rate. When everyday life includes the threat of extortion or violence, just going out for a drink or a dance becomes a small stubborn act of defiance.
Halfway through my set there last November, a light shone directly in my eyes. A balaclava’ed man with an automatic rifle was waving a torch at me to stop the music. There were a dozen others on the dancefloor, all similarly armed. The promoter quickly told me it was only police checking the age of the kids in attendance. They left after 20 minutes and I started the music again, heart beating half out of my chest (who needs coke when you have adrenalin?) The cheer was massive, the rest of the party amazing. A false alarm, but for a moment disco escapism never felt less of a luxury. |
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| JPlay |
sounds like another day at office to me...
lived in israel for 3 years. :toothless |
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| Demoted |
| sounds like they need an anthem kinda like Dance4Life. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
I like it, "disco defiance." Reminds me a lot of this:
| quote: | ...whenever I read something about the Khmer Rouge, for example, or the genocide in Rwanda, I reflect for a time upon my own life and dwell a little on the insignificance of my efforts, the selfishness of my concerns, the narrowness of my sympathies.
So it was when I first learned of the destruction of the two towers of the World Trade Center. I was settling down to write a book review: not of a great work, but of a competent, conscientious, slightly dull biography of a minor historical figure. Could any activity have been less important when set beside the horrible fate of thousands of people trapped in the then flaming—and soon collapsing—buildings? A book review, compared to the deaths of over 300 firemen killed in the course of their duty, to say nothing of the thousands of others? What was the point of finishing so laboriously insignificant a task as mine?
In my work as a doctor in a prison, I save a few lives a year. When I retire, I shall not in my whole career have saved as many lives as were lost in New York in those few terrible moments, even counting the time I spent in Africa, where it was only too easy to save human life by the simplest of medical means. As for my writing, it is hardly dust in the balance: my work amuses a few, enrages some, and is unknown to the vast majority of people in my immediate vicinity, let alone to wider circles. Impotence and futility are the two words that spring to mind.
Yet even as I think such self-regarding thoughts, an image recurs in my mind: that of the pianist Myra Hess playing Mozart in London's National Gallery even as the bombs were falling during the Second World War. I was born after the war ended, but the quiet heroism of those concerts and recitals, broadcast to the nation, was still a potent symbol during my childhood. It was all the more potent, of course, because Myra Hess was Jewish, and the enemy's anti-Semitism was central to its depraved view of the world; and because the music she played, one of the highest peaks of human achievement, emanated from the very same land as the enemy's leader, who represented the depths of barbarism.
No one asked, "What are these concerts for?" or "What is the point of playing Mozart when the world is ablaze?" No one thought, "How many divisions has Myra Hess?" or "What is the firepower of a Mozart rondo?" Everyone understood that these concerts, of no account in the material or military sense, were a defiant gesture of humanity and culture in the face of unprecedented brutality. |
http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_what_we_have.html |
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| RebeL9 |
I can warmly recommend you a book called:
"Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide
it can be ordered from Amazon.
It really opened my eyes when it comes to understanding humans notion on tackling incomprehensible evil and brutality. Check it out. |
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