Chez Mana

A class at Stanford brought up many memories from the distant past. Memory is selective. I have rejected much that I did not care to remember and I have romanticized what I wanted to remember.

Professor Khalessi has a passion for his material. His hands move like a conductor when he reads a verse and the light in his eyes reflects his joy. We are studying Sohrab Sepehri, the Iranian poet and painter. I have just joined the class and have far to go to master these profound works.

Sepehri brings me back to my childhood. My dad used to communicate to me in poetry. When he wanted to convey an important idea, I had to get it through a poem. He wrote in the calligraphic style called khatte shekasteh. I had to read the letters many times just to unravel the words. Compared to that, this class seems easy because Professor Khalessi is there to help.

The poetry makes me reflect on my roots and how I have changed. Sepehri writes about freeing oneself from the distractions of the world to develop the human spirit. He emphasizes an appreciation of nature and a serene view of life. His words lead me on an introspection into my own identity, and help me to separate what is important from what is not. The simplicity, the humanity, the tenderness and wisdom in these poems embraces me and warms me to the point that I am overwhelmed.

A performance Friday night at Stanford’s Cubberley Auditorium was a perfect complement to reading Sepehri’s poetry.
Fared Shafinury, the Iranian-American musician, performed with his band Tehranosaurus. The room was packed. Shafinury’s work blends the traditional Iranian musical system called radiff with contemporary Western forms. He plays the delicate ancient instrument, the setar, with virtuosity. His singing style is romantic, with unexpected pushes of energy from the percussive rhythm of the tombak and dohol . The fusion between the classical Iranian compositions and indie rock brings new urgency to the ancient forms.

Shafinury talked to the audience about the feelings underlying his song “Bani Adam” which is based on a poem by Saadi from his Gulistan.
This well-known verse is displayed at the entrance of the United Nations Hall of Nations:

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

Four hundred years after Saadi, John Donne expressed a remarkably similar sentiment in his famous Meditation XVII:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

These ideas remain just as relevant today amid the world’s many conflicts.

“Beyond the seas,There is another land; Its windows open to the virtues of lights; On its roofs, doves constantly stare-at the soar of human mind
Its children walk, with their backpacks full of faith, hope and trust.”

I should not miss my next class as I have a long way to go.

Beyond the Seas
I’ll put up a boat,
and set it free off the shore.
I’ll let it take me away-from this eerie land,
where nobody calls up the sleeping heroes-
from their long, lonely trance.

I’ll put up a boat,
and set it free off the shore;
a boat with no net, a boat with no seine,
with my heart cleansed of wish for pearl.

I’ll sail away on the tides.
I’ll sing all along the ride.

Neither the blues of the deeps,
Nor the mermaids, the natives of the seas,
shall captivate me-from my solitary glide.
I’ll move on with pride.

I’ll sail away on the tides,
I’ll sing all along the ride:

“I’ll leave this eerie land behind;
in this land,Truth is forsaken, set aside,
here, no man recalls- how their heroes died,
here, of woman all but silence is denied.
I did not see a torch.
I did not see a loch.

I shall sail away-
for I am tired of the reign of opaque, thick panes,
I am longing for the crystal verse-
of an open space”.

I’ll sail away on the tides;
I’ll sing all along the ride:

“Beyond the seas,
There is another land;
Its windows open to the virtues of lights;
On its roofs, doves constantly stare-at the soar of human mind
Its children walk, with their backpacks full of faith, hope and trust.”

“Beyond the seas,
There is another land.
People there, they care:
for the call of a gentle hill,
for the feel of a brief dream.
Its soil listens to the song of your soul.
Its breeze, spreads in air-the full flavour of flight.

“Beyond the seas,
There is another land;
Its dawn is weightless, vast and white,
with the freshness of a bird’ first flight.
Its poets are heirs of water, wind and light.”

Beyond the seas,
There is another land:

I shall put up a boat,
I will put up a boat.

By: Sohrab Sepehri
Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani, September 2007, Montreal.

I traversed the Luxembourg garden for many years during my studies at the Université de Panthéon Assas. The Medici fountain is centuries old. Its calm, unchanging presence always gave me a feeling of peace.

Just across the street, the bustling students hurry about the modern university.

Paris contains many worlds within.

When most Americans hear the word Chantilly, they think of the 1958 rock and roll hit by the Big Bopper, Chantilly Lace.

But of course, Chantilly is really a town in France and near the town is the beautiful Château de Chantilly. Of all the many fine châteaux in France, this is my favorite.

The Château de Chantilly has a unique charm that results from the manner in which it was developed. In the Middle Ages, it was a fortress of seven towers surrounded by an irregular moat. In the 17th century, its aristocratic owners decided to preserve these old structures and to build the garden around them. Other Châteaux such as the Palace of Fontainebleau feature a rectilinear layout in which the central axis of the gardens bisects the main house at right angles to the main elevation. At Chantilly, necessity compelled the eminent landscape architect André Le Nôtre to adopt a daring design. The axis runs parallel to the front of the château, with the central focus on an impressive equestrian statue of Anne de Montmorency, the 16th-century Constable of France and the château’s onetime owner.

As you approach, you see the horse and rider against the sandy paths; as you get closer the statue shifts against a different background, the sky. Only when you reach the moat does the château itself come into view. In this design, the gardens dominate the architecture but each element, sand, sky, water, gardens comes into view in a dynamic manner, creating a very intimate and poetic feel. The castle also houses the Musée Condé, one of the finest art galleries in France, second only to the Louvre, as well as one of the most magnificent libraries in France.

In April, 1671, Louis de Bourbon, the Prince of Condé, held an extravagant banquet at the Château in honor of Louis XIV. There were 2000 guests and the Prince spared no effort to make a good impression on the King. According to legend, his maître d’hôtel, Francois Vatel, grew so upset when the fish arrived late that he committed suicide by running himself through with his sword. It is also claimed that Crème Chantilly was served for the first time on this occasion. Whether this is true or not, it is indisputable that the Château became a symbol of refined food at a time when the French were raising cookery to a fine art.

Crème Chantilly is whipped cream sweetened with sugar and often flavored with vanilla. You might like to try it this Thanksgiving on your pumpkin pie. As you enjoy your food and company, be glad that you do not have the 2000 guests of the poor Vatel.

Baudelaire wrote of Eugène Delacroix that
he was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible. I thought of this as I visited the Musée National Eugène Delacroix in the artist’s old apartment on the rue de Fürstenberg. For me, Paris has always stirred many passions.

Delacroix’s well-known painting of Liberty leading the people captures the ideological ferment that has always been part of Paris in a single brilliant scene. The figure of Liberty is symbolic, yet she seems to fit naturally into the crowd, striding right out of the picture at the viewer. The fighters surrounding her represent the whole range of social classes, from the young bourgeois in his top hat to the masses of poor people. The young boy with pistols is said to have inspired the character of Gavroche in Les Misérables, which made such a strong impression on me as a child.
The scene commemorates the Revolution of 1830, but could apply just as well to many episodes in the long struggle toward democracy in France.

The painting was at first kept out of public view by the French government, which considered it too inflammatory. Only after the revolution of 1848 was it finally put on display by the new ruler, Napoleon III. Today, it resides in the Louvre and is seen by millions of visitors.

In my imagination, Paris is dark and black just like scenes from Les Misérables, the 19th century Paris with black cobblestone streets, men walking in their black hats, a shabby Paris. I remember the tears running down my face when I was eight years old, reading the story.

Then came the Paris of the Steins, Leo and Gertrude, buzzing with the new ideas of Modernism and the art of Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, and so many others. The walls of their apartment on the rue de Fleurus are crowded with paintings. The air is thick with the excitement of innovation and discovery.

Paris, who are you? A shabby Paris? An avant-garde Paris? A Ritzy Paris? Drinks at the bar at Plaza Athenee have lights in them. Paris, who are you? The Paris of the cafes? La Palette, so close to the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, is the café where Cezanne and Braque drank. Now Lonely Planet ranks it number 1267 of 1466 things to do in Paris.

Paris, who are you? Under the Pont Neuf bridge, on a gorgeous night with the Seine and the lights just like a Vermeer painting, a man sleeps in his bag but he is made of flesh and blood. Hollande vs. Sarkozy, what will be the outcome of the elections? I think that the man will still sleep there in any case.

Delacroix’s passion was stirred by the struggle between the old and the new, and his own art was revolutionary in its technique. The same artistic struggle was carried forward by the Modernists whose work the Steins encouraged so effectively. When I am in Paris today, I still feel the conflict between the old and new. The energy that comes from it is what I love about this city.

During the summer of 2011, Savage Beauty, an exhibit of Alexander McQueen’s work at the Met caught my attention and the attention of a million others.

As I waited in the long line to reach the Costume Institute on the second floor, my eyes wandered over the artifacts in the Ancient Middle Eastern Art galleries. When I finally reached the exhibit, I was not disappointed.

I had not followed McQueen before but I found myself increasingly interested in what I saw. Among the wide assortment of his work on display, many reflect an aggression that confronts the viewer. His themes include gender, identity, nature and history. It was the last of these that affected me the most.

McQueen’s parents were Scottish and he had strong patriotic feelings for his ancestral land. His collection Highland Rape was based on the Jacobite Risings and the ensuing Clearances: after suppressing the Jacobite uprising in 1745, the English began a policy of “clearing” the Scottish Highlands. This caused great hardship to the Highlanders and put an end to their traditional way of life. In McQueen’s words

This collection was a shout against English designers doing flamboyant Scottish clothes. My father’s family originates from the Isle of Skye, and I’d studied the history of the Scottish upheavals and the Clearances. People were so unintelligent they thought this was about women being raped – yet Highland Rape was about England’s rape of Scotland.

The dramatic Dress number 13, from his spring-summer 1999 collection, has an echo of the same theme. Inspired by installation artist Rebecca Horn, a model in a pure white dress on a circular platform is threatened by two robots that surround her and spray the dress with brightly colored paints. Model Shalom Harlow felt that this symbolized sexual submission, but I see a different interpretation.

The model has come between two technologically sophisticated competitors, who draw lines across her dress dividing the territory between them. She has no control over her destiny, reminding me of another English conquest. In the late summer of 1941, Great Britain and the USSR launched a surprise attack against Iran and quickly overran it. The scene of the two robots spraying and drawing lines on the white dress epitomizes that conquest to me. The purpose was to gain control of Iran’s oil and to secure supply lines into the Soviet Union. The occupation continued until the end of the war.

In its aftermath, Iran entered a turbulent political era. The old Shah had died during the war and his son took his place. The reformist prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, setting in motion a series of confrontations with Great Britain that culminated in his overthrow in a coup that was supported by the British and US intelligence services. Mossadegh’s foreign affairs minister, Hossein Fatemi, was executed. These events set the stage for the close association between the Shah and the government of the United States, which eventually unraveled in 1979. Perhaps there might have been a very different outcome if Mossadegh had been able to remain in power.

The Met is a fascinating place. It embraces 5000 years of human creativity. A visit to the Arms and Armor gallery on the first floor completed my thoughts on dress number 13. The armors were beautiful. There is art even in savagery.

Leaving the Met, I took a last picture of a worker on its beautiful roof.

New York is a place like no other. It is shaped by people from diverse cultures that have converged, driven by their historical struggles and in search of their individual freedom, constantly striving towards a vision they can never reach. I started discovering this city during my recent short stay, beginning each day with a view of the Hudson River from my apartment in Manhattan. Looking at the sky with the buildings in the background, I thought of the movie Man on Wire. It tells the story of the French funambulist Philippe Petit, who committed the “artistic crime of the century. “ He walked on a wire 1350 feet above the ground while 100,000 New Yorkers watched. After many years of planning, problem solving and practice, he realized his dream of reaching the clouds, expressing himself in a unique and astonishing way.

In the evenings, friends filled my apartment while during the day the cultural treasures of New York stimulated my senses. As I visited the world-class museums and attractions, one theme ran through my mind. New York, and all of humanity, has been shaped by individual realities and the struggle to express the emotions within them, which come to life through movies, musicals, architecture, and other types of art. The result is an aesthetic culture which conveys the struggles of people in such a poetic way. It is our duty not only to nurture this aesthetic but to democratize it and make it available to all people, since it helps us to live our lives in a more connected and optimistic way.

I began my explorations with a visit to the nearby Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights. This Palladian mansion was the place for fashionable parties during the decade before the Revolutionary War. George Washington used it as his headquarters during the Battle of Harlem Heights in the fall of 1776. The young Continental Army repulsed a much stronger British force for their first battlefield victory under Washington. In later years, Washington dined there with his Cabinet, including Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams.

Further uptown, the beautiful Fort Tryon Park filled my day. This park is a country jewel inside bustling New York with views of the George Washington Bridge, trails for jogging, a beautiful garden and the Cloisters.

The Cloisters is the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe from the Romanesque period to the Gothic era. Its collection includes architectural fragments shipped from Europe by the Rockefeller clan that have been incorporated into the fabric of the neo-medieval building in a manner suggesting their original functions and situation. An amazing project fulfilling the dreams of one man that is now available to all, its peaceful setting is a sharp contrast with the busy city all around it.

Continuing on to Harlem was quite fascinating. Harlem today has rebounded from its past decline and once again resembles the vibrant cultural scene of the Prohibition era. It offers a well-preserved architecture of brownstones and fantastic nightlife. Although jazz originated in New Orleans, it reached its height here thanks to radio, recording, music publishing, and the way the clubs circumvented Prohibition. Today, I found that there is still great music at The Shrine and the Lenox Lounge, which occupies a gorgeously restored 1939 art deco bar. In the back, its Zebra Room is where Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and John Coltrane all performed. Next door, you can even try President Barack Obama’s fried chicken at the Red Rooster restaurant.

Two performances that I saw brought the struggles of people in other times and places to life in the context of New York. With some Trinidadian friends, I saw the movie The Help, which depicts the complex relationships of class and race in Mississippi during the civil rights era. The Broadway musical Billy Elliot, which won 10 Tony awards, portrayed the dilemmas of a young man whose ambition to become a ballet dancer fits awkwardly in the working-class English mining culture in which he lives. The general mining strike of the 1980’s and the extinction of this way of life form a backdrop to his story.

A visit to the Bronx, one of the country’s poorest urban areas, showed a conflicting landscape. The Bronx contains one of the five poorest Congressional Districts in the U.S. while the Bronx Zoo is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States. It houses more than 4500 animals, all well taken care of.

In contrast, Soho offers high end boutiques and is a playground for the young and the rich. The Housing Works Bookstore Café, an attractive two level bookstore and café carries second-hand books and gives all the proceeds to support services for people living with AIDS. It is a pleasant place to browse or sit and think about living life in a poetic way.

It is the search for the expression of individual realities and the human struggles to express those emotions that shapes the different parts of New York. And in that sense we all are New Yorkers. No other city epitomizes that expression of the human spirit better than New York.

In the summer of 2011, I traveled across many borders, rediscovered friends, savored music and feasted on works of art that throughout questioned notions of identity, and physical boundaries.

At the Montreal Jazz Festival, three outstanding musicians caught my attention. Anouar Brahem, a Tunisian composer and master of the oud who combines Arab classical music with jazz, and traditional folk performed his Voyage De Sahar. He was accompanied by two French artists, Francois Couturier on piano, and Jean-Louis Matinier on accordian. That night, the world felt like an enchanting place.

The delicately complex tunes carried me to all the regions that had left an imprint on their work. The humming of Anouar Brahem added a chanting mood. The whimsical accompaniment of the accordion and the way that the piano adapted itself to the rhythms of the oud made me feel as if I was flying over a varied landscape. The music came and went in such precision and innovation that it felt light in its complexity and rigor.

Next to me sat one of my favorite Canadian painters, Sophie Lambert.
As we absorbed the energy of the performance, I felt togetherness. The sounds transcended physical boundaries while preserving the individuality of each. The duo between Matinier and Brahem was so tango-like that I felt uneasy listening in between them, yet happy to have the opportunity.

Talking to Brahem afterwards, I learned that one of his collaborators was unable to get a visa to come to Canada. I then remembered the real world which is wonderful and horrible at the same time. It is the aesthetics that helps us tolerate the unhappier part of the world.

In Paris, I met with former classmates from grade school and university. The first reunion was at the Espace Louis Vuitton, where the exhibit Trans-Figurations represented eleven contemporary Indonesian artists. Tintin Wulia displayed her project (Re)Collections of Togetherness. With her work, the topic of borders, and boundaries came back. Wulia studies the relationship between political borders and personal identity. In this installation, Wulia’s chosen symbol of borders was passports. Through her work, she dissolves the physical boundaries in the modern world and shows that boundaries have meaning because of the social values that we attach to them. Our own identities cross many boundaries.

The feeling of togetherness continued when I met my friends and acquaintances. Nowadays, we were dispersed all over the world as a result of the historical events that had swept over us like a giant wave. The joy of being there was all the greater because of the many roads we had traveled from our common starting place.

Then came the breathtaking work of Michal Rovner at the Louvre. She explores the themes of archaeology, memory, and territory with works that are deeply influenced by the conflicts in the Middle East.

Rovner chose to install her exhibition at the Louvre in the rooms devoted to Syria, Jordan, and Palestine and the medieval moat. She creates her works in situ, projecting her videos directly onto the walls and ancient objects creating a dialogue between her moving figures and the ancient inscriptions. With her work, she abolishes the borders between periods and cultures, reinforcing the feelings of togetherness through human social experiences.

In this summer of 2011, I reconnected with old friends and found new connections to artists whose work I had not previously known. Through it all, there ran a feeling of togetherness, of bonds that are enriched by our origins and movements across boundaries. Those bonds remain rooted in our social identities through different cultures, which we construct ourselves despite the forces that may drive us to different places and ways of life.

Sophie Lambert’s two paintings Régate à la Baie des Chaleurs and Le Solitaire offer a striking contrast. The first depicts an endless array of sailboats, each distinct but all quite similar, the participants in a regatta. They seem a community, like-minded people joined by their common interest.

The other shows a single boat against a background that suggests an infinite expanse of sky and open sea. Three seagulls are flying by, but the feeling of solitude is palpable. Looking at these paintings stirred a number of reflections in me.

The isolation of the boat in Le Solitaire almost overwhelms me, especially when put in contrast with the closely connected group in Régate. It seems so alone, cut off from the rest of the world. Yet the prospect is thrilling as well as fearful . The solitary captain is completely in control of her fate, on a journey with no limits.
Life’s exigencies often put us in the position of that captain, driven apart from our communal roots and finding our own path through the clouds and waves. We know the same mixture of loneliness and anticipation, rejoicing in our self-reliance while regretting the loss of our former connections.

Exile and longing are themes that are explored by many artists, among them the Iranian-British visual artist Kourosh Salehi. His video Longing expresses the sadness of one who is cut off from his homeland. Combining Eastern and Western modes of expression, the generation of diaspora tries to resolve the discontinuity between their roots in a world that has now vanished and the familiar but not quite meaningful context of their present lives. The separation in time and space from where they once expected to spend their lives creates powerful feelings of longing and a desire for a new way of existence that can only emerge slowly and with great difficulty.

The music in the video is called Under this rock and is by British composer and musician Jocelyn Pook. Among her many accomplishments, Pook was chosen by legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to score his final picture, 1999′s Eyes Wide Shut.

Political events sometimes trigger artistic expression, but the universality of art transcends politics. The feelings of solitude and longing expressed in Lamber’ts paintings and in Kourosh Salehi’s video are the same, though the contexts are very different. By discovering the common themes underlying the works of artists, you get a deeper understanding of realities which shape our common histories and our personal ones.

The lone sailor in Le Solitaire faces a daunting journey through solitude, but with the freedom to shape her own destiny, I like to think that she will find her way to the warm embrace of like-minded friends in Régate à la Baie des Chaleurs.

The painting Solitude is available for sale through Chez Mana along with other of Sophie Lambert’s paintings.