When we tell our own stories, and especially when we tell the stories of countries or empires, it is easy to use the big, sometimes catastrophic events as the only reference points. "I moved here, lost this job, moved here, divorced, got sick, this person died, then I moved here. And here I am!" Or, with a history lesson about a country, "Iran was part of the Persian empire, then was invaded by the Ottomans, and then the Mongols..." (I don't actually know if that order is correct).
I went to a talk last night on Iran, and the presenter made some reference to the culture of Iran between the invasions that dominate its timeline. I much appreciated this. It made me think of how fiction illuminates the small dramas that give substance and animism to our lives. And not only that, but they highlight the dynamism of our inner lives - how we think, obsess, decide, ponder, worry, etc.
So this video gives a sense of contemporary Iranian history, using the timeline approach (I love John Green)
And this movie gives a sense of one family's drama.
I also read about this musical, which, while telling no story, reveals such an important part of the human experience by revealing some of our common neuroses. I am especially interested that the characters on stage in addition to the protagonist are the voices in his brain. From the review:
the only other characters in the show are Usher’s “Thoughts,” six hilarious, hyper-verbal, endlessly cruel archetypical shape-shifters. One moment, they’re abstract entities—self-loathing, sexual ambivalence, financial mishandling.
Thank goodness for art for showing us what goes on between the invasions and wars.
I went to a talk last night on Iran, and the presenter made some reference to the culture of Iran between the invasions that dominate its timeline. I much appreciated this. It made me think of how fiction illuminates the small dramas that give substance and animism to our lives. And not only that, but they highlight the dynamism of our inner lives - how we think, obsess, decide, ponder, worry, etc.
So this video gives a sense of contemporary Iranian history, using the timeline approach (I love John Green)
And this movie gives a sense of one family's drama.
I also read about this musical, which, while telling no story, reveals such an important part of the human experience by revealing some of our common neuroses. I am especially interested that the characters on stage in addition to the protagonist are the voices in his brain. From the review:
the only other characters in the show are Usher’s “Thoughts,” six hilarious, hyper-verbal, endlessly cruel archetypical shape-shifters. One moment, they’re abstract entities—self-loathing, sexual ambivalence, financial mishandling.
Thank goodness for art for showing us what goes on between the invasions and wars.
No comments:
Post a Comment