Sent: March 18, 2003 - 9:23 AM
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This is an amazing day for feelings. Sent: March 18, 2003 - 9:23 AM
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I spent last night watching "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" with friends and room-mates and this morning playing/working out a bunch of beautiful new music that sounds sort of like Chopin that I hope to play tonight at UpStage. It was a bizzarre movie for me this time - it has been about 12 years since I saw it - and it was a very very sexy movie, the screen was filled with beautiful bodies, but none of the sex looked beautiful to me - it was all about this self-absorbed clueless guy having orgasms and it seemed like the sex portrayed always left the women in a very strange utterly unfulfilled state. My favorite metaphorical moment in the whole movie was when the two women are in front of the fire in the second phase of their erotic photography session and they are clearly almost ready to embrace one another and finally discover what each has been suspecting - that they really don't need guys - and then the new guy bursts in, uninvited, in a basket-case bout of high-drama, having just left his wife. That scene seemed like it perfectly encapsulated their whole situation - surrounding and defining their sexual oppression. Then I came back here to work, and crashed into my own feelings like hitting a wall. Today, I am all tangled up in full-tilt fight-or-flight level of frustration, writing to my Senators, etc, knowing that to a one they have abdicated and entrenched behind the administration. Tonight I have a performance - focused on raising hands and prevention of the war - that I look forward to, and yet by the time the show begins it will be daybreak in Iraq ... Here is what the letter I sent last out night has come down to ... Dear Maria (Cantwell) These are indeed amazing times. On the one hand, the legitimacy of war as a means of resolving problems between nations is being debated world-wide, for the first time in history. On the other hand, we appear to be inching as close to releasing the demons of global warfare as at any time in your life-time or mine. You supported the resolution authorizing the use of force, but stated clearly that this resolution does not endorse unilateral action. No one in the world outside a few lawyers believes that the alliance of Spain and England constitutes anything other than a tattered costume on a unilateral action, since the civilian populations, if not the leaders, of these "allies", like the majority of the people in the world, appear clear in their rejection of the unfolding U.S. policy. Today seems like an excellent time to step back and attempt to find a perspective on what is actually happening. The clearest analysis I can offer to you today is that the policy of attacking another nation because it "might" possess or be acquiring WMDs, while welcoming those who can demonstrate that they already possess them as our allies, assures that the nations of the world return immediately to WMD-based mutually assured destruction as the sole mechanism that constrains the use of imperial force. Unfolding of the new US policy based on preemption and unilateral action thus forces the world to accept that the possession of WMDs - be they chemical, biological or nuclear - has become a de facto requirement for nationhood. Likewise, the unbridaled use of our imperial force, unilaterally, against another nation, in contradiction of international law, fuels the recognition among a growing number of people of the world that nationhood, treaties and international law no longer provide a shred of useful protection against aggressors, thereby forcing the accceptance of terrorism as their sole recourse. Each situation - the demonstrated requirement to posses WMDs and the demonstrated failure of the most powerful nation on earth to follow the path of diplomacy and law - drastically increases the likelihood that such weapons will be used as instruments of terror in our lifetimes. And the convergence of these two situations turn civilian populations into targets, both here and abroad. Both you and the President were elected to prevent this from happening, not to assure it. Are you already familiar with this logic? Is it helpful? What more can I offer? |