Christmas

All the Christmas movies are on TV. And there seem to be more every year. Of course, the older ones tend to be better, maybe because they’re not pure commercialism – although all movies are ultimately made for commercial reasons.

The funny thing is that, even when the movies are shown in the afternoon, there are commercials for “Preparation H”, an ointment for the relief of haemerrhoids. Not entirely appropriate. It makes you yearn for the days when there weren’t medications for haemerrhoids and “feminine itch”, so that it was socially acceptable to just scratch (maybe not entirely true, at least for people of the female persuasion).

I listened to an interesting program on the radio recently. Every year we hear the familiar cry: “Put the Christ back in Christmas”. The caller on the radio, obviously a devout Christian, was proposing a radical alternative: “Take Christ out of Christmas”. I’m sure I can’t reproduce his arguments exactly, but here’s the gist of it. Christmas has always had very little to do with Christ, mostly because he was a baby at the time, and had little to contribute other than looking cute. Easter, of course, is a totally different story, because he’d had time to experience life and all its lessons, and could offer meaningful commentary on the way on which we should live it. But Christmas … well, it has mostly become a commercial tradition (probably based largely on more ancient traditions anyway), from which Christ is slowly being elbowed out. So, rather than wait for the inevitable, why don’t we just rename “Christmas” as “Yuletide” (or whatever), give up the pretence, and concentrate on Easter as a Christian festival.

You’ll know already that I’m not particularly religious, in the accepted sense. I believe in Christian values, but I believe that they’re also Moslem values, and Jewish values, and Hindu values. And I believe in a higher power, with whom I can commune just as well outside a church (although there are times when communities or friends need to share, and church is an excellent place to do it) as in it. And so I can’t say that I oppose this viewpoint. I might even go further and endorse it – after all, we’re way past the point of de-commercialising Christmas.

Air travel

Air travel gets worse, not better. I understand that there’s increasing competition in the marketplace, so that “service” is cut to the bare minimum to keep the profit margin positive. I also understand that there’s constant pressure to keep the airlines safe from terrorism, even though it’s my personal belief that traveling by air has never been safer, and will only cease to be so when we drop our guard – and the terrorists have infinite patience. And I know that it makes economic sense to leave aircraft fuselages unpainted in order to save 100 lbs of weight that would increase fuel costs at a time when oil prices are spiraling out of control.

These things creep up on you unnoticed, until you travel, as I did today, with a couple from the “old school”. They remember days when you got dressed up to fly, when meals were recognizable (and were perhaps even preceded by a printed menu), when “wide-bodied” referred to the aircraft, and not the flight attendants, when “beverages”, alcoholic or otherwise, were free, and when both passengers and flight attendants were civil to each other.

Those days are gone, and the couple looked positively anachronistic – he, unmistakably British, in cord trousers and tweed jacket over a thin woolly jumper with blue-and-white striped shirt and regimental tie, grey and balding, with a frequent and annoying “foreign-office” “har-har-har” laugh; she, a Dallas native, on the obligatory annual trip to see relatives (although sacrificing neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas), in a smart twin-set and red court shoes with gold buckles, and an accent that was a curious attempt at a mixture of wealthy American and British upper class; they, talking, as if on stage, in slightly projected tones, so that everyone could receive the benefit of their insights and exploits, though, traveling in coach, they could clearly not afford to live in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed.

They seemed happy. No doubt they moved in circles that maintained their illusion, and remained largely impervious to the world outside (attempted conversations about contemporary films and music failed dismally). Nobody ever said change was for the better, and, for once, I agree with them.

Indian Festival

I was glad when this weekend arrived – work has been very stressful. Fortunately, the people I work with tend to relieve stress with humour, and that helps ease the tension. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I work with a lot of British expats, and we traditionally go out for curry at Friday lunchtime. This Friday, we started to discuss some of the stupider things we’d done as schoolboys. By far the best was a game that one of the guys used to play in the library. It’s delightfully simple: someone comes into the library, sits down, and whispers “bollocks” to the person next to him. The only rules are these: firstly, that person has to repeat the word to someone else; and secondly, he has to say it louder. Apparently, the game usually finishes with someone running out of the library screaming “bollocks” at the top of his voice. Who said all-boy schools were a bad idea!

So by the time the weekend came, I’d had no time to think of anything to do. Fortunately I heard on the local radio that there was an American Indian Festival in Dallas. It turned out to be very interesting (as unplanned things often do).

I parked the car, paid my $8 entrance fee, and quickly toured the site. I decided to eat first: Indian tacos from “Choctaw Vicki”. An interesting cross-cultural culinary experience. Very similar to Mexican tacos, but served on fried Indian bread. Indian bread is somewhat similar in taste and texture to, if you can imagine it, a savoury doughnut (and I mean an American doughnut, not the pale British imitation). It’s a risen dough, deep-fried, and very tasty. I picked an empty table and sat down on the hay bale that provided seating, to be approached by a young lady who asked if she could join me. I had no objection, particularly as there seemed to be many more tables than available seating. As she sat down, she slid her business card across to me, at the same time beckoning to her companion: “Rita – Michael Motorcycle Hair Salon”. “He’s my boss”, she said, as someone who looked remarkably like an aging biker approached. After they had been sitting for a couple of minutes, I broke the ice by asking if he was “Michael Motorcycle”. To cut a long story short, it turns out he was, and he was fascinated to discover that I was from England, because he had just been there doing interviews with the BBC. It seems that he does Jerry Hall’s hair, and she had been singing his praises in London, so that he’s now thinking about opening a salon in London. He invited me down to his ranch, but I didn’t go yet, mostly because he’s only just bought the land and hasn’t yet built the ranch. But it is in a very pretty part of Texas, on a hill with good views (and hills are rare in these parts), and the land is wall-to-wall Texas blue-bonnets in the Spring. He drew me a map, and said I was welcome to wander about the many trails, so I probably will one of these weekends.

After lunch, I watched Allenroy Paquin on stage. He’s an Apache-Zuni dancer, musician and story-teller. From him I learned that there are 563 American Indian tribes that are officially recognized by the American government. Now we’ve all heard of the Apache, Cherokee, Choctaw, Zuni, Hopi, Seminole, etc., but 563! How many of these will manage to survive after the appalling treatment they received at the hands of “the white man” I don’t know. The systematic attempt at their genocide is, tactfully, hardly ever mentioned by them; and, conveniently, mostly forgotten by us. He was a softly spoken man, and passionate about his heritage and his art.

He told a story that I will repeat here. I won’t get it exactly right, of course, but then he probably didn’t either – that’s what story-telling is all about. But it’s still his story.

“There was once a time when all creatures could talk to each other, and lived in harmony. And in that time there were two sisters who loved each other very much. They loved to play together, and especially they loved to dance. And the time they loved to dance best of all was at twilight – when the weary day was done, but the night was still fresh and young, and the silver moon cast hazy shadows on the ground.

“One evening, they noticed an owl, high up in a tree. They climbed up to the lowest branches, sat down, and looked up at the owl. ‘Hooo, hooo, who are you?’ said the owl. The older sister replied, ‘We are sisters, and we love the moon. In fact, we hope to marry the moon one day.’.

“The owl said, ‘If you love the moon so much, I’ll tell you a story about it:

“When the world was new, monsters roamed the land and terrified the people, and so all the tribes came together and agreed that they should slay all the monsters. But nobody came forward to volunteer, except for one. This brave man single-handedly went out amongst the monsters, and slayed them all. When he returned to his village, they gave him a new name. It was an Indian name of course, and so wouldn’t really mean anything to you, but, translated, it means “Monster Slayer”. They also gave him the highest honour that could be bestowed on anyone: a pure white buckskin robe that was dazzling just to look at. As time went by, Monster Slayer became restless, because there were no more monsters to slay; so he announced that he was going to the Moon, to slay all the monsters there and make it safe for the people of the Moon. Everyone thought he was crazy, but he ignored them. He made a huge bow and arrow from the largest trees he could find, and when he was finished, he took a length of rope, and tied one end to the arrow, and the other to himself. As the Moon came up, he pulled back the bow as far as he could, and unleashed the arrow. It shot up in the air, over the water, and disappeared from view; then the rope went taut, and Monster Slayer, too, went up in the air, over the water, and disappeared from view. The people thought he must surely have drowned, but their curiosity brought them back to the same spot the following evening, when they saw that the Moon shone brighter than ever – they thought it could only be the light reflected from Monster Slayer’s white buckskin robe.”

‘Go home now and pray, and if you pray hard enough, you may be able to marry the Moon.’

“And so the two sisters went home and prayed for four days and four nights, until they fell into a deep sleep. And as they fell asleep, they heard a distant voice saying, ‘If you want to marry me, you must be patient. You must keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.’ The two sisters could feel themselves being lifted up, and hear the wind rushing by their ears. This went on for so long that the younger sister couldn’t resist opening her eyes to see what was happening. The instant she did, she started falling back to earth, but, just as she was about to hit the ground, she woke up from a deep sleep. She turned to tell her sister what had happened, but her sister wasn’t there.

“Meanwhile the older sister heard a voice telling her to open her eyes. When she did, Monster Slayer was standing before her, and she squinted at the light reflected from his glorious robe. Monster Slayer said to her, ‘I bow to no-one except you, and now we shall be married’. He took her by the hand, and she smiled, because she could hear faint music that was growing stronger; it was a tune she recognized, that she had heard many times before: the Indian Wedding Song. And she was happy.”

And at that point, Allenroy Paquin played the Indian Wedding Song on his flute: a plaintive, haunting melody that I’m sure is as evocative to Native Americans as the Wedding March is to us.

Discover India

The local TV station website told me that the annual “Discover India” celebrations were happening today in Annette Strauss Artist Square, in downtown Dallas. It was free, and so automatically wins out over truck-racing at the Texas Motor Speedway (which I’d love to go to, just once, but not for $25), or Cirque du Soleil (at a whopping $195!), or the last weekend of the State Fair (I saw enough fat Texans last year).

So I headed towards Dallas, and parked 100 yards from the supposed site. Since it starts at noon, and it’s already 11:55am, I’m already thinking that something’s wrong. Either I’ve got the date wrong, or Annette Strauss has, because it’s completely empty. I walk over a block towards the “Arts District” (which is difficult to fit in the same sentence with “Dallas” and still sound credible), and find two of Dallas’ finest on their bicycles (yes, bicycles – and this is probably just as well, given that, as they freely admit, 20% of the Dallas Police Department’s motorized vehicles are out of commission at any one time, and most of the others are older than they legally allow taxicabs to be). I ask them where the “Discover India” activity is, and they don’t know; they call into their central command station, and they don’t know either. I thank them, walk one block, and fall over it. Not only is the street blocked off, but there are joint exhibits with the Dallas Museum of Art, the Childrens’ Museum, and the Crow Museum of Asian Art. I’m beginning to think that the first “D” in “DPD” doesn’t stand for “Dallas”.

It was small, but delightful. A street market with about 20 stalls, with a stage at one end. The first act was a group of 7-8 year olds, performing classical Indian dance. They had to stop half way through because the sun had heated up the outdoor stage, and they were dancing in bare feet. Resourcefully, the organizers quickly laid carpet, and everything continued, albeit half an hour behind schedule. I lunched on Chicken Tikka Masala with Mango lemonade, and watched Indian classical dance, “Bollywood” dance, and classical ragas on violin and tabla (it was difficult for me to tell when they had stopped tuning and started the raga – but that’s my ignorance rather than their imperfection). I never cease to be amazed at the range of sound that can be produced from what look like a simple pair of drums, although the violin, being fretless, is ideally suited to producing music based on a musical scale radically different from our own.

Before heading back to the hotel, I visited the Dallas Museum of Art. I concentrated on European art, and Contemporary art, because there’s rather too much to take in all at one go. To my eyes, “contemporary” art is 50% thought-provoking and 50% rubbish. At the same time, there are some whose views are diametrically opposed to mine, just as there are some poor souls who think that it will be a good idea to vote for George Bush on November 2^nd.

Motorcycle Diaries

I saw two movies today. I’d only planned on “Motorcycle Diaries”, but then a colleague at work recommended “Primer”, which is only released to four theatres in the US this weekend. Since one was local, I had to take advantage of it.

“Motorcycle Diaries” was not easy to find. An award winner at Sundance, it was generally released in late September, but seems now to be relegated to the smaller independent theatres. So I found myself in the precocious “West End Village” of Dallas, surrounded by the Mercedes-driving, Starbucks-drinking, NY Times-reading Sunday morning crowd. The movie is based on the early, formative years in the life of Ernesto Guevara (to become later better known as “Che”), and his “road trip” across South America from his home in Argentina shortly before he was to graduate as a medical student specializing in leprosy. It starts as a tale of two young men, one frivolous, womanizing and seeking adventure, one more deep-thinking, and probably in search of his destiny, as well as accompanying his best friend. Both young men grow to adulthood during the journey, and their attitude to life changes until they are similarly idealistic. Their paths separate at the end of the movie, but they are re-united again some 11 years later in Cuba. Che was, of course, later captured in Colombia as part of the revolutionary movement, and executed with the CIA’s tacit approval. Some of the images in the movie, of dis-enfranchised natives of Peru, Chile or Venezuela will live with me for a long time. Think of it, perhaps, as a “Michael Palin” documentary, but from the perspective of the have-nots.

“Primer” is a self-confessed low-budget movie. It’s been reviewed as a movie you either love or hate; having seen it, I interpret this to mean that it’s a movie you either understand, or you don’t. The plot makes “Donnie Darko” look straightforward; I’d like to say it was science fiction, but it almost defies categorization – it challenges our idea of “time” in the same way that Sartre challenged our idea of “being”, and is a movie that I think you have to watch more than once. But then maybe I’m just getting slower.

I wouldn’t recommend either of these movies generically; I’d simply say that, if these are the kind of movies you like, you’ll like these movies. I certainly did.