I was going to write something witty about artists with obsessive compulsive love for their sneakers or a post musing on the irony of nerds who become super stars, or something about the pattern of zero to hero and back again. Learning to drive feels like a constant process of that. As for the trials and tribulations of detoxing, well, I've got a book coming on that.
But today I'm feeling a bit more reflective - a bit more interested in things beyond the sunny streets of Surry Hills and Sydney in summer. I'm totally consumed and preoccupied with this whole situation in Gaza. It's one of those taboos that we're not really allowed to talk about. We can talk about any other conflict in the world, we can talk about sex, drugs, rock n roll. Even about abortion. But the whole Israel-Palestine thing is something that everyone prefers to side step. Elephant in the room perhaps?
I don't know quite why it's politically incorrect to talk about it.
Maybe it's something about a collective guilt and shame for what happened in Europe at the beginning to middle of last century. Or something about a collective unease and confusion over how the situation works - both sides provoke each other - and both sides have people who don't agree with the actions of the side they've been born on. It's just that one side has bigger, more deadly infrastructure behind it and so causes more damage. Both sides have casualties. It's just that one side has way more deaths of mostly women, children and elderly folk.
It's also something about our uneasy feeling that The Middle East is a foreign and wild place and they have cultural ways we don't understand and they constantly, subtly and sometimes overtly, get cast in our television programs and movies as The Bad Guys. As Terrorists. Even though you're educated and know that's not the case, but, well, maybe you feel a bit uneasy. It's all very confusing. Everyone seems very passionate about it - I mean this thing has been going on for more than 50 years so what's conversation going to do to change anything? Maybe it's easier to just ignore it.
Anyway, who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Is it that simple? And why is Speak the Hungarian Rapper the biggest and most eloquent spokesperson on this?
1 comment:
Miss A - I'm not sure that it is taboo, but a sense of deja vu continues to recur - that the situation never develops from one year to another. It's a terrible shame (on us) because so many lives are impacted so drastically by the conflict. But dare I say it - in this part of the world I do think a certain amount of fatigue on the subject has set in. No one knows what to say, or do. Bravo to you for bringing it up! Perhaps we should continue discussion over a mocktail (with a secret dash of vodka in mine) later this week? Keen for some hang time...
Px
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