Posted by pancho (148.244.221.75) on November 14, 2001 at 12:13:20:
The Architect And The Emperor of Assyria
This was the title of a play my mother, her brother and their parents went to see in San Francisco in the 60’s. I was surprised at the time that they went. Going to professional theatre, or any kind of live performance of a play, was not something I ever thought they would have done. It turned out that there was nothing in the play about an emperor of Assyria, or any architect either. That had been bad enough but halfway through the first act the two characters on the stage squatted down and took a theatrical dump on stage, pulling their pants down and all…my family trooped out of there in disgust and fury.
In the lobby they demanded to see the manager of the theatre who finally arrived on the scene to see what all the noise was about. My uncle insisted they get their money back, said this had been a blatant case of false advertising…that there had been no mention of Assyria on the stage, no Assyrian props or backdrops, that the actors had worn no Assyrian costumes, or much of any costumes, that there had been no mention of any architects or architecture, and to top it off…the two had pretended to go to the bathroom on the stage…pulling their pants down to do it, which was not only highly offensive but cast aspersions on the good name of Assyria for no emperor of Assyria would do such a thing…accompanied by his architect no less.
The bewildered manager held his ground…tried to explain about plays and Art and all of that but to no avail. My family insisted they had been cheated and there was precious little Art in a play that could be so offensive and historically inaccurate. They left after having given the poor fellow an earful and I’m sure he has never been as equally startled in all his life. The play closed soon after that. Those of you too young to remember that era of experimental theatre when every production of Shakespeare had to have a nude scene…when even the Royal Dutch Ballet company danced an entire ballet in the nude and all sorts of other things were being tried out in the name of Art…wont understand the fuss. A lot of garbage was pawned off as experimental theatre…but a lot of good stuff was produced too. I guess that’s how life is for those who are non Assyrian and make mistakes along the way. We Assyrians have found out how not to make those sorts of embarrassing gaffes…we don’t do anything at all…like the kid who keeps his clothes and morals clean by never leaving his living room.
The narrow definition we maintain of Art and culture may keep us pure, but it keeps us infantile as well. Assyrian artists, who insist on it, must fight their families first, then the community, after which they finally turn their backs on us all and go to the white man. Richard Benjamin, Terrence Malik, Mr Magoo and many many more artists we’ve had…have gone on to success in the theatre world and other places and never once looked back. Why would they…why would they ever forget the crippling definitions and conditions placed upon them, like lead weights on new and fragile wings. The things we allow, the things we condone, the things we support, if that is the word for it…are of so primitive and limited a nature that no really artistic spirit could withstand the claustrophobia in the community when it comes to things that have to soar and fly above the narrow confines of propriety and art, as we define it, or historical accuracy and what is allowed to exist in a dead Kings closet…or it and they will die aborning.
You can see the kinds of things I get subjected to and wonder how someone younger, someone with less acid in his head and tongue could endure. Think of Rabel Schmoel, who at nineteen years of age presented a painting of his to the hometown crowd in Chicago…only to have it unceremoniously removed because he used the color purple…the “official” color of ZOWAA, in a “sad” way…and therefore must have been attacking Assyrians…there’s that word again…”attacking”.
How do you survive these kinds of assaults and keep your wits and your heart sound and strong when there are so many dangers and pitfalls in the market out there to deal with…out there where artists from every nation are contending with all their might for attention and sales and exposure and the chance to earn enough to keep going, to experiment a little, take a few chances, dig a little more deeply cause who knows what gold you might strike… or coal…and all the time you too want a family and some mere hope of a shred of security to raise a child or two with….where there is enough to fear and prepare for and steel your nerves against without having to have your teeth kicked out first by your family, “friends” and community.
And before you ever hit your stride or gain any confidence, along comes one of your own people, supposedly, one who doesn’t have the courage it takes to give his name, when you are willing to give your blood, and takes off after you, smugly putting words together, oh so easily and effortlessly, slamming you and damning you in the guise of getting the details right…pointing out wee little “errors”… spreading rumors about you as if he hated you for something awful…maybe something as awful as the fact that he is ashamed, too ashamed to own up to his identity even…ashamed and jealous that for all the risks involved, for all the harsh words and doubts and worries conveyed to you as you stand, fearful enough on your own account…words intended to pluck you back into the nest, words intended to at least bend your wings a little…and all of them delivered with assurances that your own interests motivate these words…or a concern for historical accuracy, or the Truth…and why are you so excited when they are just words…but not to you, the one who has to leap out of that nest into god knows what and take your hopes and pride and self esteem and family with you, while he stays cowering and cringing at home…unable himself to peek out over the edge let alone stand there for a moment and look beyond.
You gotta be tough and tender to make it in this world…tough enough to protect the tender side of you, cause it’s that side the poetry and visions come from. You can’t just be a poet…at least not in my line and not the way I’ve chosen to do it. That’s why I came on the way I did, and why there isn’t an Assyrian alive that would dare meet me in an alley or on a stage, and the best they can do is attack my father, my family and children…when they aren’t spreading rumors and trying to wreck my career. They aren’t interested in Art or Assyria or any of the things they claim motivate them. They are dedicated to mediocrity because that’s the only way they can maintain the fiction that they are what they claim to be…and my attitude, my words and most of all my work, gives them the lie and they know it…and this is exactly what the lawsuit will be about. It took awhile for the lawyer to grasp the full dimensions of the beast, but he’s got it now and it’s taking time only because he has to research areas of the law he’s never seen come up before in this same context.
He couldn’t understand it at first…and if you step back somewhat, you’d be puzzled too…and people not connected to this community will be even more aghast at what we’ve become accustomed to, much to our shame…if we had any room left to see it.
Why would a community allow its organizations, and why would the leadership of those organizations, take the steps they have taken to ruin work they at the same time sponsor and have given money to. I am the only one who has brought this kind of attention and notoriety to our Heritage in the arts…as an Assyrian. It’s not a question of whether I am the greatest sculptor among us, I know my limitations better than anyone…and how I’ve kept myself limited, intentionally, in order to make these kinds of sculptures and to endure the humiliations heaped on my head…especially by those calling themselves supporters and friends.
What is it…or what was it, that brought about the kinds of treatment I still receive. It has nothing to do with the quality of the work…nothing at all for we applaud loudly many an untalented or unmotivated person among us…just look at what we give awards to as Man and Woman of the Year. The reaction against me has nothing to do with historical accuracy either for we never mount any expeditions ourselves…we produce no real experts of our own…we have never supported an Assyrian to go learn cuneiform and speak and decipher on our behalf…but have stood idly by accepting as historical whatever a scientist of the month tells us we were…and when they correct themselves, we believe the next version and on and on…and we call this scientific accuracy and historical truth, when it’s used as a club, as in this case, to beat someone down for other reasons…reasons too ugly to admit to, even anonymously.
What exactly is the problem with me…as far as the community is concerned. The experts and leaders and thinkers in the community that is, I’ve enough support among regular people. It’s the leadership that has the problem with me…and it is with ME they have the problem…for most of them care little for the work anyway. I must be a challenge to their status, to their lock on their self appointed roles as leaders and movers and shakers. In any contest with any of them, I don’t care whom, I could beat them out hands down, flat, and they know it. And not just me, but several of any of us if we just bothered. But we don’t and I do, maybe that’s what it all comes down to. They will gladly drive away anyone who threatens their position, no matter how shallow or comical and insignificant that position is…do you suppose anyone in the world needs to hear from Nimrod or Jackie or the AANF. But people WILL stop in front of the monuments, they WILL take a second glance at a kind of sculpture their dim knowledge told them didn’t exist any longer. I’m not the only one among us who can do these things, and I’m certainly not the best we can produce…let’s hope not or we can all pack up and go home. But I AM the one doing it, and they would vent their fear and rage against anyone else who dared do it.
My real artistry may not lie in sculpture or writing or speaking at all…my real skill may be what my teachers said of me long, long ago…that I had a knack for figuring out a person’s weak points, and their strengths as well…their inner fears and vulnerabilities, and I seemed to be able to play upon those as on a musical instrument…and masterfully too. They said I was especially adept at driving people to their very limits…pulling back at will just as they reached a breaking point…then doing it again and as often as I pleased. More than one of them said that about me and I guess it must be true. I mentioned that to Jackie a while ago and she laughed it off…a little nervously I think.
Perhaps all the sculpture and monuments and collections and all of it has just been a way to bring this leadership from hell to their knees…and they sense it My lawyer would be pissed as hell that I write like this, with a trial looming in the near future. But he needn’t worry…my instinct will serve me well. I know people are copying what I write and think to use it as evidence of my bad character etc…or hope to find in it clues for their defense…or holes in my position. I know it.
All I will say is that it wont be the first time I provided the rope for them to hang themselves with. They have no idea of what it’s like to sit on that witness stand, in front of a room full of curious spectators and have to answer questions put to them…questions they can’t dodge any longer and had better not even appear to be dodging…questions they could easily escape from outside a courtroom…questions they have NO PRACTICE at answering because they never bothered to even think about them…or what kind of an answer they COULD give. And I’ll be happy…eager to answer any and all questions put to me…eager and willing.
The things they may think they can say about me in court…will all be ruled inadmissible and just as Dadeesho made an idiot of himself in court…as the judge said his comments were long on rhetoric and short on logic…so will the trial judge have no time or interest in statements about the historical accuracy of my sculptures or how I ATTACK Assyrians on the net…or how I act like I’m so special etc. These will all be beside the point, the legal points under which the suit is being brought and to which the other side has to confine themselves…if he bothered with it the judge would tell them to go sue me for being historically inaccurate , or thinking too much of myself…or talking back aggressively etc.
This is a trial about much more than ruining one artist’s career. It will explore what it is, what it has been, that has kept us locked within ourselves…too afraid or unwilling to express who we are as Assyrians…for fear of what the leadership will do to us….for it has always been them and never the outside world. And what is this leadership…who is it made of…what are they and what have they tried to achieve. You can’t just cry for Nineveh, “Oh Nineveh”. It isn’t enough to weep in front of the judge, or a statue…appearing to be so moved that you can’t speak or talk or think straight. For god’s sake I see more to cry about than any of these leaders of ours, because I not only see poor Nineveh…but I see how useless and hypocritical tears are…how a lot of this service for Nineveh is phony, is motivated by a need to cover up the guilt they feel at doing nothing of any substance or worth…or taking advantage of Nineveh to line their own egos with. That’s why they’re all so convinced I’m working on my ego as well…as those who are making a buck off of Nineveh are convinced I must be too.
And this will sink them faster than anything…this making a buck thing. The lawyer had to have it explained to him three times, and written down, before he grasped the utter silliness…for lack of a better word…of an artist with three children to support…selling his sculpture and using the proceeds to build monuments at cost…skipping any profit or prospects…and on top of it, being blocked and hindered and tossed out along the way. In their fear and anger these people have neglected to think about how their actions will square in an American court of law…in a country that allows and defends the rights of people to paint Madonnas with elephant crap and make all the money they can from their work…good or bad.
All of this will be aired in court…and the best part is that I will be able to speak on my own behalf…I’ll be able to question John and Jackie and Alladin and Alphonse and Atour…and for the first time in their lives there will be people present, other people…people trained in these sorts of things, listening in on the questions and answers. This is a trial about the Assyrian community, in America especially…and it is something that ultimately has to be held in the open, before the largest audience we can get. That’s the only way to show each other and the world what we really are…what we have been…and maybe, just maybe…point to an entirely new direction for the generations to come.
It had to happen sometime…and I’m just the right bastard to do it.