The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Farewell to the Utterly Unique John Ross

Re: Farewell to the Utterly Unique John Ross
Posted by Marcello (Guest) georgiomalik@yahoo.com - Thursday, January 20 2011, 2:36:45 (UTC)
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Unfortunately, the days of the mom and pop shops are gone. I remember back in the 90s when I was employed at a bookstore's coffee bar, across the street from where I was taking courses at a community college, how excited I was to work in a place where we could put on poetry shows, art exhibits and talk about ways we can improve things in the community. Of course, with the rise of the super-bookstores, the owner was forced to sell the place and with it was gone the wonderful nights of poetry, pot and pretty little hippie girls dancing in their loose skirts.. somehow we tried to continue the spirit of the 60s but just as the 60s ended, so did our little experiment in that sweet little corner of time in the 90s. Maybe we were being naive or even pretentous, but our intentions were to be creative and share our creativity to bring about something better for ourselves and those around us.

What I learned from that time in my twenties, was that I didn't believe in violence: either getting my head kicked in or bashing in someone else's head. I still don't believe in violence, what I do believe in is the power of the imagination, the power of art. It is through art in which we can reach the universal, the historic, the imortal. Not all people are fortunate to be aritistic, but they all have the senses through which their imagination can be fired up to shape a different consciousness. A conscousness that can understand the poverty of eating potatoes when one looks at Van Gogh's "The Potatoe Eaters," or the the price of bloodshed and destruction when one takes in Picasso's "Guernica".

The only way that my head has been bashed and kicked has been through the works of art. And although I'm not an artist or one who can deeply understand all the subtlities of aritistic works, I am always moved by the creative energy that art offers. My hope is that we can all tap into our creative imagination and release the artist in each one of us.

Having said that, I don't live in the occupied territories of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Nor do I live in Iraq or anywhere in the world were the only option left is the last resort to violence to defend oneself. It seems rather ridiculous to tell someone living under the circumstances of a modern "Guernica" (Fallujah) about how I can relate to their suffering through Picasso.



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