Shifting

A few months ago I lost a journal of mine.  This is a journal I carry around with me, almost like an anthropologist might carry around a notebook to take notes in; that is what I used this book for.  See, most people think if you use the word 'journal' you are writing down what you've been doing throughout the day, or how you feel throughout the day.  Some of those things were included in my journal, but more often this book contained things I saw, things I learned, things I thought about that I wanted to remember.

I've been telling myself I'll find this journal of mine because there are some things in it that I sorely miss and regret losing.  One thing I miss that was in this notebook were 5-10 pages (small pages, given) of notes I took on a tour my family and I took of Downtown LA's movie theatres.  It’s a tour put on by volunteers, organized by USC on different parts of Downtown LA.  My family and I had been on one of these tours before, but when a friend was visiting LA with me, I asked if we could go on another tour, and my father decided on the theatres tour.

I fell in love.  To the extent that I just wanted to study Los Angeles history, film history, and historical theatres around the Los Angeles area.  I love movies; I love the theatres; I love going to the theatres to watch movies, and I love history.  It seemed perfect.  We walked around Los Angeles for over two hours learning about the different theatres, some abandoned, some altered into storefronts for electronics stores, or jewelry stores, others altered into churches, and some used for special occasions but no longer used on a day-to-day basis.  I thought it was all fascinating.  I took so many notes.  I drew pictures of the things I saw, and drew maps of the streets I turned onto.  I wrote about what these places were, I wrote about what they are now, and I wrote about the stories told about these places.  Los Angeles.  Movies.  Gosh, I miss those notes and I pray that when God resurrects me, he will return all lost items to me.

Have you seen Psyche?  Remember that episode where they know a man who can find any lost object?  I need him.  I hope this book turns up.

But I think these notes I took, and this tour I took of downtown Los Angeles helped me realize how much I love cities.  See, I've always known I loved cities, but I always thought that because we as Latter-day Saints are such "Romantics" (notice the capital R) we attach this romantic notion to nature.  I think I like nature, but I don't share the feeling that without nature I'd die.  I don't need wide open spaces in the literal sense, because I get it in the figurative sense when you're in the middle of a city crowded with people and yet alone.  Its a wonderful feeling.  And I don't mind being anonymous.  I also don't mind being around so many people because we share a camaraderie that I love.

It is the love I have for Los Angeles, and every major city I've been in--San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, London, Paris--that led me to this decision to go the route of Urban Studies within my field study.  I love African American history and I want to learn about it, and jazz, and I want to read about the African American expatriates, but I realized that I want to know about their experience in the city, and I want to know about the culture of the city.  The people are important to me, but in the city the culture isn't held by the people--it's held by the city itself.  It's carried in every brick or cobblestone, every layer of paint, and every broken tile.  The place holds something different.

The people in Los Angeles have changed considerably in the last fifty years, but the place still has a power to it that you can feel when you wander the streets, and it's been there longer than the people who inhabit the streets now.  I think that's important, that people bring culture, but sometimes place is embedded with culture and it's okay to study that too.  I want to take that approach with Paris as I discover Paris and the culture of Paris.  It is this idea that the place itself has embedded within it a culture that allows me and mandates that I go to the city to truly understand what these African American expatriate musicians felt and went through upon moving to Paris and working in Paris and making a home for themselves in a city with a culture that predated them, or anyone around them.

This makes going to Paris necessary.  This makes the location integral and I've been struggling with expressing that or explaining or justifying those ideas even to myself.  But I also think it's an important shift in my field study and realizing why I'm going.  It's not about these African American expatriates necessarily, but the city and learning how to think about the city, read about the city, and talk about the city in a way that expresses this theory that the city is a living organism that contains more than just the people living within it.  But the city is a big place, and one way to study the city is to study peoples' interactions with the city and that's where the American expatriates come in.  To know where they worked gives me a place to start.  To know who they were and their experiences gives me a comparison.  To listen and read their creations gives me tangible evidence of their experience which I couldn't have just by walking through the city alone.

I love these ideas, and I also love that this applies not only to my field study and to Paris but to the city I came from which started this whole thing.  It gives a lot more interest to all the places I'll be going and things I'll be doing.  I need to rewrite my proposal now.  Excuse me.

Ethics of History

"There are different kinds of love and each, according to the Fitz, is never like the other." - Rachel's ofdeerfolk

Um.  So, I totally found a source on the Ethics of History (not the History of Ethics), and I kind of want to give this some more thought, and also I mentioned today in class that it'd be a good post to write about.  So here goes it.

As indicated by my annotated source for Wednesday, this source has a chapter that outlines the three responsibilities of a historian: 1.) to be "advocates of collective memory and responsible for its order."  2.) to be "responsible for the future insofar as it is a matter of their representation of the past." and 3.) to be "responsible for taking over the heritage of the past," doing "justice to the people of the past and..." coming "to terms with crimes and horrors which belong to this heritage" (Carr 197).

I love this idea.

I wish I were a historian.  Also, history is not dead!  And I like the idea of being an advocate of the collective memory, responsible for its order.  I think that means not only uncovering lost truths, but learning and holding on to known truths so it passes through the ages.  This is why I want to learn about these people who played music and lived in Paris, because their experience was also an American one and I don't want it to be forgotten, but I also don't want it to go unnoticed.  I think there are ethics to not letting history be forgotten.  But I also think there are ethics to being expansive and open-minded about the history that really is, and never making a decision.

"The time to make up your mind about people is never." - The Philadelphia Story

I would add, no matter how long they've been dead, you should always take in new information, ESPECIALLY if it will change the way you see a human being.

But I also look at this history in a very real way as my responsibility to the future.  I like the idea of the past reflecting onto the future.

I think the biggest relationship to ethics, however, is in the 3rd point: being responsible for taking over the heritage of the past, doing justice to the people of the past and coming to terms with crimes and horrors which belong to this heritage.  I believe this is important because it implies staying away from the interpretations of history done by others, and making your own decisions.  It means staying away from the stereotypes or decisions people made about others in the past to interpret history at this time and place.  We do this particularly with the horrors of war where we refuse to teach some of the worst parts of history.  But ethically, it is important not to dredge up old hurts, but to see people in the context of those hurts, and when dealing with history I think its particularly important not to color things in a rainbow of goodness for it is much too hard to understand people, their motivations or their intentions if we forget the trauma they went through or the challenges they faced.  As an example, I think it would be ethically wrong to portray the 20s as a time of great fun, new ideas, liberal lives, and wonderful pervading ideals of equality and love for all men.  Sure we remember the flappers and the speakeasies, the great clothes, and the freedom from tradition and strictures.  But it's important to remember also that there were race riots, horrible acts of violence, overspending and reckless living that led to the Great Depression, the racketeering, the murders, scandals, the breakdown of familial relationships, and the oversimplifying of the issues that pervaded the time period.  I think it is far more ethical to make educated guesses about people living at the time when they are taken in the context of the trauma, "crimes and horrors which belong to [their] heritage."

I think there are incredible ethics to writing and representing and learning history.  I think it means endless reading and research, open-mindedness, and a willingness to take all stories into account as possibly true, while checking sources to confirm it.

un bonheur ordinaire, est-il possible?

Je sais que je ne comprendrai tous les chose.  Mais je peux essayer.

Elle me dit, qu'elle aimerait changer d'air

C'est vrai que par ici, les vies prennent la poussière

Elle me dit, qu'elle voudrait voir la mer

D'autres pays, un bonheur ordinaire

Elle me dit, qu'on pourrait se défaire

De ces utopies, qui rendent nos nuits amères

Elle me dit, ses doutes et ses colères

Comme aujourd'hui, lassée de toucher Terre

Même si notre histoire peine à s'écrire, j'ai le scénario

Même si l'on s'égare dans l'intro

J'ai, tu as tout ce qui me faut, j'ai tout ce qu'il te faut

Elle me dit, le pire et le meilleur

Le bleu et le gris, mes poches vide à toute heure

Elle me dit, que l'issue lui fait peur

Que je m'appuie sur trop d'apesenteur

"Elle Me Dit" - Ben L'oncle

God made this man for me.  A black, french, blues/soul chanteur.  Il n'y a rien de mieux.

I've been studying this song for a while now.  Je l'aime parce qu'elle lui disais "ses doutes et ses colères" mais il ne demande rien d'elle.  Within the first two lines he validates her doubts, her need for a change of scenery, "It's true, that here life gathers dust."  And with the rest of the song, he need not validate her, because you know he's listening, he respects her views, and is free to go along with them, because he believes she's right.  And why not?  For she has some beautiful ideas.  "She tells me, we could get rid of these utopias that make our nights bitter."  Une belle idée, n'est-ce pas?  Se défaire de ces utopies--les utopies qui n'existent pas--qui rendent les nuits amères.  Parce que c'est alors seulement qu'ils écrire leur propre scénario, et trouver "un bonheure ordinaire."

And I love her worries, her "doubts."  Tired of touching the ground.  Relying too much on weightlessness.  And he's going along with it.  Je l'aime parce qu'elle sait qui sait qu'elle peut lui dire ces choses, sans de jugement.  She's not holding anything back, you know?  And he, he's just telling us.

I think we fear that quite often--that when we tell others what we want out of something--life, maybe--that we will be judged for it.  I can't remember the last time I told anyone what I really wanted out of life, or why.  But the more no one asks, the less I care what my answer is.  The more I do what I can, what I want, without worrying that I'm pleasing anyone but myself, and God maybe.  I think that's an important part of this learning process.  That maybe it's not so much about the project I want to do but just being.  Finding that raison d'être as we would say the french would say.  Or maybe finding les raisons d'être pour les autres.

Isn't that what I really want? C'est la musique, non?  Pour tout le monde.  It's a big part of everything, I think.  And I take a long time to realize what its for.  Healing, maybe?  I'm just thinking now.  But what I mean to say, is that what I really want is to come back to the things that keep me sane.  Music.  Writing.  Curiosity.  Fairness.  Learning.  Exploration.  People.  And so maybe what I need to do is leave this "project" alone for a little while, and focus on what I want to get out of this experience, sans le projet.

History is not Dead

I fell into the field of American Studies more by accident than on purpose.  And what a happy accident it turned out to be.  In high school History had always been my favorite classes, but my favorite subject was always American History and Literature, Government and Economics, and how they all fit together.  Hence American Studies sounded perfect.  Later in my college career, I discovered I hated the History Department and it's view of history, as though history was finished, complete, done with, over; dead.  For me, in my study of history, this is definitely not the case.

In 2010, while I was at home for an 8 month break from school, there was a day I can remember rather clearly when the Armenians in my neighborhood flew flags on their cars and outside of their houses, had parties, were celebrating something.  Most of the flags I saw were of an Armenian flag, which made me assume a holiday of some sort, but later in the day I saw the Armenian flag with the words 'ARMENIAN GENOCIDE' printed onto them.  I remember my younger sister asking my why the Armenians would be celebrating genocide--let alone genocide of their own people, and all I could respond with was, 'I doubt they're celebrating it, exactly...'

Then in winter 2011 when I took a Political Science class, I did research on my home congressman Brad Sherman, and looked at some of the Resolutions he had been involved in passing, and among them--in March of 2010--was the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, despite the Turkish refusal to recognize it as such.  Sherman addressed the House saying, "We can not be cowered into denying the first genocide of the twentieth century, because genocide denial is not just the last step of the genocide is the first step in the next genocide.  That is why Hitler, when faced with wavering compatriots, could say 'We can get away with the Holocaust, for after all, who today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?'"  What the Armenians in my town were celebrating was the recognition that the massacre they suffered was in fact one of the first war-crimes of the Great War.

Over a decade ago, in 2001, France passed a law recognizing the Armenian genocide, despite the economic retribution promised them by the Turks.  Now, only 3 years from the 100-year mark of the Armenian Genocide, France is voting to pass a law making it illegal to publicly deny that the 1.5 million killed in Armenia was genocide.  Sarkozy is criticized for deciding to pass this law, as it is seen as an attempt to regain popularity among the Armenians for the coming elections, but regardless, the Armenian President, Serge Sarkissian wrote, "La France a réaffirmé sa grandeur et son pouvoir, son dévouement pour les valeurs humaines universelles."  ("France has reaffirmed her greatness and power, her devotion to universal human values.")

Recognizing the war crimes committed against the Armenians as genocide is an important subject to me, and is why I read up about it for my current-event newspaper article.  But what is more important to me is the idea of history in retrospect, that some great wrong committed in the past can still be acknowledged in the present, and that learning about it in the present changes the past in some small way.  History is not dead, for if it were, the world would not be moving toward the recognition of the Armenian genocide.  History is still being used to swing political favor, to validate economic goals, and to correct past "social wrongs."  And it's not just happening in a vacuum: Armenians affect Armenians and the French affect the French, and the Americans affect the Americans.  We're more connected than that, and history is more connected to our present than we give it credit for.

This is a small taste of what I would like my project to do: look at history in a new way with the intent of changing how we interpret the present.

More:
Brad Sherman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFCAXW7ta1Q&feature=colike
In English: http://www.france24.com/en/20120123-genocide-armenia-turkey-france-sarkozy-denial-sanctions
In French: http://www.20minutes.fr/monde/865854-loi-francaise-genocide-armenien-turquie-indignee-riposte-concrete