The Wall
Just a few words about my New Years Eve.
First, quickly, we watched the movie "Barbershop". I'd heard about it and knew a little about it and it had three stars in our TV listings, so I thought, why not? It desrved much better than that. Perhaps as a white person, I had been thinking of it as a movie that would be of interest to black people. Perhaps I might not even understand many of the jokes or references. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And I'll admit it. That was one meaty movie, a movie with so much substance to it that I might well watch it again to catch the things I missed the first time around. And for me, it's a very rare movie that I want to watch again for that reason. So to anyone that hasn't seen it, see it.....for what my opinion is worth, of course.
Then I watched a movie about The Band's last performance. i enjoyed it a lot. It reminded me how much music of my youth is classic and still able to stand up to the test of time and stand above a lot of what's coming out lately. I'm not saying that what is coming out is bad, but will it stand up and still be played from the college dorm rooms of 20 and 30 years in the future? I doubt it. I could be wrong, though.
The third thing we watch was Pink Floyd's performance of The Wall in Berlin in 1990 just after the Berlin Wall had been opened up. And this is why my New Years Eve TV watching belongs in a blog about emigration. My SO in 1989 was a guy who had spent several years studying in Berlin. The Berlin Wall opened up on Novermber 5, 1989 or close to that. We watched it all closely, and he said he just HAD to go there, to BE there. I didn't really understand why it was such a big thing to him, but I never saw anyone organize a spontaneous trip to Germany quicker and more efficiently. This was not my SO's strong suite and it involved among other things dropping off everything that had been collected to be our Thanksgiving dinner including a huge frozen turkey (a "bonus" from work) off at a homeless shelter. So we went. We flew into Dusseldorf, because there was no chance of getting a low-cost flight to Berlin, and took the train into Berlin. That, in itself, was the beginning of my understanding. The train traveled a barricaded path through East Germany. it was like traveling with blinders on, so extensive were the efforts of the East to make sure those traveling Westerners couldn't see in and the Easterners couldn't make their way out somehow via this train passage.
Once in Berlin, very late in the evening, we were met by his friends. I believe we went straight from the train station to the Wall. The friends wanted to do this, and SO was eager too. I was tired from our journey and really thought it could wait. It was freezing cold. We parked and started walking toward the Wall. It was nearly midnight by then and we had parked some distance away, maybe as much a a mile since the friends said it would take about 15 minutes to get there. I remember asking because I thought we were almost there. There was this sound, coming seemingly from all around us. Clink. Clink, clink, clink. Clink, clink. All kinds of different tones. Some deep. Some almost like wind chimes. The closer we got, the louder it got. Eventually we began to hear people sounds, too. Voices in dozens of languages.
Now remember, this was midnight and it was freezing, and there were dozens and dozens of people out chipping at that Wall, talking to each other, peering through the small places where chipping from one side had met chipping from the other so that the people on the two sides could see each other. And there was a joy like nothing I'd ever seen before, and maybe haven't seen since.
That sound is what sticks in my mind when I think about it. Nobody who wasn't really THERE heard that sound or experienced that community of people from every corner of the world who cared enough to come and take that Wall apart with their own hands. And the people of the two Berlins? Talk about a V-8 moment. They were trying to get their minds around a fact that had just dawned fully on them. The only reason that Wall stood for 20 years was that THEY LET IT! The moment that that Wall became unaccetable to enough people to the point that they were willing to take action on that attitude of unacceptance, the Wall ceased to be effective in dividing them.
The experience of going there, of searching in the stores for a hammer and chisel that would be strong enough to put a dent in that Wall (and that Wall was built tough!), and doing it! And the idea that unacceptable things CAN be eliminated if people just care enough to take action. I brought that back with me. It lives inside me. When I see something like the demonstrations in the Ukraine, I remember it. When I took part in the demonstrations outside the Republican Convention this summer, I remembered it. Who would have thought that so soon after 1989, my own country would be a place in which the people accepted the unacceptable? Who would have thought that the Ukraine would someday have a more valid democracy than my own country? Who would have thought that demonstrations would be walled off from any chance of effectiveness here? And who would have thought that so few of my countrymen would care about it?
That's why I'm leaving.
First, quickly, we watched the movie "Barbershop". I'd heard about it and knew a little about it and it had three stars in our TV listings, so I thought, why not? It desrved much better than that. Perhaps as a white person, I had been thinking of it as a movie that would be of interest to black people. Perhaps I might not even understand many of the jokes or references. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And I'll admit it. That was one meaty movie, a movie with so much substance to it that I might well watch it again to catch the things I missed the first time around. And for me, it's a very rare movie that I want to watch again for that reason. So to anyone that hasn't seen it, see it.....for what my opinion is worth, of course.
Then I watched a movie about The Band's last performance. i enjoyed it a lot. It reminded me how much music of my youth is classic and still able to stand up to the test of time and stand above a lot of what's coming out lately. I'm not saying that what is coming out is bad, but will it stand up and still be played from the college dorm rooms of 20 and 30 years in the future? I doubt it. I could be wrong, though.
The third thing we watch was Pink Floyd's performance of The Wall in Berlin in 1990 just after the Berlin Wall had been opened up. And this is why my New Years Eve TV watching belongs in a blog about emigration. My SO in 1989 was a guy who had spent several years studying in Berlin. The Berlin Wall opened up on Novermber 5, 1989 or close to that. We watched it all closely, and he said he just HAD to go there, to BE there. I didn't really understand why it was such a big thing to him, but I never saw anyone organize a spontaneous trip to Germany quicker and more efficiently. This was not my SO's strong suite and it involved among other things dropping off everything that had been collected to be our Thanksgiving dinner including a huge frozen turkey (a "bonus" from work) off at a homeless shelter. So we went. We flew into Dusseldorf, because there was no chance of getting a low-cost flight to Berlin, and took the train into Berlin. That, in itself, was the beginning of my understanding. The train traveled a barricaded path through East Germany. it was like traveling with blinders on, so extensive were the efforts of the East to make sure those traveling Westerners couldn't see in and the Easterners couldn't make their way out somehow via this train passage.
Once in Berlin, very late in the evening, we were met by his friends. I believe we went straight from the train station to the Wall. The friends wanted to do this, and SO was eager too. I was tired from our journey and really thought it could wait. It was freezing cold. We parked and started walking toward the Wall. It was nearly midnight by then and we had parked some distance away, maybe as much a a mile since the friends said it would take about 15 minutes to get there. I remember asking because I thought we were almost there. There was this sound, coming seemingly from all around us. Clink. Clink, clink, clink. Clink, clink. All kinds of different tones. Some deep. Some almost like wind chimes. The closer we got, the louder it got. Eventually we began to hear people sounds, too. Voices in dozens of languages.
Now remember, this was midnight and it was freezing, and there were dozens and dozens of people out chipping at that Wall, talking to each other, peering through the small places where chipping from one side had met chipping from the other so that the people on the two sides could see each other. And there was a joy like nothing I'd ever seen before, and maybe haven't seen since.
That sound is what sticks in my mind when I think about it. Nobody who wasn't really THERE heard that sound or experienced that community of people from every corner of the world who cared enough to come and take that Wall apart with their own hands. And the people of the two Berlins? Talk about a V-8 moment. They were trying to get their minds around a fact that had just dawned fully on them. The only reason that Wall stood for 20 years was that THEY LET IT! The moment that that Wall became unaccetable to enough people to the point that they were willing to take action on that attitude of unacceptance, the Wall ceased to be effective in dividing them.
The experience of going there, of searching in the stores for a hammer and chisel that would be strong enough to put a dent in that Wall (and that Wall was built tough!), and doing it! And the idea that unacceptable things CAN be eliminated if people just care enough to take action. I brought that back with me. It lives inside me. When I see something like the demonstrations in the Ukraine, I remember it. When I took part in the demonstrations outside the Republican Convention this summer, I remembered it. Who would have thought that so soon after 1989, my own country would be a place in which the people accepted the unacceptable? Who would have thought that the Ukraine would someday have a more valid democracy than my own country? Who would have thought that demonstrations would be walled off from any chance of effectiveness here? And who would have thought that so few of my countrymen would care about it?
That's why I'm leaving.
posted by ISAY | 3:36 PM
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