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| When the World Trade Center was hit--I first felt shock--then I cried. After a full two days of frantic e-mails and attempts to reach friends and family by phone (the phones were out in NYC) I discovered -THANK GOD--that my love ones were OK. Yet I couldn't kick the feeling that I was in mourning-- as if I lost my best friend. I was sad for the buildings, for NY, for the people who lost their lives, their families left behind, and for all of our futures. |
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My heart became heavy, my body weak, I couldn't sleep, and couldn't smile. I entered my sculpture studio and looked around. Before September 11th my head was full of ideas of artwork I wished to create. Yet, after September 11th, I no longer knew the value of my sculpture. All my art seemed unimportant in the wake of events. I felt as if I was standing in a room alone and the floor fell from under my feet. How could I wake up from this nightmare? How could I do something? I am just an artist--a creator--not a politician. My dear friend Ira told me about a CD he owned, that was no longer released, featuring the great Algerian Rai singer Khaled singing with an Israeli woman named NOA. They sing John Lennon's "Imagine" in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Wow, this was the answer. With Ira's help, I danced every chance I could at Union Square Park and other public locations in lower Manhattan. Moreover, I was invited to perform my "Peace Dance" for: Ameri Corps, Studio Montclair, and at Star Seed Yoga Center. The "Village Voice", "The Villager", and "The Montclair Times" covered me. I danced every week for months. I danced for PEACE!!!!! I used wings (a symbol of freedom or like dove wings...peace) and candles (a symbol of remembrance, reverence, and peace). I want to do good in the world. I want to put a smile on a face. I am a dreamer...like John Lennon.
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The following is a quote from "TheVillage Voice" titled "The Birds Are on Fire" by Una Chaudhuri:
November 6 2001, Vol. XLVI, No. 44:
The theater I dream of would create a space outside the melodrama of good and evil. It would be a Theater of Cruelty where the painfully complicated realities of life-"cruel to myself", as Artaud put it-can be inhabited. It would be a searching theater rather than a cathartic one, a wounding theater rather than a healing one, a theater willing to question all those towering twin monoliths-East and West, artist and critic, terrorism and war, us and them-that dwarf our humanity.
I think I glimpsed an image of this theater
in Union Square the other day, when a belly dancer, unfurling a costume of glorious
golden wings, danced to an Arabic version of "Imagine". Watching her,
I heard a hopeful note alter that terrible cry-"the birds are on fire"-that
had filled my ears since September 11.