Ooh, people are the main spring
Turning the world around
Ooh, people, they're the main spring
Spinning this world upside down
—"People," King Crimson (Thrak, 1995)
I periodically need to travel to different parts of the world for work. This year, so far, the itinerary has included Egypt, Cuba, the Netherlands, France, Serbia, and Turkey. Tonight I am in a cafe in the Galata neighborhood of Istanbul enjoying a shisha after a week of labor.
In Istanbul tonight, a busker with a guitar sings an impassioned song in Turkish to a small audience of walkers. Nearby a hawker calls out his offering of Bosporus mussels opened and eaten on the sidewalk until the early hours of the morning. Just before dawn and at regular intervals the Arabic call to prayer resounds and echoes from near and distant mosques.
In Serbia last week I heard a herder calling and singing to his cows on a verdant island in the middle of the Danube. I spent much of the week working as a team with a group of Russians who spoke their own language much of the time. With no understanding of words, the texture and feeling of the voices was delicious. By the end of the week I was able to pick out a few phrases and tried to repeat them, the most useful being Ya ne ponimayu—I don't understand.
When I travel and have a direct experience of each place I am amazed at the multiplicity of pace, food, music, and language of people—the unique patterns of existence in different cultures. I sense that all these simultaneously sounding unique human vibrations are part of the sound of the body of humanity. Each community is an engine of emanations resounding in concert and participating in a whole symphony of emanations.
Each time I travel, I receive a deepening sense that the knowing that comes through embodied and sensed participation is a dimensional shift from simply knowing about things. The movement is an initiation across the threshold from an outer circle into an inner circle where information is more robust, dense, and meaningful.
I received an email from a friend at home this morning. It read: "I heard Turkey is a hot spot too! Are you OK?" Being here, in this peaceful place with an overarching atmosphere of contentment, the question seems laughable. Particularly surprising as I knew the person had hitchhiked across India and Afghanistan 50 years ago in her youth. Nevertheless, if one's information comes from the news and "entertainment" media, the world appears to be a dangerous place.
On my way to the airport last week I had some time to visit my friend Gennaro in Brooklyn. (I mention him by name because one of his photographs of Roma people appeared on the cover of Chronogram in 1999 and in the cover show at Time and Space Limited in Hudson this month). Gennaro generously bought me an Uber ride from my starting point in Bushwick to his place in Carroll Gardens. The driver was recently arrived from Georgia (the one in Eurasia). He knew slightly more English than I know Georgian (which is none).
My driver Giorgi pulled up pictures and videos of Georgian weightlifters and MMA champions while he drove and pointed at them while steering with his knee. He also had a passion for American actors, of which he could name more than me. We shook hands when I got out of the car and Georgi drove away with my suitcase in the trunk. I yelled at the back of the car departing into the distance but it turned the corner and disappeared.
Gennaro tried to use the app to get in touch with Giorgi for an hour. We finally spoke to someone who said the company is not responsible for lost items. "That guy's a real jerk," Gennaro commented, "stealing your suitcase like that."
We drove to Old Navy to get some clothes and toiletries to replace the stuff in my suitcase. As I shopped, I couldn't accept that I had been fooled by the friendly and good-natured man who showed me pictures of his twins with their mother in Tbilisi. It just didn't fit my experience.
When we got back to Gennaro's, Georgi finally called back. He arrived with my suitcase in time to take me to the airport. My faith in humanity (and my capacity to assess character) had trembled slightly but was restored.
