Film Comment: 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama...

…wherein an earnest in the extreme American journalist  named Rick Ray visits His Holiness the Dalai Lama (HHDL) in his exile home in India and questions him on topics ranging from the unexpected happiness of the the poor to how to bring about peace in the Middle East (people getting to know each other, and festivals.)

HHDL’s responses are subtle and complex even as his vocabulary is simple, even child-like; it put me in mind of Samuel Beckett getting at the essence of things when writing Waiting for Godot in French instead of his native English. 

While seeing HHDL is always uplifting this relatively short film had enough material for a second story—the infinite number of ways the government of China is sabotaging and trying to wipe out any aspect of Tibetan culture.  Government armies have been taking over lands since forever; the Chinese government is doing nothing new or imaginative in occupying Tibet and oppressing the native population.

Bad enough, but the film shows has the Tibetan experience of occupation has nasty twists.  HHDL, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, was forced to flee when he was a boy and has to rule in exile in India.  Not only can’t he return to Lhasa, but the Tibetans there will be questioned or arrested or even tortured if they possess the HHDL’s picture.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition all of our Guys are dead; imagine if their reincarnations were alive and we could not even mention their name for fear of being arrested.  (You’d think our holy-roller evangelicals would be all over this.)   

But wait, there’s more, and this is where it gets diabolical.  OK, there has to be someone to be the next person to pick the new DL.  HHDL picked a little boy as the reincarnation.  The Chinese government put the kid and his family under house arrest and he hasn’t been seen in years.  He’s missing out on the intense education the religion requires for such an important task and position.  Unlike our Ten Commandments, half of which are like, Duh, Tibetan Buddhism has over a hundred subtle lojong precepts that the holder of the position needs to have mastered.  Are the Chinese providing this?    Oh, no, they’re too busy parading around their own fakey-fake reincarnation kid who probably doesn’t know how to pour water out of a boot. 

Why can’t the western powers stand up to China on this?  It’s all so redolent of the anti-apartheid era of South Africa. (Update: Walking a now-deleted sentence back in light of finding out Apple donated $43 million to Africa via the Product (Red) campaign.  Also, the HHDL isn't calling for a boycott.)

Speaking of Apple, Cockatoo was goofing around with the new iPad mini the other day.  After seeing our image in the camera we in short procession purchased a pricey lotion, contact lenses, and got our hair done.  If only there were some kind of ethical camera one could aim at the Chinese soldiers in the film so they could see how hideous and shameful  they looked when they wailing on random Tibetans, or when a handcuffed Tibetan walked by and one of the soldiers gave him a gratuitous knock on the head.

A monk in the film was beaten and tortured by the Chinese.  He made it to the Indian compound and spoke to HHDL.  This monk said he didn’t want to be a monk anymore, that he wanted to fight.  Even the most pacifist among us would see the point.  But just like Archbishop Desmond Tutu would have done, HHDL hugged the battered young monk and talked to him for two hours on how violence would not help.  With a smile the young man said he was convinced to remain a monk.

HHDL’s compassion for everyone – even the Chinese government and the Chinese people – is a force more powerful than anything in the Chinese arsenal.  It lights up the world. 

2006.

 Recommend

p.s.  Cockatoo would ask one thing of the monks and laypeople in Tibet:  Please, have compassion on people you don’t  know, people who you will never meet, who are rooting for you, praying for you, and hoping for you – have compassion on us and yourselves by not even considering harming yourself to bring attention to your cause.  Your enemies don't care if you are no more, but your friends do.  The day of celebration will come, and we want you all to see it.

Where Has All the Music Gone?

It started with an advertisement for one of those televised singing competitions: Cockatoo didn't know one song by anyone on the show's panel of judges. Yikes! How did that happen? Is it an inevitable part of growing older that one loses all track of what music "the young 'uns" are listening to nowadays? Mind you, we've have heard of all of the judges, just haven't heard them.

Then came the Grammys last Sunday night. The word was out that folk music was making a big comeback. Cockatoo went into the show only knowing - and liking - guitar-hero Jack White's Blunderbuss. Sadly, we left with only a "Well, that was kind of nice" feeling about The Lumineers, even as we're kind of wondering if that $3.99 download was a good investment. And shame on The Onion for saying Mumford and Sons won in the category of "Best Vest." (By "shame" we mean, of course, it made us laugh.)

We wanted to fall desperately in love with a new band, a new voice, to feel that delicious thrill again. But we can only see U2 for the first time once, and ours came on the Live-Aid broadcast where they performed Bad, and, really, what can replicate that feeling? As Bruce Springsteen said of U2 when he inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they're the last group for which he knows each person's name. So true, so true.

We grew up listening to KGFJ, the soul music station in Los Angeles. The first record we ever bought was the single - vinyl, with a red Atlantic label - of Respect by Aretha Franklin. The second one, though, didn't create an obvious pattern: Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones.

But actually there is a link. Cockatoo loved the soul of Aretha Franklin and the guitar-rich energy of the Stones. With every record we bought during our teens and young adulthood we held out the hope that it would somehow, somehow entwine these two strands of heart and electricity. Bono's one line in Do They Know it's Christmas stood out for Cockatoo, and we bought our first VCR (yep) the day before the aforementioned Live-Aid concert.

Did it affect me? Let's put it to the Bruce test: Bono, Larry, Edge, and Adam. For extra credit: Paul David Hewson, Larry Mullen, Jr., Dave Evans, and Adam Clayton. For super crazy credit: May 10th, Oct. 31st....

Fellow U2-disciples will note that the title of this blog comes from a "Breathe" lyric on the "No Line on the Horizon" album. Rattle and Hum-era fans will remember another good U2 lyric, which addresses my current dilemma: You glorify the past when the future dries up.

We solemnly vow to not become fossilized, to keep an ear out for new, contemporary singer-songwriters, and not let my iPod become a museum.

Even as Cockatoo anxiously awaits a new U2 record.

My Life in Politics by Jacques Chirac

Palgrave McMillan
2009.  English Language Translation 2012.
337 pages.

Are memoirs by American politicians this candid?  Cockatoo hasn't read an American political figure's memoir since Jimmy Carter's Why Not the Best?; somewhat shamefully, we've never even read Dreams of My Father.  Perhaps Santorum or Gingrich also recounted, as does former French President Jacques Chirac, losing their virginity in a dodgy quartier in Algeria.  Or, perhaps not.

Upon leaving the Elysee after serving two terms as president, Chirac had had forty years of experience in French politics. The memoir perhaps tells Americans more than we want to know about the inside baseball - boules? - aspect of that career.  (Long story short - prime minister and president is a whole different and nastier dynamic than our president and vice president.).   Still, it was a fascinating insight into not just a world figure but of an era, as well.

Particularly fascinating were the descriptions of his encounters with the major players.  From General Charles de Gaulle, to Valery Giscard d'Estaing; from Pompidou to Mitterand; and from Dominique Villepin (he of the famous UN speech against the war in Iraq) to Nicholas Sarkozy, Chirac gives a nice sketch of people who might merely be historical names to Americans.  Chirac revered the general for how he personified France's liberation. He clashed with the (apparently) snooty Giscard but had warm respect for Mitterand despite his predecessor being a socialist.

Chirac clearly would have preferred the noble Villepin to succeed him. Of Sarkozy's election speech Chirac says:

Each of us listened to each word he pronounced with the greatest attention, secretly waiting for the moment when he would mention the name of the man he was preparing to succeed or even thank him for the support the latter had given him. But this moment never came.".  

One can sense how Sarkozy's blingy, breezy modernity would make the formal, dignified Chirac wince.

Famously, Chirac did nor just sit by and watch the US march into Baghdad. His government lobbied security council states intensely to let the weapons inspectors do their job. That the lobbying or Villepin's elegant speech for the ages did not stop the war does not reflect poorly on them but merely adds to the eternal shame of w. Bush, Rice, Cheney, Wolfowitz etc. for insisting on death and violence.

Lastly, it's fascinating to see conservatism unyoked from philistinism and racism. Indeed, this French-style conservative comes off as a bit if a hippie with his concerns for the environment, or his telling the King of  Spain that, no thank you, France would not take part in any Christopher Columbus anniversary celebrations (..."the expedition of cc did not constitute ...a great moment in history but rather a calamity that could not justifiably be celebrated). Add to these his deep interest in African art and ones gets the image of a career politician with more layers, more depth, than one might have guessed.