I kicked off the PEN World Voices Festival by going to see a
play at the CUNY Grad Center called Smartphones. It was part of a series of New Plays from Spain. Smartphones is a farce with heavy intertextuality recalling Beckett's Waiting For Godot, Sartre's No Exit and a Bunuel film called The Exterminating Angel. It is about four people (two heterosexual couples, kind of, there's a lesbian twist) waiting in their friend Fede's apartment. They keep waiting but Fede doesn't come and they can't get in touch with him because his mobile provider gives "spotty coverage." Any clues as to Fede's whereabouts or ETA via twitter or Facebook, or broken connections through telephone calls were always that he was on his way. Smartphones, by Emilio Williams, was translated into English by the playwright who rewrote his own piece to fit the American culture. The play made me laugh a lot and it was well-written and well performed, however, it didn't challenge me.
I think that the lack of socio-political challenge was my underlying frustration with this year's festival. And perhaps that's why it is a festival and not a conference. We're celebrating! However, I wonder who it is we're celebrating. This year there was no discussion that I encountered that acknowledged those writers who were not able to be present due to political situations in their countries or visa oppressions in ours.
A panel on Guantanamo Prison took for granted that the United States has 'values' that ought to be upheld. Where . . . what . . . who has values? A panel for Haitian writers featured two married writers, one of whom is the President of PEN Haiti and the situation in Haiti was contextualized by a white American journalist while the moderator didn't even speak French, never mind Kreyol, and seemed to know very little about the situation or the panelists. A panel on South African literature failed to feature a woman writer from South Africa.
Perhaps it is my own thought process that has advanced beyond the organization that I have idolized and been inspired by for so many years. Yet, simultaneous with my disappointment is inspiration to remain in a state of constant intellectual stimulation - because the small dose I've had this past week has knocked me off kilter and put the chemistry of my brain into a bit of a frenzy.
I feel like sprinting across the country shouting nonsense in a mishmash of endangered languages - that was a good panel. The Endangered Languages panel provided not only insight into a situation, gave breadth of perspective but also left the individual audience member with a sense of power to make a difference by learning a language and supporting policy that preserves indigenous languages, philosophies and cultures. Language is the pathway to the soul.
As I stated a few blog posts ago, I have every intention of continuing the project. In what context I have still to figure out. I'm leaning toward the absurd and collaborating with adults of all backgrounds - cultural, artistic and sexual. I am not searching a post-racial or post-conscious voice, I'm looking for harmony in plurality. Or a lack of harmony, or total failure in my absurd vision of full inclusion.
Idealism dead. Ideal.
In regards to the youth I've been working with I think the PEN events were a phenomenal opportunity to think about writers and writing and the writer's role in the community. The solitary intellectual will always be an outsider no matter where she comes from or how vast is her ability to think. Yet literature is also the doorway to get inside a culture, especially your own.
