In that glittering, gliding infinity between
Now and Then,
Night and Day,
Here and There
And Life
and Death
Ghosts wait;
Their wails and laughters
reach us here, now, now-and-then.
Their touch makes us brave; thus we breath forth art and freedom.
Warsaw, 02/09/06: 01:15a..m
Those are indeed the words of a ghost! Just take a look at the time the poem was written; 01:15a.m!
There is a variety of ghosts out there, but we shall explore just two types, i.e., political ghosts and the normally accepted ‘disembodied entities’. We shall begin with political ghosts because, 1. We of flesh and blood are on this side of reality defined by ‘what I see, touch, taste’. Let’s leave ‘what I smell and feel’ because they are abstract in nature and closer to ‘the other-side of reality’ and have more affinity with where our subjects spend their time. And 2. Since man is given to discrimination, let’s take the opportunity to discriminate against ghosts... after all, because its daylight, we have power over them hence their protests won’t bother us.
Political ghosts:
What is the connection between ghosts and politics, you ask? Is there any meeting point for the two? This we shall try to explore. Ask yourself why is it that Institutions of Physics do employ psychics in their researches? It’s a proven fact that several outstanding Physics and Scientific Institutions make use of psychics, parapsychologists, etc., in interplanetary communications.
Art, immortal in essence, isn’t concerned with rights and wrongs. It strives purely on ‘Narration’ and thus it thrives, using words, brushes and similar instruments. The artist as creator, constantly interacts with multiple spheres. In so doing he meets ghosts and sees them everywhere, everyday, whether he’s aware of it or not.
The only form of non-political conflict is personal conflict. Any dispute that touches more than one individual, has a political undertone. In extreme cases disputes end in crisis, which in interstate or autogenous situations, result in wars. Wars inevitably lead to death. And dying is the elementary step to ghosthood.
Take a weapon for instance; by itself it is motionless. Combine it with the human will and it automatically becomes a ghost-making gadget. The desire to invent weapons, follows a political sway. A tiny, single bullet is an interesting phenomenon, which goes beyond the mechanical explanation of how it functions. Beside the scientific explanation of how it breaths death, it could be argued that a bullet is condensed latent and lethal energy, which could be triggered to unleash death, not by the finger, but by the human will. In so doing a battalion of mad, microscopic and destructive ghosts are sent forth to finish off corporal existence.
So if you ask what is the connection between ghosts and politics, you have one in the above lines.
In his book ‘A Concise History of Polish Theater from the Eleventh to the Twentieth Centuries’, Kazimierz Braun, a Polish émigré to the US defines theatre as ‘an artistic and democratic process of communication between actor and audience, where each side contributes to the exchange. This is a definition birthed by experience. There could be nothing better. Thinking over Braun’s definition, I asked myself, ‘how to define that magical sphere where art and politics meet? It is magical because whenever they meet, the result is always extreme., i.e., the encounter is marked by an overflow of either abstract violence between antagonizing views or emotional ecstasy. The end result of the situation is that political ghosts, in the command of the powerful, leave their shelters by command and conspiracy to haunt, hunt and hurt. This is particularly trendy on the sphere of ‘Underground theatre’, which while in action, transforms a physical sphere into a metaphysical meeting point.
Nicholas Hytner, director of the English National Theatre wrote a piece titled; ‘No Limits; The Business of Theatre, which was published in an anthology of protest letters and essays by Penguin Books: ISBN 0-141-02473-9, under the title Free Expression is no Offense. The most remarkable part of his essay is kernelled in the words; It’s the business of theatre to disturb and provoke. That’s the theatre’s power.
The book was published by International PEN following steps taken by the Labor Party to pass a law criminalizing ‘Religious Hatred’. The publication was done strictly for the sake of artistic freedom, and freedom of speech, which International PEN is committed to. In turn, the theme for the anthology is closely knotted with a row that followed the release of a play Behzti, by a Sikh female-playwright, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti who lives in the UK.
After the premier, the play was cancelled several times after crowds invaded the theatre compounds where the play was expected to run. Bhatti was physically threatened and verbally abused. Her family was harassed repeatedly.
Well, if you indeed wish to touch a political ghost, or want one to touch you, use your imagination to draw a theatrical pentagram and put it on stage, anywhere in the world. Migrator Theatre had a recent encounter with political ghosts when one of our actors was stabbed, soon after a performance.
Perhaps the most glaring example is the case of Kenyan writer/playwright, Ngungi Wo’Thiongo, who wrote a play in which the protagonist became so popular that a serious commotion erupted. The hero of the play became so popular that he grew to be the subject of conversation in households and beer parlors. By the time the Big Man got word of it, the message had been dented. What he heard was that the protagonist was an emerging political rival who could seriously threaten his popularity. Without delay he ordered the police to embark on a nationwide search to track down the ‘political dissident’.
So the point here is that with political ghosts you don’t have to learn how to touch them. They can easily touch you. All you need to do is provoke them. Words are red-buttons’ that could easily bring them from their hotel rooms.
Political ghost shelter behind words. History is full of them: terror, aids, refugees, migrants, the other, etc.
To those on one side of the political divide, words like fascism, Nazism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, racism, are hotels where ghosts reside. And to those on the other side, words like homosexual, lesbian, etc., are also hotels where the opposing ghosts dwell. Most of the words where political ghosts reside evolve and live on snowball effects, i.e., they become ghosts after lengthy repetition and feed on emotional reactions; fear, envy, etc. Often, particularly for those deft in the act of manipulation, they can be shaped, reshaped and constructed to meet ends.
Finally to round up on political ghosts, since a political decision could trigger death, violently or in even a subtle manner, politics is hence closely connected with the phenomenon that creates ghosts. What’s more, it can even invent them.
Disembodied entities:
How can you be sure that I am not a ghost? How can I be sure that you are not a ghost? How can you be sure that amongst the people walking the street some of them are not ghosts? These are important questions to consider when raising the issue of disembodied entities. They too have become very tricky as a result of political evolution. We touch them everyday. They touch us everyday. The meeting point where you can easily touch them and they can touch you too, is on the realm of dreams. My dad told me, ‘the realm of dreams is the ultimate proof of immortality’.
When you leave or pass a place you will never return, you are dead to that place. There are people you met and you will never meet again. To them, in a sense, you are dead. They too are dead to you. The only think that keeps them alive is memory, the same memory that sustains the image of a person we knew while he/she was alive.
Poland is quite unique in terms of political ghosts and disembodied entities. To get details of its political ghosts all you need is to read its history, which I presume we are not strangers to. Interestingly, because of its history, or the birth of political ghosts in Poland, which led to wars, revolutions, etc., this also birthed disembodied entities. During the war, people in their prime died violently. A violent death experts believe, leave the victim clinging to the fibers of life. As a result, there are several buildings across the country that are said to be haunted. In fact, the house where I currently live in is one of such.
On a more practical note, what I know is that Stones tell stories. They are silent and motionless witnesses to man, time and place. So the next time you pick up a Stone at the seaside, in a park, on the street, hold in mind that you could not only be touching a ghost, but probably you are carrying one with you home. For in a Stone rests the history and times of a place… and pieces of the place itself.
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