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Gilad Atzmon
This paper is about the possibility of surfing over your troubled identity and enjoying your symptoms.
Some thirty-eight years ago I was born in a small town near to the eastern Mediterraneans seashore. As far as I can recall from my memories, I would say that in my early days I was more than happy and proud with my Jewish ethnic background and sense of national belonging. I was delighted to see myself as the ultimate Jewish victim and even to spend the rest of my life blaming the rest of the world for being anti-Semite. As we all learn to know, modern Judaism and Zionism both specialize in generating feelings of guilt among gentile souls. As soon as I got a bit older, some cracks and signs of skeptical thoughts start to reveal themselves. As a matter of fact, while being an Israeli soldier at the time of the Lebanon war I came to realize that rather than being a victim I was nothing but an oppressor. I came to live with the terms of the enormous guilt my identity is involved with. I will never forget my visit to Anzar, an Israeli concentration camp on the Lebanon soil.
I will never forget the thousands of Palestinian surrounded with barbed wire fences and IDF sentry tower guards getting burned in the heat of August sun. I remember the tiny concrete isolation cells my army put for those uniquely resistant Palestinians. I knew then that I wouldnt last more than five minutes in those conditions. What I saw there was the biggest clear manifestation of oppression and abuse I have ever came across. After facing those devastating sights I could not live any longer in peaceful terms with the idea that all those atrocities were being done on my behalf. I could not stand the idea that my existence as an Israeli was involved with a continuous domination over millions of Palestinians. I painfully grasped that my identity was grounded on a very basic denial of the legitimate rights of innocent people to return to their homelands. I have learned that my existence as an Israeli is based over a complete ignorance of the Other. By that time, my self realization as a victim completely evaporated, I acknowledged the terrible fact that my given identity was involved with a severe guilt.
As one can imply, guilt feelings are far from being the most productive
kind of feelings. If anything, they just make you feel very lost. The
horrible idea that you are a member of a club that is based upon some
clear injustice cannot be easily resolved. At the time I was clever
enough to realize that clubs never change their fundamentals voluntarily.
I understood that my feelings of disapproval would never resolve themselves
unless I either taught myself to ignore my moral sense, or just ceased
my membership of the club of evilness. In my early thirties I migrated
out of Israel and settled in London. At the time I wanted to believe that
this kind of a move would bring down the vividness of my feelings of guilt
and disappointment from my people but apparently, my wishes were found
to be very short lived. As a matter
of fact, living in London, a multi- cultural environment, enlightened
the scale of my troubled Identity. Being seen and presented in public
as an Israeli Jazz artist made it very clear to me that I had to take
an unmistakable stand opposing my people. I had to do it as noticeably
and
obviously as I possibly could. Identity is a very tricky concept it carries
two painful elements that
cannot be avoided:
First. Ones identity is involved with the approval of the other. Ones
identity is determined by ones self realization coinciding with the Others
endorsement of that very realization. For instance, I regard myself as
a jazz musician and have managed to get this realization
recognized by my audience. On the other hand, I am seen as an Israeli
not because I want to be one but rather because of the way I am perceived
by the Other. Second, any given particular identity is held in an enormous
web of endless meanings in which every element is determined by all the
other elements in the web. You are what you are because you are not something
else. I am an Israeli because I am not an American citizen, I am not a
Royal Highness, not a Palestinian cheap labour force, not a banana and
so on. Following this line of thinking we can deduce that identity is
a dynamic notion that keeps changing in an endless flux. It is determined
by more than one factor and dependent upon the entire field of meanings.
The concept of identity leads toward complementary and dialectical process
of self-realization that can never be fully achieved. Living in a multi-cultural
society, in which many different identities
merge into colourful hybrid, makes it even more complicated. It brings
one to a further comprehension of ones essence and meaning via a sense
of multiplicity. It appears that keeping in touch with yourself becomes
a full time job. Coming to terms with the new role of my identity within
a very ixed society, I realized that I could no longer hide myself behind
a heroic guilt. It is not enough to claim that you feel guilty, you must
do something that reflects your opposition. My uneasy identity became
a form of mediation between my social environment and myself.
Being a very active jazz artist in European and British fronts, I realized
that my disapproval of my people determined some major aspects of my identity
wherever I went. I moved toward an active role that provided a full rejection
of my peoples wrong doings. I exposed my views regarding the situation
in my homeland in a completely explicit manner. In other words I became
responsible.
I regard myself as personally responsible to bring the oppression of the
Palestinian people to a halt. I try to turn my music into a mouth for
those who were very unlucky to confront the most radical exposure of my
peoples discrepancies. In my music I try create a collage of cultures
mainly Arabic and Jewish within jazz dimension. I take some Jewish prayers
and play them over Arabic rhythms and vice versa. I try to stimulate my
listener towards thinking, towards confusion, towards moments of empathy.
I try to draw my listener toward my own private and
personal abyss. Some of my audience participate in my abyss, in which
case we fall together for two and a half hours. Those among them that
purchase my album, fall forever!
Surprisingly enough, being caught within my own identity struggle, I found
out that my music began to sound more and more personal. My composition
increasingly became a sort of self-reflection. Being a jazz artist (an
art form that becomes more and more analytical, clever and
academic) I find that personal complexity and social struggle encourage
some emotional expression that have almost vanished from improvised music.
I find that, being stimulated by a strong social commitment brings some
radical blossoming to the artistic activity. It brings some
anger that is coupled with personal pain; it reveals the multiplicity
in life. Facing my difficulty with my uneasy past and national background,
I have learned to surf over my troubled identity, Like a proper Jewish
mother I have learned to enjoy my symptoms.