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Join on Telegram Rabat – Twenty years ago, in the eye of the whirl of winds, at the core of rhythms and beats of hearts and drums, in gowns of many colors, in words born in the depth of souls only partly heard and understood and, in memories long become desperate and forlorn, a dream was born. Since then it has not ceased to come true, reaching ever further for the threshold of the promise from the day of its inception.
Culture is our way of thinking that determines our behavior, our reference framework, the authority that regulates our attitudes, convictions, and beliefs including our religion, hence the relevance of cosmological symbols and the various efforts, both individual and collective, to influence and control them and put them to the use of hegemony. It is, therefore, that through which others are influenced and brought to submission – in politics, society, economy, geography, and other fields.
Destruction in the arts, literature, discourse, science, and ideological systems is a way of reshuffling authority and of making power centers shift and change grounds and perspectives. Furthermore, it is exerted through competing networking options firmly anchored in new technologies within which is created the legitimacy for new rising authorities and powers to challenge previously prevalent systems of producing, sharing, and appropriating domination and hegemony.
Fusion, a dual process of destruction and reconstruction, means to surpass the whims of illusion and of representations that confine the self in pre-constrained images and to embrace others, to pull down walls, to open up space, and to join the march of history towards universality. What took place those nights was the coalescence of intelligence, genius, sensitivity, emotion, will, experience, talent, and skill – both individual and collective – each as authentic and true as the collective urge to jump over a gap and not wait for a bridge to be built to meet the other.
Connection was total, as stage and audience sprung into oneness, frontiers vanished, languages merged, the sounds of instruments wedded each other, and foreignness dissipated.
Multiplicity, diversity, and plurality dominate the range of the visual field which, despite the mobility, dynamics, and flexibility of the contours making its borders and marking the division of territories of which it is made, remains fundamentally coherent, united, singular, exceptional, and unique.
The symbolism is latent but eloquent. One may not see it but cannot not be aware of it, nor not feel the weight in it, not vibrate for it. While it can conceal itself in the ambiguity of everyday entanglements, it is irresistibly present in the breath of moonlight and in the gentle blow of wind drying up the sweat on the eyebrow of artists adding the glitter of salt to the sparky twinkling of their eyes. It, the range of the visual field, springs and extends from the convictions that attitudes do not mask and from the traits of behavior of adjustments to expectations and to collective hopes often undeclared.
Walking day and night in the streets of the cities of my country, big and small, I meet people of all ages, obviously from all the social and economic strata and of all regional and ethnic strains. I try to see beyond the appearances they display and the outward signs they let speak for them. I try to distinguish what makes each one specific, to read their differences and to identify what they have in common.
With no difficulty I see every bit of what they share and of what makes them a whole – not only conscious parts of it, but necessary elements of its defining energy. Their pride of belonging to one and same heritage is what makes them able to be happy with themselves and with each other; and to enjoy the same Gnawa performance before, during, and after it has espoused universal dimensions in the fusion episodes well after midnight in Essaouira and under the mused eyes seagulls – its patrons.
Life cycle, half life, life expectancy, and shelf life are concepts that apply equally to ideas, theories, artwork, feelings and passions, commodities and perishables as well as to institutions, including the State and the various mechanisms through which it operates and exercises its authority, monopolies, and hegemony.
Thereis nothing that is not subject to a process of growth, maturation, aging, and expiration. Absence is hard to pardon. Finding excuses for it only worsens the forfeit. Dignity, a so much shaken and churned concept, remains, however, a stable value for many and a painful sore when it has not been acknowledged.
Pending the change of what is, that is, the fulfillment of a full turn, several stages are to be covered. Awaiting, for example, that some art, literary genre, technology, or science theoretical or applied expires and is buried and another one, yet to be conceived, about which no one has the least idea, which no one is able to imagine about is to take its place, you can but do the best with what you have. Being critical of a hope, a dream, a solution or of a technology does not mean you are entitled denigrate it or dispose of it while you still have no alternative to make for it.
Likewise, awaiting for the time in which all the concepts we hold to be self evident may be consigned to oblivion, let us try to do the best we can with those available, without, however, letting them prevent others from emerging and establishing themselves as viable substitutes, without allowing them to delay neither departures, disintegration and evaporation of the previous conceptual systems which hold us back nor to slow down our evolution, both tangible and intangible, intellectual and cognitive, rational and emotional or hinder our capacity to dismantle and surpass current constraints or suppress our faculty to imagine alternatives and to innovate.
Just like the waves which punctuate the web and flow of the tides of the ocean and which reveal its obstinate power, and just like imagination which punctuates time and the spaces of creation and impose the respect they deserve and that is due to them, Essaouira punctuates all with the simplicity of being, authenticity of emancipation, the humility of hope, and the promises of joy and happiness.
