A reflection on The Debt movie

From IMDB

The Debt was overall an excellent movie, great writing and wonderful acting. I really wanted to examine something that stuck with me even after the movie because it was so well-written and perfectly acted. The "Surgeon of Birkenau" who, during his captivity by Jewish special ops, delivers a brutal commentary on the justification of the Nazi treatment of the Jews. He says something to the effect of, "You doubt that the Jew is egotistical? I saw it! Every day I saw it! Every one of them, thinking only of how to avoid being flogged or kicked, or killed. Do you know why it was so easy to exterminate you people? Why it only took four soldiers to lead a thousand people to the gas chambers? Entire families? Because not one, out of thousands, dared to resist, dared to be the first to fall. Not one would sacrifice himself. I knew then that you all did not deserve to live."

After having been to both the national and local Holocaust museums most of the time, it was reiterated multiple times that the subordination of the Jews in Nazi Germany was a stepwise and gradual process. First it was restriction of sales, then restriction of movement and clothing, then restriction to ghettoes, then restriction to concentration camps, then restriction to experiments and gas chambers. One must keep in mind, though, that part of the Jewish identity is to keep the Law, and the blessings accrue according to the degree of abiding by the Law. This attention to detail, the black and white, the numbers on paper has contributed to something of a cultural identity of the Jewish people, particularly in 19th century Europe where the Jews controlled a large number of the banks and were extremely successful at the management of money. It is no coincidence that Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and his demand of a pound of flesh was a Jew and synonomous with unyielding adherence to the set of rules everyone plays by. They were to obey the laws of the land as they have prospered by doing so in the past, why should Nazi Germany be any different. Once the rules are satisfied and the demands of the government appeased, then won't they leave us alone?

Germany, however, has in its roots the Prussian state. Prussia was a small state surrounded on all sides by much larger wealthier countries which constantly threatened to swallow Prussia. Prussia, lacking the level of resources of the surrounding states, deigned that it would pour all its energy into its army. Every man served in the army as a young adult, the army was trained with discipline and the primary goal of the state was the development of the army. In this way, Prussia was able to maintain its identity and borders in the face of its surrounding neighbors with the best army in the world at the time. Is it any coincidence then that after a couple centuries the German state would force its hand through the use of an extremely advanced and well-trained military?

So the Surgeon of Birkenau in this quote is actually hitting on the histories of both of these cultures and conveying that the values that each holds is central to the conflict. This series of lines delivered by Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) is meant to be disturbing and poignant, and in its salience and meaning, if you care to imagine what it might be, is alone worth the price of admission.

Project Row Houses Art Opening

The Project Row Art Houses is a block in Houston's third ward that was set aside with the help of some generous benefactors, and they give a space to community artists to express themselves. This accomplishes a couple of things- it gives an at-risk community and population a valued space that can be a source of pride, and it gives an opportunity to expose a point of view that is often overshadowed or overlooked by higher end developments or interests.

CasteAways: A Rescuscitation of Third Ward by Brittney Connelly

An excerpt from the artist: "Discarded furniture from the streets of Third Ward is reconstituted in a cast of paper and flour. Blanketed in white, the non-functional objects that once contained a history and energy become mere obstructions in space. In an attempt to recondition the state of these de-contextualized objects, I will intervene in the process by detaching the obstructions and redistributing the pieces..."

deLUX by Logan Sebastian Beck

An excerpt from the artist (Logan Beck): "Signs are everywhere- the serve as way-finding mechanisms and information displays- by their very nature as signs they force the viewer into interaction and conversation. A sign uses spectacle to stand out of the visual landscape and grab the attention of the passerby. In this way, signs produce and self-disperse; however, as our culture becomes increasingly spectacular, signs become more familiar, and our communication with them becomes instantaneous and unperceived.

"I am interested in slowing down this process by revealing the work that signs do. For this reason, signs that work against themselves or fail to function properly as signs- broken signs, fake signs, misinformed signs and deconstructed signs all interest me."

Third Ward Sno-Cones by Matthew Gorgol

An excerpt from the artist: "During my residency I went about handing out complimentary sno-cones to the Third Ward community. This idea arose from the recession in America and the continuing heat in Houston....This exploration into the act of giving has initiated conversations ranging from the difficulties of being health conscious to the economics of generosity. The communities' response has been one of welcome and surprise, welcoming the treat and surprised it is art."

Pobres y Ricas by Catherine Cartwright

An excerpt from the artist: "Recently returning from El Salvador, I was intrigued that rarely a woman from rural parts of El Salvador carried a purse. It was crucial for a woman to have her hands free for many laborious tasks, so the purse's function was served by a half apron the women there wore. To me this garment represented more than storage. It symbolized the struggle of a population of women who have not the opportunities that women in the United States have. The desire to provide, care for, and advance their families is manifested in a multitude of creative ways, and this project was my way of empathizing with the desires of these women."

Where better to start than with the soul?

I caught a recitation on the radio in the middle of the night about a week ago called "The Soul Bone" by Susan Wood (http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15057) which is an incredibly beautiful poem written as a reflection of where one would find one's soul if it could be localized to a specific part of the body - the soul bone. On a side note, she happens to be a professor at Rice University where I do a lot of thinking as I jog around the campus. In this poem, she refers to ancient thinkers believing that the soul could be found in the body: "...the Midrash believed in the bone and called it the luz, just like the Spanish word for light." She goes on to imagine the bone just so, casting its light throughout the darkness of the inside of her body.

It is often easy to treat the body as something wholly distinct from the soul, in so doing playing the Hamlet and seeing the body as just a "mortal coil" to be "shuffled off" (Hamlet III.1:10). This comes from the famous "To be or not to be" monologue (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27761/27761-h/27761-h.htm#sceneIII_1) that is universally panned but contains within it the exact conflict that philosophers, religions, and individuals have struggled with since the beginning. Whether it is better to suffer the troubles that come with a physical existence or to "sleep perchance to dream," dreaming being a metaphor for the soul continuing to exist without the body. If the body is a "cage" (thanks, Arcade Fire) then what more of it is there than to release the soul at some point in time? This is problematic for someone like me whose livelihood depends on treating those diseases that afflict a small portion of this body. 

The notion of the caged soul is not sufficient, though, because I know people and have experienced myself either loss or pain so grievous that it feels as if "my soul hurts" - a feeling that can't be completely embodied by a physical reaction but indeed penetrates into a place that one can't even characterize but nonetheless knows it is there somehow. Conversely, we have mapped the human body with such detail that I know that there is no bone, ligament, muscle, vessel, nerve, or organ whose function is to contain a spirit. Just about every bump on every bone has a name assigned to it (ex. external occipital protuberance)  that relates to its location or function or disposition, yet I cannot conceive of removing any of these alone which will remove the soul at the same time and contain the soul within it. Perhaps the Latin for soul (anima) or the Hebrew ruah ("breath") can lend some understanding. The body is "animated" through the presence of the soul, and it dies when the "breath" has run out of it. In both cases, it appears the soul is an active entity.

Susan Wood's stumbled on something profound with regard to the spirit as a "light" because this too is an active characterization of the soul. The great paradox of physics is that light has particle-like qualities as well as wave-like qualities. Everyone knows that if you put a barrier in front of a beam of light, the light stops and a shadow appears behind the barrier. This is because like a particle, light will travel in a straight line. However, if you place a diffraction grating in front of a beam of light, multiple light bands will appear at regular intervals - a wave-like quality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_grating). If the soul bone is characterized as a "luz" it would have particle and wave characteristics. As a particle, it will continue to travel until it reaches a barrier, and then beyond the barrier there is shadow. So the soul can reach the boundaries of the body and then stops. But as a wave the manifestation of the soul is seen throughout the body and possibly even beyond. Look at the ripples produced by a rock dropped into a pond - there is obviously energy radiating out from the center but there aren't tiny pieces of the rock radiating out uniformly at a constant rate. The evidence of the wave is seen in the change it makes in the material around it. In the same way, soul light traveling as a wave is evidenced by the animation it produces in the body. At the same time, would seem possible to me that the effects of the soul doesn't necessarily have to stop at the boundaries of the body, just as if a gel was in a pool, the waves would transfer through the gel as well as the water. But this is the topic of another entry...

What is most appealing is that every characterization of soul is active, with the light being especially so. This body then as it gets better becomes a better conduit of the soul meaning it is valuable for the body to be maintained to its best possible extent. This is in every sense a work in progress and I hope you can appreciate the value of the journey as well as the destination in every endeavor as I attempt to fumble my way through the subsequent entries, and enjoy the ride!