ARMENIAN REPORTER
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July 21, 2007 — From the Arts & Culture section
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Newsreel
1. Pepo the fisherman at NYU
2. Bollywood to roll cameras in Armenia
3. Film festival wraps up
4. Design: A 21st-century Tower of Babel
* Entry for Prague National Library competition honored in Los Angeles
5. MTV: New Hollywood director Sevag Vrej visualizes Serj Tankian’s
lyrics (by Paul Chaderjian)
6. Theater: Saroyan double Bill (reviewed by Aram Kouyoumdjian)
7. Canvas: Can I say, "Bravo Armen Eloyan!" (by Raphy Sarkissian)
8. Memoir: 1001 Nights in Iraq: The Shocking Story of an American
Forced to Fight for Saddam against the Country He Loves (reviewed by
Marilyn Arguelles)
9. Auteur: Aftershock (by Lory Tatoulian)
10. Literature: All is fair in love and money (review by Atina Harutunian)
* Das Kapital: A novel of love & money markets by Viken Berberian
11. Stage: The red dog howls — and a New York audience gasps (by
Florence Avakian)
* A family’s grisly Genocide story unfolds in new play
12. Sidebar: An influential Armenian grandmother (by Florence Avakian)
13. Cinema: Recounting the twists fate takes
* A meeting with Antonia Arslan
14. Aperture: The best of the best
15. Point of view: Gracias amigas y ‘akhperus’ (by Patrick Azadian)
16. Music: Saying goodbye to Elvina
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Newsreel
1. Pepo the fisherman at NYU
The 1935 Armenian film classic Pepo or Bebo — the first full-length
Armenian feature film with a soundtrack — will be screened at New
York University on Thursday, August 9 at 7 P.M. Pepo was directed by
Hamo Beknazaryan, who is considered the founding father of Armenian
cinema. Based on Gabriel Sundukian’s play, Pepo was produced by
ArmenFilm, which is now part of the CS Media family (like the Armenian
Reporter). It’s about a fisherman who is robbed by a cunning trader.
The NYU screening of Pepo comes on the heels of its round-the-clock
screenings during the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan last
week. Along with Pepo, four other films will be featured during NYU’s
ten-part lecture, performance, and film series called "Making an
Armenian Difference."
connect:
2. Bollywood to roll cameras in Armenia
Indian leading man Suniel Shetty is set to star in the first Bollywood
film to shoot in Armenia. Shetty’s production company, Popcorn
Entertainment, is coproducing the film titled Loot, in a joint venture
with Viacom and TV18, India’s fastest-growing media company. Loot will
star Suniel Shetty, Govinda, Shreyas Talpade, and Javed Jaffrey;
however, the female leads have yet to be cast. Directing the $3
million feature will be Rajneesh Thakur, who also plans to shoot in
Russia. Film company executives say Loot is a comic thriller.
connect:
3. Film festival wraps up
The struggle for Nagorno-Karabakh and the condemnation of genocide did
well in the Fourth Golden Apricot film festival in Yerevan. A Story of
People in War and Peace by Vardan Hovanesyan picked up best
documentary film, the silver prize in the Armenian Panorama
competition, the Fipresci prize, and an ecumenical jury award. Carla
Garapedian’s documentary Screamers received a Golden Apricot in the
Armenian Panorama section and an ecumenical jury award.
The Austrian film Import/Export went home with the Golden Apricot
for the International feature film competition. Other international
winners were Nuovomondo (Italy/France) and Flanders (France).
*************************************** ************************************
4. Design: A 21st-century Tower of Babel
* Entry for Prague National Library competition honored in Los Angeles
Architect Hraztan Zeitlian’s Struere design group has been honored by
the American Institute of Architect’s Los Angeles Chapter.
Struere earned the "Next LA Award" for its modern take of the Tower
of Babel in a competition held to choose a design for an extension to
the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague.
Among the 350 entries was Praha — Zeitlian’s modern take on the
biblical story about the Tower of Babel.
The book of Genesis writes about the tower, which was meant to build
a ramp to the heavens and to God.
God was angry about humanity’s arrogance, and that prompted the
Maker to confuse civilization by making people talk in different
languages.
The reverse of the Tower of Babel story, the story of a civilization
united culturally and empowered with enough knowledge to build a
third-millennium building reaching the heavens was what the designers
and architects at Struere said they offered the Prague jury.
Struere’s concept for the Tower of Babel is based on the idea that
21st-century civilization is global and multicultured, with nations
made of mixed racial character, multilingual, and Babel-ized.
"We view the design of the Prague Library as an important statement
about the state of human knowledge," proclaims Zeitlian, "and about
the role of the library in the global cultural condition in the 21st
century."
Zeitlian’s group proposed a structure designed in the form of a ramp
spiraling to the sky. The 50,000 square meter (nearly 550,000 square
feet) extension to the library was to be used to house the national
library’s modern collections.
Zeitlian says the library of the 21st century is not just a
depository of dead artifacts. "Rather," he says, "it is to be designed
as a museum that curates the global media culture."
"The Tower of Babel, this ramp that humanity attempted to build to
ascend the Heavens and whose construction was supposedly interrupted
by the emergence of the different languages," says Zeitlian, "is
therefore a potent typology for a library in the 21st century."
Praha was not chosen as the winner of the Prague Library
Competition. But Zeitlian’s peers awarded the concept with the "Next
LA Award."
The winner of the competition was a design by Future Systems, which
calls for the library to resemble a hill and blend into the building’s
natural surroundings.
connect:
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5. MTV: New Hollywood director Sevag Vrej visualizes Serj Tankian’s lyrics
by Paul Chaderjian
System of a Down lead Serj Tankian’s debut solo album is not due out
until October, but already in production are a dozen music videos.
The prolific songwriter, poet, and activist — the first true
Armenian rock superstar with an international following — has tapped
12 directors to create music videos for each of the 12 tracks on his
"Elect the Dead" album.
Tankian picked the directors, gave them a small budget and a
directive: create the concept, shoot the music video, and deliver it
in six weeks. The one requirement: Tankian does not appear in the
videos.
* Enter Sevag Vrej
The filmmaker shot his first music video when he was fresh out of high
school and working for the Armenian National Committee’s hour-long
weekly television show called "Horizon."
The program aired on broadcast stations in Los Angeles, Fresno, and
San Francisco and on cable nationwide on the International Channel.
"That was more like an experiment," he says during a break on the
set of his new video. Sevag is shooting in an empty warehouse at the
Casitas Studios in the Los Angeles neighborhood called Atwater
Village.
About a dozen professionals are working around a two-storey set at
the end of the nearly two-thousand-square-foot
warehouse-turned-studio.
Director of photography Florian Stadler, art director Keith
Davidson, and camera assistant Garo Hussenjian are loading the film
into two cameras, shooting, and making sure the shot is as pure art.
A production assistant is gauging the foot-candles to make sure
there is enough light.
Producer Garin Hussenjian is providing the only actor on the set on
this Sunday afternoon, Alex Kalognomos, a fresh and chilled bottle of
water.
Sweat forms easily in a hot warehouse. It’s 90-plus outside on this
Sunday afternoon, and even the caged rooster, a co-star in the video,
is complaining about the heat with an occasional and untimely crow.
Welcome to the new Hollywood.
"I got my hands on a camera for the first time, and I just wanted to
shoot something," says the director about his first music video more
than 15 years ago. "I was learning, so we did that as a trial run."
Sevag’s first professional music video was for a band called "Fair
to Midland," an up-and-coming band from Texas, signed to Serj
Tankian’s Serjical Strike music label and Universal Records.
"The video was a profile of the band," says Sevag, "and it also had
elements of them performing and an animation sequence."
Sevag and Serj have known one another for years, but it wasn’t until
2005 and 2006 that the director proved himself to the rock star.
Sevag traveled with SOAD and shot a behind-the-scenes documentary
while the band traveled through Europe and then in the United States
during Ozzfest.
"That’s how my relationship started with the band," says Sevag. But
before SOAD, there was "N-4," a full-length feature the Art Center
College of Design graduate wrote and director in 2000.
"That was my first feature film," says Sevag. "It was a
father-and-son story about a father trying to reconnect with his son."
* Tankian’s video
Sevag and Alex listen to a boom box blasting the Tankian song they are
shooting; it’s called "Feed Us," and Alex plays a war bureaucrat
weaving a web of deception and lies.
Below his sparse world furnished with a desk, a typewriter, and
plans for war machines, is the innocent and magical world of a little
boy, played by Benjamin Friedman.
"My interpretation of the song is that it’s about exploitation and
deception," explains Sevag. "It’s about how our leaders and father
figures, the people who are supposed to watch over us and guide us,
have misled us."
In the video, when every frame counts and every second has to
advance the story, Sevag will show his audience the consequences of
the deception.
"Slowly, the leader above corrupts the child’s mind and his world,"
he says, "and the child turns against his own nature and starts to
destroy the garden with the war tanks and soldiers he’s been given by
the bureaucrat."
Davidson created the set, which includes trees, shrubbery, and a
background painting with an eye. The eye is courtesy of graphic
designer Sako Shahinian, who designs for Tankian and Serjical Strike.
"That image will be part of the website and part of the album
cover," says Sevag. "We are using it as a motif and will be repeating
it over and over."
When the video is edited, Tankian’s partners at Warner Brothers
Records will eventually decide how to distribute it. It will most
likely be featured on Tankian’s website and may eventually end up on
MTV.
* The bureaucrat
Alex has returned to the set after his matinee performance of William
Saroyan’s "Hello Out There," at the Fountain Theater, which is a few
miles south, over Silverlake Hill and in Hollywood.
"I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time," says the actor after
removing an Abu Ghraib~Vtype hood he had donned in the previous shot.
"I’ve been dreaming of working this hard and on so many different
projects that share my love of performing and my love of storytelling
and supporting other Armenian-Americans who are trying to work."
Alex, the bureaucrat, ends up in the lower world, he’s the little
boy all grown up, and synching to the music on the ghetto blaster, he
tears apart his garden, pulling and breaking tree branches, uprooting
plans, and dancing half-naked and half-crazed.
"I think every actor will tell you that they’d want to do a music
video," he says, "because when you do a music video, there are no
limitations. You’re not bound by a script, not bound by any of the
conventions that a normal actor has. You’re just free to do whatever
you want."
Like Sevag, Alex says he’s happy to be part of the video. He says he
believes in Tankian’s ideas and ideology. They all do. Even his sister
Helen is on the set, helping Alex with make-up and hair.
"Serj Tankian is a visionary," says Alex. "How he sees the world
today are in his lyrics, and we want to support him, because we
believe in those same ideas, the idealism, the questions like, ‘Why
aren’t we living in a better world?’"
*********************************** ****************************************
6. Theater: Saroyan double Bill
reviewed by Aram Kouyoumdjian
Audiences who only know William Saroyan for his gentle tales of
innocence will find surprise and revelation in "The Ping-Pong Players"
and "Hello Out There," two provocative one-acts playing at the Luna
Playhouse in Glendale until August 19.
Opening night for the double bill fell on this past Friday the 13th,
but no ill fortune befell director Tamar Hovannisian’s meticulously
crafted production, which boasts seamless performances by Alex
Kalognomos and Karine Chakarian.
In "The Ping-Pong Players," the two portray a handsome — and
curiously unnamed — married couple looking to spark their
all-too-civil union. While facing off in one of their usual ping-pong
matches, they slip into a spat that quickly turns explosive. "Shall we
quarrel?" the husband asks. "You know we never have. Let’s really
quarrel!"
Abandoning all regard for politesse, they unleash an exchange of
toxic volleys — which emit a strange sexual charge. They find
themselves slithering atop the ping-pong table in a state of arousal.
The ever-escalating conflict soon turns dangerous, however, when the
husband threatens to hit his wife. Her stunning response is that he
should. "I love you," he protests. "If you love me, you must," she
replies. "You must strike me if you love me."
Yet, it is the wife who deals a devastating blow when she reveals
that she is pregnant — but that the child may be another man’s.
Whether she is truly confessing or further perverting the couple’s
game becomes a tantalizing question that explores how the marriage
relationship can be, at the same time, lovingly beautiful and
hurtfully ugly.
Written in 1940, "The Ping-Pong Players" anticipates by over 20
years "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" — Edward Albee’s iconic and
epic play about a vitriolic marriage. In both plays, absurd mind games
become essential to escaping the suffocating strictures of marriage
and ensuring its very survival; the games stop only so that drinks can
be refreshed.
Sporting smart glasses and sipping wine between the rounds,
Kalognomos offers a winning turn as the husband, modulating his
excitement for the depraved marital games with the emotional grief
that they engender. Chakarian is luminous as the wife and achieves the
perfect balance between effervescence and solemnity, though she is
still searching for her cruel intensity. Jenn Powdermaker comes across
entirely too young to be portraying her mother.
***
Showcasing their acting range, Kalognomos and Chakarian tackle
vastly different characters in "Hello Out There," an inevitably tragic
tale that unfolds in the jail of a small town in Texas. Kalognomos,
now looking ruffled, plays a young man — again unnamed — falsely
accused of rape by a married woman. Chakarian is the shy, forlorn girl
who does the cooking and cleaning at the jail. Out of shared
loneliness, love is born, and the two desperate souls plan on fleeing
to San Francisco in order to make a life there together — even as a
lynch mob gathers outside.
Director Hovannisian’s remarkable staging relies on moveable set
pieces — specifically, the contours of a jail cell — to achieve
striking shifts in audience perspective. This filmic quality allows
for ever-changing points of view and keeps the action brisk, dynamic,
and rife with tension. Kalognomos paces the cell with the manic
frustration of a caged animal, while Chakarian complements his raw
energy with the timidity and tentativeness that define her character.
Henrik Mansourian’s moody lighting subtly illuminates Maro Parian’s
impressive set. Less successful are the production’s musical accents,
which verge on manipulative sentiment.
Clearly, Hovannisian perceives the play as a love story — not as a
political or social critique. She has modified the ending, opting for
a romantic closing tableau in lieu of the mob scene that Saroyan’s
script envisions. Indeed, the production not only downplays the racial
commentary underlying the text, it actually distorts — through
colorblind casting — the paradigms that existed in 1941, when the
play was written.
Saroyan wrote "Hello Out There" at the tail end of the brief
proletarian movement in American literature. Class struggles and race
relations were prominent themes for this Depression-era movement —
themes that resonate in several Saroyan plays from that period,
including "The Time of Your Life" and "My Heart’s in the Highlands."
When viewed in this context, "Hello Out There" takes on political and
social overtones that Hovannisian’s interpretation sidesteps.
Nevertheless, the production remains visually arresting and
emotionally haunting throughout, providing a theatrical experience
both engrossing and memorable.
***
Aram Kouyoumdjian is the winner of Elly Awards for both playwriting
("The Farewells") and directing ("Three Hotels"). His latest work is
"Velvet Revolution."
******************************* ********************************************
7. Canvas: Can I say, "Bravo Armen Eloyan!"
by Raphy Sarkissian
Crude, fascinating, disturbing, luscious, appalling, and sumptuous are
the works of Armen Eloyan, in a solo exhibition at the Parasol Unit,
Foundation for Contemporary Art, London. Amusingly entitled "Two Feet
in One Shoe," the exhibition features sixteen medium- and large-scale
oil-on-canvas paintings executed in 2006.
"Bravo" is the last word that comes to one’s mind when confronting
artwork one considers to be mediocre at first. Yet mediocrity soon
transfigures as a misnomer of parody and caricature, revealing an
aesthetic judgment that is disconnected from modernist theory and the
current dilemma of painting. Such was my train of thought when I
encountered the paintings of Eloyan.
The profligacy of Eloyan’s practice relies on submitting fragments
of themes lifted from popular culture and thereabouts to a diverse
range of eclectic and ecstatic gestural brushworks. The outcome is
frequently repulsive on the level of figuration, yet always remains
indelibly pleasurable to the viewer who is willing to step down and
participate in Eloyan’s unrestrained and rough investigations into the
painterly process.
The end result is itself the very means of mark-making within this
frenetic love of experimentation. There is, after all, the pleasure
principle of the action that comes into play, the pleasure principle
of tracing raw colors that often excludes linear precision.
The expressive rendering of "Fantasy Figure 2" can easily register
as a tragicomic parody of van Gogh’s "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," for
instance. Here the coherent gestural pattern of van Gogh has been
replaced by a jumbled range of compulsive brushstrokes that allude to
Willem de Kooning, Markus Lüpertz, Julian Schnabel and Cecily Brown.
The painterly bravura of Eloyan treats the canvas itself as a
palette, whereby composition, calculation, accident, history and
intention are not mutually exclusive. Nor are they strictly definable.
Yes, the surfaces of de Kooning or Schnabel are also rendered as
palettes very often. Yet each means~Walong with the subsequent
manner~Wof smearing colors upon the canvass gives rise to an accident
that is both "unique" and "generic," a concept that oddly remains at
the core of Andy Warhol’s mechanical reproduction. Herein lies
Eloyan’s sophomoric risk-taking as a sole channel of embracing the
primordial. The miserly, ridiculous, infantilized face of an illusory
Dr. Gachet has been paired with a ground that remains clinging to the
majestic greens and blues of van Gogh’s "Cypresses."
Messing up the surface of the canvas is Eloyan’s methodology of
tidying the painting’s legibility. In the center of "Untitled" appear
two heads of eerily chained ducks whose bodies are absent. Apart from
a somewhat sure-handed execution of a pair of beaks, the rest of the
painting is an arena of painterly "spontaneity," coupled with
occasional oozes of thinned oil. Here a greenish theatrical setting is
executed through gestural vagaries, where paint is applied in fluid,
hasty and gaudy strokes.
Far from being despondent, the magical brilliance of Eloyan’s work
lies in its capacity to accelerate content by accelerating the very
technique. Suspended somewhere between sadomasochism and agony, the
heads of these animals embody the human melodrama of the past and
present. They suggest the all-too apparent: terrorism and war
obliterate wellbeing upon the bleak human stage set.
Oil transforms into asphalt and blood within "Wishes and Wishes,"
depicting a stage set for two white caricature human figures in midst
of a gruesome corporal persecution. In the background, hectic
signifiers of skeletal windows act as agents of a shoddy intuitive
perspective, transforming the otherwise abstract expressionistic
surface into representations of ominous houses. The strident and
harshly applied colors of the foreground evoke Anselm Kiefer’s
impastoed surfaces. Confronting "Wishes and Wishes" brings into mind
the legacy of the German Pavilion of the 1980 Venice Biennale that
included paintings by Kiefer and Baselitz, notoriously ascertaining
the Neo-Expressionist tendency symbolic of the memory of the German
people.
Would it be feasible to then read Eloyan’s vocabulary as an addition
to the path paved by German artists in the 1970s? Inescapably yes. Yet
while Eloyan’s style is inseparable from the New Fauves and the
Neo-Expressionists, at the same time it inevitably calls for not only
an expansion of that sociohistorical framework, but seems to act,
through "Wishes and Wishes," as one more possible means of
overstepping boundaries and rethinking "otherness."
Or perhaps such wishes will always remain as mere wishes, only to be
converted into visual palimpsests. In the heart of Eloyan’s juvenile
output lie reciprocities of pleasure/obscenity,
abjection/emancipation, trauma/relief. The embarrassing infantilism,
excesses and subversive devices of Antonin Artaud once again poke
through the irrational pictorial rehearsals of Eloyan.
Octavio Paz concludes his book "Alternating Currents" through a few
sentences that might as well be read as textual counterparts of "Two
Feet in One Shoe": "The powerful conceive of history as a mirror: in
the battered faces of others~Wthe insulted and injured, the conquered
or the ‘converted’~Wthey see their own face reflected. This is the
dialogue of masks, that double-monologue of the victimizer and the
victimized. Revolt is the criticism of masks, the beginning of genuine
dialogue. It is also the creation of our own faces."
Just as Eloyan’s paintings may instantly swipe the validity of
aesthetic judgment, so too they fog the distinctions of sincerity and
sarcasm. As such, their melodramatic pathos renders pictorial humor as
a postmodern maze of passion, polemics and politics.
Charles Baudelaire, the great French poet and art critic of the
nineteenth century, said that art criticism must be passionate,
polemical, and political. So must be painting at this moment: three
feet in one shoe.
If the compulsion to dab oil paint on canvas can reverse the
obsolescence of painting, then bravo Armen Eloyan! (Was painting ever
obsolete?) If the dismantling of the orthodoxy of painting’s
obsolescence can carry on this medium’s conversations with Goya,
Turner and Nolde, then bravo Armen Eloyan!
"Two Feet in One Shoe" was on view at Parasol Unit, Foundation for
Contemporary Art, London, from June 1 to July 20.
connect:
Armen Eloyan is represented by Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zürich, Switzerland.
connect:
* * *
Raphy Sarkissian, an artist and curator, teaches at the School of
Visual Arts in New York City.
******************************************* ********************************
8. Memoir: 1001 Nights in Iraq: The Shocking Story of an American
Forced to Fight for Saddam against the Country He Loves
A novel by Shant Kenderian tria: 304pp
reviewed by Marilyn Arguelles
Shant Kenderian has written a real-life story of his forced service in
Saddam Hussein’s military beginning in 1980. His is a drama of
misfortune, coincidence, and irony that ends with his return to the
United States and an exceptional career as an engineer.
Shant was born in Iraq. As an Iraqi Christian of Armenian descent,
he recalls often feeling like an interloper in his own country. He was
a child of privilege, however, and his family was prominent in the
close Armenian community in Baghdad.
When he was 15, his parents’ marriage ended in an acrimonious
divorce. Shant and his brother moved to Chicago with their mother, and
he assimilated quickly, enjoying the excitement of learning a new
language and experiencing new things: "I loved donuts at first bite
and cafeteria-style mashed potatoes with gravy." Education became of
utmost importance to him, and he excelled, especially in math and
science, to the point where his GPA was above 4.5.
Because of the continuing battle between his parents, even though
both had remarried, Shant felt compelled to travel to Iraq to settle
things with his father. He did this just before his senior year in
high school. Unfortunately, this trip coincided with Saddam’s war with
Iran. Shant was able to delay the inevitable military service by
enrolling in engineering courses at the University of Technology,
graduating with a degree in engineering in 1985. He was then drafted
into the Iraqi navy and spent over three years fighting the Iranians
near Basra. (Had he not enlisted, he would have been executed.)
Because of the intransigence of the Iraqi bureaucracy, he was not
allowed to leave the country after those particular hostilities ended.
In August of 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, Saddam decreed
that all males under the age of 53 had three days to register for
military service. Shant was again a member of the Iraqi navy and
volunteered for the crew of the L-87, a landing-craft boat with a unit
close to the front lines, where the American forces were expected. He
was desperate to be captured, and being on the front lines was the
ticket to P.O.W. status.
Shant’s recollection of the military’s inadequate equipment and
supplies sounded similar to recent news about up-armored Humvees, and
the like, but I don’t remember hearing that soldiers in the U.S. army
are sent to battle without guns. This was not the case with Saddam’s
forces; only two of Shant’s crew of 15 had guns. And although most
U.S. service members aren’t thrilled with meals-ready-to-eat, I doubt
any of them would trade their MREs for the Iraqi fare (which Shant and
his ship-mates were convinced included slaughtered old camels, judging
by the size of the bones sticking out of the soup pot).
After suffering attacks from the air, fires on board, and being
abandoned by the Red Crescent ship which was to have rescued them, the
crew was captured. Shant’s dream was realized, and he became the
twenty-third P.O.W. of Desert Storm.
Although he quickly announced himself as a permanent resident of the
United States, Shant was not spared relentless interrogation. Each of
his interrogators in turn asked him the same questions, and each
accused him of lying. The author carefully balances his descriptions
of the discomforts he and his fellow P.O.W.s endured, such as often
being blindfolded and handcuffed, with his admiration for the many
fine American service members he came to know.
He includes a great deal of information about his relationship with
individual soldiers, including an unlikely affair of the heart with
Monica, an Army reserve truck driver who in civilian life worked as a
waitress. (Such are the vicissitudes of war. Would Shant and Monica
have found each other as interesting in another setting?) Eventually,
because of his English language skills, Shant was used as a translator
who helped to diffuse tensions and explain cultural differences
between the prisoners and the Americans.
Finally, in the spring of 1991, Shant made his way to his family in
Los Angeles, via Saudi Arabia and Norfolk, Virginia, and the attendant
bureaucracies he had to maneuver. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in
materials science and engineering from Johns Hopkins University and
now works for a private firm on NASA projects in Los Angeles. He is
married and the father of three children.
The author’s writing style is often conversational in nature, and
the result is a book which moves quickly and is easy to read. It is
full of humor and irony and is a testament to the author’s
intelligence and his religious faith. Although some may see it mainly
as homage to the American way of life, it is also a reminder of the
horrors of war on all sides.
****************************************** *********************************
9. Auteur: Aftershock
by Lory Tatoulian
Khoren Aramouni possesses the demeanor of the artist, from his
cascading beard, to his small round glasses, to his lean frame.It’s as
if he is an ascetic for the arts, approaching his art with ardent
devotion.
For the past 20 years Khoren has been a prolific writer in the
Armenian language, oscillating his career between the United States
and Armenia.
His latest play, "Aftershock," will have its premiere at the Beyond
the Stars stage in Glendale.
"Aftershock" explores the repercussions of the three major political
and natural travails Armenia has experienced in its recent history.
Aramouni explains a few of the themes that underscore his current
play. "We have had to face three devastating episodes in Armenia’s
immediate history: the 1988 earthquake, the fall of the Soviet Union,
and the Karabakh war," he says.
"These three events have caused major political and cultural
aftershocks," he continues. "Because of these major shifts in peoples
lives, some people have had a hard time acclimating to these changes,
especially the intelligentsia."
Aramouni believes that the individual who has grown up in Armenia
has seen his or her environment disappear and replaced with something
else."Therefore their personal history and connection with the city
[of Yerevan] are erased," he says, "because nothing in their
surroundings has remained the same."
Armouni addresses these poignant themes in his new play by using the
dynamics of an Armenian family as a microcosm to address the more
universal issues that affect the country.
As the story unfolds, surprising plot lines lace their way through
the body of the play, layering the dramatic narrative with provocation
and pathos.The protagonist in the play is a young filmmaker who was a
little boy when he was adopted from Leninikan after the 1988
earthquake.
He returns to Armenia as an adult to make a documentary.
A young women falls in love with him. She later ends up being the
sister he never knew, because they were separated when he was adopted.
This is but one of the many suspenseful episodes that punctuate the
play.
Aramouni simply does not want to have his characters to be
representational; he wants them to express the depth of human
behavior.
"When I am creating my characters," he says, "I think of them as
inanimate dolls that need life breathed into them. It’s as if I’m
assuming the role of Aramazd, giving them a spirit, an authentic
voice."
"Aftershock" features seasoned actors such as Violeta Gregorian,
Avedis Khrimian, and Hagop Beligian.
Aramazd Stepanian does double duty as director and actor.
Putting on a play is a big undertaking for Aramouni.
He is not only the architect of the play, but also takes charge in
all areas of the production, from selling tickets to delivering props
and stage design.
It’s a huge responsibility that can sometimes make him uneasy.
He becomes so engrossed in the play that he gets a bit restless
months before opening night.
"Every day I get fidgety, and I don’t get a lot of sleep," he says.
"I care about this project so much that I wake up in the middle of the
night wondering how the production is going to go, wondering if the
actors are going to interpret the script correctly, thinking about
what changes I have to make, every fiber of my being becomes consumed
with this play."
His devotion to his work is validated by the positive reception he
has received from previous audience members.
"From my past productions, audiences did not want to leave the
theater after the play was done," he says.
"I would get phone calls from audience members asking me, ‘how did
you know so much about our lives, how were you able to depict our life
so well on stage?’" he says.
Aramouni’s repertoire is full of books and plays that are tailored
to reflect and challenge the current paradigms in the Armenian
community.
For the past two years, his play "Future Without Return" has been
playing at the Sundukyan Theater in Yerevan. He also has written a
collection of stories about life in Glendale. One of his more absurd
stories is titled "25 Cents." The playwright-director explains that
"25 Cents" is about a coin personified.
"The 25-cent coin travels though many peoples lives and pockets and
speaks of his journeys," says Aramouni. "The story not only examines
human relationships, but examines the relationship between man and
money."
"Aftershock" is sure to carry Khoren Aramouni’s signature —
insightful material that is current and complex. Aramouni says he
always aims to pose those abiding existential questions that provoke
all human drama, either on or off the stage.
"Ultimately, I want the audience to questions themselves," he says.
"Who they are as Armenians, as members of the human race. I try to
dive deep into the interiors of humanity."
********************************* ******************************************
10. Literature: All is fair in love and money
* Das Kapital: A novel of love & money markets
by Viken Berberian
Simon & Schuster: 175pp.
reviewed by Atina Harutunian
News of Viken Berberian’s second novel has been all over the Armenian
Reporter lately: from a one-on-one interview with the author, to an
excerpt, to a segment in last week’s issue covering his reading in
Glendale. Reading these articles I became curious to demystify this
highly anticipated novel, Das Kapital. Judging from the title I
thought it best to have a "Karl Marx for Dummies" handbook by my side
in case I encountered any daunting language I had to decode.
Thankfully, the story is not bogged down with heavy or complex ideas
about money or love. The novel concentrates more on ideas than on
imagery. The two characters we follow embody the age-old tension
between humans and nature.
Wayne, the Stock Market Cowboy, profits from economic meltdowns. He
has what Berberian refers to in a previous interview as a
"counterintuitive mind."
People who make money from the stock market generally do so by
betting the market will go up. Wayne, however, profits when whole
civilizations meet a catastrophic end.
This is why he favors human progress at the expense of nature. The
more humans progress, the greater are the chances of economic
devastation, and that inevitably means more money in Wayne’s pockets,
since he is in the business of betting against the market. He has
great disdain for nature and sees it as a nuisance, in the way of his
own gain.
Wayne’s adversary, the Corsican, is his complete opposite in the
ideological warfare between humans and nature.
This gentle giant believes in the conservation of nature and the
importance of protecting it from the threatening advances of humans.
He has a "secret pact with nature to restore its honor." But, alas,
the Corsican needs sustainable income. And he works at Buscati, a
lumbering company in Corsica. "With each swing of the axe [the
Corsican] chip[s] away at his beliefs and sometimes at the end of the
day his body convulse[s] from the shock of mechanized pogroms he and
his friends commit against nature" (p. 15).
Meanwhile, Wayne dreams about economic disasters on an apocalyptic
scale with an "ocular smile."
The two ideological opposites cross paths when, unknowingly, they
fall in love with the same girl, Alix, an architecture student living
in Marseille. It is the Corsican who meets her first; he encourages
her to contact Wayne at his firm Empiricus and find out the nature of
his relationship to Buscati.
The correspondence between Alix and Wayne quickly turns from
innocent inquires to erotic emails, just as her affection for the
timid Corsican is depreciating. The Corsican, heartbroken by the end
of their relationship, finds out who Alix has replaced him with and
plans his vengeance.
While reading Das Kapital, I was immediately struck by the airy and
light tone Berberian cultivates with the words he uses. They are
specific and sparse. Berberian cleverly constructs phrases and
sentences like "ocular smile" or "the singular and undeviating
smugness of its hills, standing stubbornly in the way of human
progress." This is a refreshing new writing style.
There are a few cases where a phrase like "politically correct
nipples" will shake you right out of the narrative. On page 5, there
is a comparison of the degree of difficulty of the Armenian and
Corsican languages. It is a bit of random information with no further
connection to the story.
Despite these minor blemishes and the Wall Street jargon, it’s a
smooth, comprehensible, read. I didn’t need to use my handbook after
all. Berberian took great care in writing Das Kapital.
And yet, even though the love triangle binds the characters to the
narrative, they still feel somewhat distant from the reader. Perhaps
it’s because of the philosophical nature of the book or it’s a part of
Berberian’s ethereal style that makes it difficult for one to relate
to the characters. Nevertheless, Das Kapital, is a light read both
literally and figuratively; it presents a fresh new voice and style.
****************************************** *********************************
11. Stage: The red dog howls — and a New York audience gasps
* A family’s grisly Genocide story unfolds in new play
by Florence Avakian
NEW YORK — "And the red dogs of the desert howled all one night /
After hopelessly moaning over the sands / For some unknown,
incomprehensible grief."
Words by the martyred Armenian poet Siamanto form the crux of a new
play written "in tribute to the memory of all the victims of the
Armenian Genocide," by Alexander Dinelaris, which received a staged
reading at a New York theater on Monday evening, June 25.
Produced by the Resistance Theatre Company and Shotgun Productions,
Inc., Red Dog Howls attracted an audience of more than 350, including
award-winning actors Danny Aiello and Ed Setrakian.
A plaintive Armenian melody on violin opened the play, portending
the tragic events that would eventually unfold. Michael Kiriakos, a
young man living in New York with his pregnant wife Gabriella, has
opened a box against the wishes of his recently deceased father. In it
he finds a letter with an address in the Bronx. Going there, he meets
a crusty, defensive 91-year-old woman Rose — Vartuhi — who turns out
to be the Armenian grandmother he thought was dead.
The emotional six-month relationship of Rose and Michael is one of
growing awareness, as both slowly shed their outward defenses and form
a close bond of love, warmth, and support. Very slowly, the history of
the family is revealed, as the two protagonists constantly "measure
each other like two prizefighters."
In their weekly meetings, certain phrases are repeated. "Eat, eat.
You are not strong enough. You need to be strong," implores Rose, who
forces generous portions of Armenian delicacies on her grandson
whenever he visits. Words in this context are everything, the
characters perceive, because emotions cannot be trusted.
Though she eats no meat, Michael realizes his grandmother’s
unnatural strength as she wins every arm-wrestling match. "She was
summoning the strength of a million and a-half martyrs," is the
explanation — and to compete Michael begins weight training at his
local gym. He also becomes obsessed with the Armenian culture,
becoming familiar not only with the food, but with Armenian words and
snippets of history told by his grandmother.
However, he can’t understand why Rose does not want to meet his wife.
* Sins of the mothers
During this time, Rose has been making a pillow on which she has been
embroidering the name "Eva." It seems that Rose as a young wife left
her husband, and her young son, Michael’s father, also named Michael.
"When you commit a terrible sin, you take it out on your family," she
says quietly — before at last divulging the secret that has tortured
her for 60 lonely years.
"Your grandfather was Vartan, my first husband," she says in a
whisper, starting the horrifying story. Your step-grandfather was
Abram Kiriakos, a good, trustworthy man who brought up your father.
Your grandfather made clothes for the Turks so we thought we were
safe." Hiding her face, with her voice coming out in choked screams,
she unfolds a scene of human barbarity which caused the audience to
gasp, and inspired audible sobs among several listeners.
The revelation — an example of Genocide-era Turkish barbarity as
horrible as the most grotesque Greek myth — explains the puzzling
words and behaviors of the grandmother, the sorrowful meaning of name
on the pillow, and her reluctance to meet the grandson’s pregnant
wife. But it also impels Michael to a dark action of his own, which he
commits the following Easter.
"There are sins for which we can never be absolved," the grandson
ruminates quietly, over violin music that draws the play to an end.
"Sins so terrible, so unimaginable, that if or when we finally
acknowledge the depths of our complicity, we will be changed
forever…. I know this because I have committed one."
The outstanding cast included Kathleen Chalfant, the 1999 Drama Desk
Best Actress Award winner, as Rose; Matthew Rauch, who has performed
in Prelude to a Kiss on Broadway, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, and
The Revenger’s Tragedy, as the grandson Michael; and Darcie Siciliano,
who was in Michael Weller’s Help! and The Chaos Theories, as the
pregnant wife Gabriella. Stage director Ian Kahn is known for work in
television, including Dawson’s Creek and Sex and the City.
* A tragedy of millions boiled down to one family
The staged reading received a long ovation, and during the reception
following the reading, there was no dearth of attendees willing to
share their feelings.
For screen actor Danny Aiello — who playwright Alex Dinelaris
called "a friend and mentor" in his welcoming remarks — the play
should win a Pulitzer Prize. "It’s unlike anything I’ve seen. It’s
brilliant, heart-tugging," gushed Aiello. "It allows people the
opportunity to know of this catastrophic event so that they will
investigate and learn about it."
Calling Dinelaris the "youngest, most prolific writer in the last 20
years," Aiello compared him to Arthur Miller and William Saroyan. "I
was not aware of the Armenian suffering. What Alexander did was to
personalize it. He took the tragedy of millions and portrayed it
within one family. Each of the traumatic events was a total shock.
This play should definitely be on Broadway."
Kathleen Chalfant who had previously starred in Leslie Ayvazian’s
play, Nine Armenians, and sported a very respectable Middle Eastern
accent as Rose in this production, called it a "wonderfully written
play." She revealed that during the difficult Genocide scene, even
though she was thinking of her own grandchildren, "you have to just
tell the story."
For actor and director Ed Setrakian, whose mother’s family from Mush
was wiped out during the Genocide, the play "resonated greatly. It’s
an excellent piece of writing, very moving," he commented, paying
special tribute to the exceptional talent of Kathleen Chalfant as
Rose.
Former longtime columnist for the New York Daily News George Maksian
found the work "profound, and hard-hitting. But it might be disturbing
to some people," he noted.
Among the dozens of young people in the audience was 18-year-old
Nick Mouradian, a New York University student who though "very moved"
was looking for "more powerful, intense and sorrowful music" at the
beginning and close of the play.
Michael Matossian, also 18, a student at the University of
Cincinnati, called the script "great. The character of Rose was
developed both physically and emotionally. I’ll be thinking about the
characters and events for a long time."
The June 25 staged reading was made possible by a grant from the New
York State Council on the Arts, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
******************************************* ********************************
12. Sidebar: An influential Armenian grandmother
by Florence Avakian
NEW YORK — During an exclusive interview following the June 25 staged
reading of his play Red Dog Howls, I asked Alexander Dinelaris whether
it was necessary to portray such a gut-wrenching description of
Genocide barbarity — which nearly pulverized the audience.
He responded that he had heard such stories in his early life with
his Armenian grandmother. "They made a deep impression on me."
Dinelaris revealed that it had taken him a year to write this play:
"a year of tortuous writing and rewriting. There is nothing
autobiographical [in it], except for certain Armenian phrases, foods,
and my grandmother’s name."
Even so, he confessed, "I was petrified to write this story since I
was not raised in it. It felt like a fraud. Maybe there was a need for
stillness with my grandmother."
It was during his formative years of two to six that Dinelaris lived
with his grandmother, Rose Afratian, a survivor of the Armenian
Genocide. Though she was in her 60s, she gladly took him in following
the divorce of his father (half-Armenian, half-Albanian) and his
mother (half-Cuban, half-Puerto Rican) when he was only a year old.
"My grandmother was absolutely willing to do it, and showered me
with an overwhelming amount of love. Like the character in the play,
she was open-armed, tough and loving," he recalled with visible
affection. "I remember the wonderful Armenian food and music; but it’s
her unbelievable love for me that will stay with me forever."
By age six, he was one of very few who could read and write in his
class. "My grandmother couldn’t read, but she forced me to read the
funny pages to her."
One of the worst times in his life occurred when his grandmother
passed away while he was in his teens. "It was a traumatic period. I
felt great guilt because I wasn’t there the day she died, because
foolishly I delayed going."
His early life from ages six to sixteen was spent shuttling back and
forth between his parents. Entering Barry University in North Miami,
he studied theater and literature, then came to New York as a
20-year-old "devouring" books on theater.
However, his intense interest in the acting world had begun much
earlier. "At nine and ten, I watched movies incessantly," he said, and
in a high school production he had starred as Tevye in Fiddler on the
Roof. "That did it: I was hooked. After that, I was in one play after
another," he related with enthusiasm.
During his early 20s, he worked in restaurants, and produced small
theatrical works, and at age 23 he served as an assistant to the
director of the Roundabout Theatre for a year. By 2001, though he
needed money, he missed the theatrical world so "terribly" that he
"escaped" from his restaurant job, and began writing full time.
* Search for self
Since then Dinelaris, who is now 39, has written several plays, the
themes always being "a search for self." He said that he wrote Red Dog
Howls to "show the brutality of man."
"My father very rarely cried," he said. "But he once said to me,
‘Look at things men can do. Their genius built the World Trade Center,
and their brutality brought it down.’"
Dinelaris has been recognized for his works prior to Red Dog Howls.
His off-Broadway hit "Zanna Don’t" garnered him a Lucille Lortel prize
and two Drama Desk awards. Two of his plays, Still Life, and Folding
the Monster (which starred Danny Aiello) are currently being developed
for Broadway productions in the spring or summer of 2008.
He also authored the critically acclaimed work The Chaos Theories,
which was performed to sold-out audiences during the 2004 New York
Fringe Festival. It received a staged reading with renowned actors
Kathleen Chalfant, Ally Sheedy, and Karen Ziemba in starring roles.
Dinelaris’ other works include "Big Kids," "Adam and Evelyn," and
"Pathetique." He has also found time to also be a script doctor for
New Line Cinema, and has recently completed work on a television pilot
titled, "Crisis Center: NYC."
He explains the lure of theater versus film. "In movies, for
example, if you want to show the sense of danger, you can easily cut
away. Theater has the immediacy of the play. There is no cutaway. You
must portray danger or any emotion through behavior and dialogue. It’s
the equivalent of being a magician without using magic."
He defines artists of all stripes, whether they are painters,
sculptors, writers, or actors, as being "tremendously insecure, with
egos in great proportions."
However, in the theatrical sphere, he singles out a few actors as
special. Kathleen Chalfant is a "seasoned, classic, generous and
honest artist." Danny Aiello, whom he has known well for more than
five years, has "great talent, with a deep and generous soul." He
calls Liam Neeson, an "actor’s actor, who is beyond ego, and always
looking to improve his work." And Judi Dench is "just the best."
"In all my plays, the protagonists have always been women, strong
characters, like my grandmother," he said thoughtfully. "It reflects
my upbringing."
And like his characters, Alexander Dinelaris himself can be
"obsessive about things. But ultimately that reflects my great passion
about my life and work."
************************************* **************************************
13. Cinema: Recounting the twists fate takes
* A meeting with Antonia Arslan
Antonia Arslan, the Italian-Armenian novelist, was in Yerevan last
week for the Armenian premiere of The Lark Farm, the movie based on
her novel Skylark Farm.
It is the story of her family, survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
She spoke to the Armenian Reporter’s Betty Panossian-Ter Sargssian.
The conversation developed around the genesis of the novel.
BP: La Masseria Del Allonso (Skylark Farm) is your very first novel,
and within a couple of years it achieved international success as a
literary work and as a film. Where does that leave you?
AA: I am really glad by the result my book achieved. I didn’t expect
nor claimed to attain international applause, but what I always felt
was that the book and the theme it touched were very important.
BP: And after this marvelous launch, do you plan to continue your
newly established career as a novelist?
AA: Following this positive experience I definitely am eager and
ready to continue my path as a writer. I know that I will write two
more novels with the same premise stirred up by my family’s story. In
the following two parts of the trilogy, I intend to extend the themes
of the first one.
BP: Why did you wait so long to tell the tale of your family, of
your aunt Hanriette, "the child who never grew up"?
AA: This subject was buried so deep in me that I couldn’t bring it
to the surface. When I translated Taniel Varoujan [the great Western
Armenian poet, slaughtered in 1915] and become in touch with his
poetry, only then I was able to create a connection with the deep
memories and the stories within me and the outside world. And only
then I was able to bring out everything that was within me.
BP: Some paragraphs of your novel penetrate into the life of Taniel
Varoujan when he was standing at the threshold of the Genocide. This
pattern is noticeable throughout the novel, when the narration zooms
into the lives of those who are soon to be the victims and tries to
illustrate what the Genocide was from inside. How did you combine the
history and the survivor memories?
AA: I have read everything I was able to find with the topic of the
Genocide, ranging from the works of the historians to personal
memories and eyewitness and survivor accounts. And as I read, I was
gradually feeling that I was entering into these lives. Poetry and
music have always had an important place in my heart, and it was
during a concert of Armenian music in Venice that I understood the
time had come to give my thoughts to the paper. That was my real
moment of inspiration. And on the program of the concert I started to
write some verses, the first of five or six poems in Italian titled
"Armenian ballads" I wrote but never have published yet. I wrote all
around the program page and copied them later at home. And I am told
by the Mkhitarist monks at the St. Lazar monastery, that they have
chiseled that program on the altar of the Genocide Museum at St.
Lazar.
BP: In its margins the book reveals much about your life and
upbringing, and your relationship to two different worlds, two inner
and chaotic worlds.
AA: Yes, and one of them is the Italian world. My name is Antonia, I
live in Padova, and the first pages of the book narrate my visit to
the church of St. Antonio. And that visit is the precise moment when
the two worlds are interweaved, because that is the moment in time
when my grandfather talks me about [the Armenian Genocide]. And the
chant that he sings is "Der Voghormia" ("Lord, have mercy").
As for the book, it is a novel which fully expresses my Armenian
identity, at the same time communicating in Italian, and it couldn’t
be told in any other language but Italian, because that is my mother
language. And there is a great difference between the mother language
which is transmitted to you and any other language mastered later. I
insisted to write in Italian also from an Eastern perspective. I used
the Italian as a medium to express the other world.
BP: The portrayal of the happy and untroubled life of your family in
the small Anatolian town is interrupted by paragraphs in bold
foretelling the black fate and the dark future. Why the rhythm of
constant hammering of the disaster to come?
AA: Because that is exactly what I wanted to preserve. I didn’t want
the reader to follow to the line of narration of the book as an
exciting recount of an adventure, but as a work which conveys the
turns fate takes. The ticking rhythm of the book is that of fate. And
I definitely want the reader to communicate to this rhythm. The
paragraphs in bold prepare the reader for what is about to happen.
This rhythm, this chorus wasn’t premeditated. It just came out to the
surface as I wrote.
BP: Was your blissful, bright, and tranquil life and upbringing in
Padova punctuated with the hammering of similar dark rhythms of tales
from the Genocide?
AA: That is exactly what happened during my whole life. It is not
that I have had a sense of guilt and remorse, but that of urgency, and
that really has hammered my entire life.
BP: Tell us about your upbringing and background. What triggered you
to become a writer recounting the tales of your family?
AA: Let me start by mentioning my mother, who passed away last year.
She had a great affection for our Armenian relatives. My father had
completely adopted the Italian outlook and identity. My mother
compelled my father to rejoin with all his Armenian relatives. And I
joined my mother and father to this big voyage to the Middle East, and
I was lucky to accompany my parents without my brothers and sisters.
We went to Beirut, Tripoli. We traveled through all of Lebanon and
Syria, visited our relatives in Damascus. Our uncle Zareh, who in the
book saves the children from the death camp at the gates of Aleppo,
was still living there with his Syrian wife and their daughter. Then
we went to Brazil to visit other relatives. My mother was in regular
correspondence with all of our relatives in English and French. And we
explored the Armenian world through our Armenian relatives. with the
same premise stirred up my family’s story. Then we regularly visited
the St. Lazar monastery in Venice.
We lived all these without uttering a single Armenian word. But each
afternoon my aunt Hanriette, to whom the book is dedicated, crossed
the street and brought us a big tray loaded with yogurt and sweets. At
fourteen I read The Forty Days of Mousa Dagh, and started regarding
this newly found world as my own.
The other factor was my grandfather. When I was nine, my aunt got
very sick. She had an inexplicable high fever. And it was terrible
that my grandfather and my father were acclaimed doctors and didn’t
know what to do. At the end they were able to save her life using
antibiotics, because at that time antibiotics were rare. My
grandparent went to my aunt and, trying to convince her, said that for
every shot he would give her fifty liras, and I bargained for my aunt
and increased that amount to one hundred liras. But the important part
of that disease was that my grandfather took us to the countryside for
one month to get recovered. It was during that month of recovery that
he told me the complete story.
BP: What were your first impressions when you watched the final
version of the film The Lark Farm by Paolo and Vittorio Tavianni based
on your novel? And what was your input in the making of the film?
AA: I first saw the film in Rome with the entire cast and crew
members. We all were crying. I have very positive impressions of the
film. The story is beautiful, told beautifully, and most importantly
the film is independent of the book, as it should be, because
literature and film are two different languages.
I am not the scriptwriter of the film. My involvement in the film
was in two aspects: Remind them to cast an Armenian actress, Arsinée
Khanjian, who was naturally excited by this offer. And secondly I
suggested the song "Ov siroun siroun" and introduced Vardouhi
Karakhanian to the Tavianis. It is her voice singing Nounik’s favorite
song in the film. Besides contributing to the film with her song and
voice, Vardouhi (Valentina) made suggestions to the composer of the
film, who is the son of one of the Tavianis.
I am only sad that the spiritual element which was so stressed and
present in the book is absent in the film. The Tavianis are filmmakers
who are experts in recounting historical events, but the spiritual
dimension of the novel was not explored in the film.
******************************************* ********************************
14. Aperture: The best of the best
Helena, Hilma, and Chris — the Reporter’s three photographers were
asked to present their favorite of the nearly 4,000 photos they
snapped at last week’s Navasartian Games and Festival. Here they are.
Their top four hundred photos are available to be viewed at
For the best of the best, go to reporter.am or pick up the print
version of the paper.
****************************************** *********************************
15. Point of view: Gracias amigas y ‘akhperus’
by Patrick Azadian
Talk of housekeepers seems to be taboo. Many people employ one (or
more), but not everyone wants to admit they need help in their daily
chores.
Until recently, I prided myself in not needing help. But I
eventually realized that it takes a while to clean the place, and in
my case, a fraction of that time to make my apartment look like a
hurricane passed through it.
Such is a single man’s life. No one else besides me sees the
apartment on a regular basis. But then again, I need to be prepared
for that occasional but special unexpected guest.
Moreover, seeing my place squeaky clean could encourage me to keep
it that way in between housekeeper visits. Ideology was not a factor,
either. Long ago, I gave up on the empty and cliché slogans of
pseudopopulism and insincere modesty. Besides, employing someone and
treating them with respect seems to be more in the interests of the
masses than not employing.
I finally gave in to the idea; that was the easy part. But finding a
reliable housekeeper was not an easy task. First, my relatives
cautioned me about hiring someone of my own ethnicity.
"Before you know it, she’ll be giving you advice on how to
re-decorate your place." They act like family, I was told. I did not
want that.
I was also told not to be surprised if in a few weeks she would get
involved in my personal life as well. She may say: "Doo chess oozoom
amoosnanas? Meenchev yerb es boo-ee pes menak apreloo?" (‘Don’t you
want to get married? How long are you going to live alone like an
owl?’)
Of course that was a no-no.
With at least half the population of my hometown being Armenian, it
hasn’t been an easy task finding a helping hand here in Glendale.
Friends have tried to help, but every time someone suggested they
would introduce me to their help, the promise has gone unfulfilled.
Good help seems to be as good as gold, and I can understand no one
wants to take the risk of losing their jewel just in case I end up
treating them better. Sharing has not been caring in this case.
Susan, one of my few Venezuelan-Armenian connections, was the
exception. She is a fellow graphic artist; we worked together long
ago. And we’ve managed to keep in touch. She called me randomly months
after her wedding. I was prepared for her standard quasi-affectionate
greeting.
"Oor es khent?" she always asks. (‘Where have you been, you nut?’)
We chatted for a while and I eventually told her about my problem.
"Do you know someone who can help me?" I begged. She did: "Her name
is Margarita, and she is great! I will let her know you’ll be calling"
Problem solved.
I was very excited. Now, I could be a regular person with a regular
tidy apartment. I would not have to blame my clutter on being an
‘artiste,’ single, or eccentric. Moreover, my friends wouldn’t need to
look for creative excuses to patronize me: "Well . . . you know,
creative people are always like this."
I called Margarita the same day and managed to communicate with her
in my broken Spanish. She is originally from San Salvador.
I meekly introduced myself: "Como esta usted? Soy Patrik, amigo de
Susan." (I meant: ‘How are you? I am Patrick, Susan’s friend.’)
"Si Señor Patrik, si."
I continued: "Proximo Sabado, nueve en la mañana." (I meant: ‘Next
Saturday, at 9 in the morning.’)
The date and time were etched in stone. Yet, I had a big task in
front of me; I had to get the apartment to a certain cleanliness level
before Margarita arrived. I did not want Saturday to be her first and
last day.The Wednesday before our scheduled cleaning day, however, I
got an unexpected call from her.She asked: "Señor Patrik? Where [is]
your apartment? I [am in] Glendale now!"
I was confused: "Pero Margarita . . . proximo Sabado, no?" (I meant:
‘But Margarita, [our appointment was for] next Saturday, no?’) Before
I had time to process the information, a new voice got on Margarita’s
phone. It was a man.
"What is your address? We want to find your place." He said in a
masculine tone. I explained that our appointment was for Saturday and
not Wednesday. And then I came to my senses.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I am Artur. Margarita came to Glendale today to find your address,
so she isn’t late on Saturday trying to locate it." Artur’s speech was
monotone like a recording. It didn’t sound like he wanted to open his
mouth when he spoke.
Although that alleviated part of my confusion, I still did not
understand what Artur’s connection with Margarita was. They were
clearly from different worlds.
I asked Artur again who he was. It turned out that Margarita had
identified this stranger in the neighborhood to help her find my
address. I had a hunch. So I asked: "Artur, are you Armenian?"
His response was warm: "Ha akhperus, doo hay es?" (‘Yes bro. Are you
Armenian?’)
"Ha Arturjan. Hay em." (‘Yes, I am.’)
Artur was more than happy to help. He assured me that Margarita
would find my apartment so that she’d be on time on Saturday:
"Patrikjan, mee mtatzee, yes ko apartmentuh kuh gtnem Margreetee
hamar." (‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she finds your apartment.’)
I thanked Artur: "Arturjan, shnorhakal em."
"Vocheench akhperus." (‘No problem, bro.’)
I had a look of glee on my face. I was happy with my hometown; at
that moment all the condescending remarks I come across about Glendale
and its residents became inconsequential.
A random stranger was helping another random stranger to locate yet
another stranger.
It was a nice moment.
* * *
Patrick Azadian, a columnist at the Glendale News-Press, is the
creative director at PADA, a graphic design and marketing studio in
Glendale, California. He is a UCLA graduate with a B.A. in sociology.
Aaron Shure, the Emmy-winning producer/writer for the television
series "Everybody Loves Rayond" says about Patrick’s writing: "He
finds universal themes in local politics while untangling delicate
knots of culture, race, and personal history. You can’t argue with a
guy who makes Glendale interesting."
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16. Music: Saying goodbye to Elvina
Talented performer, teacher, and award-winning jazz star Elvina
Makarian died of a heart attack last week in the United States. She
was 59. Makarian’s talents caught the public’s attention early when
composer Aram Khachaturian called her "a miracle." She would later be
titled "La Piaf de Soviet" in a front-page article in the Soviet-era
Izvestia newspaper. Elvina’s talents surfaced early in her short life.
She was 12 when she won her first music award, and the next four
decades of her life would be full of music, learning, teaching,
touring, and performing. At 14, Makarian was invited to be the soloist
in Robert Amirkhanian’s jazz band. At 16, she joined the Constantine
Orbelian orchestra and became a soloist for the State TV and Radio
Orchestra. She studied the at the Komitas conservatory in Yerevan and
toured the world, performing in places like France, Canada, Syria,
Italy, Germany, and England. Her albums are still popular and
available through on-line music stores.
connect:
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