The Presidential Cup: the final photo in the Mali series by risa
I don’t know why, but this photo reminds me of the last page in Caryl Phillips’ novel “Crossing the River” which has always made smile and tear up. Maybe it is the look of attentive listening on all the people’s faces.
For two hundred and fifty years I have listened. To voices on the streets of Charleston. (The slave who mounted this block is now dying young from copping a fix on some rusty needle in an Oakland project.) I have listened. To reggae rhythms of rebellion and revolution dipping through the hills and valleys of the Caribbean. I have listened. To the saxophone player on a wintry night in Stockholm. A long way from home. For two hundred and fifty years I have listened. (…) To the haunting voices. Singing: Mercy, Mercy Me. (The Ecology.) Insisting: Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. Declaring: Brothers and Friends. I am Toussaint L’Ouverture, my name is perhaps known to you. Listened to voices hoping for: Freedom. Democracy. Singing: Baby, baby. Where did our love go? Samba. Calypso. Jazz. Jazz. Sketches of Spain in Harlem. In a Parisian bookstores a voice murmers the words. Nobody Knows My Name. I have listened to the voice that cried: I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have listened to the sounds of an African carnival in Trinidad. In Rio. In New Orleans. On the far bank of the river, a drum continues to be beaten. A many-tongued chorus continues to swell.
Michael in Mali part 1: Arrival
Michael in Mali part 2: Moto Yamaha
Michael in Mali part 3: Chez Moi
On the Niger: the first photo in the series
The Streets of Mopti: the second photo in the series
Garbage inMali and America: the third photo in the series
Four Little Birds: the fourth photo in the series
Michael in Mali: the fifth and sixth photo in the series.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:45 pm
i’m heartened by the image; its figuring of an unintentional solidarity is staggering. indeed, the images we’ve feasted on these last few days of new orlean’s black poor and more generic images of death and conquest in iraq strike a chord in the context of insisting, “man, i ain’t got no quarrel with the viet cong.” it was awesome–literally inspiring–to see people in new orleans offering comparison to the situation in iraq. where is the war being waged, then? these communities have been resiliant for years, under fierce scrutiny, living in abjection, in the fallout of larger forces and power relations. new orleans’ working poor, iraq’s stuggling civil society, even those in aceh and sri lanka after the tsunami, which i draw upon in relation to new orleans–all have been pioritized to absorb the force of this sort of moment of failure. perhaps they, in their common plight, share empathy. the best i can do is sympathy, relief in the distance provided by the image, a measure of my relieved removal. that the shia procession yesterday was mortared (killing 16) **before the thousand were killed in response to a threat of a suicide attack perhaps allows for a recognition of the emergent environmental conditions; losing 16 is par for the course on a daily basis. yet people still insisted on participation….and yet, with the football match above, there’s relief, not in a primitive sense of sharing the spectacle nor in a sense of celebrating an idealization of roots, but in the sense of taking a moment to commonly participate and partake…i don’t know much about mali but i assume the country occupies a zone on the fringe, at least relative to the powers that be. yet, the affect the image generates and inspires suggests a resiliancy that may, in its simiplicity, be the best form of relief and resistance of all.