The music around you is making a statement -

It was before my time, surely before most of our times, but we've all seen the famous pictures and television clips of the Berlin Wall being torn down. Set up to devide West Germany and communist East Germany, it remains one of the outstanding symbols of the Cold War. The main thing I remember sbout the Wall in particular is that it was covered in graffiti. I'm not talking about some all city train bombing, end to end burner graffiti either. I imagine that the subcultures that existed on either side chose to express themselves through a medium that they thought would endure for a worldwide audience to see. They had to live with the physical body that represented a much more abstract notion to the rest of the world. The Iron Curtain was made of brick and mortar for those Germans. Whether their graff came in protest, was nationalist, or subversive, it was up there for a global audience to take in.

In Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace he talks of the separation between the affluent and the impoverished in NYC. Page after page he writes of cabs that stop short of the expendablem neighborhoods we've created and forgotten about. He writes of people who ride mass transit unaware that the train even runs to the ghettos of Mott Haven, they've certainly never stayed on it long enough to find out. There are many examples of the extreme class division, but the point is made that a wall exists. The affluent never leave their comfort, and the poor are unable to leave their slums. One of the images that has stayed with me long after finishing the book is the story of the unoccupied apartment buildings that are visible from the highways entering NYC. The buildings are physically located in the ghettos, the location of so much heartbreaking poverty and disease. On the sides of the buildings that face the roads, all the curtains are drawn. On the backs of the curtains are paintings of flowers, drapes, lamps, basically all the trappings of the homes of the middle to upper class. These vacant buildings are on the wrong side of the wall and have been turned into billboards. The dregs of society are swept further under the rug through a different form of paint on a wall.

It has very much been at the forefront of the news recently that walls are being erected around Iraq. Much like Berlin decades ago, these physical boundaries are being built in an attempt to keep parts of Baghdad "safe" from the rampant conflict years after the war was declared a success with the US as the victor. If large, nondescript, gray walls were being built around your city to complement the rubble it would be safe to say that the aesthetics of your home would be going down the drain. That is why I was so impressed and amazed at an article recently appearing in USA Today. It was about the recent projects undertaken by Baquir al-Sheik. He is a painter who has linked up with other artists in Iraq to work to cover the walls with murals. "We can't remove these walls anytime soon. We may as well try to beautify them," al-Sheik said. He is painting landscapes and scenes from ancient Sumeria to add some beauty to his beloved city that is being torn apart and beginning to look like "the inside of a military base, not the capital of a country." While not social protest or visual misrepresentation for tourism's sake, al-Sheik is fighting his own personal war with brushes and paint. War metaphors may be as cliche as they come, but I still tip my cap to the man that sees possibility where others just see an opportunity to complain.

As a global society we have become quite adept at constructing walls, be it a border that contains ethnic groups that cannot co-exist, a wall to separate people within their own country, a fence to keep people out of a country, or a boundary known only as a street name that you don't travel past. JD said in a past entry that what borders contain you do not define you. You can take out your violin and play a sad song, but I'm still going to remid you that there are tens of thousands in New Orleans who would love some walls and a roof. My fellow man spending the night in the ironically named Mansion Square Park would take some walls. Every day a majority of the people in this country takes their walls for granted. So tear a few down, because hiding behind them does a lot more harn than good.

In the movie Coffee and Cigarettes several characters repeat that "Nikola Tesla perceived the world as a conductor of acoustical resonance." How are you going to play it?