notes from the nice side of the fence

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

- Anais Nin

the following is a personal example of a process of self-inquiry using the four questions and turnaround that make up a method called The Work of Byron Katie. this method is used on thought patterns that I can identify as bringing some kind of stress into my life. the questions are simple, and the answers come from careful introspection and meditation rather than from logic and judgment. the turnarounds are not a way of seeking to void my thinking, but rather to explore aspects of reality that I have been neglecting that may relax my attachment to my own painful stories. for more information on this, visit www.thework.com

“having more than one home is like having none.”

1. is it true?

yes. once you’ve gone and lived abroad and then come back, there’s always gonna be something missing, always a part of you not here. that’s what happened to me.

2. “having more than one home is like having none.” can you absolutely know that it’s true?

…well, not really. in the sense that, I can’t really know that adopting a new home was the problem to begin with. I was anxious about staying in one place long before I did that. so no, I can’t absolutely know that “having more than one home is like having none”.

3. so how do you react when you believe the thought “having more than one home is like having none”? what happens?

basically, I get bitter. I have this image of myself as a tortured traveler, like Lot’s wife - leaving loved ones behind, never being able to look back despite herself. I get on this ego-trip that somehow homelessness and restlessness is my calling, it’s my nature, as if it were the inevitable downside of my gifts and talents.

when I have this thought, I treat other people as if they have something I can never have - a real home. and that usually means either admiration or envy, or a mix of both. sometimes I get really mad at people I love who settle down in homes and in relationships, because it looks to me like they’re flaunting. I can see how in the past I put distance between me and people I love for this reason, and then secretly blamed them for it saying they got “mellow” or “boring”. I then try to get close to people who are more “like me”, people who have no roots, no attachments. but there’re very few of them and although we can have fun together, ultimately I feel like they cannot give me what I need, which is a real home, so I go back to the “normal” people. the effects of this confusion is that I don’t get very close to anyone in either groups. I guess this means that I’m also judging people by their level of homelessness, I’m measuring their attachments to see if they can help me or not. I become obsessed with how dependent or independent people around me are, and myself.

when I believe this thought, I feel this detachment in my body. I feel like I have nothing to stand on, like something floating, disconnected from life force. this feels like lightheadedness, a difficulty to focus on one thing. I also feel this lethargy, this heaviness in my limbs. tired.

I get really angry at people like employers, therapists and musicians that require of me to stay in one place if I wanna work with them. I have the thought that I can’t stay in one place because I’m innately homeless, and that they’re not being flexible, brave or spiritual enough to accommodate my needs. I think about governments and travel agents and get furious with the world for making it so hard to move from one place to another. I feel like I want to be in two places at the same time, I feel like I wanna do everything at the same time, cook and do laundry and write emails and rest and work all at the same time. I can’t focus, I get tired.

I regret choices I made in the past. “if only I didn’t run away at 19 looking for other homes, I would be happier and more secure now”. I criticize myself and think I’m a coward. I get really sad and guilty. I don’t get too close to anyone, because I don’t want to disappoint them once I have to go again. I also don’t want to feel the pain of that. I spend a lot of time alone. I have thoughts like “I only have me to rely on, nobody else”. I see my needs for love and affection as a weakness.

essentially, my life with this thought feels like stumbling blind through endless dark corridors while everybody else is dining at the grand ballroom.

4. who would you be without the thought “having more than one home is like having none”?

someone who has friends in many different parts of the world. someone well-travelled. somebody not obsessed with the concept of “home”.

without this thought, I’d be more open to the joy of traveling, of moving around, of meeting new people. I love doing those things. I would feel less like a victim, and more grateful for all the amazing opportunities that have come into my life. I see myself smiling more, connecting with people easily and immediately. I wouldn’t always be trying to decide whether a particular place can be a home for me or not. I wouldn’t project so much into the future. when I’m in London, I would not see myself and all other immigrants as having some kind of shared fate that other people don’t understand. I would meet all people without fear. I would not see people who assimilate into other cultures as fake or lacking in any way. I would be more accepting of people and of where they are. I would be less confused about where I wanna be and what I wanna do, and I would not agonize so much over things I am supposedly missing or sacrificing. I would be more at ease with myself, more at home.

turn the thought around:

>> having more than one home is not like having none.

how can I measure “home” in the first place? it’s not about ownership of a house, or having a particular number of friends, or knowing the language, or having a visa, or spending a number of years in the same place. ultimately, being home is a feeling. a feeling that I deprive myself whenever I believe this ideology that would have me testing and counting my so-called “homes”.

plus, many people seem to be dividing their time between more than one home without too much trouble. so in this I can see how I had that same expectation of myself, perhaps at a time when I was not ready to do that comfortably. that doesn’t mean that having multiple homes will not work for me in the future. the confusion around my experience also does not mean I do not have multiple genuine homes already. I was just a little hard on myself there.

>> having more than one home is like being home everywhere.

yes, that is closer to my experience. from my travels I learnt how to let people walk in and out of my life without force, and how to pick up where I left with anyone even after years apart. I also saw that no matter where I went in the world and no matter who I met, I was always meeting myself, always confronting myself in everything that I did. so in that sense I have always been home - it wasn’t even a choice. it just isn’t always such a nice place to be…

that feeling of being home comes from a place of trust and confidence - the confidence that everything is will be fine. it’s only then that I can approach people with an open heart, and then the communication that follows only feeds back into that trust, that being home, being here, completely safe.

[interior. 7pm, sun beginning to set outside. boy on his laptop. three knocks on the door, door opens, middle-aged woman walks in room, places pair of sandals by the door.]

“your sandals.”

“hi. what do you knock for if you don’t wait for a response?”

[short pause.]

“it’s a warning. it’s like saying, ‘here I come’, so you know.”

“and what if I’m jerking off?”

“pah, in the middle of the day?”

“what’s it to you?”

“just like that? you need some atmosphere, after all…”

“look, please just wait next time, ok?”

[woman turns to leave, giggles softly.]

“now you can jerk off.”

[door closes.]

This interview was originally posted in Hebrew on 28/5/09 by Leehee Rothschild.

Shahaf Ifhar performs singing and playing the piano in clubs across the country, and has already released a studio album independently. In his shows he combines original material with unique cover versions. I met him for a chat about his second album, “A Philosophy of Freedom”, music, and identities.

How would you define your style of music?

I like the idea of a song-teller, or the narrative element in song, because I feel that’s a very comfortable place to sit in. That borderline between poetry and music, that is what happens when I perform. Inside this huge genre generally referred to as popular music, which really started with folk music, the idea of communicating pieces of history in a way that did not require the people to be literate, that’s always really appealed to me. I feel that I and many other musicians are really working in that same stream. It’s part court jester and part lowbrow historian.

What influence would you like your music to have on people?

That has two sides to it. When I write I try to do that with no goals, so I keep the world out. But if I’m honest, then yes, when I collected the songs for this project I did hope to use these fragments from several characters to build some kind of mirror people could use. In the same way that I used music when I was growing up. Beyond that, when I walk into the studio with the songs I’d written I do have the goal of creating something that would sonically become like a body of water, something you can dive into - because that is the music I love, the kind of music that would have me reach for my wallet in a music store. So, there has to be a kind of an expanse. There are many ways of creating that, which as a producer I’m only just beginning to learn.

How do you feel your sexual identity influences the music you create?

With the current project it’s very clear to me how these currents are there, because the album is called “A Philosophy of Freedom”. I was very interested to look at and investigate that place of freedom, meaning where I am liberated from everything I was born into, as in sex, nationality, religion, skin colour, language, culture, and anything else. I think a part of that is the experience of being in some kind of closet. Soon after the project started I discovered that straight people had closets too. Like, if you can’t bring your Arab boyfriend home because you’re gonna get kicked out, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s your closet, and only you can know it for what it is, what it looks like, what shape it takes. I think that yes, in some cases that closet will have more of a presence and it may be clearer where it comes from and where it ends. It’s all the same subject. On the album I tried to explore that mainly through characters that are mostly not me.

Who are these characters then?

They are mostly people who belong in one way or another to a masculine gender. They are all people trapped in some kind of closet. There is, for example, that guy coming home very late, his wife already asleep and the room is dark, and she really doesn’t wanna know what parks he’s been to and what kind of guys he ran into. People cannot live in denial too long. I know I couldn’t. Not because of the politics of it, or the solidarity or education, but just because it hurts. I tried to approach these characters with a great deal of respect, because I didn’t want to be the judge. Cos I know that I too have challenges that I choose to face, and others that perhaps I keep aside for later.

What are your sources of inspiration?

Anyone who’s ever taught me I couldn’t do something. That is a very liberating attitude to me, because I could have called it ‘oppression’, but I think the word ‘oppression’ implies that my freedom depends on other people, and today that is not my experience. I think that in many cases in life people have simply told me what they thought should or shouldn’t be, and I believed them. And I think when you enter this space of creation, then in many ways it’s the ideal place to process the ways in which this thing is done, and it’s very hard to lie to yourself at that point.

What do you try to achieve when you go on stage?

Taking stage is not the most natural situation to be in. I have to keep checking why I do it, because as far as I’m concerned there are only two options. If on any level I believe that what I need is to win a Grammy and sell a million copies, then in that moment the music becomes my whore, cos I’m using it to get something that I think I need. And I would always rather be a whore to the music. When I perform and go on stage then the way I see it, I’m a whore to the music. And by that I don’t mean to cheapen that profession. I give myself over completely to sound, and when it works it’s better than the best sex I have ever had.

So do you have any professional ambitions?

To be able to perform when I like and to be able to record when I like, and I’m not entirely there. As far as my dreams go, I fulfilled my biggest dream the first time I played live, because it doesn’t really matter whether there are 5 people there or 5000. So as time goes by and I keep doing what I do, I rid myself of more and more illusions, about the profession and about art… Illusions as to what the money, approval and admiration of other people might bring me. The way I think of it is, after a few years of performing you realize that even if you sell out Carnegie Hall, at the end of the night you still go to sleep alone, and even when you go to bed with someone, you still go to sleep alone, in that moment of falling asleep, and you wake up alone. If through the music I’m trying to finally gain that rest and peace we all want so badly, it’ll just slap me in the face again and again, until I understand that it doesn’t come from there. I think we always have it and we only think it’s missing, that peace.

You can’t make a wrong decision; you can only experience the story arising about how you made it. I like to ask, “Are you breathing yourself?” No? Well, maybe you’re not thinking yourself or making decisions either. Maybe it doesn’t move until it moves, like a breath, like the wind. And you tell the story of how you are doing it, so you can keep yourself from the awareness that you are nature, flowing perfectly. Who would you be without the story that you need to make a decision? If it’s your integrity to make a decision, make it. And guess what? In five minutes, you might change your mind and call it “you” again.

- Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World

Omri Gilan took this photo.

I like to think of it as a question posed to the first ideological Zionist migrants to Palestine from Europe. and to their descendants living today.

ghetto souvenirs

“peace-building”. I have come to suspect the term.

does peace need to be built? worked at? developed?

what is peace?

peaceful is who I am when I’m not stressed.
peaceful is what I am when everything’s alright.
my natural state.
that is peace.
peace has no substance - it is simply the lack of constriction and plight.

peace is the social condition prior to conflict. a peaceful society is one that is successful at resolving its conflicts as they arise.

it follows that what we need is not to build peace, it is only to remove the structures that are preventing it. and to do this, we first need to get very clear about those structures.

who are those using terms like “peace” and “war” to avoid an honest look at the true power relations that create conflicts?
what do they mean by “peace-building” exactly, and whose interests are they trying to promote?
what is this “peace” that they are trying to “build”? is it engaging in true reconciliation, or sweeping the undesired effects of domination under the rug?

I snuggle under the duvet in my sister and her husband’s spare room, pretty sure it’s late enough to doze off into sleep. they live in a remote Druze village in the north of the country. I can’t seem to get warm enough. it’s very quiet. my mind starts talking. it’s on the How Can We Fix It mode.

“maybe I should jerk off. sexual release would send me to sleep. it’s like the body gets in this kind of balance, and then it’s like I don’t notice that it’s cold anymore, and then it isn’t. like it preserves its heat better or something. I could do that. and I don’t even have to corrupt my sexuality with porn, I’ll just concentrate on the sensation. having sex with myself. it would be a feeding experience, not a draining one. sensual. if I need to I can conjure up the lovely people I’d had sex with. imagine one of them visiting me again. maybe a few.”

and so far, I like the story my mind is telling me. then it takes an interesting turn.

“I’ve always had such a weak libido. that’s always been what really held me back from exploring my sexuality. I just don’t seem as interested as other people are, as passionate. sometimes I even find the idea of having sex exhausting. it’s one of my unfortunate shortcomings, my lack of sexual appetite.”

a few seconds pass, and my mind silently asks itself, is that true? is it true that I have a weak libido? is my premise for all these evaluations even correct?

in response, I get images from high school, from university - years where I would masturbate almost every day, often via stimulation from pornography on the internet. “have I always had a weak libido? well, that doesn’t seem to be very true. it seems to be truer that I have channelled my sexuality in the ways that I found most comfortable, then. for all I know it was a very strong libido. but I’ve always had such strong fears of approaching men, of exposing myself physically, of hurting someone’s feelings or being hurt myself. that is what holds me back, not my libido.”

as I’m having these thoughts, a few hidden muscles in my body relax, and I feel myself open. actually, I’m amazed. this never occurred to me. my history is not what I thought it was. I suddenly feel like I just got to know me a bit better. but then it turns on me again.

“I wasted it. all those years, wanking in the toilets. my formative years. student years. by now, I could have explored every fetish imaginable. I could have stepped into many more relationships, and could have learnt so much more. I had a perfectly healthy libido, and I wasted it.”

my muscles contract again. I feel the sadness of mourning, and my face wears a strange grimace. and I don’t know where this is going, but I seem to be asking myself again - is it true? is it true that I wasted my libido, all those years? is it even true that I would have learnt and developed to a greater extent had I done differently?

“well, looking at what I believed about sex and about my body back then, it’s hardly surprising that I did what I did. and who knows, maybe if I’d had no sexual inhibitions whatsoever when I was still living in London I would have been seduced into some very tricky situations. I might have contracted disease, or developed serious addictions that would have burnt up months and years of sobriety. I might have been so sexually active that sex itself would have become an addiction, instead of porn, and I would have still come to the same point that I’m at - trying to find liberation. perhaps porn protected me from a worse fate, or from things I just couldn’t have handled. I sure learnt a thing or two from it. not least what addiction feels like. what I certainly know is that the frustration of masturbation coupled with the belief that I should be more sexually active is what led me to confront my ideas and beliefs about sex and about people, my fears. that was my path. nothing here was wasted.”

and then my awareness comes full circle and descends back into the throne of the moment. there is silence. comfortable. another page is turned, and the canvas is freshly blank, with not even a trace of denial of what came before. whether I have sex or I don’t, I know that my libido is perfect the way it is. increasing it, supressing it, channeling it or ignoring it has never been my job. I just thought it was.

I turn on the tap and check the water, then pour in some Dr. Bronner soap, Eucalyptus. if it came to that, I’d give up coffeeshopping to be able to afford my Magic Soap. luckily it doesn’t quite come to that. though who knows what I’m indirectly missing out on on account of my coffeeshopping (and soap). I check my bank account - if there’s money there I use it, if not I don’t.

I put my foot in and it tells me that the water’s too hot. I find myself thinking about the water and where it comes from. am I being wasteful? would taking a shower use up less water than a shallow wash in the bath? is it more important that I save up water in my home, or that the government explores alternatives like recycling and desalination, many of which are avoided for political reasons? I don’t know. I turn the tap off as soon as I have enough.

I soak in, and my mind drifts to the future day’s activities. I’ll write that email, submit that application form, work on that song, translate that book. all of which will involve sitting at my laptop, while something I tend to think of as “real life” will be going on outside; on the streets, in offices, in bars and cafes, in checkpoints and refugee camps. I am struck by how little I actually live. so many hours of my days are consumed by sitting across from a computer screen, and the ones that are not mostly involve maintenance and upkeep to that end, like cooking and making tea so that I can keep going. sometimes even meeting a friend for lunch is just a respite from this routine, a charge-up. I converse with people online, I do my learning online, I do much of my paid work online, I make my art online - I even do most of my political protest online. it’s all by proxy.

I live my life not in reality, but in representations of reality. is this significant? is this wrong, or unhealthy? did I choose to live like this? when was the last time something actually happened, I ask myself. as response, my mind gives me images from the events of the weekend - housewarming, clubbing, weekend papers, sex (with other people, for a change). surely, leaving the house and meeting someone is more sensual than talking to them on skype, and therefore more real, more meaningful. surely, ranting on the Occupation at a house party is more effective and powerful than doing so on facebook. it moves things. it makes things happen - faster, better.

but hang on a minute, I tell myself as I rub my scalp. what is this duality about? I mean, what is this “real life” I’ve so readily idealized? does it even exist? when I meet a friend and listen to them speak and watch their body movements, am I experiencing what’s “real”, or just a representation of something I can never have any access to in the first place? I hear the sounds coming out of their mouths and I attach them to words I’m familiar with. I then attach those words to meanings, and I go on to attach those meanings to stories from my experience that match them. I call this “understanding”. but what did I understand? I just constructed a story about what is happening in the moment of the conversation (“where did she get that scar?”, “why is he being so nervous?”, “how long have we been sitting here?”, “is it hot in here?”), and about the narratives that I’m hearing (“she’s taking too long to grieve”, “he shouldn’t have done that”, “she’s being too pushy about this”, “he’s so adorable”). not only that, but even when I’m relatively free from my own interpretations, I still rely entirely on my subjective imagination to relate to another person. someone tells me they’re upset about getting dumped, and I imagine what heartbreak must feel like. I conjure images from my past or theirs (which I can only imagine). I hear songs about breakups and see tear-jerking movie scenes. I look at their reddening eyes and connect them to all those things, and I say “oh you poor thing”. so what I react to is not reality. I react to my interpretation, based on an experience that can only ever be mine. much like I would to a blog entry or a status message. even when a hand touches my skin, when fresh air enters my nostrils, when my muscles ache from running - it’s all I ever do, all I ever can do. all my life I’ve been trapped behind these eyes. the internet, like everything else, is just another little reminder of this. it’s here to wake us up to what we already know - there is no world outside of thought. there is no pain or pleasure outside of thought. we live inside our own representations.

I get out the bath and look outside the window. I make tea and sit down to write. it’s a life.