This past week (as in last week ((I've been a bit behind on the blog posting)), was an interesting exercise in contrast. Last Monday night, September 6th, my group and I ventured out to Ataturk Olympic Stadium on the western side of Istanbul, the site of U2's first concert in Turkey, which is surprising in light of the hip-prestige and cultural richness of Istanbul and the supposed global awareness of the band (more to come on that later). Getting there took us over 3 and a half hours as we struggled to navigate bus routes, trams, metrobuses, and taxi buses, so many (insert expletive) buses, of every possible shape and size, but still every one of them way too (insert expletive) crowded, and all of the public transportation in this sprawling city seeming to be especially susceptible to Istanbul's awful traffic; giant buses can't duck and weave like the crazy taxis that come so close to running us down at every crosswalk, even when we have the light. On a side note: I'd still love to drive in this city where traffic laws seem to be open to interpretation depending on the speed of the car and the skill of the driver. We waited for shuttles to the concert for at least an hour and a half, shuttles of dubious existence, or at least shuttles that remained very poorly marked, nothing but one tiny U2 poster plastered on their fronts to indicate their destination.
But the winds of fortune, or at least the bus-exhaust fumes of luck, were at our backs, filling our sails with serendipitous smog. In spite of the transportation difficulties, we managed to make it to the concert with plenty of time to spare. We worked our way to the front of the sparse crowd until our entire group, or at least the 10 of us who chose to go, were within 30 yards of the stage. I thought the concert had been drastically undersold because the vast stadium was barely a quarter full, and the soccer pitch, tiled over with metal panels to protect the grass, not even close to a third of its capacity. But, as soon as Snow Patrol took the stage, the crowd had swelled, spreading across the floor and the stands, over 55,000 Turks and foreigners all there to enjoy one of the biggest bands in the world. I'm not even that big of a U2 fan. I love all of
Joshua Tree and can dig on many of their singles, but I wouldn't rate them very high on the list of my favorite artists. They probably wouldn't even crack the top 40 on such a list. Nonetheless, U2 put on an amazing show. Their 360 degree stage is by far the most insane stage I've ever seen, four giant claw-legs, like the legs of a giant praying mantis, or the landing gear of an alien ship, rising up to support 360 degrees of LCD screens, cameramen and spotlights hanging from every leg to cover every angle of the show, lights, smoke, all of it coordinated to perfection. I've seen more passionate, compelling, and musically interesting performances, but I've never seen a show executed with more precision. Phenomenal. I will never forget belting out "Where the Streets Have No Name", going hoarse, tearing my voice apart in rough, out-of-tune unison with thousands of Turks. (Insert expletive of the F***ing variety here) PHENOMENAL. And as we left, all of us Oles sang the "Um Ya Ya" rouser as loud as we could, getting many strange, amused, and entertained looks from the mass of the crowd surrounding us on the way to the exits. Seeing U2 was easily the first huge highlight of the trip.
And now for the contrast. Last Wednesday, our group decided to fast in observance of the final day of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month during which pious Muslims fast every day from sunrise to sunset for one lunar month. I went 24 hours without food and over 20 hours without water. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not an observant, pious Muslim. It was supposed to be an experience of "cross-cultural awareness", an expression of solidarity with Turkish Muslims, an endeavor of forbearance, an effort to see what it feels like to be an observant Muslim. Mainly, I just felt tired, irritable, weak, and obviously hungry. I can't even say that breaking fast was anti-climactic because I didn't feel even the slightest shred of anticipation or excitement. I just felt deadened and annoyed. Probably should've taken the advice of our TA, Deniz; she was pretty baffled when we told her we were planning to fast for the day. Why would American students do such a thing? Indeed, her doubt proved to be somewhat prescient. The experience was a total flop. We had planned to break fast in a public square, breaking bread with Turkish Muslims in celebration of the end of their holiest month. Unfortunately, when we got to the Hippodrome in the Old City, we were unable to find any public sharing of Iftar (the feast shared after breaking fast). Hungry and tired, our group hustled away from the Hippodrome to a restaurant on a random side street. We shuffled into a private room large enough to accommodate our sizable group, and then we proceeded to scarf down our first meal of the day as quickly as possible, appetite for food satiated, but appetite for the experience of a different culture left completely unsatisfied.
In retrospect, I'm not surprised at my reaction to my fasting day. Indeed, I can see now that my expectations were unreasonable and naive. Profound, memorable instances of cross-cultural awareness will never emerge from contrived, one-day efforts, like trying to fast on one day of Ramadan with the rest of my American, and with the exception of one student, my non-Muslim peers. Perhaps fasting would've been a more satisfying experience of foreign culture if we had done it in Morocco or Egypt; Turkey is far more secularized then either of our future destinations. But, I can't help but think that fasting was a doomed endeavor
Maybe I'm being too narrow-mined about this. I might have let my hunger get the best of me. But, to be honest, I still don't feel as if I gained anything significant from the experience of fasting. Honestly, the whole project of deliberate cultural immersion seems entirely foolish to me. I should strive to travel as I strive to live: remaining true to myself, being there and being me, not trying to force myself into situations, content to let things happen as they will, ready to explore and learn, but patient enough to let the experiences come to me. I will never know what it's like to be a Turk, or a Moroccan, or an Egyptian. I can only hope to get a brief, admittedly superficial impression of their mindset and culture. I'm not going to be in any of these places long enough to really burrow in to that deeper level of cross-cultural understanding.
Now, to get to the main point of this post, I want to compare my experience at the U2 concert with my day of fasting for Ramadan. At first glance, it might seem obvious that fasting would yield the better cross-cultural experience. After all, fasting is an integral part of Muslim life. On the other hand, U2 had never played a concert in a Muslim country before Monday night's show in Istanbul. U2 is an Irish band, probably with Catholic roots, one of the biggest, most global bands in the world, at least in terms of their popularity (I remain skeptical in regards to their supposed global awareness. At one point in the concert, Bono tried to recount his meeting with a very unpopular Turkish politician, but he was drowned out by the boos of the crowd. I thought that was pretty hilarious). Going to see them was probably one of the least authentically "Turkish" things we could have done on this trip. Nonetheless, I will not hesitate to admit that I felt a much more profound connection with my fellow Turkish concert-goers as we sang those songs together, putting our arms around each other during the choruses, swaying and clapping hands in unison, yelling conversations to each other in stilted English from them and meager Turkish/English from me, all of us totally elated to be at the show and excited to share it together. Compared to the U2 concert, breaking Iftar was a damn joke, a complete downer in regards to connecting with individuals from a different culture.
I do need to qualify my comparison a bit. I am aware that the U2 concert was not an example of authentic Turkish culture. But, it was certainly a priceless experience of cross-cultural connection. Comparing my concert experience to my Iftar experience has provided me with some interesting insights. First of all, I now think that it is ridiculous to draw lines demarcating "authentic" culture and "inauthentic" culture. Cultures are messy concepts. They change constantly as new influences and trends move from culture to culture. As our societies continue to tangle up with each other in the inevitable spread and inherent interweaving of globalization, determining the authenticity of cross-cultural experiences will become increasingly irrelevant.
Furthermore, as we strive for "cross-cultural awareness" (whatever that actually means) we will always encounter insurmountable limits at some point in our exploration. In the end, there will be aspects of other cultures, whether those aspects manifest as assumptions, traditions, or worldviews, aspects that we are fundamentally incapable of understanding. Ultimately, I will never truly know what it is like to be a Turk, or a Moroccan, an Egyptian, or an Israeli. I would have to live an entire life in another culture to know what it is truly like to be a person from that culture. But, it remains obvious that total cultural understanding is not the project we are hoping to accomplish. That would be an impossible task. Nonetheless, I am convinced that admitting the limits of our understanding in regards to cross-cultural awareness will be exceedingly important if we are to avoid falling into the naive, arrogant, premature judgments, which color us against foreign cultures. However, admitting limits does involve a further risk. Even though we should identify and acknowledge the limits in our understanding, we should not allow anticipation of these limits to excuse us from our efforts to understand and connect with individual cultures. That would be a grave mistake. We should only admit our ignorance in order to avoid making arrogant, ill-informed assumptions and judgments.
Lastly, I think it's absurd to think that we can get to know "a culture". That's impossible. We can only meet cultures by meeting and connecting with individual representatives of foreign cultures. In the context of my own U2 vs. Iftar experience, the U2 concert yielded multiple personal connections with fellow Turkish concertgoers, while breaking fast did not lead to a single personal encounters with even any of our fellow fasters. In fact, our group did not meet a single person as a result of fasting.
As far as I can see it, this contrast in my experiences points to one overarching implication. Cross-cultural connection, which is the most important prerequisite for "cross-cultural awareness", will always find its roots in the ground of common, familiar experience. People are best equipped to encounter each other in familiar settings, or at least in the context of familiar, shared cultural references, meeting in the expanse of popular, global culture. Even though I am loathe to admit it, U2 is a perfect example of the type of common cultural reference point we nee to resort to in order to bridge the gaps separating distant cultures. I admit that it's somewhat lame, surely a cop-out of sorts, but it's an expedient, effective strategy, and it's really the only option we have when we're only in a country for a month or so.
It's clear to me that we need to meet foreign individuals on the common grounds of experience (i.e. going to the concerts of internationally famous bands, shooting the shit about global popular culture). From these grounds, we can attempt to forge solid connections with each other. Once these connections are forged, we might be able to move on to "deeper" cultural experiences, but I still believe that breaking ground on the "common ground" will prove to be the pivotal first-step in all of our endeavors to achieve greater cultural awareness. In light of my experiences last week, I am comfortable with welcoming the changes of globalization. Indeed, globalization will lead to expansion of the common grounds of cultural references and popular culture, and it's clear that we can lay down more connective roots between cultures if we have more common ground to work with. I used to be afraid that increasing globalization would lead to the homogenization of distinct cultures, and the endpoint of this progression would be the elimination of distinct cultures. All humans would be united under a single common culture, and this culture would defined by complete, homogeneous blandness, devoid of the cultural differences that make life interesting. I can't imagine a more boring world; such a world would be unbearably boring, insanely boring, impossibly boring, but frighteningly possible, and perhaps even probable.
My fears might be unfounded. Cultures have died before; they have vanished from this earth, leaving behind nothing more than a few shards of pottery, or maybe some crude stone tools, or, if the archaeologists are really lucky, perhaps even bizarre idol to a forgotten fertility goddess survived the stress of time, all of these meager artifacts enduring through the millennia to give us proof for the brief existence of the dead culture in question. Perhaps all cultures will die off if we give them enough time. But, questions of the far future are obviously beyond the bounds of our current discussion. I still think most people are proud of their cultures, proud enough to commit to the preservation and practice of the traditions that constitute their cultural identities. For now, we do live in a world of diverse cultures. We should not allow globalization to eliminate this diversity, but we should welcome some of the changes globalization can bring, especially the changes that result in an expansion of the common ground. If we hope to achieve some humble measure of cross-cultural awareness, we need to realize the importance of references shared by distant cultures. Indeed, connections between cultures are staked out in the bounds of these common grounds.
Whew...apologies for that post...way too long and way too full of random tangents. But, above all else,I hoped you enjoyed it, I hope you think about what I've said, I hope you consider my arguments in light of your own experiences, and I dearly hope that you will respond with some responses on my comment board!
Until next time,
Your Favorite Luker
