The Other Side of the Story
The night is always young in Madrid. You could say that of many other large cities, of course, but it is especially true of Spanish culture, European culture. Many people are just sitting down to their evening meal as I am brushing my teeth and turning down the covers to go to sleep.
Most sociologists write off this nocturnal bent as an avoidance of daytime heat; there is a propensity to close up life during most afternoons. Once the worst is over and napping finished it’s time to launch into the second half of the day. Eating begins late. But not only eating.
Major entertainment often begins even later than eating – like concerts, for instance. One evening I attended a ballet whose curtain didn’t rise until 10:30 p.m. That means the curtain doesn’t fall until after midnight. Take me home on a stretcher.
One of Madrid’s new summer entertainment venues is an outdoor theatre and it is catching on with Spaniards. I wanted to tell them that they have nothing on long-standing American traditions like the Muny in St. Louis but decided to be quiet. Once I found my seat I preoccupied myself with sipping a cool Tinto de Verano.
To be perfectly honest, we would have purchased tickets to just about any show. But the fact that the only performance available featured an American troupe with an English libretto brought me pause. Do I really want to travel across the world to hear something I could consume in my own back yard?
West Side Story. I mean, really. Tonight, Maria, Cool, America, One Hand One Heart …
Like so many Americans I have taken numerous opportunities to view this stage classic. I come pretty close to knowing every word by heart. I can sing along with 95% of Bernstein’s music.
Well, I don’t know. Ok, let’s go anyway, since nothing else is showing.
The first sign that things were going to be different was the large libretto monitor over the stage. Normally when you and I attend some foreign language work like an Italian opera we continually refer to the translation of the libretto into English. Not so with Madrid and West Side Story. We were the foreigners and so we experienced an American English production – with all its dialects and colloquial language – being translated for this audience into its own Castilian Spanish.
How do you translate a word like, “cool,” in West Side Story? The connotation of the word has less to do with temperature and more to do with an attitude, a frame of mind. When I looked up at the Spanish translation on the monitor they provided the interesting, “tranquilo.” Hmm. “Stay tranquil, man.” Something is lost in translation, but we were probably the only ones in the theatre thinking about that.
“Excuse me for interrupting the show but do you know that ‘tranquilo’ doesn’t cut it here?”
Ok, I didn’t really interrupt; the conversation only took place in my mind.
So much meaning falls through the cracks between cultures and their languages. Since thought, concepts and subtle emotional connotations are reflected in the intricacies of language those fine shades of meaning are often lost as we move back and forth from one linguistic thought world to another. We assume we know what the other means and experiences, but that knowledge is often incomplete.
The intricacies of world religious systems are like that; their individual convictions, concepts and worldviews are held closely by their stories and those stories and embodied in their cultural and religious language. One can only know a religious thought world from the inside-out, and most of us are like tourists looking out of tour bus windows upon a strange land we don’t understand.
I suppose this unusual setting - a native English-speaking American viewing an American production through the eyes of another culture and its language - spoke the truth about just how distinct each and every culture is. And within a larger culture, like North American culture for instance, there are many sub-cultures, all shaped by their own contexts and histories.
The end result of this cultural collision brought new clarity for me, for I saw West Side Story as though for the first time. I found renewed attention to the subtle interplay between the gangs, the uses of language, the hopes of immigrants and the inevitable conflict that arises in the collision of cultures. And something accompanied this new awareness and it was very, very surprising. The emotion I never would have anticipated was pride almost bordering on patriotism.
As I looked down at the stage, glanced up at the Spanish translation, and looked over the audience I unconsciously thought to myself, “Hey, those are my folk down there, our story, the best of composing and dance and the American experience in all its untidiness. That’s me and I’ve come to America, too.” It all sounds so corny.
The obvious implication is that my presence in Spain or any other country that is not my motherland is that I am an outsider, not really understanding the insides of their experience. When they retell Cervantes and proud tales of Don Quixote they have their own version of my West Side Story experience and I don’t understand it all.
Isn’t this also true of our most intimate relationships? We think we know the inner world of another but we really don’t. We know much and may have a pretty good read on the interplay of the other’s actions, values, emotions and spiritual inspirations. Like an astronaut walking on the surface of the moon we pick up rocks, look back toward earth and leave our tracks in the lunar dust. But the inner world of another, even that of one very, very close to us, remains a mystery. Just consider what a mystery we are to ourselves. We know ourselves in part, looking through a darkened glass into the deep recesses of mind and heart. And if so much is hidden to ourselves, how much more is the inner life of the other even more hidden?
When people share a thought, feeling, word, idea, impulse or dream with us, do we really know what they mean? Even if we have a monitor to translate the literal meanings we often miss the deep level, the place beyond words. There is more meaning captured in a wink or a smile than a thousand word essay.
I sit and look at the birdfeeder in the early morning. A lineup of competitors arrive and depart – wrens, sparrows, woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, doves – and they all gather around the lip of the tray and pick out the seed they prefer. There is a pecking order of dominance which is sometimes contested but usually settled quickly. What they have in common is that they are eating to survive and inhabit the same space to do so. On some level they know they need to co-exist. But do these different tribes understand their distinctive place among all fliers?
I paraphrase the Lord’s Prayer while I watch them land, crack seeds and take off: “Our Father, who art in this bird feeder, holy are you everywhere and in this place … your reign is spread over the earth like a blanket and so let it come and flourish…your creating purpose manifest itself among these and among all and be done … give us daily bread and seed this day and every day…help us to forgive the hateful and selfish impulses of those who have hurt us just as we seek forgiveness for our destructive thoughts and actions that have hurt others …place us not in the way temptation that in our brokenness and weakness we are so often unable to resist…deliver us from the dark underbelly of our natures and that of others that wreak destruction…for you are the dynamic power that animates every quark and galaxy in which we live.”
How much is lost in translation in my prayer? Though I pray Jesus’ prayer and apply it to my daily life, what does it mean to say that I share the essence of that prayer with other brothers and sisters, with the worldwide ecumenical community manifesting itself across the whole inhabited earth, embodied in Iceland and Botswana, Chile and India? Do I sit around the same bird feeder with all these people of spirit and share the same table, the same bread, the same body? Is there a spirit that animates beyond the vast sea of unique differences?
As I waited for a recent flight in an international airport I sat in a waiting room, marking out my territory – carry on bag here, bottle of water there – and a very handsome, younger couple came in looking for a place to settle. As few seats were available, they had to choose where they might slip in and I waved and indicated there were two seats available adjacent to me. They came over and sat down. Their appearance was Middle Eastern and the woman wore a Muslim head covering.
After a while we struck up a conversation of interest to most - the results of the Wimbledon tennis match - conversation headed other directions. They were living in Canada, newly married, and he was a teacher. We spoke of the beauty of Niagara Falls and the underground of Toronto. They knew we were American but they were holding their original national identity closely. I suspected why.
They were cautious as they divulged their country of origin, that they were Iranian and lived in the capital city of Tehran. It would be an understatement to say that relations between the Yanks and the Persians have been frosty over the years.
He spoke of the fermenting unrest in his country and the troubling policies of their current administration. We shared that we had watched the news from afar. With courteous reserve we circled the cultural, international, and emotional space.
They were returning to home, to Tehran, for a particular reason, because this young man had just lost his mother in an unexpected, sudden death. Because of the vast distances and his teaching responsibilities he had missed the funeral. Now he had time to return and be with his family. I was aware of the deep significance of his having to miss his mother’s funeral. I had some limited experience with Shiite communities and their mourning practices. That was the time when the tribe needed to gather most. Collective mourning was essential.
When he shared that story, that he had missed his own mother’s funeral, the pain was so very evident in his body and spirit, and the empathy of his wife so very, very deep, that I was led to the brink of tears. I shared the only thing that I could, that I had also lost my mother. That much, at least, we shared.
With the revelation of grief, that universal human experience, the cultural differences took a break, went out for a walk and left us alone, at least for a little while. When we parted to go our own ways, returning to very different countries and very different lives, it was with warmth and a very different bond. The differences may not have disappeared but something bigger transcended them.
When West Side Story finally came to a close, sometime after midnight, those Spaniards rose to their feet and cheered and hooped and hollered for five minutes. I did, too, of course. We were cheering together, crying out for Romeo and Juliet in Tony and Maria’s clothing, weeping for ourselves and every tragedy that has befallen the heart. And somehow all the truths that could be gathered up worked their way through this very distinctive cultural delivery system. When the story is deep enough, true enough, lasting enough, it makes its way up and through the cracks in the cultural sidewalks, and when it does it fills and transcends Spanish or English, Ballet or Tap, Opera or Rock, Doves or Jays, Iranians or Americans, Jets or Sharks.
Cool.
