A gathering of solitaries

I provided a brief film review of Bab’ Aziz, hopefully encouraging enough to prompt a few of you to rent it.

Many aspects of the film resonated for me, and by that I mean it struck archetypal chords that corresponded to my own experience. The motivating force that sets the entire film in motion, namely finding the gathering, a once in thirty years event where dervishes gather at an undisclosed place in the desert, reminds me so much of what I at times witness and know I participate in as a “digital native.” The “social” aspect of this media exists, but in different corners of this space, independent of corporate interests (i.e. herding consumers), political agenda (i.e. the lobby of the corporate interest trying to herd consumers) and the slew of lonely hearts, there is a movement toward a gathering slowly evolving with these tools. Folks separated by time, space, age and culture are, through common interests, shared values and a rigorous commitment to the unfolding path of individuation, realizing the “happening” on a scale that was not dreamt of forty years ago in the hay fields of Bethel, New York or sixty years ago at Black Mountain College.

So if you do by chance rent Bab’ Aziz, and as you watch the gathering come into ocus in that desert, remember the analogy to what I sense is unfolding here. Undisclosed realities draw us on…