#30/ ON HUMILITY AND IMAGINATION

Welcome to issue thirty of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.

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I am proud of having created and shared high quality content (text and photography) with you all for 30 issues so far. I am taking a break throughout the summer to reflect on how I would like to continue with this newsletter and podcast from September on. Maybe in another format, or a monthly instead of bi-weekly issue… I don’t know yet but want to think (and dream!) about it as I find it essential to keep creating in a slower pace than what is required of us on social media. I hope you will still be here when I am back. Have a wonderful summer.

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“When we hold space,” writer and anthropologist Aminata Cairo writes in her book Holding Space, “we don’t know what kind of stories are present in the space. We do not know the kinds of sacrifices people have made or are making to be in the space”.

I have written about Aminata Cairo’s work in issue 23 of this newsletter, and this quote from her urgent and necessary study is one that has never left my mind since I first read it. I try to bring it everywhere I go - to my friends, to my beloved, to work, to my creative process, to my imagination… I do my upmost to remember that there is so much we do not know about the people we encounter, work or live with, even those who are the closest. Such acknowledgment requires empathy and, most importantly, humility. It asks us to let go of our ego. In these highly violent times that nurture polarization on many levels, it requires a lot of care and imagination to remain connected to that level of humility.

These questions are constantly on my mind - even unconsciously it seems as I now realise that most of the photographs I took while I was in London last month have had a common thread, one that was created organically: they all carry that idea of the hidden, the border between what we see and do not see, what we know - think we know, and do not know at all: a closed park gate on a square, a face behind a camera, a flag behind a fence, a wall separating the street from a housing estate, … reflections of our own gaze on the world.

In the moments I captured these images, trying to decipher what may be happening behind these closed doors, I have come across surprisingly tender encounters: a third element entered the scene, and it was always a person. Like the one I had photographing shadows on the floor on St James Square and an old man from New Zealand walking with a cane and wearing a straw hat stopped to observe my gesture. We exchanged a few words, and he gifted me a brass pin shaped like a kiwi bird. Or the smile a young woman gifted me as I was photographing the wild flowers smoothing the harshness of the urban concrete next to the housing estate in a Greenwich neighbourhood.

“When we hold space, we don’t know what kind of stories are present in the space. We do not know the kinds of sacrifices people have made or are making to be in the space.”

There is so much we cannot see when we look at a person, even if we think we can recognise states of being or identities: tired, sick, healthy, person of colour, queer, disabled, rich, poor, we think we recognise it all… and sure, some aspects of a person’s identity are visible, and yet, not all identities and states of being are what we believe them to be. People’s mental health, invisible disabilities, our personal lives, what we deal with, our traumas (collective and personal)… A lot is required of us, and sometimes it is easier to put someone in a box that makes us comfortable, we all do it, no matter which boxes we think we fit into. We may assume someone’s struggles, privileges, beliefs or politics based on the watch they wear, the car they drive, how they present themselves, where they live, how they smell, look, talk, look you in the eye or don’t, how it all shapes our own gaze based on a set of constructed narratives.

Seeing a Lest we forget remembrance flag in a garden behind a fence reminds me of the many sacrifices previous generations made in the belief of building a better world for us today. That flag dances in the wind in a land that voted for Brexit, and my heart aches. Yet, I feel some strange level of freedom wandering the streets of a city I used to call home. I am thankful for those generations, and I am angry at their grand-children, who seem to have forgotten to look behind the slogans and political discourses that only but call for hate nowadays.

Do we need to identify people in one way or another to be able to engage with them? Whether it is to accept or reject their presence in our lives. If that is the case, doesn’t it show an immense lack of imagination on our part? Have we lost the capacity to imagine there’s a lot more behind what we see? Or are we afraid to face what Aminata Cairo so simply puts: that we indeed do not know the kinds of sacrifices people have made or are making to be in a space. This may mean we need to look behind our own stories, our own ego, and take responsibility for the collective beyond the individual. To move beyond identities, to not assume what is behind a fence, a wall, a gate, a camera, a person… to just allow ourselves the humility to accept our ignorance and hold space for more imagination.

READING
Isabella Hamad’s essay Acts of Languages in The New York Review, in which she asks why, amid the actual violence of Israel’s assault on Gaza, have so many writers treated pro-Palestine speech as a threat? Her response to Zadie Smith’s cruel and ignorant essay is spot on. Hamad writes: “When writers (and pundits and politicians) opine about free speech rights and violations around Palestine they rarely address the material conditions of such speech, including the fact that some speech is met with violence and some is not, in accordance with the unequal distribution of power.”

WATCHING
High and Low - John Galliano (2023) by Kevin Macdonald is a documentary film about fashion designer John Galliano who was widely recognized as one of the most influential names in the 1990s and 2000s couture until his career froze in 2011. Many of us may know of his antisemitic burst to strangers in a Paris café as one of the reasons. The documentary shows the toxicity behind the glamour shaping the world of haute couture - alcoholism, burn out, depression… all leading to highly problematic behaviours. I am not sure how to feel about Galliano and the whole fashion world after this good but disturbing portrait, but it’s definitely worth watching and reflecting on.

LISTENING
I have had Nadine Shah’s latest album, Filthy Underneath on repeat. I just love her music, since I first encountered her work with her album Holiday Destination. She has a powerful sound, with a darkness I like. No surprise, she also has collaborated with another favourite artist of mine: Ghostpoet (see their song X Marks the Spot). (Concert alert: Nadine Shah will be performing on 18 November at Paradiso’s Zonnehuis in Amsterdam).

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ABOUT

Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil (she/they) is a writer, literary translator and artist based in Amsterdam. They established The Attention Span website and its newsletter to publish their work independently: making the time to reflect, analyse and imagine.

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When quoting or sharing content, make sure to attribute it to the author. Unless otherwise stated, all content (writing, photography, design) created and published in this newsletter is authored by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil.