Nathalie Handal: “Music and photography are the flesh and bones of my poetry”

 

Born in Haiti to a family of Palestinian descent, Nathalie Handal is a well-known French-American writer and poet.

Her latest poetry collection, the profoundly erotic, passionate and political Life in a Country Album, received Palestine Books Creative Award last year. In conversation with Nathalie Handal.

Erotic, lyrical, “nomadic”, nostalgic, passionate, political, sensual, cosmopolitan yet deeply culture-specific, is your poetry -and your approach to its composition- a reflection of the multiplicity of your identity?

Being myself means being many different places. People often want one answer, but questions often have more than one right answer.

We are made of many selves, as well as images others carry of us. And we naturally show a different side to each group, but still exist in one body and have to negotiate our multiplicity.

There is a tendency to feel lost in between our pluralities, but I have found diversity balancing. And writing has allowed all my selves, cities, languages to exist tunefully together.

Life in a Country Album, your awarded latest poetry collection, is indeed loosely structured as an album -perhaps photographic-, and your poems often resemble photographic snapshots. How do you relate to photography as a medium?

When I held my first camera -a Canon AE-1- at fourteen years-old, I became conscious that photography would teach me stillness. I realized that photographs collect worlds and eternities.

Later when walking became fundamental to my poetic practice, I realized during my wanderings that my mind is always photographing.

With every book I am building a geography of many people and places. To take photographs is to take the world. To collect photographs is to collect worlds. To photograph is participating in another person or place’s transience.

And it has also been a vital way to witness and record my vanishing city of Bethlehem and its natives.

The collection consists of different albums both photographic and musical.

Music and photography are the flesh and bones of my poetry.

My dream is to live like poetry, be alive like music, and pause like a photograph.

“Music always takes us back/to the cities we are made from,” you write in Orphic. Which cities -and which music, among which rebetiko- are you made from?

My ancestry is the sea. I am made of many Mediterranean cities: Bethlehem, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Akka, Beirut, Tripoli (Lebanon), Venice, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Marseille, Paris, Thessaloniki, Mostar, Zagreb, Malaga, Granada.

No landscape moves me like that of the Mediterranean- it plants my body in the land and still lets me be water.

My other cities are London, Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Santo Domingo, New York City; and to some extent Lausanne, Dublin, Yerevan, Saint Petersburg, Shanghai, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires.

They have all played a role in forming my identity. But my main instrument, my drum, is NYC. That is where all my cities converge. I would never have understood my complexities had I not become a New Yorker.

Music is a city. Like poetry it comes from a place I don’t know, yet am most intimate with. Music is memory is melody is magic.

Our playlist like our bookshelves is a biography- and mine are filled with global beats, languages and styles.

I first came to the rebetiko of the fin-de-siècle. The rebetiko that took me to Smyrna. To the songs that dived into the depth of displacement, exile, war, loss, social injustice, the lives of refugees, to Piraeus, ports, love and death.

The Greco-Turkish War took a lot of space inside of me. In certain ways, I feel it is part of my greater story. That of the Mediterranean- migrations and uprootedness. Also, my mother, I am told, has a Constantinople Greek surname.

It is said when they left Constantinople they went to Venice, converted to Catholicism, intermarried, and went to Palestine as Venetians. The family always spoke of their Greco-Venetian roots but it impossible to trace their routes. 

 I learned later the origins of rebetiko can be traced back to the prisons of Athens in the 1830s and to the Greek populations of Constantinople, Smyrna and other Anatolian cities, who created their own music based on traditional Greek and Eastern rhythms.

And in the 1920s these various musical traditions and styles merged together, creating what is known as rebetiko. This Greek urban blues caught me the first moment I heard it.

Many consider the 1930s the golden period of rebetiko, when it was most authentic. But I think of how rebetiko united Greece after the Nazi occupation and the civil war.

It didn’t matter what social class you came from, rebetiko became a voice for the oppressed. It’s extraordinary. Of course, traditions change so did rebetiko, and it is now a fundamental part of Greek culture.

One of my favorite moments is the taxími.

I have gone to taverns, bars, and concert halls to listen to rebetiko so I am not a purest. That said, rebetiko is not only music, it is a state of mind. In that sense, maybe it only existed when it was played in the fringe.

A special section of your poetry collection is devoted to your “conversations” with the emblematic Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Do you consider him as one of your major influences as a poet and a reader of poetry?

I met him in Paris in my early twenties. He gave me my first writing assignment- to interview Allen Ginsberg, who died a month later. He was a major influence. Each time I return to his work, I am moved deeply and differently.

And our conversations continue to be a map of inquiries.

“But even in love/war inhabits me,” you confess in Even in Love. Do you refer to war as a state of mind or to particular wars as well?

Once war begins, it doesn’t end. It continues inside of us, follows us to death, and stays inside those we love and have left behind. War doesn’t bring peace, is ends it.

“Let me ask again- love isn’t a lie but a country is?” you wonder in Declaration of Independence. Is love a continent, a country, a terra incognita, or, indeed, a mirage?

Everyone has a map of a country in the heart but no one can be certain that country loves us the way we want it to.

Whether you decide it’s a continent, a country, a terra incognita, a mirage, all or none, love is difficult. It requires intelligence.

Love shouldn’t be about falling in but about stepping in a blank page like in poetry, and joining the silence. And in the center of that silence is sense.

You are an avid traveler and a genuine travel writer.

What do you enjoy the most in the mental preparation for a journey, its materialization and its literary reworking, and to what extent has the pandemic redefined your concept of traveling?

Touching the distance…

Knowing the journey invents itself. The most exhilarating is what isn’t planned. How the voyage translates you. How it transforms you but you only discover later, often much later.

The pandemic has stopped the constant traveling but I am always in motion. I miss the world and look forward to its reopening.

73 years after the Nakba, yet another brutal bombardment of Gaza Strip by the Israeli state occurred in May, while the “Western world” maintained an equal distance from the colonialist perpetrator and the resisting -and rightly so- victim.

No one is free until everyone is free. Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

What are the prerequisites of a truly just and viable solution to the Palestinian issue for you?

An end to apartheid, the occupation, the denial of refugee rights, an end to crimes against humanity, to corporate and state complicity like in the case of the United States which enables occupation.

Palestinians must be given their rights under international law.

The photograph of Nathalie Handal featured in this article has been kindly provided by her.

Life in a Country Album is released by University of Pittsburgh Press in the USA and by flipped eye publishing in the UK.

You may discover more about Nathalie Handal and her multifaceted work by delving into her personal website.

Martin Phillipps: “Sometimes the right words can really help other people”

 

Musically uplifting, Scatterbrain, The Chills’ latest pop “confection”, does, however, sound like an honest and profound personal and creative testament, as is evident in several songs.

In conversation with Martin Phillipps, the creative mastermind behind the legendary New Zealand band.

Musically uplifting, Scatterbrain does, however, -at least in terms of lyrics- sound like an honest and profound personal and creative testament, as is evident in several songs. Has it indeed stemmed from such a pressing internal need?

Following my recent health scare, as documented in the film The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, and also the death of my mother, I have found myself thinking more about mortality and how much control we have over our own destiny.

It became apparent that these were common themes amongst my age-group and now was the time to talk about it. Sometimes the right words can really help other people cope with difficult situations.

Who’s the “scatterbrained”, in fact? Is it you, certain others, the era we live in?

All of the above! It was my own confused state of mind, it was watching the rise of stupidity as a valid intellectual stance and it is watching the shutting down of rational discussion in the face of the armies of ‘the offended’.

“Dark times- nothing left to say/Black holes draining all the light away,” you lament ominously in Hourglass.

Although the so-called “pandemic era” has been more lightly felt in New Zealand, how much has it darkened your outlook on life and humanity?

The lyrics and themes of Scatterbrain were completed before we’d even heard of Covid but it has turned out to be an oddly prophetic album.

The early months of lockdown were a time of strange, quiet beauty but also of growing terror as I wondered whether this was how life would be forever.

On the positive side it gave us extra time to share sound-files and really fine-tune what the album was about before we regrouped for the final recording sessions and it really has benefited from that.

“I know I won’t avoid the void eternally/And mortality- well, it must be met alone,” you confess in Destiny. You’ve come face to face with void in the past.

Do you feel more prepared to fight it at present, creatively as well as biologically, to “weather the ages”?

Scatterbrain is possibly the best of the recent three albums and I now feel I can step back and take stock of where I am in my life and where The Chills need to explore next.

I am relieved that the saga of this band has been brought up to date and no longer rests entirely on achievements made in the eighties and early nineties.

“The old people (like me) want to feel more involved but they also know that their time of influence has largely passed,” you write about You’re Immortal.

Assuming that your time has passed, what’s the imprint that The Chills have left on the world of music?

It appears to us that there are a lot of people only just discovering our band for the first time and it speaks well of our legacy that so much of the music has aged well and can still feel relevant to new listeners.

While we are often referred to as just a pop band we have, in fact, covered a lot of ground musically and the new fans do find a large world of music to explore.

What kind of music do you most fondly listen to when you feel like it?

I have moods.

Recently I had a night of listening to very loud Deep Purple and Motörhead and the next night I binged on Scott Walker - from his early works right through to the later more experimental albums.

I don’t do Spotify, on principle, but I fear that I will have to adapt just to keep up with more of the amazing music that is being made today.

Legendary graphic designer and musician David Costa, whom I interviewed last year, is responsible for the highly imaginative cover art of the album. I assume this has been a rewarding collaboration. Is that so?

I was thrilled with his artwork. We quickly established a good relationship through email and I had one or two suggestions about the color palette and script but everything else was David’s natural response to hearing Chills music for the first time.

And I’ve really been enjoying discovering more of Trees through the wonderful Fire Records box set.

Each time the listening experience of Scatterbrain is over, I keep wishing there was more of it, somewhere. So, revisiting my initial question, is there any chance of a follow-up to this brilliant, introspective pop creation?

There were three other songs completed and mastered and one epic song we nearly started but realized we did not have the time to do it justice. We hope to record that soon and perhaps release all four tracks as the modern equivalent of an E.P.

Other than that there are the usual plans for beginning the process of writing the next album - although this time I don’t see any need to be hurried.

I would like to warmly thank Alice Gros of Fire Records for facilitating the realization of this interview, and Martin Phillipps for “carrying the flag”. Creatively may he go on!

The Chills’ Scatterbrain is released by Fire Records.

Meegan Lee Ochs: “I wish my father’s songs were less relevant than they still are”

 

Meegan and Phil Ochs (Photo credit: Alice Ochs)

Only daughter of the great troubadour of politically engaged folk music Phil Ochs, Meegan Lee Ochs lovingly shares with us memories of her father, who committed suicide 45 years ago, on the 9^th of April of 1976.

You were only a teen when Phil Ochs, your father, committed suicide on the 9th of April, 1976. Could his death have been avoided or was he too determined/internally pressed?

I was 12 when my father died.

I lived with both of my parents until I was 2 ½, and then my mother and I moved to Mill Valley, California. My father moved to Los Angeles, California, and we visited both with my traveling to see him in LA, and his visiting me in Mill Valley.

My father suffered from a chemical imbalance that is now called Bi-Polar and at the time was called Manic Depression. Because I didn’t live with him, I didn’t experience the depression.

There were medications available, but they were not as fine-tuned as they are now. Lithium was prescribed at a much higher dose than was needed and had a reputation of taking away creativity.

From what I know, he had a prescription at the end of his life but had never taken it.

His creativity was his core, and I believe his fear of losing that was a price he was not willing to pay. He spoke about suicide frequently -not with me-, and there were concerns and many attempts to help from our family and his friends.

His father had been hospitalized for Manic Depression, and it seems clear that he inherited this from his father.

“What if” is a dangerous game for survivors of the suicide of a loved one. When I was 12, I thought if I had called him right before, I could have saved him.  The omnipotence of youth…

In retrospect, his decision does not seem to be a momentary thought.  It seems he was plagued with depression for most of his adult life.

He must have thought the only way to ensure that he would never suffer that deep depression again is if he were not here to experience it. I would give anything for him to have survived those years and could be with us still.

Losing a parent at such a tender age must have been devastating. How did you manage to come to terms with his loss and move on with your life on all levels?

My mother’s parents died when she was nine and 15. When my father died when I was 12, and my mother was struggling with drug addiction, I lived in fear of losing her as well. 

I’m grateful she was able to come out of drug addiction and live a productive life for another thirty years. Losing my father and nearly losing my mother involved my needing to have personal responsibility at a young age. 

I’m a silver linings person, so I see it as having made me self-reliant. Having his music and video of him helped me.

It is no replacement, but I literally have a documentary about my father made by Ken Bowser for my son to be able to know his grandfather much better than nearly any child whose grandparent dies before they are born.

Has your subsequent orientation, professional or political, been influenced, even subconsciously, by your relationship with your father or your memories of him?

For 28 years and counting I have been working at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) as a fundraiser and event producer.

My father was a political folk singer, but he was also an organizer.

He was a founding member of the Yippies and engaged in various forms of protest including declaring the Vietnam war over and marching through the streets of New York letting people viscerally feel what ending the war could feel like.

There is no question that my life is infused with my father, his music, and his activism. The core belief that people should have equal opportunity and fighting against discrimination are in the fiber of my being.

My initial activism in high school was working with Planned Parenthood as a teen leader talking to peers about birth control access.

In my 20s, I was a volunteer fundraiser, raising funds for Central American Refugee organizations and traveling to El Salvador twice.

First on a fact-finding mission after five Jesuit priests were murdered and then when Ruben Zamora ran for public office in the early 1990s.

Of the many people that my father has guided into my life after his passing is Sean Penn. I met him when I was 19 and he was 23. He became like a brother to me, and I worked with him for three years, which was an amazing experience.

I joke that I attended “Penn University” because so many people I met through Sean have remained a part of my life and affected my work.

Though our dream of a film about my father have not been realized, it feels like the perfect time might actually be now.

Like my father, my adult life has been a mix of politics and entertainment. In 1992, I started working at the ACLU SoCal. I produced events including the Bill of Rights Awards.

In 1999, I created the ACLU’s online auction. Currently, I work on our annual Bill of Rights Awards, but most of my time is spent on auctions and sweepstakes and working with influencers to promote advocacy campaigns.

Many of my father’s friends have supported my work at the ACLU.

In the folk tradition of adapting songs to new circumstances, my father reimagined his song Here’s to the State of Mississippi as Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon.

Many years later, Tim Robbins and Eddie Vedder rewrote the song as Here’s to the State of George W. and I discreetly wanted someone to redo it again as Here’s to the State of Donald Trump.

“And the speeches of the President are the ravings of a clown” has never been truer than for the Florida retiree.

Did you appreciate and enjoy his music and overall attitude while he was still alive? Which are your favorite Phil Ochs’s albums and why?

Just so you know, mine are All the news that’s fit to sing and Pleasures of the harbor- original pristine vinyl copies!

I have enjoyed my father’s music since I was a child.  My understanding of his powerful and clever lyrics has evolved over the years, and with understanding I am even more grateful for how he used his creativity to make the world a more just place for all.

From my perspective, the storytelling throughout his career mirrors his evolution from a curious and patriot youth who loved storytelling to his awareness that challenging your government when it does not live up to the ideals it espouses is not only a right but a responsibility.

All the News That’s Fit to Sing has an overarching story.

From celebrating America beauty in Power and the Glory, the legacy of a troubadour in Bound for Glory, blind patriotism in One More Parade, tragedy of loss in Too Many Martyrs and the hope of What's That I Hear.

Pleasures of the Harbor as an album and a song are a creative departure and stunning in my view.

Crucifixion and Pleasures of the Harbor are both intricate and expressive stories told with an orchestral presentation and beautiful melodies.

Outside of a Small Circle of Friends is another favorite song and is also on that album.

I Ain't Marching Anymore became an anthem for the anti-war movement,

Draft Dodger Rag is a song I adore, and That Was the President is a beautiful tribute to Kennedy in addition to Crucifixion.

The way he introduced his songs was often as insightful as the songs he wrote.

In Concert features my favorite introduction was to his song Love me I’m a Liberal.

He describes liberals as a shady group, 10% to the left in the best of times and 10% to the right of center if it affects them personally. Both the lyrics of the song and the introduction paint a vivid challenge/criticism of much of his listening audience.

Asking them to look in the mirror and see if they are progressive on a convenient and surface level, or deeply committed to social justice and willing to do the work.

From this album, other favorites include Chords of Fame, Joe Hill, The War is Over and Changes, which was written about my mother Alice.

Rehearsals for Retirement contains possibly his most succinct lyric of all: “I am the masculine American Man, I Kill Therefore I Am.”

In September 2014, you announced that you were donating your father’s valuable archives to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

What was included in those archives and why did you decide to donate them to the Woody Guthrie Center?

My father’s brother/my uncle Michael Ochs is an extraordinary man. He managed part of my father’s career and is solely responsible for caring for my father’s belongings.

In fact, he flew to rescue a moving truck my father abandoned and drove it to LA saving nearly everything that he did not archive himself.

The items I donated included my father’s yearly journals and countless notebooks that chronicled his adventures, thoughts, song ideas, newspaper clippings, lyric sheets, Broadside Magazines, and personal notes from those he admired including Pete Seeger.

His Gold Lame suit worn in at the Gunfight at Carnegie Hall concerts, Miranda, the wig manikin that inspired the song Miranda, countless photographs -many taken by Michael and my mother-, posters, correspondence etc.

The Woody Guthrie Center is the perfect home for his belongings. Their collections not only include Woody Guthrie’s amazing archive, but also highlight items from the full spectrum of folk artists.

The research archive and educational opportunities for students of all ages are priceless.

I’m grateful that they are now caring for my father’s belongings in their climate controlled archival storage, and in the artistic way they curate what is displayed at the center. 

Every decision I make is my imagined response he would have done himself.  I feel he is smiling up there somewhere at the thought of his belongings hanging out with Woody’s, Pete Seeger’s and others he admired.

Meegan Lee Ochs with her husband and their son

45 years after your father’s untimely death, what do you most miss of him both as a committed, politicized artist and a troubled human being? Do you feel that his musical legacy is still felt nowadays, in the US as well as abroad?

Personally, I would love for my father to have known my beloved husband Jay, my stepdaughter Cierra, who is a performer herself and my son Caiden.

As far as the challenges he faced through manic depression, it was devastating to him, and took him from me.

However, I believe that I inherited ADHD and Dyslexia from my father, as did my son. There are challenges in both, but I sincerely believe that in addition to distraction there is hyper focus, which informed his life and mine.

Dyslexia is a different way of processing information and much of what made him amazing was rooted in these differences.

The number of times I have been told in my life “nobody has ever thought of doing it that way before” is many.  That is another gift from my father.

My advocacy is my small way of continuing his work on social justice, and I would have loved to have shared that with him. I wish my father’s songs were less relevant than they still are. In the last four years they became even more so. 

Many generations have been inspired by my father’s music, which I am immensely proud of.

However, my hope is that the relevance of the songs diminishes over time, and that his dream of a fair and just world will be realized.

The reason I am working for the ACLU is that I wanted to work for the rights of those marginalized in our society including people of color, the LGBTQ community, women, and those living with a disability, as well as working to protect free speech, voting rights and access, workers’ rights, immigrant rights and prisoners’ rights.

I am so grateful to dedicate my life to this work. My father performed at the ACLU of Southern California’s Bill of Rights Dinner when I was 9. Who would have thought that I would end up producing that event for more than two decades?

Had he still been alive, which causes would he be fighting for, to your mind?

Though I don’t know if it would have been through song, I believe he would be uplifting economic justice, workers’ rights, and the effort to end voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

I would like to warmly thank Meegan Lee Ochs for kindly sharing so many valuable memories and thoughts 45 years after the death of Phil Ochs, and also for providing the photographing material which illustrates the article.

Meegan Lee Ochs

Faten Kanaan: “I just make music I would want to hear”

 

Dexterously interweaving ambient, minimalist and electronic pop soundscapes, Brooklyn-based Faten Kanaan’s latest offering, A mythology of circles, is one of the most accomplished and thrilling releases of 2020 so far.

In conversation with Faten Kanaan.

A mythology of circles, your latest and -to me- most accomplished work to date, is a fluid, moving, nocturnal exploration of myths and myth-making. How did your fascination with myths develop over the years, ever since you were a child?

Thanks so much!

Living between Europe and the Middle East, as a child I was exposed to so much various folklore- I loved stories and storytelling.

Later, in my senior year of high school, in our “Theory of Knowledge” course for the International Baccalaureate, the teacher focused on Greek mythology and narrated the stories so well, they left quite an impression.

I later became interested in comparative mythology, from the writings of Vladimir Propp, to making my own connections, and seeing every country’s unique and rich folklore as a bonding thread in our shared human histories.

In university & graduate school my focus was on Fine Arts -Painting and Sculpture. Storytelling and mythology were often at the center of my work.

There are clear “echoes” of Terry Riley, Brian Eno and Wim Mertens in the album. Do you feel that your artistic endeavors lie at the crossroads of ambient, minimalist and electronic pop soundscapes?

I love all those artists’ work, and am drawn to music from different genres:

Film scores, minimalist composers, ambient drones, medieval rounds, French & Italian pop music from the 60s & 70s that my family listened to, Arabic music, industrial/ experimental music, and more.

I just make music I would want to hear, and don’t feel the need to make it fit any specific genre.

Which is the significance of the two choral parts used in this work?

The first time I used the VST sampled choir, I was surprised by how forlorn the voices sounded.  They were both emotive, yet quite cold.

Their attempt to sound real became an embodiment of our strange relationship with technological acceleration, an example of the “uncanny valley”, as a recent review of the album had aptly mentioned - in The Quietus, by Will Salmon.

Both in terms of overall structure and sound-wise, A mythology of circles resembles a soundtrack to an imaginary/non-existent film. What kind of films do you enjoy watching and what kind of film would be “invested” with such music?

I love cinema, film theory, and watching movies. Film scores were definitely a big influence on how I think about sound, and the importance of a narrative structure for me when composing.

Kieślowski, Tarkovsky, Akerman... It’s difficult to pin down any favorite directors- but these are a few. Film is such an incredible medium because every nuance matters. Every decision becomes part of a transformative journey for the audience.

The ability to tell a story and take someone from point A to point B in such a way is pure enchantment. I think of this when composing: of what story I’m trying to tell. What mood I’m trying to conjure.

But hopefully in a way that is mysterious enough to allow the listener to come up with their own imagery.

I would love to score films in the future and hope I can do so with the right projects.

It also feels very organic, very earthly. Is this due to your connection with nature?

Yes, I do have a very strong connection with nature. It’s part of our ancestry, our history, and our DNA. Perhaps having lived in the city for so long makes me yearn for it and romanticize it, but I try to spend as much time near greenery or water as I can.

Also, I started playing musical instruments well before I got into using synthesizers. My main instrument was the piano, but then I had dabblings with the cello, oud, harp, and guitar.

Experiencing the physicality of making sound resonate in different ways definitely affected how I approach electronic music.

As a listener, I experienced your album late at night with eyes closed and was induced into a trance-like state of mind. How do you relate with your audience?

Each track is a journey. A story. I think of what it means to me, and where I’d like it to take the listener- though their journey is ultimately their own. I’m glad it was an experience!

My recording process differs quite a bit from my live performances. 

In live sets I use a pedal looper, so that I can layer the sections live on stage.

In recordings, I play the entirety of each repeating harmony, sometimes for up to 6 or 7 minutes- to allow for natural drifts to happen. I notice the physicality of how it affects me. It becomes durational...

Sometimes I lose myself when repeating a melody, and the recording process does end up feeling trance-like: a whirling dervish, or a word sounding surreal from being repeated so often.

You’re based in Brooklyn. Is there an active cultural scene in the area nowadays?

I’m very grateful for the music community I’ve had here. It’s lovely to see artists -and engineers- genuinely supporting each other.

And thanks to the internet and globalism, it’s been great to see that people can connect from different places. One can be anywhere, as long as they can engage with a community and not live in a bubble of one’s own work.

With the pandemic of course, things have changed a bit.

Several of your albums and EPs have come out during autumn, and especially in November. Is this a coincidence? Or does autumn hold a special charm for you?

That’s quite insightful! Yes, I was born in September, and love the autumn. It seems like I’ve gotten into a seasonal rhythm with recording then mixing, and when the album is ready for release. Also, I’m not quite sure my music really fits as a summer ‘jam’!

To what extent has the Trump “era” -which is by no means over yet- affected you creatively, politically and socially? Do you expect any real change within the context of the forthcoming Biden administration?

I think the bigger political machine is quite larger than any one president, so I’m not sure what changes will happen, but I hope people keep speaking up for justice.

I’m definitely glad the last four years are coming to a close. It had been a scary and disappointing time -not just in the US-, to see the worst sides of humanity emboldened like this. It took us back too many steps, to say the least.

Do you plan to visit/play in Greece once the Covid-19 “dust” settles or is it absolutely impossible to program life activities at present?

I’d love to visit and play in Greece soon! I’m actually planning on moving back to Europe next year, which would make travels there a bit easier, but of course my plans are mostly hypothetical and on hold at the moment.

Day by day, but working towards some goals.

And finally, do we, as societies and individuals, need to create new myths and mythologies? What will be left after the Covid-19 “era” subsides?

Definitely! As far as our awareness goes, we only live once. Our perspective matters in how we experience life. Some situations are easier than others, but it’s important to at least try to live the best story possible. To respect other people’s stories.

As much loss and distress as Covid-19 may have brought, it has forced us to re-prioritize things in our lives, hopefully for a more sustainable future and positive legacy.

I would like to warmly thank Alice Gros of Fire Records for facilitating the communication with Faten Kanaan.

Faten Kanaan’s A mythology of circles is released by Fire Records.