The Conservative Cat

3:46 I have arrived early and selected a seat on the balcony of Foellinger auditorium. I can see a guitar and a music stand next to the podium on the stage. Some school play-esque doors are on the left and right sides of the stage entrance. I am filled with a sense of overwhelming dread.

3:50 I can see a woman that I believe to be the speaker. She has dark brown frizzly hair, black robes that make her appear boxlike and also erase any trace of femininity. Her only jewelry are two plain pendants, one shaped like a teardrop, and another that looks like a box with streamers.

3:57 Speaker could also be gray-haired woman in red shoal, black shirt, and grey skirt.

4:01 Woman in Red takes the stage.

4:07 She opens the ceremony. She begins by welcoming the students to the lecture, and recaps some previous speakers who spoke about turning off cell phones. She introduces the Woman in Black as Evelyne Accad. Accad is an Arab from Lebanon, a songwritter, and a novelist. The Woman in Red talks about how she met Accad. She goes on about how Accad wrote about the Lebanese war as well as about atrocities against women. I'm wondering if maybe they're the same book. Worse: they could be the same song. Feeling of dread comes back.

4:09 Accad takes the stage and states the main topics of her lecture. (1) Women in War. (2) Current Wars. (3) Sons and War. (4) Cancer and War. (5) [if time permits] Violence in War Impacts Everyone. I get the Women, the Violence, and the Sons, but what's the Cancer?

4:12 She prepares to sing a song inspired by a friend's death from shrapnel. Her one-sentence summation-- "War concedes only War." After translating the song to English she sings it in French.

4:15 Still singing. I've decided I really don't like French.

4:16 She stops singing and begins to discuss Current Wars. Either the song about the shrapnel was the Women in War topic or she's doing them out of order. She starts with the war in Iraq. She claims that everyone is affected by the war, which means this could be topic (5). She starts talking about Lebanon. It was conquered by the Turks, then the French came in and saved the Lebanese from the Turks. I find this hard to believe. Then later the French left. I find that easier to believe.

4:18, or maybe 1948. The newly-created state of Israel declares war on the Palestinians. The Palestinians retreat to Lebanon and continue to attack Israel. Israel, backed by the Americans, strikes back. Then there's some sort of conspiracy to use Bush's War on Terror to conquer Palestine and divide Iraq on fragmented lines. I think that maybe "fragmented lines" means something different in French.

4:21 She mentions the Bombing of Beirut and a "Holocaust repeated by the victims of the Holocaust." This is continuing in Iraq with the bombing of innocents, and children in the area "take hope in death". I'm thinking maybe this is the Sons in War part of the lecture.

4:22 She starts the next song: I Want to Live. She translates into English, then sings in some French/Arabic dialect.

4:24 Still singing.

4:25 She stops singing, and talks about how in 1975 she started composing. Around this time a war broke out. She talks about her motives for writing. I find myself wondering what the motive is for singing songs in a language we can't understand.

4:29 She begins to talk about her family. Her father was a strict patriarchal Christian Minister. Her society had repressive practices that inspired her to run away.

4:32 She turns the subject to the source of her identity. The schools in her area taught her to be French and she did not learn about her home country until she arrived in the U.S. America is still the best place to learn how to be a foreigner.

4:34 She prepares to sing a love song in Arabic. She mentions before she starts that the term "shitt-ee" means winter. She encourages Arabs to sing along.

4:35 She begins. No one is singing along with her.

4:37 "Winter" has been mentioned 8 times so far. The auditorium is feeling cold.

4:38 The final "winter" count is 14.

4:39 She talks about how she uses music as a way to escape the pain. In her early singing days she noticed her songs moved Lebanese listeners. She planned to use music to change the Lebanese way. She wrote Sexuality and War to propose a move toward tenderness, sharing and equality in relationships. Since the book is also about war, I wonder if the move toward tenderness comes before or after the bombing.

4:42 She talks about how Arabs see women as property, and how rape is used as a weapon. She calls it a Rape Crisis. I remember Ann Coulter's suggestion that we invade all the Arab countries and convert them to Christianity. I consider possibility of a meeting between Evylene and Ann.

4:44 She prepares another song in Arabic.

4:46 She starts. The high notes are starting to hurt.

4:47 Song ends.

4:48 She begins discussing the violence that women suffer from genital mutilation. Still waiting for the Cancer and War topic.

4:52 She decides to end with a song on genital mutilation. The song starts with a high pitched tone. It does hurt.

4:55 PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP!!!! She should sing this to the whack-jobs that perform that evil procedure.

4:56 It's over. I decide I need at least an hour of Linkin Park to wash the pain from my ears.