suvroc

When I sat down to take these pictures, I could hear the city all around me, alive and loud. Very loud. On the street below, an Armenian marching band was playing in a Holy Saturday parade. There were Christian pilgrims from every corner of the world filtering through the alleyways and congregating in the streets, all trying to get to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the Holy Fire service. The hum of their voices mixed with those of the vendors, the soldiers, the non-Christian tourists, the orthodox Jews returning from Saturday services, teenagers, kids, old Arab men and women, and everyone else who lives and works in one of the most important neighborhoods in the world. In the distance I could hear church bells ringing. I decided to engage in a little cultural masturbation, if you will, and set my mp3 player to Muslimgauze's Deceiver. Quick background on that one: Muslimgauze was a pro-Arab, anti-west electronic music project by a non-Arab Brit by the name of Bryn Jones. The music, which was always recorded on analog equipment, was an amalgamation of live instrumentation (mostly of the Middle Eastern variety) and vocal samples. I figured it was appropriate, as I was in the most politicized city in the world, Jerusalem, staring directly at one of the holiest sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock, which is situated on top of the ruins of the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, while tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims were in town to celebrate the death and rebirth of their savior. At some point after the second track, I began to hear chanting in Arabic that was not coming from my headphones. It was the muazzin calling people to prayer! In seconds, that one voice was joined by others around the city and into East Jerusalem, until the call, in cacophony, was competing with the sound of the parade and the insane buzz of voices from down below. That combined with the steady beats of Muslimgauze made for a very heady aural cocktail. My mind was slightly blown as I sat there transfixed and took the same picture over and over again, in hopes that at some point I'd find something new staring back at me. As you can tell from the pictures above, it didn't really work, though I'd like to think that I tried my best. I'm happy with what I got, don't get me wrong. I just wish that I could have figured out a way to better convey everything I saw. I hope this write up helps.