Program III
KAREWAN
Departure and Encounter
The image of a group of merchants, travellers or pilgrims wandering through impassable desert land has only little to do with Oriental romanticism. For us, it serves as a contemporary symbol of the tireless departure of each individual, a courageous approach to the new and the foreign, the process of orientation and assuming an attitude in times in which we increasingly withdraw and exclude ourselves.
The caravan is what made the people citizens of the world. There is something primordial about viewing what is foreign as a goal – and receiving exchange, encounters and a broadening of horizons as a result.
The desert is the classic place for a caravan route. It presents us with a dimension that seems immeasurable to us and in which orientation is difficult. The desert as a metaphor for the unspeakable greatness of the divine sense was familiar to both, the people of the Orient and the Western mystics of the Middle Ages. Meister Eckhart describes the nature of this desert and the way to encounter it: 'Become child-like, become deaf, become blind, your own ego has to let go. Walk without a path along the narrow footbridge – that is how you will find the desert's trace!'
'All real life is encounter', said Martin Buber, the Jewish religious philosopher. This thought, as well as the words of the Persian mystic Rumi, 'We are all strangers and we are all passing through', coincide with the core statement of our third program. Rumi continues his sentence by saying: Whether Turk, Roman (European) or Arab, whoever carries love in his heart has a common language – music.
With these basic ideas in mind, we have developed a series of songs, instrumental pieces and quotations for our new program KAREWAN. The program takes its course just like a caravan - a delicate yet determined movement in a vast landscape - and ultimately unites the foreign with the familiar.
Schirin Partowi
