|
1.5.07
NY TIMES STORY ABOUT THE MYSTERY OF
LOVE PROJECT
December 9, 2006
The Countless Varieties of a Single Emotion: Love
By FELICIA R. LEE / NY TIMES
The close-as-brothers relationship between Azim Khamisa
and Ples Felix certainly exemplifies friendship as a kind
of love. But it is an even more extraordinary example of
forgiveness, compelling enough to be included in the PBS
documentary “The Mystery of Love,” to be broadcast
on Wednesday night.
“Mystery” serves up experts and ordinary people
to investigate love’s varieties, and includes the
story of how Mr. Felix’s grandson killed Mr. Khamisa’s
only son. Afterward the men met and began teaching nonviolence
as a way to redeem the tragedy, and their relationship deepened.
“The collective culture is competition, conflict
and violence,” Joan Konner, the executive producer
of “Mystery,” said in discussing why she turned
her journalistic skills to a hardly neglected topic. A former
dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism,
Ms. Konner said she sought to encourage people to consider
love as a tool to replenish a post-9/11 society that she
said was focused on survival, and getting and spending.
“I hope that people become aware of the many deep
connections and give them as much honor as they do the dominant
stories in the culture, which are love and sex and religion,”
Ms. Konner said in an interview about the program. Most
often, the love stories we tell are about romance and sex,
she said.
Given that even the oceans of wisdom from Shakespeare to
Dr. Phil cannot unknot love’s challenges, “Mystery”
introduces viewers to many types of love stories and many
ideas about what it all means. The stories include those
of an elderly, interracial couple in Indiana who live together
platonically; a 30ish couple about to be wed; the seemingly
odd-couple marriage of an opera singer and a hog farmer
in Minnesota; a national group of motorcyclists who help
abused children; three brothers in Baltimore who went to
Iraq at the same time; and even a glimpse at connections
among primates.
As host, the writer and actor Anna Deavere Smith brings
together the stories, which are threaded with comments by
people like the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., senior minister
of the Riverside Church in Manhattan; James Hillman, a psychologist
and author of “A Terrible Love of War”; and
Dr. Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at
the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University,
where the chimps have their own love stories.
Ms. Konner, an award-winning television documentary producer,
said she found no fewer than 1,000 current “experts”
who have written about love. She discovered a handful of
the show’s subjects through a professional choir called
Conspirare, based in Austin, Tex., which is included as
an example of communal love and whose orchestral and chamber
music is featured throughout “Mystery.”
Ms. Smith was chosen as host, Ms. Konner said, as an alternative
to hiring a glossy broadcast journalist who might not have
had Ms. Smith’s intellectual bona fides. For her part,
Ms. Smith said she was taken with the program’s presentation
of love as a radical force, beyond the usual boy-girl fluff.
“I’m interested in connection,” said
Ms. Smith, who teaches at New York University, in the Tisch
School of the Arts and at the law school.
“On the one hand, the traditional family has fallen
apart; it doesn’t exist like it did a generation ago,”
Ms. Smith said. “On the other hand, we haven’t
created a way for people to have intimacy outside of one-on-one
relationships. We don’t have enough ways to care for
each other; that’s the moment we’re living in.
We need love to solve the problem of education, and I don’t
know how we’re going to solve the health care problem
without love.”
The major financing for “Mystery” came from
the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Mich., a nonprofit foundation
that, according to its literature, has a mission to foster
the awareness of the power of love and forgiveness. Among
other things, the foundation finances research on topics
like altruism and compassion. It was endowed by John E.
Fetzer, a pioneer in broadcasting and the former owner of
the Detroit Tigers. Community groups in cities across the
country, as part of an initiative financed by the Fetzer
Institute, are convening with their group members and others
to watch “Mystery” and talk about its ideas.
In Dayton, Ohio, for example, a group called Civic Life
International is assembling a diverse group of 80 people
to talk about love and race relationships. They will meet
on Tuesday at the local PBS station to see two segments
of “Mystery,” in advance of the national broadcast.
“When we talk about love, we don’t want to
talk about it in isolation,” said Tokunbo Awoshakin,
the executive director of Civic Life International, a group
composed of journalists and professionals in conflict resolution
who work to help African and minority communities. “How
do you put love into action in a diverse community like
Dayton, which is deeply segregated along lines of race and
class?”
The story of Mr. Khamisa and Mr. Felix certainly happens
along a few social fault lines. In San Diego in 1995, Tariq
Khamisa, 20, was in a car delivering a pizza when Tony Hicks,
Mr. Felix’s grandson, then a 14-year-old eighth grader,
shot him to death. The teenager, who admitted the killing
and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, was part of a gang
that intended to rob Mr. Khamisa.
Mr. Khamisa, a devout Muslim, and Mr. Felix, who talks
about society’s perception of his black grandson,
now travel the country discussing forgiveness and the prevention
of violence. In “Mystery” they tell their story
to a group of elementary school students and ask how many
would want revenge for Tariq’s death. Many hands shoot
up.
“But let me ask you, would revenge bring Tariq back?”
Mr. Khamisa asks.
Another provocative segment on the documentary, called
“Love and War,” shows Mr. Hillman, the psychologist,
theorizing about the brotherhood of the battlefield. Across
cultures and across time a collective thrill runs through
civilizations as they march off to face an enemy, Mr. Hillman
said in an interview about his participation in the program.
“How the hell do you account for the fact that we’ve
been at war since human history began?” he said. “We
must love it.”
“The love of war is a love, in war, of the men for
each other,” Mr. Hillman says in “Mystery.”
On a more mundane and upbeat note, “Mystery”
takes us to the wedding of Mark Cravotta and Monica Proctor,
musicians in Austin who met on the Internet and then grappled
with preconceived notions of what a relationship should
be. Ms. Proctor was wary that Mr. Cravotta was twice divorced
and had a child. He realized that he had never really seen
marriage as a lifetime commitment.
“We are in a position now where we definitely could
get hurt,” Mr. Cravotta says in the show after he
and his wife exchange vows. “And we’re in anyway.
But that’s where the juicy stuff is.”
>>
VIEW PHOTOS from our kick-off on December 12, 2006 <<
The Mystery of Love Projects (www.themysteryoflove.org),
is part of The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness,
an inclusive, nonpartisan initiative that invites everyone
to consider how love and forgiveness can change our lives
and communities The Mystery of Love documentary is sponsored
by Fetzer Institute, (www.fetzer.org),
produced by the Independent Production Fund. (www.ipf45.org)
and distributed nationwide by ACTIVE VOICE (www.activevoice.net).
|
