BUKHARIAN PEACE RECIPES: Research and production from a community-based residency in Bukhara, Uzbekistan (April 2024)

A radio piece made from music I recorded and interviews I conducted in Bukhara. The work asks: what does it mean to the social fabric of a culture when an entire community leaves? It is mostly in Russian. There is a messy translated transcription below.

A song I wrote and performed connecting the loss of Jewish-Muslim worlds and the current loss of Palestinian life and land.

LYRICS:

What to do when your heart breaks

What to do when you’re split in two 

What to do what you see a people dying and you just want them to live again 

Do you know a road for loss that doesn’t end in war?

Do you know a road for loss that doesn’t end in settlement?

Do you know a road for loss that might end with a home?

What to do with the endless exile

What to do when there’s a genocide

Do you know a road for loss that might end with a home?

I just want to burn down all the nations

I just want them all to decompose

The thing is that when I die, I just turn into you and you and you turn into me 

What to do when we’re all divided 

What to do when everything is split apart

I guess I’ll just have to find my scattered pieces and lay them next to yours 

You. 

You. 

You belong there. 

You have many memories. 

You were born as everyone is born. 

You have a mother and a house with many windows, brothers, friends, even a prison cell 

You have a wave snatched by seagulls. 

You have a saturated meadow.

In the deep horizon of your word, you have the moon.

A bird’s substance.

And an immortal olive tree.

You have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey. 

You.

You.

You belong there. 

When heaven mourns for her mother, you return heaven to her mother. 

And you cry so that a returning cloud might carry your tears. 

To break the rules, you have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.

You have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: home.

HOME.

What to do when your heart breaks

Enter through the wound

Lie down on the floor

Of your determined heart

Breathe

Breathe

Breathe

Let is show you how

It beats beyond defeat

Let it show you how

Endings become beginnings 

I also researched the traditional dances of Bukhara, here are videos of me dancing with different women in Bukhara:

I facilitated a public peace ritual, here are some images: