Joel Schalit

Same As It Always Is

Clearly its going to take more time. Two and a half weeks back in San Francisco, and Europe has never felt closer. By the time we leave, we’ll probably have come to realize that we are indeed here, not in London or Milan. One thing is certain. The amount of moving we’ve done these last ten months has had the curious consequence of making things seem more similar, wherever we are, than it makes them feel different.

For example, this picture, shot in London’s Pimlico tube station in March, has an explicitly American feel to it. Perhaps its because I had never seen such examples of poverty until I began running into homeless persons living in New York’s subways in the early ’80s. Fresh off the boat from the United Kingdom, it was an entirely foreign sight to twelve-year-old me, one that immediately clinched the distinctions between the two countries.

Bring the Beat Back

I can’t tell you how many first class exhibitions were held in London during the half year that we lived there. Each week, it seemed, there was always something good, and most importantly of interest, that we could have gone to. Sometimes I wondered if the city’s cultural events weren’t programmed specifically for us, as though they were consolation for Jennifer’s dreadful work situation.

One such event was Unveiled: New Art From the Middle East, which opened on January 30th at the new Saatchi Gallery on Kings Road. One of the most comprehensive exhibits of its kind (in the US, such shows are usually nation as opposed to region-specific) I took the opportunity to write about one of it’s featured photographers, Shadi Ghadirian, (see above) in today’s edition of Zeek.

Shot in Tehran, Ghadirian’s work is emblemmatic of the unrest currently engulfing the Islamic republic. Contending with the intersection of religion and women’s rights in the Mideast, her staged photographs nevertheless indulge a universal vernacular easily transportable to any number of foreign contexts. The ghetto blaster atop this lady’s shoulder is the tip of the iceberg. Check it out.

Last Day in London

The day after I returned our rental van at the Europcar office on Clapham High Street, I flew back to Milan, formally concluding our half-year sojourn in the UK. Before I left, I made sure to purchase copies of my two favorite British periodicals, and read them on the flight home.

Given how hard we struggled while we were in town, our only consistent solace was having access to what remains, in my view, one of the most interesting news industries in the world. As has often been said about the BBC’s World Service, British newspapers and magazines oftentimes project a more ideal United Kingdom.

Well, not every publication, by any stretch of the imagination. Take a look at the country’s tabloids, for example. They’re equally representative. But, the inclination to say so, when one can only attribute such sentiments to four or five publications in toto, says a lot about the cultural significance of said periodicals.

She Wears the Pants

We left the US seven months ago. Transferred to her firm’s new office in London, my wife had been tasked with helping build her San Francisco-based employer’s European presence. Having taken the job with the expectation of eventually being placed abroad, we were immensely gratified. We were leaving San Francisco, finally, as we’d hoped. Not just to Europe, but to London, with guaranteed employment.

Unfortunately, we never got to enjoy the UK. Departing during the second week of the credit crunch, (amidst a parallel meltdown within my wife’s company, no less), Jennifer’s firm completely destabilized. Unable to buy simple things like staplers and stationery, and provide monitors for the staff to work on, it appeared as though we’d made a terrible choice. We’d moved six thousand miles only to get laid off, or so it seemed.

That never did happen, though Jennifer and her colleagues came exceedingly close to being sent home. The fear of being shut down, however, never quite went away, and we spent six months with our bags unpacked, without any of our belongings, looking for a way out. Jennifer’s former boss did little to dissuade us otherwise, advising us to not ship our container into London upon its arrival in Southampton last November.

When Jennifer finally landed a new gig, in Italy, it was the first time we felt like we’d really arrived. Not in the metaphorical sense, but a literal one. Unlike many similar companies, the firm that hired Jennifer had the stability she was looking for, and had maintained an active European presence for over three decades. There was no new ground to break, or learning curve to master. Despite the horrible economic climate, this company still had its hands full. We could move to Milan in good conscience.

We’ve spent the last two weeks looking back on our past half-year, and marveled at how we managed to survive. Everything that could have gone wrong did. Everything that could be extrapolated about the collapse of the Anglo-American economy seemed to manifest itself in our lives. Though we bear no ill-will towards Jennifer’s former firm, we feel immensely relieved to be outside its troubled grip, and finally on dry land.

My wife’s determination to perservere, and to continue to enjoy a career she’s spent nearly two decades cultivating never ceases to amaze me. I know very few people who’ve stayed such a course, for so long. Jennifer’s strength and focus definitely saw us through. Even more amazing was her desire to remain abroad, and not return to the US, despite how bad everything is, everywhere. Sometimes, you know you’re right, irrespective of the circumstances. Jennifer’s conviction has always been its own reward. The rest is gravy.

Got My Eye On You

I used to think that London was the capital of European street art. Living in Milan has made me reconsider that assumption. The intensity of the tagging and political postering here is overwhelming.

This detournement, using an anti-military flyer, is located inside a small municipal park a few blocks away from our apartment, on Padova street, in the middle of an Arab-Latino immigrant ‘hood.

Click on the photo for more detail.

Same Europe, Different Country

I can’t think of a better photo to begin writing from Milan than this. “Silvio, we’re here,” or so my terrible Italian renders this smart dig at Berlusconi. A language I once had a reasonable grasp of as a child living here in the early 1970s, both Jennifer and I plan on becoming far more fluent than we are at present. Granted, we have an excellent grasp of both French and Spanish, so we’re not badly off. Still, one can only go so far responding, as I am often inclined to do, as though we are back in San Francisco, ordering burritos.

We moved into our apartment on Thursday night. The end of ten days of travel, during which we drove to Milan from London and back to return our rental, it was a remarkable relief to finally enter our new home. The 1600 miles of highway we covered did not catch up with me until this weekend when, after having spent a day of ferrying things up from our basement storage space, I felt as though I’d been placed inside a concrete bodysuit. I don’t know if I can remember a time I ever felt so tired.

Like Israel, like America, my family history here is deep, my interest in it partly personal, partly political. In other words, business as usual. Nevertheless, Italy is not a geography I’ve acknowledged as being influential, though I do mention it in my first book, Jerusalem Calling. My father worked in the Genoa area for nearly twenty years, my brother David frequently traveling to Milan for close to a decade. I did my own small part, exporting experimental and hip-hop records to distributors in Rome and Pisa during the early ’00s.

One story, consistently retold by at least two generations of Schalits, concerns our longstanding ancestral relations in the country. In Venice, to be precise, apparently beginning not long after the Spanish Inquisition, lasting, or so the narrative goes, until the late 18th century. Another anecdote is about a relative of ours named Enrico Schalit, a cantorial composer from either Mantova or Padua, if I remember the story correctly. I’ve never taken the opportunity to get it all straight.

During the time we’re here, I’m going to collect these stories, and place them in proper context. For the moment, I’ll assume that their relative consistency means that there is some truth to them, and that its just a question of determining what’s more plausible than not. In the interim, I’m savoring the significance of having retraced, however inadvertently, both my brother (18 years my senior) and father’s respective footsteps. Not to mention, of course, my own.

At Levantine Station

The Middle East has become a metaphor for the world. Whether you chalk it up to undue Zionist influence on post-WWII American foreign policy, the disproportionate impact that the Arab-Israeli conflict has wielded over Western political life, the growth of Islam in Europe, Arab immigration everywhere, or the global impact of Persian Gulf petro-dollars, the point is ultimately the same.

For a variety of legitimate (and, obviously illegitimate) reasons, the Middle East has become more tightly enmeshed in the West than ever before. Though it took until the War on Terror to drive this home, the Jihadi terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have had the ironic consequence of colonizing American culture and politics in return.

-Photo: Archway tube, London. Text excerpted from Israel vs. Utopia

Zionism as Genre

Of the seven Jewish artists displayed, only two are actually Israeli. Global musics section, HMV Oxford Circus. London, March 11.

Portable Storage Device

Yesterday, I went to a local internet cafe to fax a copy of my Israeli passport’s first three pages to my parents. In the midst of transferring the title of my stepmother’s Opel station wagon to me, they needed proof of Israeli identification.

Handing over the paperwork to the cafe’s Somali owner, I noticed this wall display behind him. “Who do you think is the election’s winner?” the guy asked, as he took note of the Hebrew-language documentation I had given him.

Everywhere a Montage

Whenever I’m in London, I think of Michael Jackson, the Bible, and Gaza. At the same time.