Music Break: Adele – Hello
November 25, 2015
If you’ve live long enough, you know what this is about.
If you haven’t, well, you have something to look forward to.
The video has half a billion views on youtube, and is an instant classic. The song has inspired many, many internet cover versions, and clearly crosses cultures in its appeal. This suggests a much more elegant approach to the dilemma of hatred, misunderstanding, and terror.
It’s no accident that the first thing that happened in Berlin when the wall fell, was a rock concert. Culture is the frame story that cuts thru and dissolves the most toxic and monolithic ideologies – and Western culture’s greatest weapon is not bombs, but the culture itself – the more creative, anarchic, humorous, irreverent, sex-positive, and sarcastic, the better.
Beats not bombs.
Below, see an indescribable version that is at once Arabic, auto-tuned, and Gay. Words fail.
Picking up on this thought, the Saturday Night Live cast makes a suggestion for defusing awkward Thanksgiving dinner discussion.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
November 26, 2015 at 5:53 pm
Arabic version may not be gay at all. Best friendships between men are very close, an aspect of that culture.
But it could be.
When I lived in Greece in a very small place in the 1970s, I knew two close friends who used to belly dance went they went to the discos. Men. Not gay. Introduced themselves to me as “brothers.” Friendship is a serious matter there. They consider that you do not choose your family, but you do choose your friends. It is considered a serious responsibility. The video made me remember all of these things.
Also, in places like Saudia Arabia, for example, at parties, the two sexes do not mingle. The men dance together, and the women dance together.
I also recall that back in the day in Greece, men might walk together arm in arm (and women, too: I ended up doing it myself with my Greek friends, on occasion).
On a visit to Afghanistan, I saw men do this, too.
A friend of mine at SIU (where in the 1970s there was once a very large contingent of students from Saudi Arabia and Iran) told me that she went to Saudi student parties where the hereditary house slaves (I kid you not – they were enrolled as students) of Sudanese descent would belly dance (men, of course).
So, notice the text in the video saying “my best friend.”
But, indeed, it looks very gayish to Western eyes.