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Wings of Despair
One of my favourite films is ’Wings of Desire’ by Wim Wenders. Actually, it is more than a film. It is kind of like an artistic prayer. Released back in 1986, the film takes place in a still divided Berlin where angels are stealth guardians over the city’s residents, quietly listening to people’s thoughts and…
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Mirror Neurons and Empathy
Right now, I feel like a walking, talking nervous breakdown. Essentially, that is what I am doing: by finally healing the pinched nerves in my face and throughout the vagus pathway, the scar tissue – my monster – is losing its physicality. Thus, my energy and its accompanying monster logic, which has long kept my…
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In Search of Dorian Gray
How is it possible to go from taking drugs with rock stars in London and New York to sipping tea with Ayatollahs and Sheikhs in Tehran and Beirut? Wow, this is hard to explain. So, I need to go further back. When I was a child, I spent all of my energy trying to get…
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Love, Hate and No Exit
French philosopher and playwright Jean Paul Sartre famously wrote, ‘Hell is just—other people’. I reread his play No Exit after the fallout with my shaman doctor. I do remember reading it in French class during high school, but revisiting it again now was illuminating. In the play, three characters arrive in Hell expecting fire and…
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All Summer in a Day
What happens if somebody or something outside of your control pushes you into a dark closet and then locks the door, leaving you all alone and apart from humanity, without being able to realise any of your hopes and dreams? And what if all of this is happening without anybody else knowing or seeming to…
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My monster fairytale
Once upon a time, a foetus was conceived without her mother’s knowledge. One day, the mother had a tummy ache and so she went to see a doctor, not knowing that he was evil. Using his high voltage X-ray machine, the doctor secretly planted a horrible monster in the foetus’s stomach that feeds on human…
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Review: 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
I recently attended the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in Harlem, New York and was absolutely blown away by the quality of art on show. First launched back in 2013, 1-54, the leading international art fair dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora, now takes place annually in the cities of Marrakech,…
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Decolonizing Classical Music: Some Reflections in the Year of the Tiger
Last month, the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music in upstate New York presented The Sound of Spring concert. The program of Chinese classical music was performed by The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and featured some of the most breathtaking sounds I have ever heard live. Organized to celebrate the Chinese New…
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Dr. Sarah Marusek 