This is Elias. He was the captain of our little 8 cabin Turkish guillet for four days last week as we travelled from Fethiye to Demre. Elias is a terrific guy. He is one with the sea, having grown up in Demre and worked all his life on boats. Captaining the Alaturka for tourist cruises is hard work but for him it is a labour of love. Elias was one of the original Blue Cruise captains who got together around 15 years ago to discuss sharing the south coast of Turkey with visitors from around the world. Until he and his mates put together the idea of four day cruises, this part of the country was remote, consisting of ancient ruins and fishing villages interspersed with some tourist beach resorts like Kas and Kalkan.
Elias has a deep love of this land and sea, and knows it like the back of his hand, He took us off the beaten path to hidden caves and secluded spring fed inlets, to the best places to see dolphins and the best anchorages, where the morning sun was shaded behind towering cliffs. On our trip he kept talking about how he and his friends basically created this tourist industry from scratch, and when you ride with him it definitely has the quality of being hosted rather than being sold. He talked about the stories of intrigue and audaciousness it took to get things going, but when we stopped in the various little villages and twons along the way, you could see the deep affection he had for the men who joined us on the boat, to share a beer and a chat while the visitors were off exploring.
On trip Elias regaled us with stories of a bar that he and his friends built on a little island near Demre called “The Smuggler’s Inn.” On the last night all of the Blue Cruise boats stop here nestled on calm waters surrounded by little islands populated by Roman ruins and feral goats. A little wooden tender came out to our boat and delivered us to the bar which was a tropical beach tavern crossed with a Turkish cafe, with lots of cushions and chill out spaces, a modest light show and pumping good dance music for all ages. Elias was so excited to arrive here, back at his home base, to chill with his mates, tell some stories, drink some beer and sleep under the stars.
When friends work together like this, the experience one has is of being truly hosted. It is what I aspire to in my work, to welcome people to the warm nest of powerful conversation the same way Elias welcomes you to his coast. And this morning we are leaving Turkey for Slovenia where we will join some of my closes mates in the world to sip beer and share stories and make music and exchange our learnings.
To really see a guy like Elias, it takes one to know one. I’m glad I met him and travelled with him and his crew. And looking forward to being among my own mates this evening.
This is a photo i took of the bust of the Emperor Augustus in the Ephasus Museaum this afternoon. He was quite a guy.
He ruled during the time that Jesus Christ was born but he died before Jesus got really going. At Ephesus, he was the subject of a cult, which transferred love and affection from the official state gods to heads of state. You can see how that can happen.
But there is something really interesting about this bust. Carved into the Emperors forehead is a cross. It is a result of the Christians getting their comeuppance on the Roman emperors that did nasty things to them…reportedly Nero used burning crucified Christians as street lights from time to time. Paul the apostle preached from a stage I stood on today in ancient Epesus against pagan worship and was jeered with heckles of “Artemis is great!” from the 24000 people who were rooting for the home team. It eventually took the clerk of the city three hours to calm people down enough that he could be safely run out of town. Once Christianity was made okay by Constantine in the 400s, Christians got to finally get their revenge. And they did it in impressive style, including carving a cross in the emperor’s head.
Of course their hegemony didn’t last long. Tonight is the last night of Ramadan, and everyone is celebrating the holidays tomorrow. So even Christianity had its time around here, but was replaced when the Ottomans took over, and the churches were wrecked,
Wandering around Turkish antiquities has been an education in “getting the last word.”. In Capadocia, we saw incredible frescos in cave Churches that had the eyes scratched out of them by the anti-icon brigades while the debate about worshipping pictures was going on. And on some of the ancient caves around the region there is so much modern day graffiti that there is nothing left of the original ornamentation.
On a larger scale this whole region is all about getting the last word. From colonization to empire building to invasions to the switch from pagan to Christian to Moslem, and into the contemporary political debates about Armenian genocide and Kurdish independence everyone is selling you on the latest and greatest last word about how right they are.
But when it comes to history, there is never a final word. Today’s certainty is tomorrow’s museum curiosity.
We’ve moved from the splendour and imperial regency of Istanbul to the remote and incredible Cappadocia. This is a place of unreal geography and living history. I love the way ruins here aren’t preserved, but rather used as the basis for building new things. The region is known for the thousands of ancient cave settlements, built as long as 4000 years ago from the soft volcanic rock. Nowadays parts of those ancient caves are incorporated into modern buildings, and form the basis for themed hotels like the beautiful Esbeli Evi, in which we are staying.
Cappadocia is also a cradle of Christian community, with people from this region documented as having been present at the resurrection of Christ and at the Pentecost. Cappadocian Christianity took root in communal living in these small remote valleys, occupied by small Christian communities that came together to practice and live. The photo above is the entrance to one of the hundreds of small early churches here.
While reading up on the early Christians, I came across this paragraph:
The hidden valleys constituted a refuge for the early Christians who fled from oppression and death. When the emperor Constantine granted religious freedom to Christians, Cappadocia had to a great degree become Christianized. The tufa rocks that were used as a shelter throughout history by those who fled hostile enemies or who withdrew from the world were ideal as places to hide and leave the world behind. Because the volcanic ter rain in the region was to a great extent unsuitable for agricultural cultivation, it was not sought out as a place of habitation; therefore, its being distant from major settlements and its favorable conditions for seclusion attracted settlement by Christians. It permitted them to remove themselves from the evils of the world and devote their lives to worship. For the early Christians who lived in groups based on the principle of communal life, poverty was a source of pride and wealth cause for shame. But, the increase in the numbers of Christians and the growth in the communities led to division in the views, and after the third century, we observe that Christianity was turning away from this early philosophy and way of life.It was no longer centered on communal life and brotherhood. Some sources reveal that monks remained constant to the concepts of commonality and broth- erhood and that they suffered great renunciation for the sake of these goals; but, in time, as the monks became more worldly, the religious functionaries gradually assumed special powers and privileges and formed a sacred caste. The Church itself undertook broad efforts to organize economically and politically, so Christianity conformed to the economic and political institutions of the Roman empire. This led to the ioss of the power and meaning of the early years of Christianity.We are unable to determine precisely hen the ecclesiastical organization began to undergo transformation and bow long these early concepts were viable.
The original occupy movement! And perhaps with clues about the evolution of subsequent ones. Why do humans seem so pre-destined towards hierarchy?
In this article, stringing together some obersvations about Louis CK and Mary Halvorson, Seth Colter Walls touches on the wellspring of collaboration.
He writes a little of the play that replaces rehearsal for true improvisers, of finding outlets of artistic practice where
“no one person is responsible for all the tunes–if tunes are even the order of the day. Such groups aren’t the ones that players use as reputational tent-poles; they’re the ones that successful artists keep going in order to keep the channel for new sounds open. It’s the jazz-world equivalent of Zach Galifianakis’s avant-chat Web-show “Between Two Ferns,” the sort of thing that happens in the background of an otherwise thriving career.”
Facilitation or Hosting practice is improvisation too. Every time I work with a group I go in as a jazz musician, with a set list of “tunes” to play, which in group work as in music is simply a way to divide time into portions that carry and enable a narrative to unfold. Sometimes the unfolding narrative necessitates that we completely change the tunes we were planning on playing. Just last week for example, the group we were working with had come through some hard work rather earlier than we imagined, causing us to jettison our entire design for something that could take them onward from this new place.
So where do you learn how to do this? When I wrote recently on disruption, I talked about how learning how to deal with that is a capacity that serves marvelously in the world. In some ways for those of us who work with groups for a living, we are lucky to have a world that goes according to its own plan. You don’t need to work hard to seek out places where things change faster than you can account for them. It may be driving in traffic, walking in a busy street, participating in sports or music or dancing, socializing and playing in groups. All of these are training grounds where you can practice sensing and changing the plan, where you can try new ways of unleashing groups intelligence as a leaders, as a follower, as a bystander, as a participant. You can try and fail without any dire consequences affecting your bottom line.
In short, see your social life as practice, and your capacity to work with groups will be richer.
Istanbul is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and it’s not surprising why. The city holds so much history of importance to both Europe and Asia that people come from all over to touch it and see it. Although there are lots of Europeans and some North Americans wandering around the Sultanahmet district where we are staying, there are also lots of tourists from Central Asia and Turkey itself visiting during Ramadan. So of course staying in the tourist district it’s hard sometimes to glimpse the important things to local people, but two stood out yesterday.
This is the first time I have been in a country with a significant Muslim population during Ramadan. Of course during the daily fasting, that makes it easy to get a restaurant seat, although it means there is a lot less street food for sale. But yesterday as sunset approached, hundreds of families began to gather outside the Blue Mosque with picnic baskets,or table stoves, huge tea pots and containers full of flat bread and fruit. Everything was laid out and waiting for sunset. We decided to watch as the moment approached when the acting would begin. It was beautiful. There was a palpable sense of anticipation and as the daylight waned, the energy increased. Having avoided eating all day, people started cracking open containers, getting seats in nearby restaurants and the buzz increased. Street vendors appeared and we bought a watermelon to eat while we watched. I fact the moment was so powerful, it felt hard to actually eat anything until everyone else did, such was the field of anticipation.
And then the call came out from the minarets which towered over the scene and every began to eat at once. In a nearby restaurant plates of food hit the table all at the same time, and the fast was broken. It was incredibly moving to be among thousands of people who were eating together, so grateful to finally be able to get some nourishment after a long hot day. A sense of togetherness and bubbling joy lit up the Hippodrome and the little parks around the Mosque. A rain storm shortly opened up and even that failed to dissuade many from just sitting with each other, eating and laughing and sharing.
We fled to a restaurant to escape the rain and sat for a while watching people come and go until we realized that his was the evening of the Turkish Suoer Cup between Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, the two biggest teams in Turkish football. This is one of the most intense sports rivalries in the world, and as evidenced by the number of Galatasaray shirts we saw in the crowds during the day, we knew which territory we were in. Galatasaray took an early lead in the match on a goal that you hear acknowledged in the bars and restaurants around us. Everyone was tuned in on radios and by catching glimpses as they could from TVs. We walked back to our hotel to watch the match, at one point passing a car full of six or seven men, all crammed in trying to stay dry and listening on the radio. The game was vicious and dirty and exciting with fights in the terraces and at one point the referee, who was way out of his depth, even considered calling it off. Fireworks and other missiles were being thrown at players, freight train tackles came in, smoke flares were sparked up for each of the five goals, and in the end, after a Galatasaray sending off and despite Fenerbahce hitting a cross bar in time added on top of injury time, Galatasaray won 3-2.
I live in a tourist town myself, so I know how it is when there are two things going on at the same time – the world the visitors see and the world you live in despite them. It was cool to catch a glimpse of real life of local ritual and passion yesterday even as we borrowed their city for our travels.
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