Tea Leaf Brief

[Before diving directly into the tea leave readings, a little notice: there’s a new post on Clara’s blog, and I invite you to read it: www.paginasparaclarinha.wordpress.com.]

And then while you can, if in New York go to see Leighton Pierce’s installation, Agency of Time (Outside In) at La Viola Bank Gallery, 179 East Broadway, NY NY 10002. (F Train to E Bwy). Up until Oct 18. It is a wonderful piece which I reported on here when it was up at the Sheldon Museum in Lincoln Nebraska

Agency of Time, (Pt 1); Leighton Pierce

 

And now to the inscrutable tea leaves.

The other week, as a little experiment in internet structure – I guess I could read a book about it but I’m more inclined to do a hands-on process instead – I posted some lurid words and images, to see if there would be a flood of hits for such things. As I recall, a few weeks after I noted that the avalanche never came (better watch my language). But here it is now a month or more since posting these items and I note an incremental bit of net poetry along this line:

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At the same time, the number of hits to Cinemaelectronica took a major leap, though it would seem a sizable number come from interest in either Iran/Tehran, as this consistently gets a high number of hits, often the highest, or maybe interest in various spellings of Molotov Cocktail, of which a how-to diagram was shown on the Tehran Report page.

How to read this is a bit of a question: my guess, certainly an uneducated one in terms of ways-of-the-net, is that there remains a constant interest in what is going on in Iran, however much mainstream US press has lost interest in it. (It perked up again last week when there was a visible demonstration.) Coupled with the interest in cocktails of the non-drinkable alcoholic kind, I’d guess there is some kind of tangible resistance brewing. Perhaps in Tehran, perhaps elsewhere in the world. And also I vaguely suspect that this site, bothering to report at all on matters in Iran, perhaps owing to its title, has slipped by whatever censorship mechanisms might be blocking more obvious sources of information – so perhaps Cinemaelectronica is accidentally a conduit of some useful information for some who can’t get it more directly.

Speaking of which, it certainly seems that in Iran the government is having a much harder time wrestling the opposition into submission that apparently was expected. It seems the hard-line side is somewhat diminished in numbers, and is hence harder on its line. From what I’ve read a sizable number of important members of the clerical element – very important in Iran – have sided with either moderation or the opposition. So the heavy-hand of the authorities, or more exactly, the “authoritarians,” has gotten heavier in customary fashion: if they are hesitant to lock up a big name clergyman or politician they lock up their children or other family members. A sure sign of weakness masquerading as power.

If the very scarce tea leaves I’ve been able to find on this are in the least indicative of anything, I imagine the Ahmadinejad government is likely to collapse in perhaps 6 months. Whether owing to a violent upheaval or to slow termite work, I wouldn’t know, though I would bet on the latter first. It seems in terms of Iranian culture and politics the government has lost all credibility, the prior sanctity of the Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i has been slurried with his crude entry into street politics of the worst kind and the aura is off. It’s now down to vested interests in the military and clergy trying to hold on to what they have – which is evidently a lot of economic control and wealth. Sound familiar?

On that note I must stop and go attend to the real work at hand: editing on Swimming in Nebraska and Piccoli Miracoli as well as trying to think about and organize new film here in Seoul, for which I’ve now 3 actors, plus a few other on-camera people, and a few places to shoot in. We start on Friday with first scene.