The Foghorn

A deep, intense sound booms from the sea. It shakes me from my fog of thoughts. 

At first I had no idea what is was: the voice of Neptune calling for the end of times? 

Deep, dark and menacing as if a tremendous beast had arisen from the deep, perhaps The Beast, letting us know the end times are upon us. 

Putting two and two together I decided it was a foghorn. Not being from the sea coast I had not heard one before. Occasionally, here I hear horns from cruise ships or even more the ferries that cross to Africa twice weekly. I mean, I only live a mile from the port. But those were neither as intense nor as loud as this. 

(After a while, I remembered that the local news had celebrated that one of the largest ocean-going cruise ships in the world would be docking here. The ship was enormous, dwarfing the fairly substantial old and oldest city of Alicante by the port. The city does continue inland to the west, as well as north beyond the guardian hill Benacantil and to the south along the coast. In any of these directions it goes until it becomes something else). 

I exaggerate but that profound roar shocked and even frightened me a bit.

That experience is of the same sort as when I know something deep from within the recesses of my study and even my being and somebody, in that powerful roar, even if their voice is soft, tells me I am wrong. 

Of course, my immediate reaction is to armor up and grab my sword and daggers, since I sense a potentially mortal battle impending. My body starts flooding with testosterone.  

Because of age and learning, as well as a strong desire to cultivate humility and Christian love for other people—including when they attack me, I try to pull myself back and drain away that hormone. I force myself to listen. 

Even if it takes time to get me there,  My ethical discipline is to stop for a bit and listen in the midst of racing, armed forces coming to my defense me in my mind. Once I have brought them under control, I can think. 

That is when I often learn important lessons and knowledge.

Two potential examples: 

First, When I was a young professor at a religious university, despite my best efforts I was filled with myself thinking I was an enlightened and good professor, up to date on the literature and on critical theory. I left an important Brazilian film for my class to be shown while I was away giving a paper at a national academic conference.    

The film was the brilliant Bye Bye Brasil, directed by Carlos Diegues. It is the story Brazil in the midst of massive change—the coming of electricity and television, the post dictatorship, and the massive leveling and development of the Amazon though that was nothing like it is now—through the travels and adventures of an itinerant circus in the old style.   

When I got back and tried to lead a discussion on the film’s themes of modernization and development, as well as the differences of this internal Brazilian form of culture from more academic and outsider discussion, i.e. us. 

The students sat there silently and I should have known that for them silence was a sure sign something was very wrong. I waited, hoping to at least get an opening into their thoughts from some comment. 

Finally, an sharp young woman, blond as I was then, raised her hand and from the middle of the room gave me a tanning.

“How could you do that to us? You left us pornography. You raped us.”

I fell against the blackboard, hurt and defensive. I wanted to argue about the importance of the film. Yes it was “R” rated, a local shibboleth at the time, but I had thought its cultural significance out weighed that.  

I was right and I was wrong.  We did have after a while a good conversation about how can one as scholars, and especially anthropologist, learn about other societies when there ways strike us a wrong and even immoral.

One scene from the movie seemed the trigger. It was when one of the central figures, a young married man, Ciço, came into one of the performers’ tent, a beautiful and sensual woman named appropriately Salomé. They had sex while his very pregnant wife, perhaps close to giving birth, sat outside the tent and heard everything. 

This is such a visceral an necessary critique of modernization from the point of view of traditional rural Brazil, that I forgot how my students felt about portrayals of sex. 

In truth the portrayal was quite chaste. You saw little more than you would in the average James Bond film. Yet that was probably not the issue, I came to realize despite the desire to focus on body parts as a means of deciding what is acceptable and what not. 

Instead it was the betrayal of a self sacrificing and very pregnant wife, practically in front of her. That was a slap that I had not anticipated and did not intend. 

In any case, they learned something and I learned a lot, once I got over myself and listened. 

Another example, one much more recent. In a good conversation, the other day, over dinner, with some Colombians, we were talking about their experiences and different people.  

They showed me a picture of one of their friends while talking about that person’s effeminacy. I said, “yes he seems mariquita.” My friend stopped me and said “that sounds kind of homophobic” which pulled me up short.   

Yikes I spluttered something justifying what I said, and then I had to back up and think. I realized I had used an older language which this generation has thoroughly critiqued and organized against. 

I had to reevaluate and realize there was something homophobic in me behind that usage, going back to my own upbringing and to my years of experience in Latin America.  

Times had changed. I had changed, and so should my language. 

There is so much more I could say, but the vessel that booms its horn towards is is about to leave.   It sounds urgent.

Though I cannot go on a cruise on board it through the Mediterranean and god-knows where, it has given me an intellectual cruise through memory. I still have an awfully lot to think about. That Neptunian roar, whether from the ship, my students, my colleagues, or my friends is one of he most useful, if frightening and painful, things I know.