Armenian Reporter - 11/24/2007 - arts and culture section

[Emil Lazarian]

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November 24, 2007 -- From the Arts & Culture section

To see the printed version of the newspaper, complete with photographs
and additional content, visit www.reporter.am and

download the pdf files. It's free.

1. Music: Diasporan-Armenian finds her voice in the homeland (by Maria Titizian)
* Dzovinar Boghossian releases her first CD of traditional Armenian songs

2. Armenian animator brings vision to music video (by Tamar Sarkissian)
* Singer Gor collaborates with Armenian computer animator

3. Art: Exploring the new aesthetic of Vasken Brudian (by Lory Tatoulian)

4. TV: Sometimes losing is winning (by Shahan Sanossian)
* Jill Simonian, former KTLA weathercaster, runner-up and current
ReelzChannel correspondent talks about how she lost and what she did
next

5. Poetry Matters: Trying to find Thanksgiving (by Lory Bedikian)

6. Sirusho is off to Eurovision (by Betty Panossian-Ter Sargssian)

7. Essay: The worst years -- perhaps in vain (by Paul Chaderjian)

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1. Music: Diasporan-Armenian finds her voice in the homeland

* Dzovinar Boghossian releases her first CD of traditional Armenian songs

by Maria Titizian

YEREVAN -- Singing has always come naturally to Dzovinar Boghossian.
Her earliest childhood memories are wrapped up in song and music.
Whether at school, at home, or in the community, her singing was the
extension of an inner world she rarely expressed otherwise. Her first
foray into the world of music came in grade three, when her Armenian
history teacher noticed something special about her.

At the Nshan Palanjian Jemaran (currently the Melankton Arslanian
Jemaran) in Beirut, Lebanon, the school was preparing to celebrate the
Vartanants feast. Dzovinar's teacher was looking for a student with a
voice strong enough to sing the lead number. She didn't have to look
very far. When she heard Dzovinar singing, her sea-blue eyes cast
downward, she knew that she had stumbled onto something special.

That was the beginning of what was initially an amateur singing
career. Dzovinar participated in many concerts and competitions
organized by the Hamazkayin Cultural and Education Society in Beirut,
almost always winning first place. Her voice did not, however, find
its way outside of the confines of the Armenian community in Lebanon.
Her grade three teacher, who had discovered her voice so many years
earlier, had encouraged her parents to put her into singing lessons or
music lessons. That didn't materialize.

Dzovinar nonetheless was determined, and when she was 13 years old,
she joined the ARF Juniors' Badanegan Choir as soloist. Choir leader
Alexan Mnagian was one of her supporters and nurtured Dzovinar's
voice. While she was in the choir, Lebanon was embroiled in its civil
war. "Whether the situation of the country impacted me or whether
those feelings came from within, I was always inclined to sing
Armenian folk, traditional, and particularly revolutionary songs like
Zartir Vortiag and Pandees Trnere," Dzovinar explains.

Her family life and her community most probably nurtured those
feelings of pride and patriotism that Dzovinar felt about her Armenian
heritage. The dream of an independent homeland was always something
they held on to. Lebanon was the social, political, and cultural heart
of the diaspora, with one of the largest concentrations of Armenians
outside the homeland. Dzovinar was surrounded by a community who
provided the diaspora with writers, artists, educators, and
historians. Even during the first years of the civil war, the Armenian
community in Lebanon remained strong and resolute. Dzovinar's family
never thought about leaving Lebanon. Only the realization of an
independent Armenia would eventually change the course of all of their
lives.

The members of Dzovinar's family are blessed with beautiful voices.
Her mother, brother, sister, and niece also sing.

During the years of the Karabakh movement, Dzovinar was a member of
the ARF youth and was very active in her community's life. She was
always being invited to sing not only at events like April 24
commemorations, but also during community events focusing on raising
awareness of the Karabakh movement. "You could say I was always on
stage singing during those years," Dzovinar recalls.

In 1986 while participating in an international Armenian youth camp
in Cyprus, Dzovinar participated in a music festival in Nicosia
showcasing singers from Cyprus, Greece, and the Middle East. In 1987
she was invited to sing in Athens at a community event during ARF
celebrations.

Throughout her years singing and performing on stage, Dzovinar never
received professional voice training or instruction. She never even
had piano lessons; her family at the time could not afford them. As
for other opportunities, those were also denied her because of the
stigma at the time of integrating into the Lebanese mainstream which
may have provided her with venues for training and singing not
available within the Armenian community.

Even while she performed revolutionary songs, there was always a
melancholy to her singing; a sadness laced in her voice, which was
matched by the sorrow in her eyes. She would only sing old ballads,
folk songs reminiscing about the lost nation. Her repertoire included
Sayat Nova and Gomidas and mostly songs of tragedy. It is a state of
affairs that she does not yet fully understand. She seemed to be
searching for happiness.

If singing wasn't something she could do professionally, Dzovinar
chose the next thing closest to her heart -- teaching. She studied at
the Armenian Studies Institute -- a four-year Armenian studies program
in Beirut. Here she studied Armenian language and history and upon
graduation began teaching the next generation of Armenians.

* The pilgrimage to the homeland

Dzovinar went to Armenia in 1990, before it had regained independence.
She had only a one-week visa and after a few days, she knew that one
week would not be enough. With great difficulty and using all her
powers of persuasion, she was able to secure an extension from OVIR
(the passport office) to stay another week. It was then that she knew
her final destination would be Armenia, no matter how difficult that
would be. "We dreamed for an independent homeland for so many years,
and then we got independence," she says plaintively. The choice was
simple. "Every summer I would come to Armenia and every fall when I
returned to Lebanon, my students would wait for my stories from the
homeland." The winters in Lebanon, Dzovinar recalls, were very long
and difficult.

Finally in 1997 she moved to Yerevan with her family and she hasn't
looked back since.

For the first eight years Dzovinar didn't sing very much. It was a
time of adjusting, of becoming familiar with her new environment, and
naturally she had to make a living. Dzovinar is an accomplished
businessperson, intimately familiar with the nuances of running a
business in a developing country like Armenia.

There was, however, another stumbling block to her pursuing her
singing career. Her lack of training and professional background in
music became an obstacle when she saw the level of musical education
of those in the music industry in Armenia. Her singing performances
were limited to gatherings of family or close, intimate friends. She
remained on the periphery of the Armenian music industry; an outsider
looking in, waiting for the chance to shine.

* New Beginnings

Dzovinar had made friends with some people in the music industry and
they began encouraging her to move her singing career forward. She
took some tentative steps, which began with voice lessons and
experimenting with songs that were not sorrowful or revolutionary --
her strong alto voice needed softer melodies and even happier ones.

That is how the concept of her first CD, Shncheer Ani (Breathe Ani)
came to be. The title of the CD came after great deliberation with
friends and colleagues. The ninth track on the album, Im Ani (My Ani),
lyrics by K. Banduryan, music by A. Hekimian, was a song that was
inspirational and one of her favorites.

* Im Ani

Once again, as a pilgrim, I am on my knees at your entrance
And with silent pain I am looking at your destroyed face
Even at the moment of your destruction, you appear majestic
And I am enraptured by you, and am filled with pride.
Forgive me, that I am late in coming to you, my Ani
Even if I come everyday, my yearning for you will not be quenched
Even if I don't think about you, you are in my heart
I will sacrifice my life for, just breathe, my Ani
Now the wind sweeps across your injured skirts
And the rain kisses you, wiping away centuries of dust
Akhurian is confused and laps at your holy skirts
Lost in its foam, it remembers the days of your glory

This is a translation of the song for which the album is named. In
her own way, Dzovinar wants to breathe life back into the ancient city
of Ani, while it lies in ruins on the other side of the border.

Her voice is strong, deep, almost guttural, yet velvety. Finding
songs that would be suitable for her voice was difficult. "And even
after finding songs that matched my voice, I then had to like them,"
Dzovinar says, which wasn't always the case.

All the songs in her album are old folk favorites. Some haven't been
sung for years; others are more popular like "Ari im sokhag" and "Yes
lsetsi mi anoush tsayn." And then there's "Nounoufar"; lyrics by K.
Arvantsians and music by composer, songwriter, and singer David
Amalian. Just prior to releasing her CD, Dzovinar shot the video clip
of "Nounoufar," which is set in the Armenian countryside. Professional
mime dancers were featured in the clip. "Nounoufar" was among the top
10 video clips in Armenia for several weeks.

"Vorsgan Aghber," written by the famous Armenian poet Avetik
Isahakian, with a new instrumentation by composer David Amalian, who
sings the duet with her on the CD, is a moving and haunting story of a
mother in search of her son, who is a soldier.

Dzovinar just recently shot the video for Im Ani. The original plan
was for Dzovinar and the film crew to travel to the ancient city of
Ani to shoot the video. Unfortunately she wasn't able to travel to
Turkey with the film crew because her Lebanese passport required visas
for both Georgia and Turkey, which would take several weeks, making it
impossible for the film crew to wait. Therefore the crew went without
her and shot images of the ancient city. They then superimposed her
walking amid the ruins and shot at various other locations throughout
Armenia which looked and felt similar to the landscape at Ani. It was
a very special project for Dzovinar. "The words of the song speak to
the heart of all that our people lost," she says.

In her own way and in our own unique style, Dzovinar Boghossian is
trying to bring back lost memories through song.

Her greatest dream -- that of performing at the Opera and Ballet
Theater in Yerevan -- came true in 2006 when she performed
"Nounoufar." It was a night that was a celebration of Dzovinar's long
and difficult journey toward the realization of her dream of becoming
a professional singer. For all her family and friends who were there
to watch her, it meant something more. It meant that as a diasporan
she had made it in Armenia. She had come with very little background
but with a lot of talent and the determination to succeed. For every
time a diasporan who has repatriated to Armenia succeeds, it enriches
us and empowers us all.

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2. Armenian animator brings vision to music video

* Singer Gor collaborates with Armenian computer animator

by Tamar Sarkissian

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the lives of typical young adults, there are
crossroads to face. They have to decide whether to go right or left;
which path to choose. Hagop Kaneboughazian's path has been anything
but typical. "I knew computer animation was my calling from, like,
sixth grade. Just a big fan of cartoons and animations and I was like,
I'm going to grow up and be an animator; so here I am."

Kaneboughazian, 28, has been an artist since childhood. Later, as a
teen, he saw a family friend dabbling in computer animation. "I went
to his house and I saw the 3-D wire frames on his computer and I said.
'Yeah, I want to do that.'" Since then, Kaneboughazian has worked to
perfect his skills, taking on internships and getting a degree in
animation from San Francisco State University.

Now a decade into his career, Kaneboughazian has just completed a
music video for the Armenian singer Gor, whom he met at a concert in
San Francisco. "After the show I kind of spoke to him and said this is
what I do -- animation. I'd love to do a music video for you, so if
you ever need a music video, give me a call."

Kaneboughazian's video "Inchu Bingyole Mtar" tells the story of a
lovesick man trying, unsuccessfully, to reach the woman of his dreams.
Even though Kaneboughazian has never been to Armenia, the video still
manages to conjure up vivid images of his homeland. "I wanted to
create something that was a little abstract; not very specific. So I
created the main character, who I decided was a musician, to play off
the fact that this is a music video, and he wanders these landscapes
with an oud on his back."

Kaneboughazian makes the technique behind computer animation sound
like a simple to-do list. "Basically the whole process is starting
with traditional drawings, storyboards, sketches, coming up with what
things are going to look like, going into Photoshop, picking colors,"
he said.

Computer animation is anything but simple. Only the initial drawings
and storyboards are done on paper; those images are scanned into a
computer. Animators use rigging to create a "skeleton," allowing
images to not only move, but also bend. Lighting, texture, and
character expressions are taken into consideration. It takes an
in-depth knowledge of both art and technology to get the end result.

Dreamworks and Pixar are some of the best-known studios using
computer animation, but people often see computer animation every day
without realizing it. The technique is often used for commercials and
video games. Kaneboughazian works for Fat Box Films based out of
Redwood City, California. He's created ads, videos for trade shows,
and medical videos. "Out of those, medical is most interesting, just
because there's more room for creative freedom. Since we don't
technically have an art director at Fat Box, everybody becomes an art
director."

Kaneboughazian's medical videos are used to train doctors on new
procedures or sell new technology. Kaneboughazian often turns to his
worn copy of Gray's Anatomy or the Internet for help with images of
the heart, brain, and specific veins and arteries.

Today, Kaneboughazian is working toward developing his own
computer-animation business, which he has named Axisorigin. He hopes
his company will give him a creative outlet to develop stories based
on issues he's passionate about, including his heritage.

Kaneboughazian was born in Lebanon, but his family settled in Fresno
when he was a child. He moved to San Francisco seven years ago to work
toward his dream career. His thesis project at San Francisco State
University was called Ara's Flight. The short film follows an Armenian
boy's dream of flying with a pair of doves. The five-minute piece made
it to several film festivals around the United States, including the
Armenian Film Festival.

Kaneboughazian also has his sights on writing and animating
documentaries and a feature-length film. "The best part about what I
do is . . . I guess it's the freedom to be able to create anything I
want to. There's absolutely no limitations; as long as you can imagine
it, you can do it."

Kaneboughazian has advice for young artists dreaming of becoming
computer animators.

"The only way really, to get into animation is to be 100 percent dedicated."

connect:

arasflight.com

axisor igin.com

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3. Art: Exploring the new aesthetic of Vasken Brudian

by Lory Tatoulian

LOS ANGELES - Vasken Brudian transgresses the bounds of established
aesthetics and introduces a new paradigm to the trends of art. With
broad brush strokes, photography, poetry, architecture, and acrylic
paint, Brudian blends together the disparate elements of seeing and
being and translates these concepts into his work. It is obvious to
see the symbiotic relationship Brudian has created with his art,
interweaving the linear dimensions of design and coupling this form
with unruly and abstract renderings. Brudian himself has the
hyphenated career of artist and architect. Employing both his artistic
and dialectic faculties, the artist has developed a style of his own
that is provocative, technical, haunting, progressive, and simply
beautiful to look at.

"If you look at my paintings, it's very heavily influenced by
architecture, and if you look at my architecture, it's very heavily
influenced by my paintings," Brudian said. "I try to find the artistic
aspect of architecture, and in my paintings, I try to reflect the
thinking process that goes into architecture."

With this inverted exchange, Brudian has seamlessly blended
minimalist iterations with the whimsical gestures of abstraction onto
large canvases that measure in range from small-scale pieces to
canvases that are over 20 feet in length. In some of Brudian's work,
the image on the canvas is divided into two halves. In one of his
paintings, The New Atlantis, Brudian bisects a vast monochromatic
landscape and juxtaposes the image with the words of Francis Bacon's
New Atlantis that was written in 1627. The landscape is set in an
electric blue, as if reflecting the glare of an x-ray, echoing the
hidden sensations and ideal perceptions that are often gleaned from
the sub-conscious. The other half of the canvas has Bacon's abstracted
text fading in and out of undulating whorls of sweeping orange brush
strokes. The text, reminiscent of Chinese calligraphy, or perhaps
modern graffiti, ordained within its bounds, attempt to rupture beyond
the edges, creating a vague de-contextualized compositional ambiguity.

"Francis Bacon was the first philosopher who viewed nature as a
tool, and suggested the betterment of society through science,"
explains Vasken. These types of grating and strident juxtapositions
are recurrent themes in Brudian's repertoire. The convergence of these
ostensibly disparate mediums and concepts, metaphorically examine the
relationship between the thoughts and images that swim in the murky
vortex of the sub-conscious and its link to the visual perceptions
that are yielded from the periphery of the mind. They simultaneously
oppose and yet seem to depend on one other, impacting the formation of
a complex visual imagery that simultaneously embodies a coded abstract
language with multifaceted layers of place, space, time, subjectivity
and objectivity, as if attempting to unfold multiple, fleeting
realities. These two worlds combined, wield an image that explores the
connection between thought and sensation, environment and identity,
vision and sub-conscious.

Even though it may seem that technology and poetry are the
antithesis of each other, Brudian uses mixed-media to parlay his
message. The artist knows that technology is very much an intrinsic
part of our daily reality, and because of its ubiquity, Brudian
naturally responds to the onslaught of the influences of industry and
culture, and embraces it. "I am trying to find or uncover a new visual
experience that may reflect our moment in time and history," Brudian
said. "For me, technology is the tool, the means and the metaphor for
expressing this increasingly interconnected, delicate yet gradually
more complex character of our 21st century."

Brudian often uses text and verse from his diverse palette, layering
his paintings with language that allows a new level of communication
between viewer and artist. He incorporates a broad fusion of poets and
writers such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Balzac, Victor Hugo,
Maya Angelou among others and philosophical writers, such as Jean Le
Rond d'Alembert, Jacques Derrida, and Jose Ortega y Gasset.

In the painting Man, the Technician Brudian again pits two
uncompromising, distinct and disconnected visual elements against each
other. On the left, an architectural turbulent expression in red with
rigid orthogonal lines, and on the right, a harmless, serene, tranquil
landscape, painted in a bright monochromatic blue that would have made
Yves Kline proud. The title is synonymous with Spanish philosopher
Jose Ortega y Gasset's essay where he discusses the character of Man
and his association with nature. Here, Brudian's architectural
background comes into play. At first, the eye takes in the over-all
dynamism and the gestural intensity of the painting. Then, one begins
to focus on the vast but densely populated architectural elements:
windows, doors, columns and stairways, all subsist in an intricately
quilted, combative, dizzying architectural riddle. Reminiscent of
Piranesi's Imaginary Prison etchings, where Piranesi depicts
impossible architectural spaces, here as well, one needs to visually
excavate the various layers of obscure, psychotic structures that in
many ways reflect to our own time and space. Yet, it induces a
strangely pleasurable feeling of both discordance and harmony.

"It is also the search for an orderly expression of our irresistible
presence and our surrounding, that brings purpose to the formation of
these paintings and collages," says Brudian. "It is this elusive realm
that I think is open to experimentation and expression."

In his youth, Vasken's familial environment was rife with poetry and
painting. His mother was a prolific fine artist, and his father was an
English teacher who had great respect for both Armenian and American
poets. Having been born in Cairo, Egypt, then living in Armenia
between the ages of 2-14, and eventually moving to the United States
as a teenager, Brudian has garnered inspiration from the diverse lands
he has inhabited. This has in turn informed his identity and art with
unique sensibilities and a proclivity towards taking risks.

Vasken Brudian has exhibited his work for more than 10 years in
various art galleries across the United States. He is currently having
a solo exhibition at the Downy Museum of Art which closes on December
23.

connect:

www.brudian.com

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4. TV: Sometimes losing is winning

* Jill Simonian, former KTLA weathercaster, runner-up and current
ReelzChannel correspondent talks about how she lost and what she did
next

by Shahan Sanossian

LOS ANGELES -- It is just past 9:00 A.M. at the ReelzChannel studios
in downtown Los Angeles, and Jill Simonian is having the last dabs of
her makeup applied before she sits down to speak with the Armenian
Reporter. It is a busy day at the studios. After her interview,
Simonian will be taping promos for DirecTV before taping the
introduction to the story she has produced for today's show. To
complicate matters further, the television drama Numbers is being
filmed in the building's lobby. The sound of gunfire bursting out at
random can be heard.

Although Simonian has been a correspondent for Dailies, the
ReelzChannel entertainment news program, for almost a year, she is
perhaps best known for her participation in The Audition 2005 on Los
Angeles television station KTLA. Competing to be the next
weathercaster on KTLA Morning News, she beat out 14 other finalists to
become the runner-up. She was awarded the title of Viewers' Choice
after garnering the most votes from the public, even more than the
eventual judge-chosen winner Jessica Holmes.

At the time, Simonian was working full time in the advertising
department of Sketchers Footwear and spending her free time trying to
break into the world of broadcast news. Her first television job was
for World Entertainment Connections, a program aired in Burbank and
Glendale and geared toward an Armenian audience.

"KTLA was the turning point for me," Simonian says. "One of my
friends at Sketchers told me to send in a tape. I went through the
contest for the whole month of November 2005, and it got whittled down
to the two of us. I didn't win, but the voting was one of the main
reasons I made it to the end."

* Armenians have to unite

Simonian enjoyed an outpouring of support from the Armenian community
in the form of votes. "When the contest first started I didn't tell
anyone. I didn't even tell my parents until literally a few days
before. I was nervous about it, and I didn't want to jinx anything."
The day before her first appearance, Simonian sent an email to her
friends instructing them to watch. "Don't ask questions, just watch."
One friend immediately responded, writing, "The Armenians have to
unite!" Simonian began sending out emails every time she would appear
on the show, and her emails were forwarded, reaching Armenians and
their friends throughout the country.

"It got to be completely out of control. I mean, Armenians. Hello!
But everyone just kept forwarding it on and on and on. Then I had
friends from the east coast calling me and asking me all these
questions about KTLA. And they were voting. I don't even know; it
might have gone to Armenia." The relentless forwarding went so far
that one of Jill's emails reached a woman in San Francisco who knew
Morning News co-anchor Michaela Pereira.

"Michaela Pereira said on air, 'I got an email from my friend in San
Francisco saying how the Armenian is going to win the weather
contest.' She's saying this on air, and I'm thinking, oh my word. This
is just funny. Obviously, I was ecstatic about the way the whole thing
was. And I was happy to be so lucky that people were interested in
something like that."

Along with voting, viewers were able to leave comments online.
"[Y]ou see all these people writing in and their last names end in
ian. You read things like, 'We need an Armenian on TV.' When you see
how that affects people and the way that they want themselves
represented on TV, it affects you a different way. It obviously means
a lot more."

* Turning a loss into a win

Although Simonian lost the competition, she has no regrets. She took
the loss in stride and remains upbeat about how the competition turned
out. Her desire was to work in entertainment news, not weather. Had
she won the competition, she may not have become a correspondent for
Dailies, a job for which her Armenian identity also proved a big help.

A former cameraman from World Entertainment Connections, Nick
Artunyan, had begun work as an editor at ReelzChannel. Artunyan asked
Simonian if she would like him to pass on her name to Dailies, which
was searching for correspondents. "Now meanwhile," Simonian says, "I
had heard all about ReelzChannel from a bunch of my friends who were
hosts who had all come in here and auditioned and worked. I'm calling
my agent saying, 'Can we send my stuff?' And he said, 'Yeah, you know
I sent it.' Things were in the mix, I guess. But it wasn't until Nick
called me and passed my name along that the team from Dailies brought
me in for an interview. They tried me out on a red carpet first. It
was Will Smith's movie The Pursuit of Happyness. The following week,
they sent me to do the junket for Rocky, so I interviewed Sylvester
Stallone. And mind you, they're sending me out for these assignments,
but at the same time I'm still sort of auditioning.

"There were times last December and January I was still working
full-time at Sketchers, so I was pretty much a crazy person running
around with my head cut off. I was working there full-time during the
day, and then I was coming and doing these red carpets at night,
bringing back the tapes, writing the piece to air the next day. One
time I think I stayed up a full 24 hours because I wanted this job so
badly. And I wanted to change careers so badly that I just said, I
don't have a choice right now. This is what I have to do."

On Simonian's first interview for the Dailies position, she was
asked if she had experience writing and producing pieces for
television. "I had never done that before," Simonian says. "And of
course, I lied through my teeth. I go, 'Yeah! Absolutely. Of course.
Yes! Yes!' I'm thinking, okay Jill. You better figure this out. You
don't have a choice. So the first package I ever wrote was on my Rocky
assignment. It was rough in the beginning. I would bring back the
footage, and I would look at other people's packages, and I would say,
okay, I can figure this out. It would take me a few hours to write
something that was supposed to be 45 seconds. Now, of course, it's
second nature. I can usually write something in a couple hours for a
two minute piece. But at the time, I was sweating bullets I was so
nervous."

When Simonian speaks, she is both exuberant and at ease. Gunfire
rings out from the lobby, and she smiles, coolly stating, "You get an
email in the morning: There will be gunfire in the lobby today. Do not
be alarmed."

* Who let Jill have a gun?

Dailies airs Monday through Friday at 6:00 PM Eastern. On the weekend
edition, Simonian can be seen three or four times per episode. Her
work on Dailies has led her to interview numerous celebrities, a
daunting task for some, but not usually for her. "I've never gotten
nervous interviewing stars, but I was nervous for Tommy Lee Jones
because I had heard how particular he is when it comes to sitting down
for in an interview. So I got all revved up for it, and I did all my
research. I read probably way too much. But it ended up really, really
well. We sat down, and he talked, and he was sweet, and he was leaning
forward, and he was engaged, and everything was good. I appreciated
the way he was just a sharpshooter, and he was there specifically to
promote the movie. He wasn't going to tolerate any nonsense."

Simonian cites her interview with Catherine Zeta-Jones for the film
No Reservations as her favorite so far. "It's a weird scenario because
the way these junkets are set up; they're in a hotel room, and the
star is in that hotel room for probably eight hours~Wall day. And they
sit in there and wait for each reporter to come in and out, in and
out. It's rotated on a four or five minute cycle. Sometimes you can
tell at the end of the day they're really tired. But [Zeta-Jones] was
articulate. She was sweet. She had a certain class about her that was
really inspiring. And she was funny. I'd ask her questions about
cooking because she's notorious for not really knowing how to cook,
and she joked about it."

While she enjoys conducting interviews, Simonian's favorite
assignments are behind-the-scenes feature stories like her recent
piece about the weapons training that actors undergo before filming.
For Who Let Jill Have a Gun?! Simonian visited ISS prop house in
Sunland where over 10,000 firearms used in films are stored. She
interviewed Bill Davis, a licensed weapons specialist who not only
teaches stars how to operate guns but also helps them with their
character choreography. His lesson for an actor playing a housewife is
quite different from his lesson for the star of an action film. After
her interview, Simonian received her own tutorial firing several
automatic weapons: the Berreta Tom Cruise shot in Mission Impossible;
the enormous RT-37 Josh Duhamel used in Transformers; and the Glock 18
Angelina Jolie fired in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Simonian was playful in the
segment, but a look of fear crept into her face after she used the
Glock, which fired about 30 rounds in just a few seconds.

After filming more than two hours of footage, Simonian returned to
the studio to piece the story together. The footage was eventually cut
down for broadcast to just two minutes of the most informative and
entertaining moments. "That's the hard part, going through everything
and figuring out what is the absolute best," Simonian says. "You end
up with the highlights and everything that you need. It's a creative
process. The more I do it, the more I get used to it, and the more I
enjoy it."

* Simonian on set

It's impossible to know from observing Simonian on set that she has
only been working in television for two years. At 10:45, she stands
behind the camera waiting for Mike Richards, host of Dailies, to
complete a promo for DirecTV. Richards stands before a camera rigged
with a teleprompter and performs a couple takes before eliminating any
flubs. He fills the time between takes with slightly off-color jokes
to which the crew responds with chuckles. When it is Simonian's turn,
she stands at a different position and reads her lines from the
prompter. She is assured and natural on camera. Her first take is free
of flubs, but a producer makes the comment that she looks a little bit
shiny. A makeup artist touches her up, including her cleavage, while
she uses the few moments to continue to practice her lines. She does a
second take, slightly varying her intonation.

With the promo complete, the crew begins filming Dailies. Mike
Richards opens the show then interviews Paul Dergarabedian, president
of the box office tracking firm Media by Numbers. Meanwhile, Simonian
is handed a few yellow-colored pages of script. She quietly mouths out
her lines until she is called on camera, a pre-taped piece running on
screen while she waits. Just as she is about to be filmed, Simonian
makes herself laugh, a trick that she seems to use to carry a smile
into the first few seconds of filming. She presents her piece with
just one take. She's done filming for the day, though she will spend
the afternoon working on upcoming stories.

In front of an audience and in the community

Simonian is part of the fourth generation of her family to live in the
United States. Her grandfather was a raisin farmer in Fresno where she
also grew up. As a child, she loved to dance and sing. She performed
in local theaters before moving to Los Angeles to study communications
at UCLA. She continued to act and sing in college. She has even
performed the National Anthem at Lakers and Dodgers
games~Wopportunities she made happen by taping her singing and sending
her tapes to the organizations.

Though she hasn't sung in over a year, Simonian still appreciates
being in front of a live audience. She has emceed and presented awards
at several Armenian events, most recently the ARPA Film Festival.
"Live audiences are always more fun than talking into a camera. When
Armenians are in the audience, you have those inside jokes. You can
say certain things that other audiences won't necessarily get. It's a
cultural familiarity that gives it an extra gusto," she says. Simonian
even sang America the Beautiful with Carol Channing at a fundraiser
for former California State Senator Chuck Poochigian.

Simonian believes that more and more Armenians are involved in the
entertainment industry. "With work now, I read so many more articles
about entertainment and movies. I've noticed a lot of Armenian names.
We're all sort of floating around, but it just seems more frequently
that I see the names."

And for those looking to break into the industry, Simonian's advice
is to believe in yourself, regardless of what you may think you lack
or need to work on. "Stay focused, set goals, seek out and maintain
connections, but if you don't believe in yourself the rest of it means
nothing. This job has taught me to believe in myself."

connect:

www.reelzchannel.com

**************************** ***********************************************

5 . Poetry Matters: Trying to find Thanksgiving

by Lory Bedikian

My father told me never to forget whose land this was before we all
arrived here. He said this as I turned the pages of a book filled with
photos of Native American art, men and women gone long ago. I traced
the lines of the faces with my finger, listened as he told me that as
Armenian-Americans we should be understanding of how it is to lose
life and land, respectful of those who once called this their home.

The poet/Alaskan Native John E. Smelcer -- the only surviving
speaker, reader, and writer of his native language, Ahtna -- published
a book of poems Without Reservation in 2003. It isn't only because of
my upbringing, the words of my father, that I appreciated the poems of
Smelcer. It is also because of how the poet crafted his truth into
verse. For example, his poem "Thanksgiving" seemed to reiterate
feelings I've always felt about the holiday celebrated in the month of
November.

* Thanksgiving

Since that first Thanksgiving
the spirits of a million Indians

stand at the edge of the Atlantic
just as the sun peers over clouds

piled up in the great distance
hating the rolling ocean

for what it brought
and what it took away.

In eight lines Smelcer captures the feeling of these apparitions. The
only hatred is toward the "rolling ocean," so the reader does not feel
a hatred between one group of beings to another, but rather hatred of
what has been done. We are left, not with a feeling of bitterness, but
of understanding. The "Indians" stand in front of beauty and
juxtaposed to this landscape is their suffering.

Although the idea of celebrating that "first Thanksgiving" has never
worked for me, I nevertheless believe the idea of gratitude is one to
embrace, in poems and in life.

Yusef Komunyakaa writes a poem entitled "Thanks" which delves into
the complex nature of being thankful for what has not transpired in
ones life. For instance, in his poem, the speaker is thankful for
surviving the war in Vietnam along with so much else.

Immersed in this idea of thankfulness, I began to search for poems
written by Armenians that touched upon the subject. Although I did not
find anything, some poems created a tone hinting at some form of
"appreciation," but nothing clearly about being grateful. Of course,
my time was limited as was my access to poems, unless translated into
English.

Just as I began to think that perhaps this is some sort of cultural
phenomenon, I came across a poem by Lola Koundakjian.

* After an Italian dinner

Vin Santo -- sweet wine
made of white ripe grapes.

Dip those biscotti.
Finish it off with that espresso doppio macchiato.

Transport yourself to Florence,
or some tiny Tuscan village like San Giminiano, where the medieval towers
cast the only shadows *this* side of Sienna.

Think of all the people before you, who have admired the paintings at
the Uffizi;
Of all the people who have prayed at Santa Croce;
Of all those who hoped one day to see portraits
hidden since WWII in the underground tunnels.

Then thank the spirits who transported you there,
as part of the continuum called Humanity.
Thank your art teachers,
your parents,
your lover,
whomever.

Just be thankful.

The poem's strength lies in its ability to linger in a list of
things desired, whether with "sweet wine/ made of white ripe grapes"
or in "some tiny Tuscan village." The poem directs the reader to
"dip," "finish it off," "transport yourself," "think," and finally, to
"thank." This rhetorical device gives the speaker a tone of authority
and we listen to it as we read. So when we are finally told to "thank
the spirits" we definitely consider doing so.

Koundakjian closes the poem in simplicity, which contrasts
effectively with the more elaborate moments in the first five stanzas.

Koundakjian -- besides writing urban poetry -- produces and curates
the Armenian Poetry Project on the web and in iTunes. The project's
website/blog began in April of 2006 which Koundakjian updates daily
and has received over 22,000 hits (visits) from over 100 countries.

I found her poem on the project website and have been reading dozens
of poems on the site and whenever I receive my daily poem. I am sure
there are other poems out there, similar to Koundakjian's, addressing
the idea of gratefulness. And if there aren't too many, perhaps poets
will be inspired to tackle this topic. In the meantime, I can read
poems speaking the truths of the Native American experience, read
poems written by Armenians centuries ago or just last year, or think
of my father speaking to me about the many meanings behind a holiday.
And for all this, I am thankful.

***

"Thanksgiving," from Without Reservation: New & Selected Poems, John
E. Smelcer, New Odyssey Series/Truman State University Press, 2003.
Reprinted with permission.

"After an Italian dinner" first appeared in the Armenian Poetry
Project http://armenian-poetry.blogspot.com, January 28, 2007.

***

Lory Bedikian received her MFA in Poetry from the University of
Oregon. Her collection of poetry has been selected as a finalist in
both the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition and the Crab
Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Competition.

************************************ ***************************************

6. Sirusho is off to Eurovision

by Betty Panossian-Ter Sargssian

This year Armenians did not have to wait long to find out who would be
representing them at Eurovision 2008. With more than five months left
to the competition, Public TV of Armenia named its 2008 entrant.
Sirusho, the 20 year-old princess of the Armenian pop music industry
will be going to Belgrade.

Last year, in spite of the elaborate contest inviting all Armenian
singers from Armenia and the diaspora to compete, it was clear to
everyone that Hayko would be the winner.

There was a lot of speculation about who should represent Armenia at
Eurovision 2008. Sirusho's name kept coming up. During the ceremony
naming Sirusho as Armenia's entry at Eurovision 2008, Public TV of
Armenia claimed that it had the right to decide the format of choosing
its entrant at the song contest.

However, Armenia will have a national contest before Eurovision.
Public TV has announced a competition for songs; foreign songwriters
are not allowed to participate. Sirusho will choose five of them to
sing at a national selection performance and the public will vote for
the best one. The winning song will be announced sometime in January
or February.

At Eurovision 2007 Armenia kept its rank from the previous year, at
eighth place. As a result it was supposed to have automatic entry into
the finals, which will take place in May 2008 in Belgrade. However,
the rules have changed and those singers were were in the top ten in
2007 will not automatically be in the finals. So Armenia, along with
other countries' singers who were in the top ten will have to start at
the bottom this time around. Earlier in November, Eurovision TV
launched a revised format of the contest for 2008, announcing that two
semi-finals will take place to determine the finalists.

At the end of Eurovision 2007 Armenians were content by their secure
place at the finals. However, the new format puts Sirusho back at the
bottom of the stairway leading to success in Eurovision. Sirusho will
have to compete her way up through the semi-finals, and only following
a successful performance will she be able to reoccupy Armenia's place
in the finals.

Sirusho is aware of the huge responsibility lying on her shoulders.
Her Eurovision fate is similar to that of André's, Armenia's first
entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest, who had to climb all the way
up to the finals and finished the contest at an honorable eighth
place. It all was a bit easier for Hayko, who started at the finals
and finished in the same position.

"I don't know whether they chose me because they love me or dislike
me," she said beaming with smiles during the ceremony that announced
her name.

******************************************* ********************************

7. Essay: The worst years -- perhaps in vain

by Paul Chaderjian

You are leading a parallel life right now, with souls you do not even
know exist. They are your long-lost friends, people who need you right
now and who are perhaps in the next room, the next apartment, down the
street, and living in their own private moments of desperation --
perhaps like your own. Your mission should be to make these parallel
lives perpendicular, for these tangents of God to intersect. After
all, that is what community and humanity are all about.

Last Thursday I sat in an almost-abandoned movie theater in Clovis,
Calif., and watched the Sean Penn--directed biopic of a 20-something
named Christopher McCandless. While the story of this total stranger,
this unrelatable man, should not have felt in any way parallel to our
lives, the filmmaker had found the universal qualities in McCandless
and related them to the impulses and desperation that we all
experience. Sean Penn had succeeded and inevitably triggered me to
examine my story, our stories, the choices we have made to end up
where we are, and how we proceed from here.

McCandless' story is about a history-anthropology graduate from
Emory University in Atlanta disillusioned by a society that places
greater value on careers, titles, wealth, and materialism than on
truth and nature; he rejects our collectively adopted reality, leaving
the blessings of "civilization" behind in the early 1990s to discover
the essence of his soul, live off the bounty of the wilderness, and
find freedom from the trappings of modern life.

Inspired by the call of the wild -- and by Jack London, Tolstoy, and
Thoreau's Walden -- McCandless' attempt to live off nature's bounty in
the magnificence of Alaska is now bound to give generations of
filmgoers and readers much more than the short and painful end
McCandless experienced in an abandoned, rusting school bus somewhere
near Fairbanks, at the end of his two-year adventure as a "tramp," a
vagabond, an itinerant.

* Questions

I began to read Outdoor magazine journalist Jon Krakauer's book titled
Into the Wild less than two hours after walking out of the movie
theater a few miles outside of Fresno. The film and its heroic, or
maybe pathetic, character made me seriously contemplate how far we
often go into the wild reaches of our own mind -- perhaps as a
reaction to our relationships, our pasts, our governments, and our
histories.

As Armenians, we have become and are perhaps the perfect case
studies for philosophers, psychologists, historians, culturists, and
evolutionary scientists interested in what happens to the psyche of a
once-great people who ruled from sea to sea, who survived centuries of
slavery, lived under Ottoman rule as second-class citizens, and were
subjected to ethnic cleansing campaigns which are still denied to this
day as orchestrated acts of genocide.

Are we the creation of environment, of external geopolitical forces,
of genocide, of displacement, of the Turks and Mongols, or are these
forces veering our natural state of being creative, revolutionary,
loving, and adventurous humans?

Are we swaying between externalized pre-programmed subroutines of
behavior, or is human life so advanced that our collective histories
shape our genetics, and thus we can't help but act out the isolation
and post-traumatic behaviors of being survivors?

Does nurture or nature direct whether people focus on individual
matriculation versus our somewhat conservative conservation of our
collective experiences?

Were we genetically engineered with a strand of DNA that makes us
victims who fight back and score impossible victories? Do our
chromosomes make us circle our physical and metaphysical wagons decade
after decade, on continent after continent, focusing on
"self-preservation," insulation, and isolation? Is DNA or genocide
responsible for us isolating ourselves instead of naturally evolving
as renaissance men and women, independent of ethnic identity?

* Parallels

After graduating from his prestigious Atlanta university, young Chris
McCandless had scoured the western United States and spent his final
weeks in the middle of untamed geography: the last parcel of the
Western frontier, romantically perceived. He had traveled north to
find what was missing in his heart and mind, like we do -- us
Armenians -- when we travel to an ancestral homeland thousands of
miles away from where we consider home, and perhaps hundreds of miles
away from the actual birthplaces of our ancestors.

At the exact time Chris had set off to Alaska, I too, had been
living some of the worst years of my life, contemplating what choices
were given a man in his twenties. Rejecting civilization never crossed
my mind when I was living as a second-class citizen at the core of
American culture: mass media. I was reporting on shootings, homicides,
and county fairs in California's farm country, a place referred to by
highfalutin non-natives as the "Golden State's armpits."

As I began reading the McCandless book, a kindred soul, a fellow
editor at the Reporter, happened to sign onto her Gmail account, and I
found myself wide awake on another sleepless night, telling my Yerevan
friend Maria Titizian about my realization that the days young
Christopher had lived through had been called into reality by the
sheer power of the words spoken unto him. Not only had Jack London
persuaded him to pursue untamed nature, but Christopher had also been
led astray by a writer who had only lived for a short time in the
wild. The printed work had left Christopher without the light of life
-- hence, left candle-less.

* Wilderness

Instant messaging Maria, I told her how amazed I was that at the same
time McCandless had set off into the wilds of Alaska, I too had felt
driven to make my own departure from the road traveled by most, to go
to the Mojave Desert and work for a Christian radio station in Las
Vegas.

The Los Angeles riots and the accompanying violence in Southern
California had overflowed into my adopted hometown of Fresno. It was a
few days after the riots and days after my employer had asked me to
cross paths with the destructive looters in Fresno. Armed thugs,
menaces, American terrorists had bashed into a jewelry store, looted,
destroyed, and killed a man who had been buying a wedding ring for the
woman he wanted to call his wife.

Watching the 24-hour TV coverage of the riots when I wasn't on the
radio reporting about them made me feel that the end of Western
civilization was real, inevitable. I was reliving Beirut, planning my
escape to the wildness of Mojave, and Chris McCandless was seeing past
my reality, our realities, and wanting to contemplate life outside
"the system."

How magical that people that you and I should be talking to and know
pass within days of us and then go on to tragic ends. How tragic that
I had not met McCandless while we were both delirious in Vegas, him
working at a McDonald's, and me spinning Christian albums about
salvation through faith.

I would have told him about the innate drive of my ancestors to
survive the Syrian desert of Der Zor; their sometimes scary obsession
with preserving our dying fight against the world and its conspiracy
to treat our culture like the culture of milk past its sell date. I
would have told him to challenge what he didn't like in society,
rather than fade away by dissolving into a 60-pound carcass.

I would have told him not to kill himself searching for truth, and
he could have perhaps taught me to re-evaluate the importance of
career, success, and being accepted into a sick modern humanity.

* Survival

We were living parallel lives, him and I, miles from one another --
just like you and who knows who else. But we did not know each other.
Could I have changed his life, had we intersected? Could he have
changed my dismal outlook of being a prisoner to my Social Security
number?

Not having been given a chance to discuss "the truth" with the likes
of McCandless, how many others that I have met -- that you have met,
or that we meet and dismiss -- could have enriched our lives, had
there been an intersection of our individual tangents?

Why had I accepted our society's value of which humans I needed to
know and which I didn't. Why had fame and success been my gauge while
McCandless knew they were illusions.

While Chris was surviving the wild, I was surviving my
Jack-in-the-Box--eating Christian radio managers, but they also
survive in me and remind me daily to thank Christ that I also survived
the civil war in Lebanon. I thank Christ, God, the Maker, for allowing
me to go back to my birthplace six weeks ago, some 30 years after my
abrupt departure, to realize the civil war had been a blessing as
well.

I had survived the bullying and mockery of the toupee-wearing Fresno
TV anchor's son in junior high, the film school professors at USC who
gave me Ds for not being able to "externalize my internals" on film. I
survived the gray-haired construction guru whose name was
Shakespearean and was made the second executive producer of the first
Armenian television news magazine produced by the Armenian National
Committee.

I survived his verbal strikes when all he should have been licensed
to do was strike his hammer on a two-by-four. A revolutionary
organization had give him poetic license to call my shows too modern
and too revolutionary, so I had retreated from this community to go
and cover arguments at Fresno City Hall and arguments between
gun-totting Southeast Asian gangs.

These misguided young men had put meaning into the wilderness of
their lives and rejected society and authority in their own way, and I
had earned a paycheck telling their stories. They had taken their
universal powerlessness and hopelessness for any kind of a reasonable
future and rebelled, much like McCandless into the wild and me
retreating into the fog of the Central Valley.

However, my retreat from intersecting with my people in Southern
California at the end of the 1980s had meant crisscrossing with the
lives of racist, xenophobe rednecks at my first job as a radio
reporter in Fresno. I had survived them to move on up in my career and
to be hired by a Fresno media mogul -- the son of Greek immigrants --
who said I was in America now and had to pronounce my name on the air
as Chaderj-yen, not Chaderj-yan.

I worked my way out of the cesspool of local media only to face a
smellier arrangement in New York City. This time the scent was of the
arrogant and ignorant network news boss, who made me include Passover
as one of the most important stories of the newscast I was producing
for consumption by a 99-percent non-Jewish U.S. audience.

Ms. Paula, whatever her last name was, had the audacity to argue
with me a few weeks later that a Genocide commemoration was not
newsworthy. She mocked me and said the only significance the Armenian
Genocide had was the traffic tie-ups she had to avoid every April 24
around New York's Times Square, where our news headquarters were
located.

I survived my wilderness of psychology, my foraging for self-worth
and acceptance, while Christopher McCandless foraged for berries to
eat in Alaska. I survived the reactions one receives because he or she
is an immigrant, because he or she has an accent, and survived being
the slave of a media culture, whose news value "deciders" told me that
my grandparents' traumas and nightmare on earth equated to nothing
more than a modern-day traffic tie-up.

Seeing the film about Chris McCandless' life has made me more aware
of the decadence, the degradation of souls for a quick buck, the
breaking of hearts for success, the life of illusions and allusions.

I wonder now whether, had I met McCandless tramping around
California, our paths would have changed. I wonder whether he was
living near Borrego Springs when I visited my college friend Rusty,
who was trying to get off drugs at his parents' home there. Or whether
I may have ordered a burger from McCandless when trying to quench my
bottomless psychological and emotional hungers at a McDonald's in
Nevada.

Had I know then what I know now, would I have tortured myself to
enrolled in classes taught by the late screenwriting veteran Carol
Sobieski, and by popular novelist Thomas Coraghessan Boyle at USC. In
those days a talk with Barbra Streisand at the opening of Madonna's
Desperately Seeking Susan and waiting for suitcases at an airport
carousel with a Hemingway daughter were my personal headlines. But now
those are insignificant ads for my self in the classifieds, and a
chance meeting with Vartan Gregorian on an escalator near Ground Zero
in New York City could be classified as the only headline worth noting
in my journal.

But how could have our families and cultural history competed with
the values in mainstream media? Before we, Armenians, were creating
our own sexy and engaging media, Hollywood had hijacked our values.
Wall Street and Madison Avenue had set the markers, and I had believed
in that universality and sat behind Rodney Dangerfield on the set of
Back to School. I was told by His Holiness Karekin I that he, too,
liked to drink Diet Coke, but I had not realized his importance until
it was too late. I had sat on Mark Arax's front lawn, knowing that
moment was now more important than sitting on the john in President
Kocharian's plane and staring out the bathroom's skylight. While once
a presidential plane and a note from CNN's Anderson Cooper would have
made my day, knowing that Arax had experienced something parallel to
my Ms. Paula story made him more relatable to me and more dear than
Anderson.

These were people, the ones you may recognize, and who had passed
within moments, breaths, and feet of me and my existence, along with
the countless others I didn't know or perhaps should have known. In
hindsight, I didn't know until plopping down $5.50 for a matinée and
$14 for a paperback that our lives needed to intersect more, and that
parallel lives are so banal.

* Connection

Why write about all of this in an Armenian paper ordinarily concerned
with preserving a culture, empowering a young generation of diasporans
who may not know their mother tongue, and helping to rebuild a foreign
land that perhaps only shares -- as a least common denominator -- the
proper name of our ethnicity?

Perhaps because we should be aware that we're not alone in this life
experience, in this day and age, in a time when many are feeling
powerless and hopeless. Some of you may be more consumed by these
universal realities, more often, less often, but we are all aware of
them. Perhaps the question we all ask is do we rebel, escape, endure
or ignore?

Whether we only share the name of our culture with others crossing
our paths daily, or whether we only share the bastardized versions of
a language that enjoyed its golden age hundreds of years ago, we still
have one degree of separation that can be exercised to share our
parallel journeys as humans, and to help one another cope.

Perhaps I write this because the more we isolate ourselves on our
personal agendas of ego glorification and accumulation of wealth, and
remain apathetic to justice and House resolutions -- the more we
isolate ourselves in our private and physical wildernesses, in our
surreal detachment from others thanks to our iPods -- the less likely
we are to understand that life is about sharing experiences: the joys
and disappointments, the common goals and frustrations. And the
dreams.

Had there been someone to know my inner dance -- the desire to
follow Chris McCandless into oblivion -- perhaps I and those around me
wouldn't have been disheartened when we saw no hope in a world of
lies, selfishness, and mediocrity.

Perhaps you should ask your husband or your wife tomorrow, your
children, your neighbors, or the guy with the earrings making your
Starbuck's grande white mocha with whipped cream where they are at
that moment.

Perhaps you can look at the people who come in and out of your life
on a daily basis and see the potential for genius in them.

Perhaps you should think of your waitress or stock boy as a soul who
represents infinite possibilities.

They could have within them the ability to take a trip into the
wild, or find the resolution to the Karabakh stalemate. Perhaps a cure
for cancer. An end to world hunger, or to the genetically disposed
depression embedded in our post-genocide psyches. Who knows?

Our failures in the "real world" may be solely our own: those worst
years, all wasted, all in vain, and all of our own making. But the
only successes that really matter are making connections, and being
connected.

***

Paul Chaderjian is the editor of Arts & Culture, the Armenian
Reporter's magazine supplement, and the paper's West Coast bureau
chief.

*********************************** ****************************************

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress