Pierre Hébert

Wonderful day in Paris, sunny, just cool enough to allow strolling around without sweating. I spent the day doing my usual bookstores itinerary, from the FNAC at Les Halles to the left bank Librairie Compagny, and La Hune and L’écume des pages at St-Germain-des-prés, with a coffee or a «demi» here and there on the way. My bag is now heavy with books.

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I got the music through the Internet last evening. Today, I made two complete rehearsals successfully.

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My work at the university is finished. I will see the students again for a short period on Monday afternoon to see the final result of their work and give them DVD’s with what they did and my performance.

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A totally unexpected news this morning: yesterday, Bob spent the entire day in the passport office and finally got a passport.

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Yesterday, the practical exercises with the students went better, in a more focused way. It seems now realistic that we will get everything done by the Friday and that I will be able to edit and composite all of the segments so that we can screen this little film I was hoping for sometimes Monday or Tuesday.

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Follow up to Bob’s saga with his passport. Yesterday, I had a meeting with Sharif and we quickly reached an agreement that we would forget about the small symbolic fee that was there for us and that they would put up all the money needed for Bob to come. We sent a e-mail right away telling Bob to proceed. Which he did but just to find out that the American passport system is totally clogged, nothing is workings and the fast track services even less.

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I should now briefly give a summary of were thing stands at this time concerning the rationale of our/my presence here in Lebanon to present this piece about last summer war.

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Difficult situation. I got an URGENT mail from Bob last night. He was packing up to take off to the airport and could not find his passport. Then he remembered sending it to the government passport office to get new pages added in…and it never came back. So he could not get on the plane, had to cancel the ticket (not being reimbursed, just getting a credit on British airway for a year) having to spend money to get a quick passport, buy a new much more expensive plane ticket with a crazy itinerary, etc.

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One of the troubling questions of the last months that Bob and I have been discussing is: What the hell are we coming in Lebanon for? What is the point of coming to Beirut to show to the Lebaneses the bombing of their cities and the corpse of their death children, things they have been experiencing in real life? Are we here just to create a hot profile to the piece and make it easier to sell to promoters. Those are both surprising and unsurprising questions.

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This is the first entry in my brand new blog, which actually is not even on line yet. But I arrived in Beirut this afternoon and this seems to be the right moment to start writing. This trip is quite unlike any of the many other travel I do. Eight months ago there was war here, the whole country was being bombed by Israeli airplanes. The west end of the country was yet again being invaded. Whole neighborhoods of Beirut were brought down to rubble. Bob (Bob Ostertag, composer and musician, my long time collaborator) and I decided that the piece we were currently working on, that we later entitled Special Forces, somehow had to assess this outrageous situation.

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