Salman Rushdie/Crisis hotline reunion

This Saturday the Chicago Humanities festival hosted Salman Rushdie. He won this year's Chicago Tribune Literary Award. Rushdie was interviewed by Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune.  His new book is titled Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, a reference to the story Scheherazade, the name of a woman who had to tell stories for 1001 nights or she would be killed.  Rushdie explained that his father, Anis, changed his last name a long time ago to the name of a 12th century philosopher because he admired his progressive views.  Ironically that philosopher pissed off the powers that were. I used to think his name sounded like he was in a rush to die.

Rushdie also talked about the years he had to travel under heavy security. In 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a Fatwa condemning Rushdie for writings deemed anti-Muslim. He talked about how he was once going to be picked up in New York by a long motorcade and stretch bulletproof limo. He thought that this just drew more attention to him and he would have preferred a used Buick. The lieutenant on duty thought his girlfriend was a spy out to kill him and could not be convinced otherwise.

The interviewer asked him whether he thought he was a victim of his early success, since Midnight's Children, published in 1981, was his most successful novel. Rushdie replied that Joseph Heller was frequently asked why he hadn't written anything as good as Catch 22 and Heller would respond, "No one else has written anything as good (as Catch 22) since either".

Rushdie also said he likes to play a game with his friends: book titles that didn't quite make it. His examples were "Moby Prick" and "The Big Gatsby".  He had great comic timing, so these sounded funnier at the time. Lastly, he said he wrote a U2 song and that he starred in the music video directed by Wim Wenders. In it he is kissed by Scarlett Johansson.

Doesn't it seem that surviving the fatwa has given him rock star status?

I went to see Rushdie with a friend, Jessica, who is amazing. She is volunteering next week in Nicaragua and will be the official blogger for Spark Ventures. See: http://sparkventures.org/2015/11/launching-sparks-first-young-professionals-trip/

Twenty two years ago I volunteered for a crisis hot-line. I was getting a BA in Psychology at UIC and I was ready to attempt therapy. The hot-line included three months of training. The training was mostly in active listening, and was one of the most interesting and valuable things I have ever done. After you graduate from training, you are paraded into the secret office where you can begin taking calls. You also are given a big sister or brother who trains you further and listens in on your phone calls. My trainers were Maya and Allan, or Anal Allan, as he introduced himself to a room full of nicknamed people. 

A reunion of crisis hotline volunteers was scheduled this weekend at the Carlton of Oak Park.
I went armed with a question, "Did you have any calls that stood out?" I asked a woman who was there at roughly the same time as I was. She told me that there was a man that would only talk to her and he would say that he was going to be famous for all the destruction he was planning. She was haunted by him and twenty plus years later still is.

I should say that I obtained a BA while I volunteered there and this experience soured me on the profession a little. It did so because the same callers were calling for ten plus years telling the same stories, and I was horrified. Not by all the people calling to tell me they were naked except for wearing high heels. But I was horrified by how they needed to call every night for a decade and tell the same story verbatim.

I also asked a young girl who was on the line last year what call or calls stood out in her mind. She opened up immediately. The call that stood out for her was a man who was masturbating while talking, and whom she managed to get talking about his childhood. (Michel requested that I describe the man's actions in Victorian terms). While she was telling this story, I was thinking: This is exactly why I left this kind of work. I don't care about some disgusting person's childhood. But I have a theory: In some jobs you see the worst of human nature, in others you see the best. For instance, in what I do now,  All the people I deal with now are lovable.

Lastly, I asked a man who was on the line in the Seventies. He said he couldn't remember. but that he was there to meet girls. Then he told me that the main trainer would get him high. I was never offered that. I am not and was not a pot smoker, but I would have liked to be offered some, dammit. A pint- sized sixty year old lady walked up and said, "The real fucked up ones were us, the ones listening to callers." I agreed.

This weekend I forced myself out of my comfort zone twice and it was rewarding. Both times I was very nervous. Michel was home grading papers. But I learned that walking in to a room full of strangers is awesome if you have an excellent question that will open them up. I also learned that my voice does not carry very far at all. No one could hear me. I had to yell one inch from people's ears and it wasn't even very noisy in the room.

Michel has been trying to memorize The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176735 He was reminded of the poem when something we were watching mentioned the legend of the Fisher King. Michel explained that T.S. Eliot's poems contain many kinds of references, and that this is part of what makes him very interesting. This is also part of Rushdie's charm.  Lastly it is one of the things I love about Michel, all he knows about classic literature.