For those of you for which music elicits an emotional response or even goosebumps, it will be no surprise that a study from the Texas A&M College of medicine in neuroscience and experimental therapeutics has found that those of you who feel this have a denser volume of brain fibres that process auditory information and emotions and that the goosebumps are actually a fight or flight response and also that listening to sad songs counter-intuitively mad people happier. Music stimulates an ancient reward pathway in the brain, encouraging dopamine to flood the striatum, the part of the forebrain activated by addiction, reward and motivation. It’s also common knowledge that those suffering from dementia can trigger vivid memories when listening to music experienced in their youth.
I experienced some of these feelings when hearing the song Miss Sarajevo at Gallery 11/07/95 in Sarajevo having just viewed images relating to the Bosnian war massacre in Srebrenica.
In the 1990s, I mainly absorbed Miss Sarajevo through the music as an avid fan of the Brian Eno/ Bono collaborations including the band The Passengers rather than really taking in the gravity of the film’s pretext. This was one of those CDs (it was the 90s) one played repetitively, intrigued with how Brian Eno broke ground again by taking a risk with using the opera voice of Luciano Pavarotti instead of a guitar break from Bono’s softer voice in the ambient song Miss Sarajevo.
Although it could be seen as a political song, the lyrics are much quieter than Bono’s other war themed song such as the pelting ‘In the name of love’U2 released in the 80s. Miss Sarajevo is paradoxically quiet and soothing, belying what the lyrics are about.
“Is there a time for keeping your distance
A time to turn your eyes away
Is there a time for keeping your head down
For getting on with your day” was obviously about the apathy of the rest of the world in not doing enough to stop the four years of bloodshed that occurred in what became Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bono funded the film; the pretext for the film is that it is about the irony of a beauty contest that was run in Sarajevo during the siege in which, famously, the participants, held up a banner emblazoned with “don’t kill us” and indeed this is the focal point but it’s the stories from the actual inhabitants in Sarajevo at the time that I find the most compelling; maybe the film has a double meaning as the interviewer frequently returned to an ever optimistic young teenager who, along with her friends, sat in bombed out cars singing along to contemporary American pop music. Only towards the end of the film do you see evidence of her transformation; time has passed, evidenced by her longer hair and more drawn face “things aren’t so good now; people are dying” she offered, this time on her own, without friends. Another very short dramatized film I watched at the gallery included Ten Minutes, made more recently that contrasts 10 minutes in the life of a boy during the siege, sent out to get water and bread rations for the family with 10 minutes in the day of a tourist in Rome, getting a film processed (it was set in the 90s, so pre-digital age). At the risk of it racially profiling (the tourist is Japanese), I found the film successful in confronting the viewer with the unfair hand that is dealt to some people without overdramatising or labouring on the point; I have not included any spoilers so I recommend it for viewing, but try to do so on at least a large TV screen (chrome caster or HDMI cable anyone?); can’t wait to seek out Ahmed Imamovic’s other films shot about this time such as Go West.
As I walked back home, on a Tuesday night and witnessed many locals and maybe some tourists out, mostly eating gelato or drinking coffee, some shopping in designer fashion stores, many well-dressed Muslims, all walking amidst bullet scarred buildings. There were holes everywhere I could see.
Across from my own bullet scarred apartment, is a shell of a building which I was able to at last find out about by asking Emina, my guide for a day trip to Tjentiste spomenik. It turns out the building is owned by someone from out of town who hasn’t decided what to do with it. so it just sits there, adjacent to a very contemporary building, part café part business; the contemporary design features perforated square shapes and I wonder if this was a Post-modern reference to the bullet holes in the rest of the town; I hope that the town does not try to erase these scars as they are a poignant reminder of the past, however, for those who live here, they may wish to forget.
For Emina, her experience of the war has influenced her outlook on life and for her, to not be afraid of danger. In fact, she seems to find life boring if there isn’t an element of danger, hence her chain smoking, risky driving and preference for dangerous sports. For many of her peers however, the experience had a more detrimental effect. ‘Many of my friends are in hospital’ she offered; ‘mental health issues?’ I probed. ‘yes'. She was a 12 year old during the war; I wondered how this experience has affected the outlook on life for other 'Miss Sarajevos'.