First of all, turn on the music at the bottom of the text and let the playlist below guide your imagination as you read it.
I have a real fixation with History and early civilisations. I find the investigation of human life and culture throughout the course of time endlessly fascinating. Recently, I went to an exhibition that CaixaForum was hosting in Madrid, in partnership with the British Museum, about Ashurbanipal. I learned that he was the last great king of the Assyrian Empire — a warrior and an erudite who valued the strength of both body and mind. He said: “I have acquired the craft of Nabu, all scribal learning. I have studied the lore of every single one of the master scholars.”
Assyria and Babylon were both part of what we call Mesopotamia, but they weren't really friends. In fact, they kind of hated each other — while at the same time existing in a strange cultural symbiosis, flourishing around the same rivers.
When I think about the origins of humanity in Africa, I often find myself imagining the long route northwards, towards the fertile lands around the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates. It must have been such a journey until the first urban settlements were established; People had to deal with floods, wild animals, other people, disease — all sorts of dangers — until they found navigable fresh water, fertile land, and places where crops could grow and date palms could made life more beautiful and sweeter.
Now, imagine...
If you were a god, wouldn't you play Genesis by Justice full blast from the skies as soon as you saw these humans arriving in those lands and making such realisations, having these big insights like: “Oh, I can make fire. I can grow food here. I can stay.”
Now, back to being a human that suddenly could write and read... One day you wake up, and with these skills, magic happens: stories are written down, myths survive, and Gilgamesh finally finds his way into eternity through your words.
Enkidu. Shamhat. Ishtar. The Netherworld. The power of the body, the hidden mysteries of the soul, glory and seduction, and the roles of the beings. So many stories, lost and found, adapted and repeated across thousands of years. Sounds familiar.
Thinking of all of this, I created this playlist as a subjective soundtrack to that world — songs, melodies and audio-feelings that, through imagination, could accompany some of this stories, bodies, gods, desires and mysteries.
What about the Epic of Gilgamesh; I think of Reflektor by Arcade Fire as the soundtrack to his adventures, in his search for friendship, love and immortality. Nothing scared him — not even someone as powerful as he was: Enkidu. But death? She did. And so he went in search for something that could keep him safe from his pain of uncertainty, that could keep him intact, but also in touch with his being and his moment. See you later!