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00:01For years I composed music. Then suddenly I decided to write books instead. People ask why? I can't tell because
00:12there's nothing to say about either the music or the books. I hate talking about myself. I've got nothing to
00:19say.
00:59I've got nothing to say.
01:01Always, without formulating a concept, I had based my sense of being in the world partly on an unreasoned conviction
01:11that certain areas of the earth's surface contained more magic than others.
01:17Had anyone asked me what I meant by magic, I should probably have defined the word by calling it a
01:25secret connection between the world of nature and the consciousness of man, a hidden but direct passage which bypassed the
01:34mind.
01:53It's strange. I've lived here 59 years.
02:00And I'm still a tourist. People think of me as a tourist and I think really I have to be
02:10considered that although I am officially a resident.
02:14But unless one is or becomes a Muslim here, one is always an outsider.
02:25And so I'm always referred to as a Nisrani. Even though I'm not officially a Christian.
02:34It's very difficult to become an intimate friend of an individual here. One can appreciate the people en masse as
02:45a group.
02:47A foreigner, a foreigner, a tourist, doesn't really know how to approach Moroccan because their basic thought is completely different.
03:02They place importance upon different things. The whole point is to accept and continue to accept no matter what happens.
03:20Because one is really studying the people and one is in the position of a public looking at the stage
03:31and on the stage are the people of the other culture, the other civilization.
03:37I remember once, in 1934, I was in Marrakesh and I wanted to go to Tarodant. So I went to
03:48a garage which was near the Gemafna, from which I saw many buses leaving.
03:53I asked a man in charge.
03:56Bonjour. Est-ce qu'il y a des cas pour Tarodant?
04:01Tarodant? Le bus là-bas, derrière.
04:07Quand est-ce que ça part?
04:09Demain matin, à 6h30.
04:12D'où?
04:13À 6h30, hein?
04:14À 6h30, je vais pas oublier, mais d'où?
04:18Ici même?
04:19Ici, ici même.
04:21Oui, demain matin.
04:23Bon.
04:24Merci bien.
04:25C'est bon.
04:26C'est là-bas.
04:36The next morning, I got up very early, and took my luggage from the hotel to the garage where it
04:42was shut. There was no one around. And I waited and I waited and it remained shut. 7h it was
04:48shut and about eight o'clock, the same man,
04:53that I had spoken with the day before arrived.
05:26I had to take a taxi.
05:52Well, no, I suppose it's not to believe
05:55anything anyone tells you, because it might be wrong.
06:00Especially if you're asking for information,
06:02because generally no Moroccan likes to say he doesn't know.
06:07Also, he doesn't want to say there's no such thing.
06:11If you're asking for a bus, people say,
06:13well, he wants a bus, so I'll tell him there is one.
06:16That'll make him happy.
06:18If he says there isn't any, you might be angry.
06:25I suppose one needs to count on the eventual dissolution
06:32of our European civilization,
06:38which will be taken over by we don't know whom.
06:42But whoever takes over, we must be prepared for this,
06:47understand a little how the mind works.
06:51I assume that it will have something to do
06:53with the continent of Africa.
06:56And since Tangier is the front door of Africa,
07:00and of course the other side is the back door of Europe,
07:04things will happen, and one will be conscious of that here.
07:07So one is well placed here in Tangier to watch whatever's going to happen.
07:14Well, I shan't see it, but others will.
07:39Well, I shan't see it, but others will.
07:43I should comment that Muhammad is the Messenger of Islam
07:51and the Messenger of Allah
07:55and 알았어 their Messenger of Allah
08:03I see the Messenger of Allah
08:08and Allah
08:08I see a Arabs over and over .
08:16I did not choose to live in Tangier permanently. It happened. My visit was meant to be of short duration.
08:27After that, I would move on and keep moving on indefinitely.
08:33I grew lazy and put off departure. Then a day came when I realized, with a shock, that not only
08:42did the world have many more people than it had had only a short time before, but also that the
08:48hotels were less good, travel less comfortable, and places in general much less beautiful.
08:56After that, when I went somewhere else, I immediately longed to be back in Tangier.
09:21And they had marmalade, skengevees.
09:26Can you see?
09:27Can you see?
09:28Can you see?
09:28Yes, you can see.
09:30Come on.
09:57Come on.
11:30More important than that, I relish the idea that in the night, all around me in my sleep, sorcery is
11:40burrowing its invisible tunnels in every direction, from thousands of senders to thousands of unsuspecting recipients.
11:49Spells are being cast. Poison is running its course. Souls are being dispossessed of parasitic pseudo-consciousnesses that lurk in
12:01the unguarded recesses of the mind.
12:10There is drumming out there most nights.
12:14It never awakens me. I hear the drums and incorporate them into my dream, like the nightly cries of the
12:23muzzins.
12:23Even if, in the dream, I am in New York, the first Allah Akbar effaces the backdrop and carries whatever
12:32comes next to North Africa. And the dream goes on.
12:44I have to say that I do not want to go back to the United States because it is not
12:49a country that is worth it.
12:51I have to say that it is worth it.
12:54I have to say that it is worth it.
12:55I have to say that it is worth it.
12:58I have to say that it is worth it.
13:01Now it is a place where I live here.
13:03Now it is an endocrine, inexplicable, for me.
13:10Everybody that I knew was dead.
13:13I have no family, no one.
13:18Because I was a unique son, I had cousins, but they were also a unique son.
13:24unique alors personne n'a des enfants et tout le monde est mort tant mieux comme ça je ne
13:30suis pas obligé d'y aller je préfère ici c'est beaucoup plus beau c'est plus propre
13:49je ne dis pas je suis satisfait je suis résigné oui il faut être résigné
14:10je ne suis pas intéressé
14:18en
14:20recorri moroccan music when I say moroccan music I mean really the music of the
14:25country
14:271959
14:29I got a grant from the rockefeller foundation
14:33So I decided to start work, and I did.
14:39And it was going to be divided into four separate trips.
15:08The authorities were not in record. Many of them refused to let me record.
15:17They didn't like the idea of Moroccan music being recorded at all.
15:24And told me, no, no, no. If you record music in that village, it's going to sound like savages.
15:33And we can't allow you to export that and tell people that it's from Morocco,
15:39because everyone's going to say Morocco is a country of savages.
15:42I said, no, not at all. It's very good music. No, no, no.
15:48And sometimes they forbade me to record anything.
15:55I remember I talked to people, and they said, I said, well, I'm going to a place called Al-Hajib.
16:02And they said, no, how can you? There's nothing there.
16:06I said, what do you mean? They said, there are no people.
16:09I said, of course there are. And they said, oh, but they don't count the simple country people.
16:14They don't know anything. You can't record that.
16:17Well, that was the idea that people had about their own country.
16:23There's happened that people want to imagine that people, you know, there working together.
16:33And they had about to add they said, far, to win that culture.
16:36And let them know if they had about their compartilhounds and developing your friends.
16:36And they said, well, this is not the Pasadena.
16:38That was great things.
16:39It was so wonderful stuff.
16:40We could not ever ask you, too.
16:40And we can never ask you.
16:44No.
16:46Welcome, Finally.wości
16:46started tooutpathy down on the holiday. Mary Tuesday,
16:46we've done over total. We've done
16:46something and I can always ask you about peace. By the company,
16:50there is not only a one who I know.
16:51I'm going to go.
17:01I'm going to go.
17:05I'm going to go.
17:07I'm going to go.
17:08I'm going to go.
17:09I'm going to go.
17:10Well, various people would ask me afterward, knowing that I write music, if the experience
17:16hadn't changed at all my approach to musical composition.
17:21And, of course, it hadn't.
17:23It couldn't.
17:24The two musics are far too different from each other.
17:27There's no possible way of combining them.
17:30So it was, for me, it was simply a pleasure to record things that I knew would not be
17:36available for long.
17:38I saved quite a lot of wonderful music from oblivion.
17:43Fortunately for the music of Morocco, the past of the country has been one in which the
17:52great majority of the people were illiterate.
17:56Therefore, they did not write out their stories or their poems.
18:04they learned them by heart, often sang or danced even to them.
18:11And that is really a great help for the music today.
18:16Another two or three decades, it would be very hard to find someone who can't read or write.
18:22And that, when they, if they were to give their texts, I think you'd find them very different.
18:30Because they have reference.
18:32It all has to come directly from his memory and imagination.
19:05It all has to be a very different world.
19:24In the early 1950s, I used to go every morning with
19:29Yacoubi to a part of the beach far out where nobody ever came.
19:33Well, this was a long time ago.
19:36And now there's no part of the beach where nobody goes, but anyway.
19:39And I would have a notebook with me, and we would lie in the sun,
19:44and Yacoubi recounted stories that were generally very funny.
19:52Well, he was particularly good after he'd had smoked Keefe, and the stories were funnier.
20:00As he spoke, I would translate them into English as fast as I could.
20:04And I enjoyed doing that.
20:07Jane was ill, so I couldn't work, I mean, I couldn't write my own material
20:12because I needed isolation, quiet, but she needed me every half hour.
20:20So I gave up trying to write, but I did want to work every day,
20:24so I worked on these translations.
20:27And they took all my time.
20:29And then I met Mohamed Mrabat, and he began telling stories.
20:34They weren't meant to be funny, and they weren't meant to be true either.
20:39They were inventions.
20:40They came back to the Hougar of the Hougar.
20:43They found her, and it went perto of him.
20:48They realized they were walking.
20:49The boy ran up, that he said,
20:55he was afraid to break them down to him.
21:02He was inclined to show up the Hougar of the Hougar.
21:05They were alone.
21:05And they were người to do it, and he was frustrated.
21:07They were just close to their special Steris community that began to inspire.
21:09They were my younger Freunde.
21:09And when his sister wasacaic.
21:09He wore him and he didn'tp merchandising them.
21:17foreign
21:25foreign
21:26foreign
21:27foreign
21:27foreign
21:28foreign
21:29foreign
21:29foreign
21:29foreign
21:39foreign
21:42foreign
21:44foreign
21:44foreign
21:44foreign
21:44foreign
21:44foreign
22:08Almost every day, but isn't doing any more stories at the moment now.
22:15However, he's published ten volumes already, so he doesn't need to work anymore.
22:23Ever since I started publishing the translations of Moroccan texts, it has annoyed me because
22:34the critics don't seem to know the difference between my own texts and the translated ones.
22:41And I see a great difference between them, and that, I must say, that annoyed me very
22:48much until I began to see that I was changing my own style and making it rather more like
22:57a translation.
22:59So I think I'm pleased with that because I think it simplified my writing.
23:16The Moroccans claim that full participation in life demands the regular contemplation of death.
23:24However, I agree without reserve.
23:27Unfortunately, I'm unable to conceive of my own death without setting it in the far more
23:33terrible mise-en-scene of old age.
23:36The 노래�ough.
23:40And the extrêmement traces of the gentleman.
23:41So, the organicいやred split.
23:41Yes.
23:44Ah.
23:48That one had a penny.
23:49Very nice.
23:50What kind of thing happened to you?
23:51This one had taken me from a bit.
23:53There was no other things.
23:54You didn't buy anything anymore, right?
23:56No, I didn't buy anything anymore.
23:56No, I didn't buy anything.
23:57I didn't buy anything before it.
24:14There I am without teeth, unable to move, wholly dependent upon someone whom I pay to take care of me,
24:22and who, at any moment, may go out of the room and never return.
24:38Goodbye, says the dying man, to the mirror they hold in front of him. We won't be seeing each other
24:45anymore.
24:47When I quoted Valerie's epigram in The Sheldering Sky, it seemed a poignant bit of fantasy.
24:55Now, I no longer imagine myself as an onlooker at the scene, but instead as the principal protagonist.
25:03It strikes me as repugnant. To make it right, the dying man would have to add two words to his
25:09farewell, and they are, thank God.
25:32For a long time, I've had this particular nightmare, that of seeing my luggage go off on the train, remaining
25:41on the platform.
25:42But I think how much worse it would be if my body were on the train, and my luggage on
25:48the platform, and the train started up,
25:50and I wouldn't be able to stay behind in Tangier, because I want to stay here.
25:57My determination is to stay where I am, that is to say, in Morocco.