Me, my thoughts and the revolution.

Following the events in Iran have been a fantastic six day long saga I have been passionate about since Khamenei, our all powered white bearded spiritual leader, declared the controversial results of the elections only three hours after the voting ended. As a Persian-Swedish Musician , I was brought up by my Persian grandfather Aziz in a French boarding school leaving behind my parents and a beloved international elementary school in the south of Spain . I had weekend allowances, and on each Sunday my Granfather had epic Persian luncheon invitationals in our chic Paris flat. These Sunday lunches reunited a large range of important ( and less important ) Persian characters that had a couple of things in common : leaving Iran with the 79' revolution, fighting extra hard over backgammon, neverending superloud debates after shooting up my grandpa Aziz's traditional Sunday cold roast and , above all, an unconditional love for the past. Listening to them in utter silence , eating my roast away, I grasped the essence of these reunions : the world had stopped turning down in 79', and they all played at a vicious " let's press rewind" game. It went on for years, and some stories I heard over and over, and how to say, it still goes on now, same stories , same roast, same guys. Difference is, I do not have the obligation to attend since I dropped out of Architecture school ( thus not following Aziz's steps, him being a once famous Persian Architect ) . In other words I did not turn into a Princeton bred bourgeois-chic passeist Persian apparatchik. Nopes. I went for Rock & Roll, and in my sense, for an exciting personal experience of the world I was thrown in. It has to do with a passionate love of the future , of what it can hold, and in lots of ways , with a sane rebellion against the weight of a family fueled classical education. My favourite book at that time had been Sumerset Maughm's "The Razor's Edge" . I was mesmerized by its main character, Larry, that had chosen experience against a comfortable pre-written life. I had the hardest time of my life trying to get away from my Grandpa's clutches, as he used 1001 stratagems to get me back in line. But as my band got stronger and my entourage steadier I naturally escaped his rule. My idea of Iran was still to be made and I did not want to be estranged by thoughts of another time. Being in a band, writing songs, and playing them to people of my age or younger ( or older ! ) is an everyday thrill to me. I sense it somewhat magically links me to my generation. Like an invisible bond. I came to think, that in time things would change. Not only in Iran, but on a larger scale. Our generation has finally little in common with the baby boomer's generation ( my dad's) and even less with the Second World war's generation ( my grandad's). I often say we were born with coca cola in our hands or with a Mac at the end of our fingers. We have integrated the idea of marketing as something very very natural, and we have created a multitask psychology and an extremely ecclectic culture. The word global is second nature and in no way linked to politics, but to freedom. Freedom being the never-ending possibilities of planetary positive experience. That's what I profoundly felt when the first images came in from Iran last Friday. Man, I could have been any of these guys down there. It felt deep down like that their pledge for freedom was not only directed to the Ayatollah, but to the rest of the world. If you look at it closely, you could understand the events differently, from another angle. Their struggle symbolizes the one of a generation. From Asia to Africa, from Europe to America, Obama opened a door that was waiting to be unlocked. And now, here it is , a country's entire youth trying to liberate itself from the weight of the past , make the break . They are us, we are them.