The Era of Proud and Crazy Armenians
By Ara Tadevosian
Mediamax Director
Next year many children will be born in Armenia. They will be immensely free. They will be freer than their parents who are the Generation of Independence [born after 1991].
Some of them will become the cream of our nation and 20-30 years down the road will bestow a number of moments of pride on us. The parents of these children are the wonderful young people who, soaked in the spirit of creative craziness and freedom that filled them after Kanye West’s and System of a Down’s (SOAD), concerts returned home late at night and made love. They made love to transform those positive emotions into a new generation, new people, new Armenia, new life and new future.
We underwent big changes in the past two months – we grew bone-tired of being a victim and realized that yes, we can be proud.
When launching 100LIVES initiative in New York on March 10, Ruben Vardanyan, Noubar Afeyan and Vartan Gregorian had hardly imagined that #BeArmenian, #BeAlive motto would become so dear for thousands of Armenians and would become a reason for cogitation for many.
We learned to be a tad more tolerant. Many of us loved Kim Kardashian, her sisters, her toddler and Kanye West. We started to gradually understand that our strength lies in the differences that we have. As Ralph Yirikian says, we should bunch up those differences to create a “rich mixture.”
Kim Kardashian showed that always having lived far away from his homeland her father has been able to insert a national dignity in his children which is way more appreciable than the controversies accompanying the show-biz. By performing a surprise concert at Swan Lake and throwing himself into it Kanye West did much to broaden the horizon of our optimism and make us forget for a moment our “habit” of taking only rational steps typical of ancient nations. We understood we, too, can be free, happy and a bit crazy.
Pope Francis continued what started Kanye West. The Pontiff proved that even in the age of Realpolitik the determinant is the Human. It’s the Human who decides whether we should stick to play on words to define what the slaughterers did to hundreds of thousands of Armenian children or we should remain Humans. Seeing the posture of Pope Francis we realized we are not alone and we should be strong and fulfill the dreams of those hundreds of thousands of kids who were slain 100 years ago.
We, our children and grandchildren are the ones who will achieve those dreams.
The souls of the children martyred 100 years ago were soaring in the drops of rain that were falling from the sky at yesterday’s concert of System of a Down. We all took our portion – the four Armenians proudly standing on the stage and the tens of thousands of Armenians proudly mobbed in the square.
We really changed and changed much during these two months. We realized that Vigen Sargsyan who put forward the fantastic idea of System of a Down’s concert, Serj Tankian who has no scruples in criticizing the Armenian authorities, Ruben Vardanyan who sees the future of Armenia 20-25 years in advance, Kim Kardashian who baptized her daughter in the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, the thousands of bright and beautiful boys and girls who were dancing in the Republic Square and the unexpectedly sweet-tempered and delicate policemen – it’s “us” all.
If somebody told us years ago we would be feasting in the Republic Square a few hours before April 24, we would call them blasphemous and lunatic. But we feasted yesterday. It was the feast, the feast of our spirit, the feast of our future and the feast of those babies that will be born as a result of the crazy love made during these April days.