Kithra Cahana words ring with a silent power, a quiet echo that builds and builds to a booming forté. She offers an empathetic perspective on the forgotten people within our country that swiftly blow into and out of our minds on a lost wind that dies mid-whistle, an afterthought trailing off into the soft dark of oblivion. The homeless, the vagabond, the drifter, the nomad; she legitimizes their existence and romanticizes their way of life, while at the same time, also acknowledging the struggles of it, criticising discriminatory policies and laws that inhibit an already difficult way of life. Cahana soft voice plays like an instrument, a lilting tune that creeps slowly into our minds to cement itself there; her soft voice evokes empathy, and is essential to the perspective she crafts in her work, an outsider looking into a world that at best is an exhilarating adventure romanticized by the inherent desire for freedom, and at worst a life defined by devastation, of alienation and struggle and chained in poverty. She words are in the throes of an intangible attempt to open a window into another world; all she attempts to do is implore you to see, really see the world and the people around you, not just through them.
She romanticizes this vagabond lifestyle, this nomadic drifting; it is, in the rawest sense, a relic of the true american dream cultivated in a desire for movement, a lust for nomadism evolved from the westward expansion that fueled migration and movement within our country, the idea we have the power to create our own destiny. This aligns with the traditional sense of the american dream, however in the way of opportunity, financial stability, and what society deems as success, it becomes obvious that the group represented here are excluded from the contemporary ‘american dream’, aligning with argument that the dream is only not achievable to them because it was never offered.
Personally, I loved the speech, as the words blew into my mind as a subtle wind that incited a storm of feeling. Cahana’s engagement with the audience is very subtle, and feels almost intimate. The entire speech had a lyricism to it, a sad beauty; it told the story of a people here, in our country, dismissed without a thought, devalued and misunderstood. I will not soon forget her humanizing perspective, the beauty and rawness in which she explained life forever drifting..