SongWriter Season 7 continues with Ali Selim and Carla Kihlstedt

SongWriter is a podcast that turns stories into songs, featuring Questlove, David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Joyce Carol Oates, David Sedaris, Susan Orlean, and Steve Earle.

Filmmaker and director Ali Selim had a complicated relationship with his father. He was an erudite, cussed, and sometimes violent man, and his death left a lot of issues unprocessed. Ali is a father now himself, and has empathy for what his father experienced. But Ali does not forgive him.

“My dad passed away ten years ago, and I still have a connection to him,” Ali said. “But there’s no accountability there…and that’s what leads to forgiveness.”

At a live performance hosted by FilmNorth, Ali read an excerpt of a memoir he is writing about his relationship with his father. Ali recounts how his father repeatedly lies, on subjects as varied as biblical history, anatomy, and the law. Ali says that over time this undermined his hold on reality. Towards the end of his father’s life, Ali asked him about the violence and the dishonesty.

“After a long reflection he said, ‘Maybe. Could be. But why would you want to remember it that way?’” Ali recalled.

At the live performance Dr. Emily Gaarder shared some of her experiences in the world of restorative justice. Dr. Gaarder explained that forgiveness is such a complicated and difficult topic that she and her colleagues sometimes refer to it as “the F-word.” 

“What’s really valuable about Ali’s story is that it helps us look at the options for us to heal when the person who has harmed us isn’t taking responsibility,” Dr. Gaarder said.

Still, Dr. Gaarder pointed out that forgiveness may not be about the other person at all. Sometimes forgiveness can be an internal process, a way of putting down a burden. And while it may not feel right for Ali, Dr. Gaarder has witnessed forgiveness as a profound and powerful experience.

“When you see forgiveness happen in a restorative justice where it is offered by the person who has been hurt,” Dr. Gaarder said, “it can be a very transformational exchange.”

Songwriter Carla Kihlstedt has known Ali for years, and worked on the soundtrack of his first major film, Sweet Land. Carla spent weeks reading and re-reading Ali’s piece. During this time a close friend was taking part in the Freedom Flotilla on its way to Gaza, and Carla heard resonances between the two stories.

“These two men were finding themselves in the midst of stories that are so much larger than them,” Carla said, “and how they’re using their tools of personal transformation and expression.”

Carla said that performing the art song that she wrote, “I Am a Fish,” live for Ali at FilmNorth was intense and moving. Ali had chosen not to listen to the recording of the song Carla had sent him, so that he could experience it for the first time in the room.

“I felt like: this is why I am on the planet,” Carla said. “Occasionally you get an opportunity to do something in a way that only you could do it.”

Season seven of SongWriter is made possible by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation.

Keep scrolling for more great stories.