The Heart · Kaitlin Prest

MONOLOGUE#1 | Electricity Complexes + Keys Around Their Necks

August 15, 2024·34 min·2 clips

A 17-year-old from Gaza wrote this in 2010 — and nothing has changed since.

February 14th opens with the feel of ritual. The first voice walks with an olive branch and a coffin, and an old radio recording turns intimate, inherited, and heavy. The tape keeps moving. Amsterdam stops sounding like a destination and starts sounding like a test of where a person can live, pay taxes, hear ceasefire language, and make sense of a government's abstention. By March 3rd, the making of the piece enters the piece. Someone wonders where to begin, whether to read first or talk first, and that uncertainty stays in the room. Then the headlines press closer. Oli writes about falling asleep before an attack, Jordan being pulled into the situation, and coverage that skips past the consulate bombing in Syria. April 14th hits differently. A voicemail reaches toward someone through fear, saying words feel useless while still sending love, support, and care for a nervous system under strain. The reply sounds steadier, but only just. Warplanes have been overhead. A bomb fell close to home and was neutralized in the air. Still, life keeps announcing itself. There is a move to Abu Dhabi, a first day at a new job, and the cautious brightness of people who seem nice. The tenderness does not soften the politics. It makes them harder to separate, because congratulations, late replies, and everyday updates now share space with what people are being asked to absorb. The episode trusts the messages to do the work. Greetings like tender heart, darling, and beautiful heart hold more than clean exposition could. Near the end, music credits, the No Thanks app, and thanks to Palestinian artists and collaborators leave the piece somewhere between private correspondence and a weekly serial still unfolding.

As heard by us

A restless, intimate monologue about Palestinian identity, distance, war, and the effort to stay tender while life keeps moving.

The Heart's first monologue follows Ali Dajani, Palestinian Jordanian and newly in motion, through a private geography of voice notes, family memory, Amsterdam plans, Abu Dhabi work, and the politics that keep entering the room.

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Why you'd press play

His father's radio song about olive branches and coffins -- you'll hear it differently once you reach April 14th.

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