Yesterday I saw

a play about the Rwandan genocide, World Music, by Oakland's TheatreFIRST company.

Incredible piece of theatre, compellingly staged, powerfully acted. Go see it if you're in the Bay Area - it plays from Thursday to Sunday this week.

What's haunting me today, though, is the industry of 'cultural offerings' about Rwanda. Everything from Hotel Rwanda to graphic novels. A part of me sees it as artistic necrophilia - the desire to make art out of horror, after the fact. A part of me wonders why British and American playwrights, filmmakers, aren't turning the same lens on the devastation their own military is perpetrating in Iraq. A part of me is angry at the futility of art - that all we can do is tell the stories, delve into the moral complexities, over the graves.