2008/04/27
"I'm confused. No, wait! Maybe I'm not..."
Ok. Time to face it online: I find people extremely difficult to get along with. And I need them like hell. Which is quite tricky in itself.
2008/04/26
"My mother called me Silver."
I will decapitate anybody who says that bright and rounded days, days filled with satisfaction crowned with cappuccino froth, do not happen. From now on. I really will. Because today has been a tangible evidence of the brightness.
The most important is to hit upon a good idea. An idea based on uselessness or some activity that may be useful, but which on your list of priority tasks to complete in the best case comes somewhere in the middle. It's all about acting against your daily routine. That's why I couldn't ever live in chaos. In a mess you can never notice the weird shapes of distinctive, unusual things. There are some, however, who'd say that it's the chaos of actions that the unique things tend to happen most often.
Today it fell on the "Lighthousekeeping" by Jeanette Winterson.
Initially it was supposed to be an exercise for my English phonetics classes. I wanted to listen to recording of Jeanette reading from her book, then try to repeat after her, and finally – to record my own voice.
But Jeanette seldom works on me without any blissful side effects.
First of all, one more time I became captivated by these first few pages of the novel. This piece seems a perfect trinket, a glass button or casket, made of almost unnoticeable, also perfect elements. Jeanette Winterson is right: we should learn our favorite pieces of books or poetry by heart. Only in this way we can really notice the artistry and clarity of the form, but also capture the meaning for longer that just a little while. It is only then that you begin to understand that an introduction to a story about a girl that "was born part precious metal, part pirate", a piece of text so frugal and hard-hewn, can turn out to be one of the most beautiful phenomena you have experienced in your life.
I listened to Jeanette's voice, I repeated. I tried to imitate her deep stressing, swashbuckling curling up of phrases, painting with the voice. After that, with my muscles tensed like strings and my thumbs pressed against the inner side of hands, I recorded myself. And then I compared. "Up she went, (...) pulling me behind her like an afterthought". It was amazing.
Jeanette – dense and balanced. She sounded clear and articulate, the outlines of her English were sharp and dark so that I could almost see their graphic equivalents. Someone who reads like that is a person at the rostrum, one who makes the air around them a natural destination for their strong and confident words, the cadence of which indicates precisely their meaning.
And then me. Compared to her, very quiet, as if stooping. What while speaking seemed stressed on the verge of exaggerating, on the recording was only a shy peeping out from behind the corner, invariably followed by quick returns into more neutral, safer tones.
A woman who has thousands of jumps behind her and whose acrobatic moves are supple and smooth.
And me, irresolute, funnily young me, whose every move is only an attempt.
Hell, it's an honor to mince after Jeanette Winterson.
The most important is to hit upon a good idea. An idea based on uselessness or some activity that may be useful, but which on your list of priority tasks to complete in the best case comes somewhere in the middle. It's all about acting against your daily routine. That's why I couldn't ever live in chaos. In a mess you can never notice the weird shapes of distinctive, unusual things. There are some, however, who'd say that it's the chaos of actions that the unique things tend to happen most often.
Today it fell on the "Lighthousekeeping" by Jeanette Winterson.
Initially it was supposed to be an exercise for my English phonetics classes. I wanted to listen to recording of Jeanette reading from her book, then try to repeat after her, and finally – to record my own voice.
But Jeanette seldom works on me without any blissful side effects.
First of all, one more time I became captivated by these first few pages of the novel. This piece seems a perfect trinket, a glass button or casket, made of almost unnoticeable, also perfect elements. Jeanette Winterson is right: we should learn our favorite pieces of books or poetry by heart. Only in this way we can really notice the artistry and clarity of the form, but also capture the meaning for longer that just a little while. It is only then that you begin to understand that an introduction to a story about a girl that "was born part precious metal, part pirate", a piece of text so frugal and hard-hewn, can turn out to be one of the most beautiful phenomena you have experienced in your life.
I listened to Jeanette's voice, I repeated. I tried to imitate her deep stressing, swashbuckling curling up of phrases, painting with the voice. After that, with my muscles tensed like strings and my thumbs pressed against the inner side of hands, I recorded myself. And then I compared. "Up she went, (...) pulling me behind her like an afterthought". It was amazing.
Jeanette – dense and balanced. She sounded clear and articulate, the outlines of her English were sharp and dark so that I could almost see their graphic equivalents. Someone who reads like that is a person at the rostrum, one who makes the air around them a natural destination for their strong and confident words, the cadence of which indicates precisely their meaning.
And then me. Compared to her, very quiet, as if stooping. What while speaking seemed stressed on the verge of exaggerating, on the recording was only a shy peeping out from behind the corner, invariably followed by quick returns into more neutral, safer tones.
A woman who has thousands of jumps behind her and whose acrobatic moves are supple and smooth.
And me, irresolute, funnily young me, whose every move is only an attempt.
Hell, it's an honor to mince after Jeanette Winterson.
2008/04/19
big thoughts pissing me off
Annoyance. I'm shivering with cold as another weekend in the countryside is wet. Last night I had one of those dreams in whose deep meaning we would love to believe. My alarm clock didn't go off this morning so I asked my father to give me a lift to the town, where I got too early and froze, waiting for M. Now I'm wrapped up with a sweater and I love the fresh air that gets through the balcony window as the devil loves holy water.
I'm thinking about a real chance to be what we want to be, one that all of us should have. And I don't mean only job, filling your day with activities of some significance, some bright and simple kind of sense, far from a list of duties that so many people are left to make do with, some peaceful joy in participating in the literal part of reality.
Also in psychological and emotional terms the ideal self should (goddamnit) be one of options. We deserve it, if we are burdened with, for example, yearnings.
"Should" is nothing, just like our wishful thinking and hoping for all the best for ourselves and others. But I stick to this "should" as nothing else comes to my mind in response to the stories I hear, full of blockades and barriers created by the lot, circumstances or, most of the times, ourselves.
From which the self-made ones seem most malignant.
I'm thinking about a real chance to be what we want to be, one that all of us should have. And I don't mean only job, filling your day with activities of some significance, some bright and simple kind of sense, far from a list of duties that so many people are left to make do with, some peaceful joy in participating in the literal part of reality.
Also in psychological and emotional terms the ideal self should (goddamnit) be one of options. We deserve it, if we are burdened with, for example, yearnings.
"Should" is nothing, just like our wishful thinking and hoping for all the best for ourselves and others. But I stick to this "should" as nothing else comes to my mind in response to the stories I hear, full of blockades and barriers created by the lot, circumstances or, most of the times, ourselves.
From which the self-made ones seem most malignant.
2008/04/16
April 3: happy Easter
I sat at my computer hiding from preparations for Friday. This time I have a boring paper I'll be giving in German and it's still waiting to be absorbed like a foreign body,painful enough as it's one of those that make even the speaker fall asleep, plus there's an irritating LOT of things of every description that must be packed into my rucksack for the weekend at the parent's place. It's still true that I like the beginnings of the ends, but Thursday evenings are just too much for me. So. Pu-erh, dark chocolate and let's pretend I'm capable of extending the night hours and can literally take my time.
And with this dark chocolate and a teaspot of pu-erh I come back to yesterday's concert of Bregovič. The genious Goran in his white suite, with a choir of probably the most powerful voices of the Balkans, the brass section (with 'brass' meaning 'frivolous' in this case) and the singers from Serbia, including the wonderful, a bit childlike voice mostly known from the "Ederlezi" song – God/Goran (same difference) knows what her name is.
It felt good, very good. I recalled getting to know a year and a half ago Bregovič's "7/8 & 11/8", "La Nuit" and the rest of "Ederlezi". Back then it was hypnotizing, an energy I hadn't known before; some kind of East-European sorrow and haughtiness, bitter-sweet mixture, so different from the Klezmer melodies, so much deeper and lower. I remember it came to me when I was reading "Żelary" by Květa Legátová and slowly falling for her austere and simple stories about the people of mountains, stories that together with Goran's music gave me so strong experiences that I began to think and write in their terms. And never before or after that did writing give me so much pleasure. Nor as good results. Never.
And then it felt good because the tuba, the drums and the tones going down and down, as if I was sliding my index finger on the map of Europe, down to the Southern-East, farther and farther, made me realize that this is the land really near my country. It's not only Andrzej Stasiuk and the Eastern ethno fashion that has been developing in big cities, it's surely something more, this magic negligence and ubiquitous peasantry that determine our kinship with the nations of the East, the West left aside with a considerable lower percentage of blood shares.
Yes, I know all those heaven and earth signs with Gombrowicz in the front indicating that we're actually in the goddamn Between. But perhaps it's the East that concentrates all our complexes, our ignorance and the ever-trouble-making, and that is why we are constantly carried in this direction, maybe it pinches us so much that it has to be always on the surface layer. And all goods we draw from the West is garbage, empty coke bottles and faded plastic bags, which we decorate our blocks of flats with, our slums of all sorts. And while doing this, we're demonstrating how much we really need all those Englands with Frances and Belgiums. This is how Stasiuk described it, when he wrote about the Balkans, but it's easy to see in Poland, in these colorful signboards looking grotesque in the peasant Warszawa, an exaggerated shrine of shit, mess and one big Anyhow. Some of us try to pose, though, with a quite convincing effect, but let's be honest: we build dirty streets on purpose and only feign some enclaves where, spruced up for the time being, we can sit for a while without getting dirty with our daily dirt that we've got used to anyway.
I might be wrong but this is how I sense it, when to Goran's "one, two, three", the whole Sala Kongresowa yells: DO ATAKUUU! Funny, by the way, to hear a Bosnian talking to us in broken English, to what we response in our Polish way, in a building that was once a great gift for Poland from Mother Russia in her Iron Outfit. Still, everyone's happy.
It's not to say that I'd love to pin to my lapel the Polish parochiality, our phobias, oh, so varied, together with the conviction of our exceptionality and wear it like a brooch till I die. On the contrary, throughout 90 percent of the day I'm a straight occidentalist and if I had a chance to follow the roads that Andrzej Stasiuk travels, I'd probably be too frightened to go farther already at the first border crossing.
I just want to confess some kind of irrational and quite perverse pleasure I derive from the Balkan rhythms, the movies by Kusturica and Legátová's or Stasiuk's language invariably weighing down to the Southern-East. Or "Gadjo Dilo" by Gatlif. I guess I'm a lap-dog that would love to spend the whole day in some nice and clean hidden place from which it could observe the Gypsy, Bosnian and Slovakian mongrels.
And late in the night it would feel too much of the sorrow and yearning to fall sleep.
And with this dark chocolate and a teaspot of pu-erh I come back to yesterday's concert of Bregovič. The genious Goran in his white suite, with a choir of probably the most powerful voices of the Balkans, the brass section (with 'brass' meaning 'frivolous' in this case) and the singers from Serbia, including the wonderful, a bit childlike voice mostly known from the "Ederlezi" song – God/Goran (same difference) knows what her name is.
It felt good, very good. I recalled getting to know a year and a half ago Bregovič's "7/8 & 11/8", "La Nuit" and the rest of "Ederlezi". Back then it was hypnotizing, an energy I hadn't known before; some kind of East-European sorrow and haughtiness, bitter-sweet mixture, so different from the Klezmer melodies, so much deeper and lower. I remember it came to me when I was reading "Żelary" by Květa Legátová and slowly falling for her austere and simple stories about the people of mountains, stories that together with Goran's music gave me so strong experiences that I began to think and write in their terms. And never before or after that did writing give me so much pleasure. Nor as good results. Never.
And then it felt good because the tuba, the drums and the tones going down and down, as if I was sliding my index finger on the map of Europe, down to the Southern-East, farther and farther, made me realize that this is the land really near my country. It's not only Andrzej Stasiuk and the Eastern ethno fashion that has been developing in big cities, it's surely something more, this magic negligence and ubiquitous peasantry that determine our kinship with the nations of the East, the West left aside with a considerable lower percentage of blood shares.
Yes, I know all those heaven and earth signs with Gombrowicz in the front indicating that we're actually in the goddamn Between. But perhaps it's the East that concentrates all our complexes, our ignorance and the ever-trouble-making, and that is why we are constantly carried in this direction, maybe it pinches us so much that it has to be always on the surface layer. And all goods we draw from the West is garbage, empty coke bottles and faded plastic bags, which we decorate our blocks of flats with, our slums of all sorts. And while doing this, we're demonstrating how much we really need all those Englands with Frances and Belgiums. This is how Stasiuk described it, when he wrote about the Balkans, but it's easy to see in Poland, in these colorful signboards looking grotesque in the peasant Warszawa, an exaggerated shrine of shit, mess and one big Anyhow. Some of us try to pose, though, with a quite convincing effect, but let's be honest: we build dirty streets on purpose and only feign some enclaves where, spruced up for the time being, we can sit for a while without getting dirty with our daily dirt that we've got used to anyway.
I might be wrong but this is how I sense it, when to Goran's "one, two, three", the whole Sala Kongresowa yells: DO ATAKUUU! Funny, by the way, to hear a Bosnian talking to us in broken English, to what we response in our Polish way, in a building that was once a great gift for Poland from Mother Russia in her Iron Outfit. Still, everyone's happy.
It's not to say that I'd love to pin to my lapel the Polish parochiality, our phobias, oh, so varied, together with the conviction of our exceptionality and wear it like a brooch till I die. On the contrary, throughout 90 percent of the day I'm a straight occidentalist and if I had a chance to follow the roads that Andrzej Stasiuk travels, I'd probably be too frightened to go farther already at the first border crossing.
I just want to confess some kind of irrational and quite perverse pleasure I derive from the Balkan rhythms, the movies by Kusturica and Legátová's or Stasiuk's language invariably weighing down to the Southern-East. Or "Gadjo Dilo" by Gatlif. I guess I'm a lap-dog that would love to spend the whole day in some nice and clean hidden place from which it could observe the Gypsy, Bosnian and Slovakian mongrels.
And late in the night it would feel too much of the sorrow and yearning to fall sleep.
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