Vous les hommes êtes tous les mêmes
Macho mais cheap
Bande de mauviettes infidèles
Si prévisibles, non je ne suis pas certaine, que tu m’mérites
Z’avez d’la chance qu’on vous aime
Dis-moi “Merci”
Rendez-vous, rendez-vous, rendez-vous au prochain règlement
Rendez-vous, rendez-vous, rendez-vous sûrement aux prochaines règles
Cette fois c’était la dernière
Tu peux croire que c’est qu’une crise
Matte une dernière fois mon derrière, il est à côté de mes valises
Tu diras au revoir à ta mère, elle qui t’idéalise
Tu n’vois même pas tout c’que tu perds
Avec une autre ce serait pire
Quoi toi aussi tu veux finir maintenant ?
C’est l’monde à l’envers !
Moi je l’disais pour t’faire réagir seulement… toi t’y pensais
Rendez-vous, rendez-vous, rendez-vous au prochain règlement
Rendez-vous, rendez-vous, rendez-vous sûrement aux prochaines règles
Facile à dire, je suis gnangnan
Et que j’aime trop les bla bla bla
Mais non non non, c’est important
Ce que t’appelles les ragnagnas
Tu sais la vie c’est des enfants
Mais comme toujours c’est pas l’bon moment
Ah oui pour les faire là tu es présent
Mais pour les élever y’aura qu’des absents
Lorsque je n’serais plus belle
Ou du moins au naturel
Arrête je sais que tu mens
Il n’y a que Kate Moss qui est éternelle
Moche ou bête, c’est jamais bon !
Bête ou belle, c’est jamais bon !
Belle ou moi, c’est jamais bon !
Moi ou elle, c’est jamais bon !
Tous les mêmes, tous les mêmes, tous les mêmes et y’en a marre (x3)
Tous les mêmes, tous les mêmes, tous les mêmes
When a friend gave me her newborn baby to hold, my only thought was when it was acceptable to hand it back and go out and have a cigarette. I wasn’t what they nauseatingly call “broody”. So when I met my new partner, having children was not a consideration. We were too busy having sex. Unfortunately, she became pregnant. Condoms are so annoying. She was pretty erratic about taking the pill. How ironic that phrase “family planning” sounds now. Not for us the happy tears when the blue line appeared on the testing kit. Instead, I hoped she would have a termination; previous girlfriends had. She didn’t want to, so I had to make the best of it.
Fast-forward one year and we now have a son and I don’t have a life any more. Previously, existence was about going to the pub, meeting women and working to pay for the above. Now I work to support my partner and child, and it’s awful. Perhaps the cruellest part of it is that if my son wasn’t around, my partner wouldn’t be in the picture either. I would have left her ages ago. We weren’t particularly compatible, except in bed, and now even that has dried up. I was attracted to her because she was young and silly and carefree. Now she’s young and resentful and a nag. We’re still together because I would feel like a bastard if I left her.
They say you look at your parents in a new light when you become a father yourself, and I certainly do. I look at my dad and feel apologetic
What I’m really thinking: the reluctant dad, The Guardian, July 19
Ms. Abramović, did you ever doubt that you were an artist?
When I taught art I was always asked, “How do you know you’re an artist? What makes you an artist?” And to me it’s like breathing. You don’t question if you breathe, you have to breathe. So if you wake up in the morning and you have to realize an idea, and there’s another idea, and another, maybe you are really an artist. It doesn’t make you a great artist, it just makes you an artist. To become a great artist is a huge undertaking! So it’s really important, that instinct. You need the instinct to do it.
How does that instinct manifest itself in your life? How do new ideas to come to you?
I hate studios. A studio is a black hole. I never use a studio to work. It’s very artificial to go to a studio to get new ideas. You have to get new ideas from life, not from the studio. Then you go to the studio to realize the idea. For me the most important spaces to be are the spaces in between – like in airports or lobbies of hotels – when you’re leaving one space and you arrive to another space. Before you start to make new habits you’re really open to destiny, you’re more perceptive, you see things. If you ask someone who has made the same commute to work everyday for 25 years to describe his own door, he probably couldn’t do it. But if you bring the same person to Japan and ask him afterwards to describe something, he could do it because his perception would be open.
Your popularity has grown significantly lately, especially among the general public. Is it strange for this to happen to you so late in your career?
You know, if you were 25 years old and this happened to you and from one day to the next you become respected and you’re in all the newspapers, then it could really get to your head and you could become very narcissistic. In my life I’ve seen so many artists rise and fall like that, but to me it has always been the aim. So having success at 65 doesn’t change anything in my life, but it amuses me a lot that it happened so late. To be in a magazine when you’re 20 is okay, but when you do it when you’re 65 it’s much more fun!
It sounds like you’re enjoying it.
I’m enjoying it very much. Fashion cover stories, I come to the hotel and someone takes care of my clothes, I only carry hand luggage, people think of me – all these little extra bonuses you get. I’m really enjoying every minute of it. But this is just vanity.
Is it only vanity or can fashion have something to do with art?
I have the answer to this! (Pulls out her iPad) This is the photo we did with Mario Testino for V Magazine, and then I did one for Pop Magazine… But then the thing I wanted to show you was from Visionaire Magazine. Riccardo Tisci, the designer for Givenchy, was guest-editing it and he asked me for an artistic collaboration. I said, “Okay Riccardo, do you admit that fashion is the popularization of art, that fashion always takes ideas from art?” And he said yes. So I said, “Okay, then we’ll do a collaboration: I’m the art, you’re the fashion, suck my tit.” So that’s what we did.
Brilliant.
So I call this piece “The Contract” and that’s exactly what it is: a contract between fashion and art. You just have to understand what that means, so when I go into fashion I really go in consciously. Anyway, he was very nervous doing that piece. (Laughs)
It just seems like there’s something about the commercialism of fashion that art should rise above.
Yeah, but what about the commercialism of art? It’s all the same. Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons and all these guys have become commodities. But I’ve never made concessions about my art. I’ve never made anything just to sell it, so my conscious is very clear. I’m a woman and I love to wear clothes and what’s the problem!(Laughs)
Do you worry that the public’s perception of you as a popular figure might change the effect of your art?
They say, “How can she wear the haute couture stuff like that?” and I say, “Why not?” Of course, every positive thing brings something negative, like yin and yang. This kind of conflict comes all the time and you have to always see what your aim as an artist is. What is your duty, what is your truth.
And what is your aim as an artist?
The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit. We can put the human spirit down so easily. Art reflecting society as it is today is not an answer because it’s already shitty, so why put more shit into it? You have to find a way to actually elevate the spirit so that it’s a kind of oxygen to society. To bring concepts and awareness, to ask the right questions. Not always the right answers, but that the right questions being asked.
How does an art piece do that?
Art must have many layers. Art is not just about another beautiful painting that matches your dining room floor. Art has to be disturbing, art has to ask a question, art has to predict the future. It has to do all these kinds of things. An art concept has to have so many layers so that every part of society can take what it needs.
I think your MoMA piece – where you sat in the atrium during the museum’s opening hours for three months – was so successful because it was very accessible, because it had so many layers. How did you come up with that concept?
For the MoMA show we wanted to show only the work where I am literally physically present and this is where we got the title The Artist Is Present. I really wanted to create the kind of situation where seeing the performance art can be a really important experience, but also be understood as a mainstream form of art. Because performance has always been an alternative form of art and I want to make it mainstream. So this is what made it click. This and Lady Gaga.
Lady Gaga?
Lady Gaga became such a big part of this change because she entered the museum to see the show. She didn’t sit with me because the line was too long, but the moment she entered there was a twitter everywhere that she was in the museum. So the kids from 12 and 14 years old to about 18, the public who normally don’t go to the museum, who don’t give a shit about performance art or don’t even know what it is, started coming because of Lady Gaga. And they saw the show and then they started coming back. And that’s how I get a whole new audience.
That show seems like a real turning point for your career.
It really turned into the mainstream public. It’s very interesting. This is the piece that changed my life completely – every possible element, every physical emotion – because three months is like life.
How long has it been a goal of yours to make performance art mainstream?
40 years. I’ve really waited a long time. But my whole purpose in life is to communicate what I’m doing. I see myself as a modern nomad and a soldier at the same time. Being mainstream won’t change me because once I have something to perform, a task, then I’m a soldier. And I’ve always been a soldier.
The Talks, Marina Abramovic, I’ve always been a soldier
Još uvek pamtim kako su se pre nešto manje od dve godine gotovo svi besno bacili na mene povodom mojih 15 pitanja ateistima i 15 pitanja pravoslavnima, objavljenih na ovom istom sajtu. Tada je čitava javnost bila uznemirena presudom članicama grupe Pussy Riot i meni se učinilo važno da svi mi, što preciznije odredimo o čemu mi to zapravo razgovoramo.
A sada, kada je „rusko proleće“ već prešlo u „rusko leto“, kod mene su se ponovo pojavila mnoga pitanja.
Unapred se izvinjavam svima koje ova moja pitanja mogu uvrediti. Čujete li? Izvinjavam se!
Ja sam skroz-naskroz Rus, Rus čije su ime, uzgred, neki dobri ljudi uneli u spisak neprijatelja ruskog naroda. I dužan sam još nešto da vam kažem. Ja ne znam odgovore na niže pobrojana pitanja.
1. Zašto vi za sebe mislite da ste Rus? Zbog čiste krvi ili je u vaš krvotok (kao i u moj) osim ruskih umešano još litar i po finskih, poljskih, turskih i romskih leukocita? Možda zbog jezika? Da li je maternji ruski jezik to što vas čini Rusom? Ili je možda razlog tome nešto drugo?
2. Osećate li vi užitak zbog toga što ste Rus? Raduje li vas makar to što razumete neprevodive ruske reči i izraze kao što su na primer „да нет“ ili „всё ничего“.
3. Šta je dobro kod Rusa? To što nije – znamo: mnogo piju, agresivni su, a naručuju kapućino pre večere. A šta je dobro? Koje su im pozitivne, samo njima svojstvene crte nacionalnog karaktera?
4. Kako izgleda tipičan ruski pejsaž? To jest, ja lako sebi mogu da predstavim čoveka kako posle dugogodišnjeg stranstvovanja, sav raznežen stoji pred ruskim brezama i uzdiše. No hoćete li vi, s patriotskim ushićenjem ljubiti crni kamčatski pesak? Ili vlažnu mahovinu jamalske tundre? Gde su granice rodne grude? Što se Krima tiče, sve je jasno. Krim je zavetna zemlja, „svetinja ruskih mornara“ i sve ostalo u tom stilu. A da je Hruščov Ukrajini poklonio ne Krim već Belgorodsku oblast, da li biste tada bili manje uvređeni? Da, zato vas i pitam: gde su granice svete rodne grude? Ruku na srce: Kunašir, Iturup i Šikotan, da li je to vaša otadžbina? A Aljaska? Da li vam je žao što više nije naša?
5. Koja je naša najveća nacionalna tragedija? To jest, pobeda – ako me dobro razumete?
Naravno, naših tragedija ima dovoljno za deset naroda. No ipak, koja je od tih tragedija ona glavna? Mongolsko-tatarski jaram? Rascep Ruske crkve? Viševekovno ropstvo? Revolucija? Kolektivizacija? GULAG? Raspad Sovjetskog Saveza?
6. Kada je bio naš Zlatni vek? Za vreme Ivana IV? Petra I? Za vreme Aleksandra I? Za vreme vladavine Staljina? Ili je naš Zlatni vek nastupio sad, pri vlasti Putina?
7. Ko je naš najveći heroj? Radion Osljabja? Knez Požarski? Suvorov? Žukov?
8. Ko je naš najveći prorok? Avakum Petrov? Puškin? Tolstoj? Solženjicin?
9. Koja pesma je naša nacionalna uspavanka? (Mene ovo pitanje posebno zanima. Bez pomoći folklornih zbirki, meni na pamet pada samo ona „tamo su svi mužiki zli, kao lancima vezani psi, biju se, tuku se, sekirama seku se“ i na kraju „tamo danima pada kiša, a praznicima isto kiša“. Meni su, na primer, umesto uspavanki pevali pesmu o Ščorsu i onu, „Tamna je noć“.)
10. Koji je naš nacionalni ples? Irci, kada su radosni igraju žigu, Kavkasci – lezginku, Jevreji – frejlehs, a mi – šta?
11. Koja je naša nacionalna igra? Koja je to igra koja će svakog Rusa podsetiti na detinjstvo i koja se više nigde na svetu ne igra? Samo mi nemojte reći – fudbal. Ili, koja je to igra u kojoj smo mi ubedljivo najbolji? (Evropljani bi po staroj navici rekli – šah.)
12. Kako izgleda ruska narodna nošnja? (Nijedan narod nije obavezan da čuva uspomene na svoju nacionalnu nošnju, no mnogi su je ipak sačuvali. Škotlanđani – kilt, Japanci – kimono, Ukrajinci – haljine i košulje ukrašene vezom.) Kako biste se vi obukli za večerinku u ruskom stilu?
13. Koje je naše nacionalno jelo? Ne šči. On to odavno više nije. Nacionalno jelo je to što se jede svaki dan. Italijani – špagete ili makarone, Abhasci – mamaljigu, Kinezi – pirinač, Amerikanci – hamburger. A mi? Da nisu peljmeni? (Za nacionalno piće vas neću pitati. To znamo.)
14. Kakva smrt se kod nas naziva dostojnom?
15. Koji narodi su nama bratski?
Valerij Panjuškin, 15 pitanja Rusima, Snob.ru 01.07.2014.
Prevod s ruskog Haim Moreno, Peščanik.net, 13.07.2014.
doktore što se to događa sa mnom
osjećam se čudno
imam 37 godina i vrijednu diplomu
uznemiruju me noćne polucije
i boli me glava
profesor sam na srednjoj školi
tamo predajem neka lijeva prava
onanija mi je redovna
mjesečna plaća mizerna
što da radim bez akcije čitavi dan
dok sam bio student kružio sam često
čitao praxis polemizirao vješto
anarhizam mi je bio u krvi
svi na barikade
sanjao sam kako vodim proletere mlade
a danas doktore pomozi mi
teško mi je vjeruj mi
što da radim bez akcije čitavi dan
moje društvo za šankom ordinira od 19 do 22
ono niti eksa niti galami
zuri u prazno i truli
šljakeri spavaju po tramvajima
djeca se ljube na ulicama
noći su frajerske i uvijek na smetnji
noći su samo na smetnji
ja sada idem iz ovih stopa
ja sada idem iz ovih stopa
da se bacim ravno u savu
šezdeset
osam šezdeset
vratit će se opet
osam šezdeset
šljakeri spavaju po tramvajima
djeca se ljube na ulicama
noći su frajerske i uvijek na smetnji
noći su samo na smetnji
ja sada idem iz ovih stopa
ja sada idem iz ovih stopa
da se bacim ravno u savu
šezdeset
osam šezdeset
vratit će se opet
osam šezdeset
Kako vreme prolazi sve sam sigurniji da je u Srbiji propaganda bede, čemera nasilnih smrti zapravo državna politika. Srpska politika tradicionalno funkcioniše na raspirivanju masovnog samosažaljenja i posledičnih osvetničkih raspoloženja. Dok je bilo rane i džebane, indukovane frustracije su se praznile po ex-yu ratištima. Kada je municije nestalo, agresija se okrenula prema unutra. Hodajući ulicama srpskih gradova (po selima je nešto bolje, ali ne bitno) malo senzitivniji čovek ima utisak da se kreće samom ivicom katastrofe. To uopšte nije paranoja.
Daleko od toga. Svak svakoga gleda ispod oka i svak je u svakom momentu spreman na agresiju. Nema dana da neki putnik GSB-a ne umlati vozača ili kontrolora ili da kontrolori i vozači ne umlate nekog putnika. Nasilje u školama – počev od verbalnog, zaključno sa masovnim tučama, silovanjima devojčica i ubistvima – poprima razmere epidemije. Ovdašnjim političarima (koje slično Novostima takođe smatram teroristima) sve je to ravno do Kosova. Koje je jedino važno. Kosovo je pitanje svih pitanja, tako je to formulisao Koštunica, verovatno najveći debil u novijoj istoriji sveta koji se dokopao nekakvog uticaja i vlasti. Što možda i nije čudno za jedan narod koji masovno oplakuje prizor sa sto godina starog ulja na platnu.
Jul je mesec, a u kalendaru poštene inteligencije po univerzitetima ovo je doba prijemnih ispita na fakultete. I koliko god se ushićenost ili strast zbog generacije novog plastelina za akademsko oblikovanje izgubila u prevodu, još uvek ima neke romantične magije u tome. Uzgred, generacija duha i telesa koja ove godine upisuju fakultete rodila se 1995. godine. Smeštajući stvari u perspektivu: Nirvanin “Nevermind”, taj simbol studentske muzike, izašao je četiri godine pre nego što se generacija koja danas upisuje fakultet rodila.
Ej, rodila! Ili ovako: četiri godine nakon što je sa zemljom sravnjen Vukovar, ovi brucoši su bili (iz)bačeni u svet iz materice, raspaljeni po zadnjici, proplakavši prvi put. I uprkos toj neshvatljivo svežoj godini proizvodnje, u oktobru će ih čekati seminarski radovi, kolokvijumi i ispiti, sa više ili manje suza kao nuspojavom. Dakle, oni znaju i sećaju se nekih sasvim drugih stvari od raznih staraca (i svih koji se tako osećaju) sa antiomladinskim sentimentom. Što je sve normalno i prirodno poput vrcanog meda, mahovine ili herpesa.
Nažalost, ti isti ljudi koji danas odabiraju fakultet u Srbiji naterani su na suočavanje sa sledećim priprostim pitanjem: gde ću se posle toga zaposliti? Ovo je posebno hronično za potencijalne odabirače Filozofskog fakulteta, što je firma u kojoj ovaj kolumnista radi. Prema interpretacijama naprasno napaljenih na ceo taj kapitalizam u primitivnom “otmi i zbriši” obliku, verovatno bi trebalo ugasiti i na đubrište istorije proterati studiranje i izučavanje tih nastranih disciplina poput jezika, književnosti, pedagogije, sociologije ili filozofije. Po diktatu (n)ovih jahača “kapitalipse”, neisplativo je sve znanje što u pratećem udžbeniku ima fusnotu. Ili sve ono što neće učiniti da nekakav poslodavac ili mitski investitor inostrane proizvodnje razvije modricu od pada na stražnjicu, te facijalis od zinutosti vilice kad mu se pojavimo na razgovoru za posao. Jer doba je Vikipedije i Google Translate-a, dok se znanja o književnosti, istoriji čovečanstva, društvenim vezama i odnosima, esenciji i egzistenciji, bitku i biću – a o bićevnosti posebno – ne mažu na hleb. Ali, zar je taj hlebni namaz sve što nas u životu zanima?
Pitanje “Gde ću se posle zaposliti?” je pogrešno i promašeno koliko i uskogrudo i kratkovido. Pravo pitanje pred odabirom fakulteta, dakle, profesionalnih nutkača znanja po netržišnim cenama, mora da glasi: šta želim da naučim? U čemu želim da se usavršim? Šta želim da saznam tokom kratkog vremena u ovoj dolini suza koju nazivaju životom? I ovo nije nimalo naivan, idealistički ili staromodni stav, već nešto čvrsto, tvrdo i nedvosmisleno poput erekcije tinejdžera pred ženskom svlačionicom. Naime, sadržaj našeg uma ili mozga u izuzetno značajnoj meri čini nas same. Noseve, laktove, ključne kosti i kurje oči, manje-više, imaju svi. Naše znanje je ono koje nas čini posebnim, različitim i originalnim. Zato je pitanje “Šta želim da naučim?” istovremeno i (odgovor na) pitanje “Šta želim da budem?”. Šta želim da jesam? A poslova će biti ili ih neće biti – tržište rada je promenljivo poput stavova o Evropi Aleksandra Vučića ili tarifa bordela u ratnom stanju. Ali ono čime ćemo ispuniti karfiolski sadržaj naše lobanje ostaje trajno. Zato je nemoguće preceniti značaj učenja i znanja.
Međutim, “Uči, sine” je rečenica od koje se pod teretom horor sećanja na detinjstvo ispunjeno roditeljskim pritiscima kostreše dlačice svake odrasle osobe koja drži do sebe i nekakve slobode. Svake, jer “sine” su i dečaci i devojčice, naravno. Većina ljudi je jedva čekala da završi škole i započne sladak život ispunjen burekom ujutru, picom uveče, te državnim poslom i televizijskim programom između. Dok aktuelni studenti hronično nemaju vremena za tu gnjavažu nazvanu učenjem kad treba otkrivati granice podnošljivosti alkohola. Ili pak širiti noge umesto širenja korica fakultetskog udžbenika jer je to novi kul. “Učiti, učiti i samo učiti” bila je Lenjinova motivaciona fraza u eri ljudi drugačijeg kova i pre jeftinih trabunjarija za samopomoć. Pa ipak, i Lenjin je umro od sifilisa, a dotični se baš i ne dobija u čitaonici. Slično neubedljivo deluju i popujući roditelji jer, umesto pred nekakvom knjigom, očevi su isuviše popodneva proveli pred fudbalskom utakmicom, a majke pred sapunicom najnovijeg izvoznika popularnog treša. Tako je “uči, sine” bila fraza izmišljena da bismo već jednom pomerili guzicu od televizora ili računara, dobili bolju ocenu, i time sebi obezbedili egzistenciju mimo ribanja alufelni u autoperionici. Drugim rečima, “uči, i postaćeš bolji čovek” obično nije bila sublimirana filozofska mudrost iskustva generacija u kratkoj zen fazi, već jedan slabo provereni i još slabije praktikovani recept za postajanje koliko-toliko pristojnim ljudskim bićem pred komšilukom. Ili bar pripadnikom srednje klase. Ali, znate šta? Svi oni su bili u pravu. Učenje jeste najbolji način da postanemo bolji ljudi.
Dakle, čak iako se ovakva izjava roditelju omakla u reklamnoj pauzi tokom Lige šampiona, odnosno dok se meša čušpajz od tikvica da ne zagori, ona naprosto jeste i temeljna, duboka filozofska mudrost. O kojoj se nešto više i ozbiljnije saznaje na, neverovatno, fakultetu kojem se kliče Filozofski. Jer još je Sokrat, dok je u zagrljaju mlađanih dečaka tražio izlaz od epski džangrizave žene, izrekao onu često (i traljavo) citiranu – da zna da ništa ne zna. Koja je nešto blistavo sjajno, a ne izgovor da odustanemo od cele te gužve nazvane znanjem. Sokratovska suština je u sledećem: ako pođemo od stava da blage veze sa životom nemamo, to nam otvara gomilu prostora da naučimo neke nove stvari. I možda ćemo tada zagrejati stolicu i taj prokleti život završiti kao bistrija, moralnija i nekako zaokruženija osoba.
Pre nego što odmahnemo rukom pred još jednom dosadnom moralističkom lekcijom, zamislimo se i ukapirajmo da živimo u dobu u kojem nam (više) ne trebaju ni debeli cvikeri ni odsustvo socijalnog života ako želimo da saznamo nešto. Ponekad je potrebna samo dobra volja, a kvalitetni dokumentarci i interneti će učiniti ostalo. U sticanju znanja mora da se radi o nama samima i o našim željama. Pri čemu danas, formalno ili neformalno, možemo naučiti kako da kreativno pišemo, u čemu je bila kvaka sa tim Prvim svetskim ratom, zašto više psujemo dok vozimo, zašto je ljudima neprijatno u liftu, da li se zaista suprotnosti privlače, od čega je sačinjen kosmos, zašto postoji društvo, šta je arhe, a šta apsolut, šta je pisac hteo da kaže i šta je smisao života. Ili možemo da naučimo kako se prave aplikacije za mobilne telefone – šta god nas pali. I, zato, hajde, idimo i učimo stvari. Jer šta nam drugo preostaje u ovom kratkom vremenu na Zemlji osim da naše lobanje i njihove neobično velike mozgove ispunimo sadržajem? Ili da ih barem ne ulenjimo i ne pojeftinimo. To znanje je sve što će nam na kraju dana zaista ostati, i što nam niko ne može oduzeti. Umesto svih ostalih motivacionih budalaština iz priručnika za samopomoć, učenjem zaista postajemo bolje osobe prema drugima i prema svom odrazu u ogledalu. Ta stvar je zagarantovana, neprobojna i nepromočiva. I to je, naprosto, zakon.
Uprkos lošim namerama, ovaj zakon ne mogu promeniti ni dešavanja oko traljavog doktorata jednog ministra i nepostojećeg doktorata jednog “privatnog” rektora. Kao ni slučajevi nikad diplomiranih Romana Abramoviča, Lejdi Gage, Marka Cukerberga ili bilo kog drugog “malog koji nije učio škole, a vidi ga sad” koji se spremno prepričavaju. Drugim rečima, čak i ako je u trenutnom sociokulturnom miljeu znanje izgubilo na ceni, zar su nam toliko potrebni poslodavci i drugi tapšači po ramenu i džepu da bi nas uverili u to da je znati neke stvari o sebi i kosmosu – dobra stvar? Samo u zemljama skorojevićkog kapitalizma tržište je arbitar znanja. I zato, jednom za svagda: fakultetska diploma ne služi dobijanju posla, već dobijanju znanja. Život je jedan, i nema ga posle smrti. Čak i ekipa koja veruje u onaj zagrobni ne zamišlja nekakve škole u njemu. “Šta mogu da znam?” je temeljno pitanje tog ljudskog života od Kanta naovamo. Zapitajmo se šta ćemo znati, a ne samo gde ćemo raditi, stotinu mu toplih obroka. Radili nešto ili jok, znanje je put da spoznamo sebe. Ima li vrednijeg, isplativijeg i značajnijeg cilja od toga?
“I went to Graceland once,” Nick Cave said. “The rest of the band went in, but I stayed out on the curb, smoking cigarettes and feeling sorry for myself. Those last Elvis performances — the ones for television, when he was already sick — I must have watched those clips a hundred times. They’re like crucifixions.” He paused for a moment. “I couldn’t bring myself to go inside.”
It was a bright afternoon in early February, and Cave was in a boutique in Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain district, buying souvenirs for his sons. “Do you have these in kids’ sizes?” he asked, holding up a belt with the word “kleptomaniac” engraved across its buckle. The saleswoman was making a serious effort not to seem star-struck, but Cave’s attention was elsewhere. “These might work,” he said in his travel-worn Australian accent, as he squinted fiercely at a pair of fuzzy white abominable snowmen. “My kids are at that lovely age where they’re just figuring out what’s good in music,” he said. “They’re just grabbing stuff, on Spotify and all that, and occasionally they’ll find something that’s really mind-blowing. But sometimes I hear what they’re playing, and I just want to cut my wrists.”
‘As far as work goes, I’m something of a megalomaniac. But a megalomaniac with extremely low self-esteem.’
Cave, perhaps best known as the frontman for the seminal postpunk groups Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, was in Germany to promote “20,000 Days on Earth,” a film about his life, which was showing at the Berlin film festival. At 56, Cave can claim at least half a dozen vocations: songwriter and performer with the Bad Seeds and their garage-rock offshoot, Grinderman; screenwriter of the acclaimed (and extremely gory) movies “Proposition” and “Lawless”; novelist; film-score composer; lecturer; script doctor; and on certain (perhaps thankfully) rare occasions, even actor. His books are best sellers; his film scores have won prizes; musicians as far-flung as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and St. Vincent cite him as an influence; and the Bad Seeds’ most recent album, “Push the Sky Away,” has proved to be one of the most commercially successful of the band’s career, reaching No. 1 on the UK Independent album chart.
“As far as work goes, I’m something of a megalomaniac,” Cave told me later that day. “But a megalomaniac with extremely low self-esteem.” We were sitting in the restaurant of his hotel in Berlin Mitte, trying to have a conversation in the face of frequent interruptions from festival staff, acquaintances and a seemingly never-ending stream of admirers. Tall, gaunt and slightly ungainly, in his snakeskin shoes, chunky rings and rakishly well-tailored suits, Cave resembles nothing so much as a postmillennial hybrid of bookie and peer of the realm. His long, backswept hair, dyed black since the age of 16, frames a face that has been described both as “angelic” and “hideous to the eye,” the latter by Cave himself, in song. It’s the kind of look only a rock star could get away with, especially at his age, but on Cave it seems as dignified — as inexplicably appropriate — as those rhinestone-studded jumpsuits did on Elvis in his later years. Cave’s public persona has been called “theatrical,” but a more precise term might be cinematic. Like many self-mythologizers, charismatics and plain old eccentrics, he has always appeared to be performing in a movie only he himself could see.
The closest the rest of us may come to seeing that movie may well be “20,000 Days on Earth.” Cave co-wrote the film with its directors, the artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, with whom he has collaborated on a number of smaller projects — music videos and short films. It’s unorthodox, to put it mildly, for the subject of a documentary to be given a screenwriting credit, but very little about “20,000 Days” could be described as orthodox. As its title suggests, the film is an investigation into the passage of time, into memory and aging and artistic survival, as dramatized by a single imaginary day in the life of its subject, the musician Nick Cave. While working on a song, Cave began to play with the idea of measuring his life in days instead of years, and Forsyth and Pollard, who were documenting the band as they recorded “Push the Sky Away,” saw potential for a film. When I asked Cave what drew him to the notion of Day 20,000, he regarded me dryly. “ ‘Fifty-four Years and Nine Months on Earth’ didn’t have quite the same ring to it, somehow.”
A number of recent documentaries have explored the nebulous boundary between reportage and fiction, but in “20,000 Days,” Pollard and Forsyth try to dispense with that boundary altogether. From the first frame to the last, the film was plotted and set-dressed and professionally lit and has all the glitter of a big-budget feature; but, while a series of voice-overs by Cave were scripted, every on-screen interaction — from a visit to a therapist to a ride in his Jaguar with Kylie Minogue — was spontaneous and unrehearsed. In the case of figures from Cave’s past with whom he had fallen out of contact (like the founding Bad Seeds guitarist Blixa Bargeld, who left the group abruptly more than 10 years ago), the co-directors went even further: No conversation about the scene was allowed until the camera was rolling.
“Nick would have never gone for a straightforward rock-doc,” Forsyth told me in Berlin. “We decided to go in a direction that combined reality with fantasy as seamlessly as possible — which, if you think about it, isn’t too far from the transaction between a rock star and his fans. People want desperately to enter the world Nick creates in his songs. You can look around when the Bad Seeds are playing and see precisely which version of Nick — the junkie, the outlaw, the lover — each person in the crowd wants to be.”
The film had its premiere at Sundance in January (it won the world documentary awards for best directing and best editing) and will be released nationally in September, following preview screenings this summer that coincide with Cave’s North American tour. That such an idiosyncratic movie would capture not just the imagination of the festival crowd but also of a U.S. distributor is testament, contrary to what even the most ardent fan in his gutter-punk glory days could have foreseen, to the remarkably broad appeal that his elegant, lecherous, literate, unapologetically romantic persona has come to have in recent decades.
Cave and the singer Kylie Minogue in the film “20,000 Days on Earth.” CreditDrafthouse Films
Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries — many of whom have gradually faded from view (Bauhaus, the Pop Group) or been relegated to the purgatory of back-catalog tours (the Sisters of Mercy, the Cure) — Cave has managed to invent a self-contained, coherent fictional world that both he and his followers can enter at will; a kind of exercise in collaborative mythmaking that seems to deepen with each variation on the theme. “If Nick Cave decided to start a cult,” I heard one woman say after the Berlin screening, “I’d be the first to join.”
“Nothing happened in my childhood — no trauma or anything,” Cave said, when I asked after the origins of his sensibility. “I just had a genetic disposition toward things that were horrible.”
Nicholas Edward Cave was born on Sept. 22, 1957, in Warracknabeal, Victoria (population now 2,745), northwest of Melbourne. His mother and father, Dawn and Colin Cave — the librarian and English teacher of the high school he would eventually attend — instilled a reverence for the arts in their children from an early age. “My father read me the first chapter of ‘Lolita’ when I turned 12,” Cave told me. “Something happened to him when he read it aloud. He became a different man. He became elevated. I felt like I was being initiated into this secret world: the world of sex and adulthood and art. At the same time, though, I was only a kid, and I couldn’t always meet his expectations. He’d catch me reading some nasty little thriller, and he’d rip it out of my hands and tell me: ‘You want a bleeding body count? Read “Titus Andronicus”!’ ”
In spite of (or perhaps because of) his parents’ presence both at home and at school, Cave lasted barely a year at Wangaratta High before being expelled (“for general disruption,” as he described it to me.) His mother maintains that he was pulled out before he could be kicked out, but either way, his departure was of little consequence to him. He had decided that he was going to be a painter. “I had huge artistic ambitions as a kid,” he told me. “I liked a lot of the tortured, gothic, religious stuff — Matthias Grünewald and Stefan Lochner and the Spaniards — and I wanted to make paintings with that kind of power. There was something about just being in a room by yourself and making art that excited me. It’s exciting to me still, this weird medium of applying paint to a canvas and the restrictions of a square, two-dimensional frame.” He paused. “It’s not unlike the restrictions of a song, in a way.”
Cave ended up at a boarding school in Melbourne, where he fell in with a crew of degenerates in training who had more or less taken over the school’s art department, and they soon founded a band, the Boys Next Door. The songs that Cave wrote with Mick Harvey, the band’s stoic, clean-cut guitarist, formed the beginning of a collaboration that would last from 1974 to well past the end of the millennium. The Boys Next Door soon won a small but rabid following, in part by carrying audience confrontation to extremes that not even their primary points of reference — the Stooges and the New York Dolls — saw fit to explore. “The only places that would have us were beer barns and [military] league clubs,” Cave told me, smiling nostalgically. A typical show might include brawls with the audience, instruments being played in incompatible time signatures and passed-out band members, to say nothing of the lyrics themselves, which one critic described as “a mixture of paranoia, demented self-parody and neurotic, inebriated passion.” By the time the band rechristened itself the Birthday Party, in 1978, the number of clubs they were banned from outnumbered those that would have them, and their cult status in Australia was assured.
.
Cave’s life had begun to embody the degradation and excess that the Birthday Party celebrated in its songs. His casual use of heroin and speed grew into a full-blown dependency, and he was acquiring an estimable record of arrests. On Oct. 11, 1978, when Cave was being held in a Melbourne police station on charges of vandalism and theft, the police informed Cave and his mother, who came to post bail, that his father had just been killed in a car accident. This conjunction of events is one he still has difficulty discussing. One of the most revealing scenes in “20,000 Days” comes during Cave’s morning therapy session, in which the therapist, Dr. Darian Leader, tries to explore the subject of Colin Cave’s death. “I was 19,” Cave begins, speaking with obvious effort, “and that really just came out of the blue. That was something that kind of rocked the whole family.” He then reverts to a tense and stony silence. Leader finally says, “Shall we stop there?”
Cave, first row, fourth from left, in a grammar-school class photo. CreditPhotograph from the Cave family
In the winter of 1980, the Birthday Party moved to London, where it released two brilliant albums, “Prayers on Fire” and “Junkyard.” Cave, who at first didn’t care much for London — perhaps because he spent much of his time there in a Maida Vale squat, going through periodic heroin withdrawal — felt himself drawn to Berlin, where rent was cheap, amphetamines were plentiful and the band had played some memorable shows. “We found a genuine artistic community in Berlin,” Cave told me. “Filmmakers, musicians, painters. . . . There was a level of inclusion that we never had in London.”
In Berlin, Cave became a regular at a Kreuzberg bar called Risiko, whose sometime bartender, Blixa Bargeld, fronted the industrial-music pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings), whose militant anti-commercialism Cave admired. Bargeld contributed his radical sensibility to the final Birthday Party recording sessions (“He’s always approached the guitar with reticence and loathing,” Cave told me appreciatively) and stuck with Cave in the wake of the band’s dissolution, as did Mick Harvey.
In September 1983, Cave traveled to Garden Studios in London to record for the first time under his own name. The album that resulted, “From Her to Eternity,” was even less classifiable than the music Cave made with the Birthday Party or the Boys Next Door: an echoing, loose-limbed collection of seven ominous, stomping, meandering dirges that managed to transmit all of punk’s anger and abhorrence while avoiding most of the clichés of an already stultifying genre. The album established Cave and the Bad Seeds, as his crew of collaborators was now called, virtually overnight. The New Musical Express, probably Britain’s most influential music magazine, began its review with: “Nick Cave’s ‘From Her to Eternity’ is one of the greatest rock albums ever made.”
Cave now lives in Brighton, England, with his wife and twin 14-year-old sons, in a residence that would have seemed, for a number of reasons, inconceivable to the scarecrow-haired punk he was back in Berlin. When I met him this winter, he was renting a modest office a short walk from his house, keeping regular office hours like a bona fide salaryman. (“I used to go six days a week, till I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Cave said with a grin. “Now I go Sundays as well.”)
.
Apart from a small upright piano off to one side, a microphone stand and a haphazard-looking collection of photos and pages torn from magazines pinned to the wall, the room itself could have passed for the office of a determinedly anachronistic clerk: a good-size desk, a manual typewriter and a well-used bottle of whiteout. His work ethic has long been legendary. While writing one of his best-known songs, “Red Right Hand,” from the 1994 album “Let Love In,” Cave filled an entire notebook with descriptions of the imaginary town the song was set in, including maps and sketches of prominent buildings, virtually none of which made it into the lyrics. “It’s good to have a place to go and just write,” Cave told me in Brighton. “I haven’t always had that luxury.”
It was in Berlin that Cave undertook the first of the extramusical forays that would eventually come to define him as the renaissance man of the “postpunk” generation: a grotesque, blood-spattered, Faulkner-saturated novel titled “And the Ass Saw the Angel.” Set in the imaginary valley of Ukulore in some fever-dream iteration of the American South, the novel chronicles the nightmarish sufferings and stomach-churning appetites of Euchrid Eucrow, an inbred and mentally ill mute, whose fixation on the local prostitute, Cosey Mo, and Beth, her saintly, otherworldly daughter, does not, to put it mildly, turn out well. The novel obsessed Cave completely, often at the expense of more lucrative work, and took him three years of almost daily effort to finish.
‘You can look around when the Bad Seeds are playing and see precisely which version of Nick — the junkie, the outlaw, the lover — each person in the crowd wants to be.’
“It definitely had something to do with my father, that book,” Cave told me in Berlin. “He was an aspiring writer himself as a young man, and literature was a matter of life or death to him. My mother recently showed me a letter he wrote her, about this theater piece he was directing, and it’s written with such intensity — his frustrations with the actors and with the budget and so on. There’s this mania and enthusiasm for the work that’s very beautiful to me. Then, at the end, you find out he’s talking about a school play. So, yeah, the book may have felt on some level like unfinished business. But it took over my life in a way that wasn’t healthy, for me or the people around me. And as soon as I’d finished it, I left Berlin.”
Cave spent the next three years in São Paulo, Brazil, where he moved after meeting the fashion stylist Viviane Carneiro. Shortly after the birth of their son, Luke, Cave returned to London with his family and began to work on a new album, comprising songs about violent death. The album — titled, appropriately enough, “Murder Ballads” — would prove a pivotal one in Cave’s career, furnishing him with his first mainstream radio hit (“Where the Wild Roses Grow,” featuring Kylie Minogue), and propelling him, by way of a duet with the British alt-rock star P. J. Harvey, into a relationship with which he is associated to this day, not least because it resulted, in 1997, in what many regard as his masterpiece: “The Boatman’s Call.”
“People often compare ‘Boatman’s Call’ with ‘Blood on the Tracks,’ ” Cave told me during one of our conversations in Brighton, referring to Bob Dylan’s breakup-themed magnum opus. “Too much for my liking, I have to say. I’ve got no idea what led Dylan to make that album, but in my case, there was a coming together of a particular bunch of unfortunate events — brokenhearted moments but epiphanies, as well — that hit me all at once and became what the record was about.” He smiled. “Not a happy time, particularly. At least I got some songs out of it.”
The 12 tracks on “The Boatman’s Call” chronicle both the dissolution of Cave’s relationship with Carneiro and the arc of his brief but passionate love affair with Harvey, which played out very much in public: The couple’s first kiss took place on camera, during the filming of their “Murder Ballads” duet, “Henry Lee.” The album’s spare, candid songs allowed a listener, perhaps for the first time, to guess at the human being behind Cave’s outsize persona and freed him from the restrictions of the “Old Testament by way of Southern gothic” genre that he, with a good deal of help from Mick Harvey, Bargeld and the rest of the Bad Seeds, had invented.
Since that high-water mark, Cave has released seven studio albums, appeared in three films, written two produced screenplays and published a second novel, “The Death of Bunny Munro”; but possibly the two most pivotal events in that time stand apart from his creative life. Shortly after the release of “The Boatman’s Call,” Cave met the British model Susie Bick, to whom he has now been married for a decade and a half, and he soon kicked heroin for good after more than 20 years of addiction. As Cave himself puts it, in a recording featured near the end of “20,000 Days”: “The first time I saw Susie was at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. And when she came walking in, all the things that I have obsessed over for all the years, pictures of movie stars, Jenny Agutter in the billabong, Anita Ekberg in the fountain . . . Miss World competitions, Marilyn Monroe and Jennifer Jones and Bo Derek . . . Bolshoi ballerinas and Russian gymnasts . . . the young girls at the Wangaratta pool lying on the hot concrete, all the stuff I had heard and seen and read . . . all the continuing never-ending drip-feed of erotic data . . . came together at that moment, in one great big crash bang, and I was lost to her. And that was that.”
Cave’s life in Brighton is that of a conventional family man, with certain noteworthy exceptions. On a recent afternoon, we were having lunch in a pub called the Ginger Dog with Warren Ellis — the Bad Seeds’ wild-bearded multi-instrumentalist and Cave’s closest collaborator for more than a decade — when a tweedy-looking man in his 60s approached us. “Excuse me, but are you Nick Cave?” he asked bashfully. “I’ve just moved to Brighton, you see, and I do bronze heads.”
Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds, performing in West Berlin in 1984.
“Heads?” Cave said matter of factly, as though this sort of thing happened on a regular basis. “I’ve been looking to get a life-size portrait done, on horseback. You couldn’t do that?
The man stammered a bit, but eventually responded in the positive.
“In gold, wasn’t it?” Ellis added.
“That’s right,” Cave said, taking the man’s card politely. “A mounted equestrian portrait, in gold. Would that be in your line?”
After assuring the artist, who looked pleased, but bewildered, that he would visit his website, Cave took up the conversation where we left off. I had asked why he thought his music, which can be as graphic as the most brutal death metal or gangsta rap, has always found, in marked contrast to, say, death metal, such a wide and passionate following among women.
“I have a female audience in my mind when I write,” he said. “That being said” — he smiled wryly at Ellis — “I’m often flabbergasted by what some women find sexy in my music.”
“In a lot of what Nick writes, there’s a woman’s voice in there,” Ellis said. “Nick’s a writer, you know? He takes things like voice and point of view seriously.”
“Not all women like it,” Cave added. “I’ve been called all sorts of things. But even the material that’s the most. . . . ” He cast about for the word. “The most forceful sexually, it’s always riddled with anxiety. If my songs came off as just a male thing, I wouldn’t have any interest in that whatsoever.”
Cave and Ellis had been up until the wee hours in a nearby studio, trying out ideas for the Bad Seeds’ next album, and the talk turned to a new songwriting method that the band developed over the course of their most recent recordings, a topic that made them both seem, in that instant, like two boys who had just started their first band.
“What we do is we record nonstop,” said Cave, with a sudden animation that surprised me. “We go in in the morning, and we just sit there for seven or eight hours with headphones on and just play anything, no matter how awful. The songs are completely abstract when we start; no one even knows what key we’re in — ”
“Well, I know,” Ellis said amiably.
“ — and there’s something going on between the musicians, about discovering something, that can be impossible to repeat. It couldn’t be more different from the way I wrote for some of my earlier albums, like ‘The Boatman’s Call’ or ‘No More Shall We Part.’ It’s more the way we did it back at the beginning, making the first Bad Seeds record with Blixa and Barry” — Adamson, bassist for the group — “and Mick.”
“ ‘Push the Sky Away’ feels like a first record, in a way,” Ellis said. “It felt that way to make it.”
“Now comes the dreaded follow-up,” Cave added, not looking as though he was dreading it at all.
Exactly 24 hours after our lunch at the Ginger Dog, Cave was reclining in a swivel chair in the gleaming, walnut-paneled control room of AIR Studios in the discreetly upscale Hampstead neighborhood, listening to the ever-voluble Ellis joking and cajoling an 18-piece orchestra into playing the score the two of them wrote for the film “Loin des Hommes” (a French production starring Viggo Mortensen) with just an iota more bite. “I love what the celli are doing!” Ellis said at one point, which caused Cave to arch an eyebrow. “Is that how you say it?” he murmured. “I’d always thought it was cellos.” This was practically all he said for the next hour.
Over and over, on two large flat-screen monitors suspended from the mixing-room ceiling, Mortensen and his co-star, the French-Algerian actor Reda Kateb, walked to the crest of a hill, exchanged a few words, then made their way down a winding stone path, to the fervent accompaniment of the musicians on the far side of the glass. While Ellis talked a blue streak, Cave maintained his remove. He’d brought a heavily annotated paperback with him: a copy of a novel he was considering adapting into a screenplay for Forsyth and Pollard. Beside it on the table, in no discernible order, lay an oversize copy of the score (“Loin des Hommes, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis”), a CD of “The Boatman’s Call” and a page of mysterious notes that I allowed myself to sneak a glance at. They were attenuated and cryptic and either had to do with the film adaptation, ideas for the next album, a screenplay he was currently script-doctoring or an exegesis of Dante’s “Inferno.” Based on what I knew of Cave, it might easily have been all of the above.
As “20,000 Days On Earth” nears its end, Cave slouches happily on the couch in front of the TV, his sons on either side of him, watching a movie. The viewer can’t see what the Cave clan is watching —— judging by the dialogue, it could be Brian De Palma’s “Scarface,” but it isn’t hard to imagine Cave screening “The Proposition” or “Lawless” for his boys. (“We used to have something called inappropriate-film night,” Cave told me earlier. “I’d sit my boys down and show them something no sane father would ever show his young sons — ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ something that scared the hell out of them — and it was a wonderful bonding moment. Now there’s no other kind of film night at all.”) It’s an oddly affecting scene, and watching it, I couldn’t help thinking back to something Cave said at our first meeting, describing his emotions when his own father read to him from “Lolita”: “I was 12 years old at the time, so I didn’t understand half of what I was hearing. ‘Fire of my loins’? What on earth did that mean? And some of it made me very uneasy. But more than anything else, the words he was reading excited me. I knew nothing would ever be the same.”
I am the real Nick Cave, by John Wray, NYtimes.com
Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
You should’ve seen her face. It was the exact same look my father gave me when I told him I wanted to be a ventriloquist
I’m 33 years old; I haven’t outgrown the problems of puberty, I’m already facing the problems of old age. I completely skipped healthy adulthood. I went from having orgasms immediately, to taking forever. You could do your taxes in the time it takes me to have an orgasm. I never had a normal … medium orgasm
I have a bad feeling that whenever a lesbian looks at me they think “That’s why I’m not a heterosexual”.
Borrowing money from a friend is like having sex. It just completely changes the relationship.
Yeah, I’m a great quitter. It’s one of the few things I do well. I come from a long line of quitters. My father was a quitter, my grandfather was a quitter… I was raised to give up.
Jerry Seinfeld & George Constanza
The first episode of Seinfeld aired 25 years ago today. Nine years and 180 episodes later, a record-breaking 76 million people tuned in to watch George, Jerry, Elaine and Kramer’s final show.
I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is
Or who commenced it
I’m against it!
Your proposition may be good
But let’s have one thing understood
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
And even when you’ve changed it
Or condensed it
I’m against it!
I’m opposed to it
On general principles
I’m opposed to it!
(He’s opposed to it)
(In fact, he says he’s opposed to it!)
For months before my son was born
I used to yell from night to morn
“Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
And I’ve kept yelling
Since I first commenced it
“I’m against it!”
Song lyrics to Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, From the Marx Bros. film Horse Feathers (1932), as sung byGroucho Marx, (Harry Ruby / Bert Kalmar)
…Rodoljub je Šabić rekao da je tradicionalno iznenadjeni & uvredjeni Vučić “kritike OEBS-a shvatio lično, a to je pogrešno”. Bezbeli da je pogrešno – mada, opet, i nije… – ali pitam ja, ne Šabića nego sve nas: a kad je to ikad pa bilo da Vučić Aleksandar, otkad se blagoizvoleo ukazati u našim životima, nije nešto glede politike “shvatio lično”? Sasvim lično i sasvim tragično? Kad se to desilo, kog tačno dana u mesecu limburgu, kad mušmule lete na jug? Otkad znam za njega, gledam to nasmrt uvređeno lice Čoveka Koji Trpi Nepravdu, zli protivnici ga uvek kleveću i sapliću, u televizijskim brbljaonicama uvek kuka kako mu ciljano ne dadu da dođe do reči, i sve već u tom “muka duhu” stilu uvređene i niskošću drugih uflekane Vertikale, i takav je bio i kao radikal i kao naprednjak, i kao mladićevac i kao veberovac, i kao vlast i kao opozicija. Čovek, naprosto, ne želi i ne može iz žanra, prihvatio ga je kao što izvesni glumci od jedne svoje kreacije naprave smarajući manir koji posle vuku kroz karijeru dok ne dojade bogu i narodu, i teško i jao onim daskama što ih drže na pozornici.
ima jedan jako smešan vic
o ciganima
kao ciga
opali ciganku dok ona
kopa po kontejneru
i muž te presamićene
pita što si mi jebo
ženu
a ovaj kaže mislio sam
da si je bacio razumeš
kao tepih i ima onaj
kada cigančica kaže bratu
viri ti slina iz nosa
a on joj odgovori
ne seri
sve sam pojeo
a tek onaj
mnogo je smešan
kada ciga veli
otkad je kroz selo prošao
vodovod pička
nema ni miris ni ukus
a znaš onaj
koja je jedinica brzine kod cigana
kontejner po sekundi
a kada ciganka prenese
picajzle muji i kaže mu
šta bi ti bubamare
za deset evra
a onaj kratak
čemu služi torta na svadbi
pa
da se muve ne lepe za
mladu a ima i jedan
taj je bio hit prošle godine
kao stoji ciganin na stanici
čeka autobus i dođu
neki mladići kao pitaju ga
šta radiš tu
pizda ti mater ciganska
si krao nešto
nisi
a jesi bar karao pičko
nisi
e sad ćeš mamicu ti cigansku
sad ćeš da jebeš asfalt
i tako
zig hajl
mnogo smešno
2.
ima jedan jako smešan vic
o srbima
kao srbin
opali srpkinju dok ona
kopa po kontejneru
i muž te presamićene
pita što si mi jebo
ženu
a ovaj kaže mislio sam
da si je bacio razumeš
kao tepih i ima onaj
kada mala srpkinja kaže bratu
viri ti slina iz nosa
a on joj odgovori ne seri
sve sam pojeo
a tek onaj
mnogo je smešan
kada srbin veli
otkad je kroz selo prošao
vodovod pička
nema ni miris ni ukus
a znaš onaj
koja je jedinica brzine kod srba
kontejner po sekundi
a kada srpkinja prenese
picajzle muji i kaže mu
šta bi ti bubamare
za deset evra
a onaj kratak
čemu služi torta na svadbi
pa
da se muve ne lepe za
mladu a ima i jedan
taj je bio hit prošle godine
kao stoji srbin na stanici
čeka autobus i dođu
neki mladići kao pitaju ga
šta radiš tu
pizda ti materina
si krao nešto
nisi
a jesi bar karao pičko
nisi
e sad ćeš mamicu ti srpsku
sad ćeš da jebeš asfalt
i tako
opet
zig hajl
ali više nije smešno
Počnimo od pitanja odakle potičete, recite nam nešto o vašoj porodici, detinjstvu i da li ste oduvek bili politični?
Moji roditelji su bili imigranti. Otac je pobegao iz okoline Kijeva od ljudi koji su sada na vlasti, 1913. godine, pred Prvi svetski rat. Majku su doveli kao bebu nekoliko godina ranije. Odrastao sam u jevrejskoj porodici, i živeli smo u svojevrsnom jevrejskom getu. To nije bio fizički geto, ali oboje su predavali hebrejski, otac je bio stručnjak za hebrejski i okruženje u kojem su živeli bilo je praktično jevrejski kulturni geto. Na primer, mislim da nisu imali nijednog nejevrejskog prijatelja.
Oni nisu bili toga svesni, ali živeli smo u pretežno nemačkoj i irskoj zajednici, vrlo antisemitski raspoloženoj. Tako da sam ja odrastao bežeći na ulici od opasnih malih Iraca. Sećam se masovnih proslava kad je pao Pariz, na primer – svi su bili za naciste. Moji roditelji nisu imali pojma da se tako nešto dešava, u to vreme deca nisu razgovarala sa svojim roditeljima.
Odrastao sam u vreme depresije. Familiju su uglavnom činili nezaposleni radnici, i najranije scene koje pamtim iz detinjstva su ljudi koji dolaze na vrata i nude neke prnje na prodaju, ili kako se vozim trolejbusom s majkom i gledam štrajk tekstilnih radnika, gde ih policija premlaćuje do krvi. Jedan od mojih ujaka je imao novinski kiosk – on nije dogurao dalje od četvrtog razreda osnovne škole, a bio je samoobrazovan i vrlo učen čovek. Taj kiosk je bio neka vrsta centra za diskusiju i debatu, mnogi emigranti su se tamo okupljali. Ja bih prodavao novine i slušao razgovore.
Do jedanaeste ili dvanaeste godine – tada smo živeli u Filadelfiji – roditelji su mi već dozvoljavali da putujem sam u Njujork i spavam kod rođaka. Tih godina je Junion skver u Njujorku bio centar radikalnih redakcija – Freie Arbeiter Stimme i drugih anarhističkih novina – a u ulici ispod trga, Četvrtoj aveniji, sada potpuno džentrifikovanoj, bile su razne male knjižare često u vlasništvu novih imigranata. Mene su privlačile one koje su držali španski imigranti. Brzo sam se zainteresovao za Španski građanski rat, naročito za anarhistički pokret u Španiji. Zapravo, prvi članak koji sam napisao – i dobro se sećam kad je to bilo, neposredno posle pada Barselone, znači u februaru 1939 – bio je nekakva lamentacija nad širenjem fašizma u Evropi. Članak nije bio naročito dubok, nadam se da se izgubio bez traga, ali to je bila tema.
Od tada je bilo manje-više isto. Drugi svetski rat je izbio neposredno posle toga, tako da je to postalo najveće pitanje. Bio sam antifašista, ali kritičan prema tome kako je rat predstavljen i vođen. Kao što verovatno znate, u SAD nije vladalo isto raspoloženje prema Nemcima i Japancima. Nemci su bili pokvareni ljudi – takva je bila propaganda – ali nisu bili drugačija vrsta. Japanci su bili gamad – oni su morali da budu uništeni, zgaženi. Rasizam je bio prosto neverovatan. Neki od nas su to kritikovali. U stvari, moja srednja škola se sasvim slučajno nalazila odmah pored logora za ratne zarobljenike. Zatvorenici su bili opasani bodljikavom žicom i za vreme velikog odmora đaci bi izlazili i rugali im se. Neki od nas su pokušavali to da spreče, govorili smo da su to ljudska bića poput nas, regrutovani su, nisu imali izbora. Kad su Britanci izvršili invaziju na Grčku, vrlo nasilno i brutalno, jedna grupa đaka se žestoko tome protivila i tako se nastavilo.
Da li mislite da vam je činjenica što potičete iz doseljeničke porodice pomogla da uočite neke stvari koje drugi možda nisu primećivali?
Moji roditelji su bili tipični ruzveltovski demokrati. U to vreme je vladala podela u jevrejskoj zajednici na hebrejiste i jidišiste. Maternji jezik mojih roditelja je bio jidiš, ali ja nikad nisam čuo ni reč jidiša. Nisu hteli da ga govore jer su bili na hebrejskoj strani u kulturkampfu. Otac je bio revnosni cionista, ali u smislu koji se danas ne smatra cionizmom. Bio je sledbenik Ahad Ha’ama, koji je želeo da stvori kulturni centar u Palestini koji bi preporodio rasejanje, kulturu itd. Obnova hebrejskog je bila ključni deo toga.
Moj otac je bio profesor hebrejskog, napisao je knjigu o srednjovekovnoj gramatici, kao klinac sam čitao njegovu doktorsku tezu. To je bio njihov svet, i ja sam naravno bio deo njega. Sa ocem sam petkom uveče čitao hebrejsku književnost 19. veka, proučavao Bibliju i tako dalje. Ali druga strana mog života je bilo moje lično političko interesovanje, koje potiče s druge strane.
Kako biste opisali svoj politički angažman kad ste otišli na studije? Kako su se vaši politički stavovi razvijali, da li ste smatrali da delujete u zadatom okviru ili da stvarate nešto novo?
To je bio veoma živ period, kao što znate – kraj 1930-ih, početak 40-ih. Ni nalik na kasniji period. Subotom popodne sam odlazio u filadelfijsku gradsku biblioteku koja je iz nekog razloga imala sva moguća radikalna izdanja, pa sam čitao jedno po jedno. Do 12-13 godine bio sam antiboljševički levičar. Bio sam angažovan u nečemu što se tada zvalo cionistički pokret, ali sada bi se zvalo anticionizam – zalagali smo se za arapsko-jevrejsku saradnju, dvonacionalnu Palestinu zasnovanu na nekim kvazianarhističkim radničkim institucijama, što nije bilo toliko egzotično kao što danas možda zvuči. Možda nije bilo realno, ali nije bilo nezamislivo. Jedna cionistička grupa bila je prilično bliska ovim idejama – Hašomer hacair – ali nisam mogao da im se pridružim jer su bili podeljeni na trockiste i staljiniste, a ja sam bio protiv i jednih i drugih. Nisam bio jedini, bilo je tu drugih ljudi, ali ne mnogo.
Kako se vaši današnji stavovi razlikuju od mladalačkih? Koje velike promene smatrate formativnim?
U suštini se ne razlikuju mnogo. Naravno, danas znam mnogo više nego što sam tada znao. Na primer, u vreme Drugog svetskog rata bio sam skeptičan prema ratu na Pacifiku, tek sam kasnije saznao detalje o pozadini i tome šta je nateralo Japan da postane brutalna, nasilna i imperijalistička sila. Zapad je u tome odigrao veliku ulogu, i Britanci i Amerikanci. Isto je i u drugim oblastima. Ali moji osnovni principi, uz neka izoštravanja, modifikacije, mislim da se nisu promenili.
Ne biste opisali rat u Vijetnamu kao prekretnicu za vaš angažman?
Bilo je nekih promena. Na primer, 6. avgust 1945. je predstavljao promenu. Bio sam vođa grupe u dečjem kampu i jednog jutra su javili da je na Hirošimu bačena atomska bomba. Bio sam u šoku, ali još me je više šokiralo što nikog nije bilo briga. Ljudi su odslušali vesti i prešli na sledeću aktivnost. U stvari, bio sam toliko šokiran da sam odlutao negde, otišao sam u šumu i presedeo tamo nekoliko sati. U to vreme sam shvatio, i svako je morao da shvati, da nam sada preti opasnost, čak i verovatnoća, da ćemo sami sebe uništiti. To je bila značajna promena.
Rat u Vijetnamu sam pratio krajem 40-ih i početkom 50-ih, to je bio ključni period. Sada znamo ono što u to vreme nismo znali o internim raspravama koje su otkrivene kasnije. Godine 1961. Kenedi je drastično pojačao rat, o tome se jedva izveštavalo ali bilo je dovoljno kratkih vesti da ste mogli da vidite šta se događa. Poslao je avione da bombarduju severni Vijetnam, pod južnovijetnamskim pokrićem, započeo je hemijsko ratovanje za uništavanje useva, započeo programe odvođenja ljudi praktično u koncentracione logore. Eskalacija je bila očigledna, i ja sam na neki način vodio raspravu sam sa sobom o tome do koje mere da se uključim.
Imao sam dovoljno političkog iskustva da znam da to ne može da se radi polovično – ako se aktivirate, to vam oduzme život. A vodio sam prilično ugodan život, imao sam mladu porodicu, bio profesor na MIT-u, voleo sam taj posao, mogao da se bavim istraživanjem. Znao sam da će se to promeniti ako se aktiviram. Neko vreme sam razmišljao, ali na kraju sam se aktivirao. U to vreme je to bila vrlo usamljenička aktivnost. Ako ste želeli da održite govor o ratu u Vijetnamu 1963, to je moralo da bude u nečijem stanu ili u crkvi sa četvoro slušalaca. Recimo, održan je međunarodni dan protesta protiv rata u oktobru 1965. Imali smo antiratnu grupu u to vreme i odlučili smo da održimo miting u bostonskom Gradskom parku, koji je bio standardno mesto za političko delovanje. Održali smo miting, ali su ga kontramitingaši potpuno razbili. Trebalo je da budem jedan od govornika, ali niko nije mogao da se čuje.
Spasla nas je velika jedinica državne policije – nismo im se sviđali, ali nisu želeli ljudske žrtve u Gradskom parku. Ako pogledate izdanje Boston Globea od narednog dana, demonstranti su bili oštro osuđeni. Kako se usuđujete da postavljate pitanje o bombardovanju severnog Vijetnama? Naredni međunarodni dan protesta bio je u martu 1966. Shvatili smo da ne možemo da održimo javni miting, pa smo organizovali okupljanje u crkvi. Crkva je napadnuta. Takvo je raspoloženje u to vreme vladalo.
Do 1965. bio sam jedan od organizatora poreskog otpora. Zatim smo 1966. počeli da organizujemo grupu pod nazivom Resist, koja je učestvovala u najrazličitijim oblicima antiratnog otpora. Zapravo, zakazano nam je suđenje 1968, i verovatno bi me osudili na dugogodišnju robiju, ali dogodila se Tet ofanziva i država je obustavila proces. Ali bio je to vrlo ozbiljan angažman. Godinama mi je oduzimao mnogo vremena i truda.
Budući da ste do kraja 60-ih bili oformljeni kao ličnost, kako ste gledali na uspon pokreta za građanska prava, šezdesetosmaša, na eksploziju političkog angažovanja u SAD i Evropi tog doba? Kako biste ocenili uticaj šezdeset osme na vaš politički život?
Do 1968, po mom sudu, politički angažman je slabio. Uopšte nisam bio oduševljen događajima 1968, smatrao sam da su uglavnom negativni. Pokret za građanska prava je druga stvar. Istorija tog pokreta je vrlo zanimljiva. U stvari, odlazio sam na jug na demonstracije. Recimo, ako slušate govore o Martinu Luteru Kingu, primetićete da se zaustavljaju na njegovom govoru „Imam jedan san“ u Vašingtonu. Martin Luter King nije tu stao. Kasnije je prešao na klasna pitanja i rasizam na severu. Kada je ubijen, podržavao je štrajk sanitarnih radnika i trebalo je da organizuje pokret siromašnih. Trebalo je da predvodi marš na Vašington, koji se zapravo odigrao posle njegovog ubistva. Podigli su šatorsko naselje u Vašingtonu i pokušali da proguraju neke zakone. Policija je porušila naselje i isterala ih iz grada.
Martin Luter King je izgubio podršku liberala kada se okrenuo klasnim pitanjima i taj deo njegovog života je nekako nestao. On postoji, ali se o njemu se ne piše. To je prilično značajna činjenica. Liberali sa severa bili su savršeno zadovoljni njime dok je osuđivao rasističke policijske šerife iz Alabame, ali ne kada se bavio klasnim pitanjima na severu. Ova promena se odigravala sredinom 60-ih. Antiratni pokret je imao drugačiju putanju – jačao je. I dostigao je vrhunac otprilike 1968-69. Pretvorio se u prilično značajan pokret i sigurno je uticao na tok rata. Ali 1968. su počele podele. Studentski pokret se cepao: na maoistički element, PL (Progressive Labor), Whethermen – koji su hteli da pobede državu tako što će lomiti izloge banaka – bilo je mnogo frakcionaštva. Pokret se rastakao, po mom sudu, na opasan način.
Jedan od glavnih pokreta koji se tada razvio i koji je najduže uticajao na društvo bio je ženski pokret, koji je lagano počeo da se rađa krajem 60-ih kao organizovani pokret. Naravno, njegovi koreni su mnogo stariji. Do 1970-ih to je bila velika sila.
Ja delim pokrete na one društvene pokrete koji su s jedne strane egalitarni, ali s druge strane zahtevaju jednak pristup samom sistemu. Moglo bi se reći da su pokret za građanska prava i pokret za prava žena tražili jednaka prava i jednake šanse. I jedan od razloga zašto se može reći da su bili uspešni je to što možete da tražite od sistema da se drži svojih principa, da garantuje jednake prilike, da omogući prostor za građanska i ženska prava.
S druge strane, društveni pokreti koji se javljaju kasnije, npr. Occupy, koji traže promenu agende i strukture globalnih finansijskih tržišta, finansijskog kapitalizma, američke hegemonije – oni ne zahtevaju pristup pod jednakim uslovima, nego transformaciju organizacionih principa sistema, i u tom slučaju mnogo je teže ostvariti uticaj. Teško je promeniti tu agendu, i Occupy danas nije toliko snažan.
Po vašem iskustvu, mislite li da je ovakva podela validna, i da li biste se složili da je transformaciju zapadnog kapitalizma mnogo teže postići nego osvajanje jednakih šansi unutar strukture?
Mislim da je ženski pokret otišao dalje od traženja jednakih šansi. On je podrazumevao promenu čvrsto usađenih stavova koji su opravdavali ugnjetavanje i dominaciju, koju su i žrtve internalizovale. Veliki deo ženskog pokreta je morao da prevaziđe internalizaciju, osećaj da moraš da budeš ugnjetavana i tlačena. Znači, da ste pitali moju babu da li misli da je ugnjetena, ne bi razumela o čemu pričate. Kao da je pitate da li diše. Da ste pitali moju majku, ona bi znala da jeste, ali mislila bi da ništa ne može da se učini. Da pitate moju ćerku, isterala bi vas iz kuće. To je velika promena, kako za žene tako i za muškarce. Tako da mislim da je to više od prostog jednakog pristupa.
Što se tiče pokreta za građanska prava, pitanje je mnogo složenije. Pogledajte afroameričku istoriju – godine 1620. bili su robovi. Ropstvo se formalno završilo sa Američkim građanskim ratom, ali desetak godina kasnije ponovo je uvedeno u drugačijem obliku. Uveo ga je postrekonstrukcioni severno-južni savez, koji je praktično omogućio jugu da radi šta hoće. A oni su kriminalizovali crnački život.
Dakle, ako je crnac stajao na uglu, mogao je da bude kažnjen sa 10 dolara za skitnju, što nije mogao da plati, pa bi ga strpali u zatvor itd. Tako je stvorena nova ropska radna snaga. Veliki deo američke industrijske revolucije zasnivao se na ropskom radu, na radu zatvorenika. To nije bio zanemarljiv podatak – znamo za okovane grupe zatvorenika, to je poljoprivredni deo – ali radili su i u rudnicima, čeličanama – dakle, u pitanju je značajan deo industrijske revolucije krajem 19. i početkom 20. veka.
Ovo se promenilo sa izbijanjem Drugog svetskog rata. Bilo je radnih mesta, imigracije na sever, mnogo radnika – tada ste imali period od 20-30 godina kad su crnci bili relativno slobodni. Crnac je mogao da se zaposli u automobilskoj industriji, u to vreme sindikalno organizovanoj, tako da je imao sasvim pristojan posao, kuću, mogao je da školuje decu itd. Pokret za građanska prava je uhvatio taj trenutak i formalizovao neka od tih prava, proširio ih i zaista omogućio jednaka prava. Ali posle toga su stvari krenule unazad. Pogledajte šta se dešava od kraja 70-ih, Regan ponovo kriminalizuje crnački život. Pogledajte zatvorski sistem. Negde do 1980. godine, procenat zatvorenika u odnosu na ukupno stanovništvo u Americi otprilike je isti kao u ostalim delovima zapadnog sveta – možda pri vrhu lestvice. Posle toga ovaj procenat drastično skače. Uglavnom su u pitanju crni muškarci, sada već i Hispanoamerikanci, u manjoj meri žene. Praktično se obnavlja sistem s kraja 19. veka. Dakle, jednak pristup je omogućen malom segmentu stanovništva, ali ne ukupnom crnačkom stanovništvu.
Što se tiče pokreta Occupy, mislim da je u pitanju bio reformistički pokret. Oni nisu poručivali – hajde da raspustimo finansijski sektor, nego nešto poput – hajde da uvedemo porez na finansijske transakcije. To se lako može uraditi u okviru postojećih institucija – zapravo, već postoji u Engleskoj. Occupy je zapravo bio taktika, ne pokret. Bio je važan, ali je bio taktika, a taktika ne može da traje večno.
Upravo smo preživeli jedan od najvećih finansijskih lomova koji umalo nije gurnuo sistem preko ruba provalije. U velikoj meri, teret ove krize je skinut sa privatnog sektora i prebačen na stanovništvo. Ako pitate nekog trejdera u londonskom Sitiju šta se promenilo, reći će vam – ništa naročito. Drugim rečima, kao što je Marks rekao, državna vlast je samo odbor koji upravlja opštim poslovima buržoaske klase. Ako bude velikih troškova, oni se prebacuju na leđa srednje i radničke klase.
Radnički pokret dugo nije bio ovako slab kao danas; sistem industrijskog, finansijskog kapitalizma je globalan; uspon Azije je odraz njenog snalaženja u ovom ekonomskom sistemu; Kina spaja dve najveće ideologije 20. veka, nacionalizam i kapitalizam i uspešno se vraća u globalni poredak. Šta danas nosi duh kritike tog složenog, globalnog sistema kapitalizma? Radnički pokreti su svakako slabiji i neorganizovaniji nego ranije. Da li se slažete sa tim?
Radnički pokret jeste slabiji nego što je bio, ali to je ciklična putanja. Uzmite ponovo kao primer SAD. Krajem 19. veka imali smo vrlo snažan radnički pokret. Vrlo snažan, preuzimao je gradove u zapadnoj Pensilvaniji i upravljao njima. Praktično su ga razbili Vudro Vilson i antikomunistička propaganda u posleratnom periodu. Do 1920-ih radnički pokret je bio praktično mrtav.
Veliki radnički istoričar Dejvid Mongomeri napisao je knjigu The Fall of the House of Labor, koja govori o 1920-im. To je bio ozbiljan pad. Ali 1930-ih pokret je oživeo i bio je ključna sila koja je pokretala njudilovske zakone. CIO sindikalni savez, okupacije radnog mesta, to je strašno plašilo upravu, jer je to samo jedan korak od preuzimanja fabrike. I to je zaista dovelo do ozbiljne socijalne države. Odmah nakon toga usledila je reakcija privrednih krugova, koja je započeta već krajem 1930-ih. Tada ste imali istraživanje naučnih metoda za razbijanje štrajka itd. Reakcija je zaustavljena tokom rata, posle rata krenula je svom snagom. Taft-Hartli 1947, ogromna propaganda zaprepašćujućih razmera koja je pokušavala da okrene stanovništvo protiv radnika.
I radnička klasa je pravila greške. Američki radnički pokret je pokušao da sklopi savez sa kapitalistima – kobajagi svi radimo zajedno – i takve saveze kapital raskida kad god poželi. U tom trenutku je radnički pokret počeo da gubi snagu. Trenutno je u SAD manje od 7% zaposlenih u privatnom sektoru sindikalno organizovano, sindikati u javnom sektoru su još uvek bolje zaštićeni ali su i oni na udaru.
Ali sve se ovo dešavalo i ranije, i pokret bi ponovo mogao da oživi. U stvari, on se obnavlja na zanimljiv način. U starom industrijskom pojasu, u severnom Ohaju i Indijani, danas se obnavljaju radnička preduzeća. Na primer, Jangstaun u Ohaju, veliki proizvođač čelika. Godine 1977. US Steel je odlučio da zatvori čeličanu u Jangstaunu. Taj grad je je izgradio radnički pokret: radnici čelične industrije i srodnih grana. Sindikat je hteo da otkupi čeličanu i da je preuzme, ali uprava je to odbila, otišli su na sud i sindikat je izgubio. Ali nisu odustali. Prešli su na manja preduzeća u radničkom vlasništvu koja se sada šire u severnom Ohaju. To je moguća klica alternativnih oblika organizovanja i delovanja, koja zapravo ima revolucionarni potencijal – menja strukturu sistema.
Pogledajte na primer studente, taj segment stanovništva. Oni su danas politički mnogo angažovaniji nego što su ikada bili. Osim možda vrlo kratkog perioda krajem 60-ih, kad je bilo mnogo studentskog aktivizma, ne uvek pozitivnog. Ali sada je to mnogo šire. Ekološka pitanja, ženska pitanja, pokret solidarnosti – nisu baš koordinisani, ne kreću se ka istom cilju, ali ima mnogo vrenja, protivljenja korporatizaciji univerziteta. Mnoge stvari se dešavaju i mogle bi da se spoje u nešto.
Kad govorimo o vašem trenutnom angažmanu, kakvi su vam danas prioriteti i kako ih objašnjavate?
Ima mnogo problema, ali dva su najvažnija. Jedan se tiče 6. avgusta 1945. Još uvek živimo u senci mogućeg samouništenja, i ako pogledate istorijske činjenice, one su užasne. Pravo je čudo što smo preživeli. Svako ko pažljivo pogleda podatke o jedva izbegnutom nuklearnom ratu – za dlaku, u pitanju su bili minuti – šokiraće se. To još uvek postoji i raste.
Drugi problem, kojeg nismo bili toliko svesni do 1970-ih, jeste pretnja ekološke katastrofe. Zastrašujuća pretnja. Živimo u trenutku ljudske istorije gde moramo da odlučimo da li ćemo uništiti mogućnost za pristojnu egzistenciju, što se nikad ranije nije desilo. Sve ostalo pada u zasenak u poređenju sa ovim opasnostima.
Ima li razloga za optimizam?
Često se setim mog omiljenog komentara iz Konfučijevih Razgovora – tu postoji definicija primerne osobe, verovatno samog gospodara, a to je osoba koja se i dalje trudi iako zna da nema nade. Ali mislim da nije baš toliko strašno. Nema mnogo nade, ali nada postoji, moramo da se trudimo.
Global Policy, 29.05.2014. razgovor sa autorom vodio profesor David Held.
Eh, dražajši đuturumi, Utisak nedelje posvećen srpskom (pseudo)doktorstvu jednostavno se nije smeo propustiti, ne, međutim, zbog zabrinutosti za naše posrnulo obrazovanje (odavno je i beznadežno ono propalo), nego zato što je tema obećavala obilje cirkuskog materijala i tokom emisije to obećanje u potpunosti održala.
Olja je na samom početku cenjenom publikumu pročitala srceperatelni SMS koji joj je Mićo Megatrend poslao iz puste Londre, a iz čijeg je sadržaja i najveći tupson mogao zaključiti da ga je napisao jedan rasni doktor nauka. Pogotovo je naučno potkovan bio deo u kome Mićo prebacuje Olji da mu se “uneređuje na život”. On, Mićo – Mićo scripsit – jeste obećao da će se pojaviti u Utisku da pred srpskom javnošću položi svoje doktorske račune, ali se eto, presaludimio, pa je odlučio da se u isto vreme pojavi na drugoj televiziji, u – da kažemo – Kontrautisku. Ne znam šta je tamo pričao jer sam bio prikovan za Utisak, ali gosti Utiska su (dok su išli predlozi) zavirili i u Kontrautisak, pa su jednoglasno zaključili da Mićo – u daljem tekstu Ćomi – i tamo baje, kenja, mulja i masti.
Zašto Ćomi, a ne Mićo? Stariji Užičani to dobro znaju, a mlađima i vama pokušaću da objasnim. Vaktile, u starom Užicu, “Ćomi” nije bio samo nadimak, nego oznaka jedne društvene grupe i jednog, da kažemo, mentaliteta. Paradoksalno, množina od Ćomi, nije glasila Ćomiji, nego – Mićovi. Mićovi su, da ne dužim, generalno bili ambiciozni, nakinđureni prigradski svati rešeni da po vaku cenu – ne obazirući se na dobre običaje i utisak koji ostavljaju – uspeju u životu. Nije im to baš nešto naročito išlo od ruke. Sve dok na istorijsku scenu nije stupio Milošević. E, onda im je nastupilo zlatno doba. I doba zlatnih satova.
Pa dobro, jesu li nam stvari posle Utiska nedelje nešto jasnije? Samo donekle, samo donekle. Jeste se, fakat, ustanovilo da je Ćomijeva akademska biografija optočena lažima i prepuna rupa; saznali smo, štaviše, da je Ćomi jedan davnašnji ispit položio u nekom kabinetu predstavljajući se kao slepac; jesu na svetlost Utiska isplivale mnoge Ćomijeve brljotine, ali u konačnom svođenju računa, Ćomi je ostao “dr” i persona grata na ovdašnjim dvorovima i konacima. Sve naše glavešine vole da budu u (mega)trendu, ako razumete šta hoću da kažem. Idem i korak dalje i tražim aboliciju za Ćomija i sve ovdašnje Mićove, a krivicu za akademska nepočinstva svaljujem na pleća srpskih dvorana i glavešina. Sad ću to i da obrazložim. Nije, naime, prvo osnovan Megatrend i nisu diplomci Megatrenda srozali sve kriterijume, nego su kriterijume i sistem vrednosti srozali ovdašnji državnici (svih boja, da ne bude počem zabune), pa se u novonastalim okolnostima Megatrend pojavio kao logično visokoškolsko ishodište vladajućeg kretenizma. Mislite o tome.
Mr. Allen, do you truly believe that happiness in life is impossible?
This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have since I was a little boy; it hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that’s it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.
I think it’s safe to say that most people would disagree.
But I am not the first person to say this or even the most articulate person. It was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O’Neill. One must have one’s delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and clearly, life becomes unbearable because it’s a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit.
I have a hard time imagining Woody Allen having such a hard life…
I have been very lucky and I have made my talent a very productive life for me, but everything else I am not good at. I am not good getting through life, even the simplest things. These things that are a child’s play for most people are a trauma for me.
Can you give me an example?
Checking in at an airport or at hotel, handling my relationships with other people, going for a walk, exchanging things in a store… I’ve been working on the same Olympus Typewriter since I was sixteen – and it still looks like new. All of my films were written on that typewriter, but until recently I couldn’t even change the color ribbon myself. There were times when I would invite people over to dinner just so they would change the ribbon. It’s a tragedy.
Do you distrust the good things in life?
Life is full of moments that are good – winning a lottery, seeing a beautiful woman, a great dinner – but the whole thing is tragic. It’s an oasis that is very pleasant. Take a film like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. This is a film of great tragedy, but there is a moment when he is sitting with the children and drinking milk and eating wild strawberries. But then that wonderful moment passes and you come back to what existence really is.
Are you equally pessimistic about love?
You are much more dependent on luck than you think. People say if you want to have a good relationship, you have to work at it. But you never hear it about anything you really like, about sailing or going to soccer games. You never say: I have to work at it. You just love it. You can’t work at a relationship; you can’t control it. You have to be lucky and go through your life. If you are not lucky you have to be prepared for some degree of suffering. That’s why most relationships are very difficult and have some degree of pain. People stay together because of inertia, they don’t have the energy. Because they are frightened of being lonely, or they have children.
Can a man love two women at the same time?
More than two. (Laughs) I think you can. That’s why romance is a very difficult and painful thing, a very hard, very complicated thing. You can be with your wife, very happily married, and then you meet some woman and you love her. But you love your wife, too. And you also love that one. Or if she’s met some man and she loves the man and she loves you. And then you meet somebody else and now there are three of you.(Laughs) Why only one person?
Things might get a bit tricky if one were to follow your advice…
It’s important to control yourself because life gets too complicated if you don’t, but the impulse is often there for people. Some say society should be more open. That doesn’t work either. I think it’s a lose-lose situation. If you pursue the other woman, it’s a losing situation and it’s not good for your relationship or your marriage. If your marriage is open and you’re allowed to, that’s no good either. There’s no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.
Do you ever cry?
I cry in the cinema all the time. It’s probably one of the only places I ever cry, because I have trouble crying. In Hannah and Her Sisters there was a scene where I was supposed to cry, and they tried everything, but it was impossible. They blew the stuff in my eyes and I couldn’t cry, but in the cinema I weep. It’s like magic. I see the end of Bicycle Thieves or City Lights. It’s the only place – never in the theater and almost never in life.
You used to star in almost all of your films, but in recent years you’ve been in less and less of them. Why?
Only because there is no good part. For years I played the romantic lead and then I couldn’t play it anymore because I got too old. It’s just no fun not playing the guy who gets the girl. You can imagine how frustrating it is when I do these movies with Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts and the other guys get them and I am the director. I am that old guy over there that is the director. I don’t like that. I like to be the one that sits opposite them in the restaurant, looks in their eyes and lies to them. So if I can’t do that it’s not much fun to play in the movies.
What’s your take on getting older?
I find it a lousy deal. There is no advantage getting older. You don’t get smarter, you don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t get more kindly, nothing good happens. Your back hurts more, you get more indigestion, your eyesight isn’t as good, you need a hearing aid. It’s a bad business getting old and I would advise you not to do it if you can avoid it. It doesn’t have a romantic quality.
Will you ever stop making films?
I simply enjoy working. Where else could I develop ambition? As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?
Woody Allen, The Whole Thing Is Tragic, July 20, 2012. The Talks
Photo by Alex de Brabant