"Zemljo moja!"

Panson and I hosted Sven Cvek and Clem Choubrac during their second ever visit to Chicago. As a result, we present to you the video for "Zemljo moja"!

Advice Column

In the summer of 2001, I ran into an old childhood friend while I was walking around my hometown of Borovo Naselje. This guy was my play buddy when we were very little. Even after we each found different buddies, we remained friendly, all throughout the first 17 years of our lives. Then the war started (in 1991) and I fled, while he became one of the youngest volunteers in the Croatian army. What kind of a military tells a 17-yr boy, "yeah, don't flee this hell, don't go to back to high school, but rather, grab this gun and kill and be killed"?! He didn't get killed, but he did get hooked on all kinds of drugs. I believe heroin was the drug of choice in the military then and there, but that's not so important.

I don't think my buddy ever finished high school, and he lived on the pension checks from the military--retired at 27. I was able to piece together that much out of his monologue that summer of 2001 when we ran into each other, and then went for a drink at a nearby watering hole. He did most of the talking, and a lot of what he said was horrifying. Killing old ladies ("collateral damage"). Him trying to kill himself by deliberately walking in minefields all over Bosnia, where he fought wars for 3 years.

He had an ambition to volunteer for youth peace groups in our town, but he never got around to that. I wonder if he'd still be alive had he had gone into that kind of activist volunteering. All I know is, he died around the age of 30.

I probably remember most often what he said about romance, in fact, I'd always remember that in the years since the summer 2001, while listening to romance complaints by friends. My friends' complaints always boil down to: 'I desperately want romantic bliss and yet I constantly get disappointed (sooner or later).' Those same friends typically are always either dating or actively, systematically, pursuing someone. It reminds me of how they actively, systematically, pursue professional success. But an approach that works in the professional world doesn't seem to work in the romance department. What I've observed is this: you're much better off if you spend time just being alone, having fun, at peace with the fact that romance is uncontrollable.

"I've been happily in love before. I'm not in any kind of love now, but I'm not worried. I've been there before, and so I know it can happen again." That's what my war veteran buddy said. He was in many ways a ruin of a human being, but his head was clear about that one thing.

Women

Me: leaning against a railing that surrounds a tree & some flowers on Montrose & Walcott in Chicago, (re)reading A Megaphone. A group of women (older than me; not sure how much, I'm bad at age-guessing) approaches the car parked right in front of me, they start getting in. (A big car, I want to say it's an SUV of some kind, there's four women.) One woman goes, "What's the book about?" "It's about women poets around the world and how they're struggling. And yet plowing on." Most women already in the car, the one talking to me says: "It's a thick book." "Well, the whole world is in it. Well, half of it." Already in her seat (next to the driver), she goes, "Okay, bye!" I had a feeling she was done with this conversation before I even said anything.

A Revolutionary Throwback

One of the best protest songs ever written, if you ask me, is "Elegance" by Prefab Sprout. Coming soon: more on this song, and more songs chosen by others.

In Anticipation of Coriolanus

I'm a sucker for film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays that combine modern settings and Elizabethan English. So in anticipation of Coriolanus, which I plan to see while it's playing in movie theaters in Chicago, I did some research and found out that Belgrade plays the role of ancient Rome. Well, not ancient, since they moved the action to modern times. And we're probably not supposed to think it's Rome. Now I really have to see the film.

According to a Reuters article written from before the shooting began, "Most of the filming will be done in the Serbian parliament building and other locations in Belgrade, which offers settings from the Roman era, a medieval Serbian state and buildings destroyed by NATO aircraft during the 1999 bombing of then Yugoslavia."

Also noted: it's Ralph Fiennes's directorial debut. What happened with directors practicing their craft by making short, low-budget quirky films they show at film festivals before their first big bite and an international distributor? If you're a star of the screen and stage, you can now just plunge into a big project like this?

Winter Holidays

If people ask me whether I'm stressed out, I say, not particularly, but the truth is, I don't know how to spend a day without feeling tense for a part of my waking hours and my dreams. If nothing else these past ten days, I'm angry that I can't seem to get over this mild, but persistent cold that keeps itching my throat, keeping me up or waking me up in the middle of my sleep.

Probably in order to relieve this daily and nightly stress, my brain sends me back to winter holidays from decades ago, when for two weeks, from 21/31 to mid-January, I masterfully, completely--relaxed. I'm talking of course about 1980s, my elementary school years, especially the first half. All those winter breaks have merged into one long film reel of images and sounds of my childhood room.

The plastic tree, the same one every year. "New Year's fir" is the precise literal translation. Not just a tree, a fir. And no Christmas. Different kids celebrate different traditional religious holidays with their families, or, like my family, don't have a religion, so the holiday we all have in common is New Year's and of course Day of Children's Joy, 12/31. But even the Day of Children's Joy is not a big deal to me, except that there are no classes, and you go to school in order to get a package from the fat man in a red, fur-trimmed suit and a matching hat, and a white beard and mustache, the man we call Deda Mraz (Grandpa Frost). I don't remember ever actually believing Deda Mraz was a real person, so I must have figured out very early on that this is someone dressed up for a performance, and that the adults in our lives buy us presents, and that's okay. And it's not even the presents that are very important to me. December 31 is exciting because it's the beginning of my winter break, two weeks of my solitary rituals.

I wait, patiently, for the dusk. Turn on nothing but the string of lights on the tree, stare for a while.

Then turn on the reading light by my bed. Sometimes I read a book cover to cover in one day, like Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole Diaries. Sometimes a book takes a whole break. Sometimes it's a book of stories, a story a day. Or a book of poems, which then makes me write my own poems in a notebook.

My sounds come from the old record player, with its small wooden body and speakers, and the records I associate with winter the most: The John Lennon Collection with a lyric sleeve, 45s by Yugoslav bands Grupa 220 or Rani Mraz. Although I normally dance a lot to records during the rest of the year (at home alone; with friends in their rooms; during my twice-a-week ballet classes; at my school's dance parties), during the winter break I play the records and just sing along quietly, sitting or lying still. Side A until the silence of the final, wide groove. Either the needle snaps back on its own, of I have to slide it back. I flip the record to side B, careful not to drop it, careful not to scratch or grease up any of the grooves. Put the needle back on. Drift away with the melodies, lending the imperfection of my voice to the voices of those sensitive men writing songs about Peter Pan.

No one is sick. The adults in my life are not fighting, and they and the rest of the world are letting me have my solitude and my sweet leisure.

My brain sends me these images of stillness, soothing quiet, and spare but warm and colorful lighting.

Goodbye 2011

Nothing in particular but rather things in general bring about this little post.

What can a society that takes creativity for granted and undervalues its artists show for itself, other than a slew of mediocrity? A landfill of abandoned projects. Many talented people will successfully extinguish the urge to create and those who persist will not be necessarily the best ones, but merely the most tenacious or obsessed ones.

No matter how bad things get, artists should support one another, and also help each other rise above that mediocrity, not compete for scraps of attention.

These are interesting times, but I don't know anyone who feels that we live in a time of the great output of creative energy and exuberance. Still, I'm trying to work as if we do.

And I still have a lot of unfounded hope for 2012!