June 3, 2023
Artists with a concept and philosophers without a concept come here in flocks, from all over the western part of the world, and the journalists of our cultural columns welcome them gratefully and happily, take extensive interviews from them, all competing with them in progressiveness and revolutionaryness.
They look around a little when they arrive, and to the famous and inevitable question "what to do?", they raise their index finger and answer without thinking: "Capitalism needs to be overthrown." As soon as possible. Best by Monday.
And that same answer was announced with enthusiasm as the Announcement in both ultra-progressive and ultra-conservative newspapers, both in those that are very much in favor of the regime and in those that are very much against it. It seems they only agree on that, because that alone costs them nothing.
And I keep looking at that wise man raising his index finger, so I feel like saying to him: Wait, why should we tear him down? Well, we didn't even build it, but we got it from you on a turnkey system! But let's go ahead and demolish it, so if we see that you are doing well and that you are building something better and freer at the same time, we are following you.
June 1, 2023
Someone must have slandered Vladimir K...
And the slander is not harmless at all: that his new novel served as a "template" for the youngest mass murderer in the history of the world for his crime.
The slander is further salted and gained by the fact that the writer and the killer are surnamed and distantly related.
This was not made up, it was just left in the middle of a slanderous story like a landmine, with the full knowledge that the petit bourgeois imagination will not resist giving it a significance and meaning that it does not have.
To tell you the truth, I haven't read V. Kecmanović's novel, but I haven't even picked it up, and that's the least since the time when the author thunderously "released me from the obligation" to read his books. Fine, it doesn't hurt either him or me.
But even without that, I know that accusing literary, film and other fiction of crimes from reality is a futile and stupid thing, which misses the nature of both fiction and reality.
This is true even in the rare cases when a criminal openly refers to someone else's work as a model for his own wrongdoing, such as John Lennon's conniving killer referring to "The Catcher in the Rye".
The idiot is still rotting in prison and we deliberately forgot his unworthy name, and "The Catcher in the Rye" is at home. And everywhere.
May 30, 2023
It's not nice, they say, to call someone a scumbag, because it devalues that person, and every person certainly has some qualities and virtues. Even the one where something like that was not discovered even after many years of study.
Permanent People's Deputy Nataša Jovanović does not care about such considerations, but authoritatively, in the tone of an expert, concluded that the actors Nikola Kojo, Dragan Bjelogrlić, Marko Janketić and Sergej Trifunović are by no means, not even insane, "Serbian cultural treasures" but ordinary "scum".
MP Jovanović certainly came to this conclusion by studying all the countless theater, film and television roles, as well as the screenwriting, literary, directing and producing endeavors of some of them.
It was, it must be admitted, a huge job.
Studying the merits and contributions of citizen Jovanović would be much easier: that folder is still empty. But science, I believe, will not give up. As long as there is even the smallest, inconceivably tiny to the human mind, possibility of finding something there somewhere.
May 28, 2023
One unacted dialogue:
- How do you declare yourself and how do you feel, Mrs. Chobani?
- Thanks for the question, I'm clearly better than you, Mrs. Karleushi.
May 26, 2023
This year, I wonder, will my shadow walk around Novi Sad, roam the halls and stages of the Serbian National Theater, scare the gentlemen?
I am not ironizing here, sad sorghum, an imprisoned assassin with poetic inclinations, but myself, since only my shadow could walk, roam and frighten, while I am safely packed into real estate status - which does not mean that my price goes up, because I am uninhabitable - and for the first time in twenty years, no one will be happy or afraid of my bulky appearance, nor what I will write about the performances, the selection, the concept of the festival...
Maybe it was time for this parting and mutual rest, but still, I'm not quite there like this imagined.
Countless situations from the stage and off the stage are running through my head, a whole life, somewhat separated, has stopped in those twenty Pozorje. However, maybe my favorite and craziest is this one. Corona-psychosis is at one of its peaks, the theater is still full, we are watching Eichmann in Jerusalem of the Zagreb Youth Theater, I am in the fourth or fifth row. Wherever I look around and as far as the eye can see, everyone, but literally everyone, wears masks, only I am bare-faced, I'm tired of even explaining why. After some time, the actor Pierre Meničanin says: "Oh, there's Mr. Pančić too! Do you remember the name of so-and-so book?” I, of course, remember, so I call out her title just enough to throw it to the stage. That cute meta-theatrical moment probably wouldn't have been possible if I was wearing a mask…
Tempi trade winds, who knows if it will continue. I know that some people were relieved when they saw that I was gone, which does not necessarily mean that they are malicious, but that it is easier for them.
And I don't really care either...
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