Solange uns Zeit bleibt* - As Long As We Have Time

Better now than never, because sometimes one has to learn the hardest possible way.

*title of a compilation of political essays by Jan Procházka - they are still very up-to-date and highly recommended!

Measure for Measure

In the late 1990s I was at exhibition of works of art fromthe collection of the museum of Capodimonte, Naples, in Bonn. When I was studying the pattern of the blouse worn by Mary Magdalene on a painting by Titian, a woman behind me burst out: "I would pay millions for this painting." At first I was a little bit disgusted because money is the last thing I would think of when confronted with art, but then I realised that money is probably the last remaining, objective measurement to relate to another person one's appreciation of whatever object, one is talking about.


All else has been corrupted and yet money is exactly the best means to corrupt people...

Sublime

"There's a kind of silliness in the theater about what one contributes to a show. The producer obviously contributes the money... but must the actor contribute nothing at all? I’m not a modest fellow about those things. I contribute a great deal. And they always manage to hang you for having an interpretation. Isn’t [the theater] where your imagination should flower? Why must it always be dull as shit?" - Zero Mostel responding to criticism that his performances were too dominating of the material

About both he is absolutely right - interpretation and imagination. As an actor you should have an idea of what it is all about and a means to translate this to the audience.

His Tevye is sublime, especially the final lines where he is haggling with the Lord like Abraham blow my mind.

Doubly Lifelike

Walking across the graveyard, she suddenly burst out:"When I'm dead, I want a tomb slab because this will be far less work for the bereaved." She had always been rather fond of orderliness. Just like when she had admonished her son to not play with the cords of his sweater and she suddenly dashed forward and cut them.

Face To Face

And suddenly reality hit me as I was walking with Darren in Torquay in the summer of 1988. We were both eighteen, and he told me that he had been stationed as a soldier in Northern Ireland. Maybe there were still the words of my teacher ringing in my ear that no matter what anybody would tell us about it being a religious conflict, this was one of the last colonial wars still being fought - and probably one of the longest ever. So here was somebody to whom this was no mere subject matter, just like to the man I met recently.


He called me radiant by the way.

Urging

Sometimes there is something urgent on my mind and though I try very much to talk myself out of it, suddenly this applies again.

So being angry with some people's assumptions I had to post this comment:  "First of all let me start with apologizing for using English but I do not speak Czech this well. Jaromír Hanzlík mighht have a lot of faults - I do not know him personally -, just like everybody memost certainly included, but I cannot see why people believe that he held any sympathies for the Communist regime during the era of what you call Normalization. Just have a look at the people he associated with in the late 1960s like Václav Havel or Jan Procházka or movies he played in like Žert or the songs he wrote in August 1968. And if he was a popular actor not only with the regime, it certainly was even harder for him to avoid them. Thanks anyway for reading this."



And by the way: "Nobody's perfect."!


 

The Litmus Test

So how in God's name can you tell if a person is authentic and never had to give in?!


Easily, if he or she is still able to laugh genuinely and infect you with a smile even at - let's say - the age of seventy.

Adventurous

Lean out of the window, preferably with your breast naked.

Mea Culpa

And I still wonder whether the term "Mutterwitz"/ "mother wit" or wit in general hasn't got anything to do with a sense of humour.


Nobody's perfect by the way!

Will and Power

Smashing the glass

So he took the glass and smashed it as a demonstration for doing something surprising.


And there are those people who would smash glasses to confirm a toast.

So the result is the same: the glass is smashed and nobody will ever drink from it again.

Yet one is a sacrifice and has all the air of presenting a gift to the gods and the other is but a display of will and power. Whereas the one is done out of abundance and joy, the other shows off out of pure mischief (German: Mutwille).

And then there was my eldest daughter, who wept inconsolably because she had broken a glass - a pretty ordinary one - by accident.

More and More

Every crease reveals the angel you are.

Baroque

P S Decisive

My greatgrandfather was a musician by the way and died an artist's death, when he had a heart-attack at an organ, when he was sixty and my grandmother but three - and she wasn't even the youngest of her siblings.

Decisive

And then the world held its breath while my greatgrandfather had his true age revealed to my greatgrandmother finally at their civil wedding and he had turned to her saying: "Now you know, will you still marry me?"

Had the answer been different, my world would have fallen apart...

The Sublime is Now

Thanks a lot to my friend Beate, who has shared the video.

It gave me yesterday a moment of sublime joy watching it. Just the spinning around like a spinning top. The moment of dedication and the moments of liberation - simply marvellous and wonderful.

Magic

"de ziel van de dingen/ the soul of the things/ objects"

Troubadours wander, wonder and sing about it, for whatelse is there to do.

daily reminders




"Dees ist verhaal van 't leven, de praktijk in kunst is /This is the story of  life, which is practiced art"

There Are More Things In Heaven and Earth

"Nicht jeder kann ein Philosoph sein, doch ein jeder sollte im eigenen Interesse allwöchentlich eine halbe Stunde nachdenken./ Not everybody can be a philosopher, but everybody should on behalf  of himself contemplate every week for half an hour." - Jan Procházka (1968)

Go beyond the scope...

Could You Even Conceive - PS

So what triggered me was, that though yesterday started in a rather silly way, at the end I was feeling afraid.

So in the morning I read this letter to the editor in my local newspaper. It really made me laugh, for a woman was elaborating about hate and the fact that to her it was a bad thing and all to turn against what she termed users of animal products at the end, for these people in her eyes are the source of all violence and consequently hate on this earth.

Later on I read a post by a woman calling unborn children parasites.

So is there still a chance left for us to conceive and relate?!

Could You Even Conceive?!

Or relate?!

As I am pondering about the meaning of it all and can't help but believe that it is all about relation, connection, communion  - because nobody is already perfect, there is always something lacking, which might be the other person -, I take a look around and perceive just how far at odds with today this conception is.


"You give me reason to live!"

Exercise

Wether it's my eldest daughter, who was crying when she was playing a funny role in Kindergarden because people were laughing at her, or Jan Procházka, who on one ocassion had to hold back his anger when his daughters told him that they were laughing because he was funny, some or most people do not like being laughed at.  But then being able to laugh even at one's pretty own "authority" is an aspect of freedom.


So the exercise would be to get in front of the mirror, look quite sharp in the eye of whatever you see and then laugh about it from the bottom of your heart. Do it every once in a while.



Yeah and this is a self-portrait.

Paint It Black

A Gentleman Will Walk But Never Run

So somebody painted himself pretty black to avoid getting his soul tainted because people in power wanted him to act against his convictions. Not obeying them would have been virtually suicidal, as his wife pointed out to him.

"Plain Stupid"

So Dan Auerbach commenting on his solo album said (on Studio Brussel): "...it doesn't always have to be like Shakespeare...Sometimes it just needs to be stupid..."

"It was a lover and his lass, with a hey and a ho and a hey-nonny-no" As You Like It


Shalalala - Who would say he didn't have a taste for it as well?!

Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith - Nothing to Prove

For most relations, apart from natural science, there is no proof - and the concept of proof shouldn't apply. Just have a little bit faith and do the things you believe to be important.



original

Probably the first step is the hardest.