Soooo, haven’t been here for a while there… got back to work, did an interesting opera production, didn’t go to the afterparty, ‘cause kid and goodnight crap, summer started, went to the seaside, got pregnant, got an offer to give lectures in the theatre and music academy, took it, now – scared to death. Sooooo yeah… your usual couple of months there.
AAAANYWAY.
Ah, also, I’ve started to do commentaries on the radio, to anyone interested (sorry, only in Lithuanian), follow links here: https://www.facebook.com/RadioAvanscena/
BUT TODAY and now I’m getting back here and wanted to say this... Just very recently I also went back to my favorite magazines. And on the 9th issue of #riposte I found this breathtaking interview by Suze Olbrich with Maria Alyokhina from #pussyriot. I mean, all this time I knew about them, about what they were doing, about the trial and all, but… Now, with this time passed, with some distance…
no, that’s crap, it’s just the realization that today, in the fuckin year 2018 I’m reading an interview with this beautiful woman, a mother, an activist that essentially has been sent to jail as a political prisoner. And, yeah, I knew this long time ago, I read it on the news as it was happening, but what happened now, while reading this interview, it was this chilling feeling of reality, of how close all of this is. And Ukraine is close, and with today’s media I can also very closely listen to kids crying in Adolf Trump camp of crippled childhood… but this was another closeness: it was about comprehending 100 percent what she said, why she said it, why she did it and doing it just as she is talking – without any dramatism, holy sacrifice, overacting or tears. It’s just how it is, and this woman is living in the present, doing what she feels is right. It is all very simple and there is no creepy heroism in it. She is close to us, to me, just like that.
These people that we see and hear about every day, that are actually fighting for what they and we believe, - somehow, we always mystify them, we try to tell big stories about them, but the thing is that the simplicity of the reality is the real stress of this situation. If each day while reading the news we could fully comprehend that the war that is going in another country is no surprise for them now, it is their everyday. We are still far away of comprehending fully what is it like to live in a real, contemporary dictatorship. And it hasn’t really reinvented itself, as someone beautifully tweeted:
So, what I’m trying to get to here is, apart from the everlasting urgency of always being aware, present and active, I was once more reminded that a written word, an interview, a true meeting, a sharp view and honest story can make a difference. In this sea of sad and bad news that has made us almost tearless, there should be and there still are authors that can make us touchy again. And who knows, maybe after that we might once more start doing something ourselves. Or not. But still…
Comments