Dear Anne-Sophie,
I tend to write when I am in some enthusiastic mood but here is one of the contrary.
i am currently taken by a mourning for the disappearance of the communist bloc.
only cuba remains keeping up against the pressure of mediocrity, yet I hear words that there people also are unhappy and want a change... :(
...
i was meeting many new people over those workshops, some are fun and it is quite good, but I also experienced a number of communication breakdowns. i listen to people talking, say, in the pub and they find perfect agreement with each other, yet I see how irrelevant am I in that group. Their words are pertinent only to their own world and to them my feelings would look completely distorted and irrational and maybe even worthy of prison. (in some of the cases my argument was indeed irrational but I believe that irrationality is a good thing, and the most human! you see?)
So most often I just sat there only listeninng, with internal dissatisfaction, self-alienating myself and that stayed with me for the rest of the night, not having a will to talk to them anymore. Though in few cases I did say something that made the atmosphere not very good. (for everyone, that is)
I admit, we are probably all in the same trap of self-exaltation, but I cannot heal myself from the bitterness
but my sadness tonight was caused by another trend in my mind - on occasions I am experiencing that my mates here are perceiving and feeling in a more simplistic way than me. (yet I am not good enough myself, to be able to lift them.) As one example, I had this today again over the russian version of Winnie the Pooh (from the 80s) which Eugene had in his archives. although it works on an entirely different level, it was seen on the same terms as the version by Disney (and of course immediately dismissed, because it never aimed in the qualities which Disney animators promote). thus a series that in Russia is considered of brilliant excellence was dismissed here simply as "Ha-ha, I could draw this too!" and "But they dont resemble at all Disney`s characters!"
in fact further I found out that noone has ever read the book and in fact the non-british didnt even know there is a book on the first place - they thought Pooh is a disney thing like mickey mouse! From there we moved onto children`s authors and I discovered that noone has heard of any of the authors which have completely shaped the magic and dreams of my childhood, and probably have shaped the mind of every single person in eastern europe! of course I do not expect them to know about bulgarian or russian authors, but westerners like Astrid Lindgren, Tuve Janson, Gianni Rodari, A A Miln, Erich Kestner were also unknown... Me and Eugene were like "Do you know Karlsson?" "Ooooh! Yeah! Yeah! That was so great! 'A man in his best years, fat just enough!' And do you remember that event where..." Everybody else was like "what the fuck are you talking about?"
I will try to give another very minor example that I am certain you as french will relate to: there is no Louis de Funes here either! He is an epoch in comedy cinema but for them that is just not there! My trouble is not because they dont know about it, after all I dont know the notable iranian or indian films either. I have not even read a great deal of the classical literature, Shakespeare Pushkin and so on, despite all the efforts of my teachers in school : ) ...
but I was finally faced -personally- with the process of extinction that I knew only in abstraction!
For, commercial american/english culture is intensively replacing also at home the one that we used to have. If similar thing happened to France, the joy of the gandarme, for one, would be lost to the world - only cinema scholars and people with awkward hobbies would ever be able to touch it...
Yes, that is what I am worried about - the historical process of change.
But there is another thing to it - it seems to me a change towards more simplistic perceptions. a loss of a range of sensitivity.
Indeed, I am feeling that the environment in which I was brought up was intellectually more superior (refer to the self- exaltation above :)) and that the world as a whole became more simple-minded when communism gave up and --earning-- replaced --respectable personal achievement-- as the socially promoted drive for one`s career/life on yet another big portion of the planet. the "non-macdonalds" culture in my country no more relates to the society at large, but only to a few lucky ones to be raised in appropriate environment.
Once a poster in a bulgarian newspaper forum put it quite spicely,
"държавната стратегия се определя от новата европейска концепция за балканите-никой не е заинтересован да въди интелект сред децата на балкана.изкуството ще е елитарно,достъпно за малка част от населението.останалата част и стигат барбекютата,чалгата,секса,алкохола и нечленоразделните звуци!"
"the state political strategy is defined by the new european concept for the Balkans: nobody has benefit of sowing intellect amid the children of the Balkan. the art will be elitist accessible to a tiny part of the populace. for the rest should suffice the barbecues, turbofolk, sex, alcohol and the caveman speech!"]
And on a personal scale:
In recent years in Sofiia I lived along people who were much more sensitive than me and potent in areas of understanding or feeling, which i didnt have myself. Thus I always had the opportunity and the challenge to absorb new and to grow and develop. Here, I do not know such people yet, and for an year now I have felt like my mind is atrophying and I am actually losing the faculties I have gained earlier. Naturally this is not a very happy feeling. (or maybe self-illusion)
ok, thats enough, I think summarises my big problem with a different culture
How are you?
Did you start in Marseilles?
Nottingham,
6.X.2005
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