and then

... and then winter comes. you get ready to live mostly indoors. gotta arrange the space for that. you have a little home on the 10th floor above bucharest. near the mall. every night you go home, you see this huge pillar with huge blue lit letters: "MEGAfun". today crossing the mall you had small pleasures. watched the mannequins from the mango shop, who all look the same, and thought- these girls are really sexy. it was actually the same face, but different clothes. you found a present for this boy you like. talked at the workshop about stuff in ur life- ur mum and the pigeon she found, lost friends, job. then you came home, made this salad. bought bacon and mushrooms from the shop named "real". while waiting at the cue, noticed the beautiful huge faces hangin on the walls. made judgmental remarks in your head about the next person in line's boots. thought about the moment when you will make pics with everything that's in your room. made this salad. ate it. while crossing the parkway, made judgmental thoughts about a girls' feet. and watched your own feet in the new 300 lei boots. ur mum bought your new boots. in the bus, a young man talking about the gypsy tradition with the girl- that he and his girlfriend must not tell the parents she is not a virgin anymore, cus they'd throw her away and no other gypsy would take her. "a romanian would take them. even if they're not virgins", said his romanian friend. the discussion continued. then home, the salad and probably sex and the city. next morning, clean up the space, the living space. looked at the plates you wash thinkin this can be a good meditation opportunity. you wash the plates and think about the plates you wash. ate eggs bacon and mushrooms. had a small fight with the cat. cleaned the floor. last night you dreamed rj died. then woke up realized it was just a dream. probably talkin yesterday about his accident at the workshop made it come back in your mind. then fell back asleep and dreamt he ressurected. you met, but he said that now that he's back to life he'll not be gay anymore. then we wondered if we can still be such good friends if he's - quote- 'heterosexual". watched "the doom generation" again these days- a heterosexual movie by gregg araki. 15 december. plans for the near future. while washing the plates i was asking myself what would the definition of "theatrical" be. then plans for funding. then plans. think about the peter pan monologue. will you ever finish it. probably until june. wash your clothes. think about your hair which has a natural rasta tangled portion. eat little toblerone chocolates. outside's snowing. you won't be able to wear the new boots so much now. check rj's profile to make sure it's not like in the dream, where there was this huge black band on the fb profile, written- we are sorry to inform you that your friend died. you buy plasticine from "real"- wonder if this is a sign of inner peace, or just a sign of winter coming- this will generate little coloured animals who will then fill the living space. think about the text ur writing- the one with the education. gotta give it more time. think about time, while washing the plates. listen to melancholic music, like marianne faithfull but especially diamanda galas

vaslui theatre festival, october 2010

Ich Clown @ Festivalul Umorului "C-tin Tanase", Vaslui from veioza arte on Vimeo.

9 sept city

9th of september and i say leave a trace of your thoughts write i was in the bus 2 days ago thinking about a memory and then said to myself i should write this until i forget it until it starts decomposing in my mind but i didnt even believe myself when thinkin that. the memory became just a frame that got stuck into my mind making me think, as so many times recently, that love and affection are a form of illness. a form of being stuck like an animal in a trap. your helpless look. your random moves, trying to escape it. your dreamy eyes when you think of something that is not here with pain and desire.

one of the first days in bucharest today. walked a lot. sometimes feels like a battle field. it s grey and violent and intense. poisoned. gas and noise. loads of noise. the main street, magheru, feels so heavy. very hard to handle. when you walk through it, you have to shout, the sound of the cars is too strong. and there s fogg, things look misty cus of the pollution. a walk through magheru and you need a retreat. streets are underconstruction everywhere. you hear the sound of machines breaking cement, and this is mixed with the sound of cars and claxons, and alarms. people s faces are dark brown and frowned. some of them seem lost. there was an old lady from the countryside near nottara theatre, the kind of very skinny old ladies with black clothes and a black scarf (basma?) on her head. she looked at me grabbed my hand and shouted ”where are we?”. ”we are near piața romana”, i shouted back. ”i want to go down the hill to universitate” she shouted. i pointed the direction. ”just keep on walking!! keep on walking in that direction and you will see it!!” she seemed frightened. i had to give her a little push in that direction. ”i will go down there and i will see it, right?” said she, already moving. ”right.” and i waved my hand. she looked as confused as in the beginning and then she dissapeared in the crowd.
i sort of like this intense heavy feeling. i breath in and feel the dust gas ans smell of sweat. feel dizzy. gives you quite a high. can t compare it with other drugs. feels stronger and better than the dreamy hippie amsterdam. maybe also because i m not a hippie anymore. i don t wanna feel The Love anymore.

discovered a beautiful artist 2day, her name is yașam șașmazer. she is from turkey and she makes these weird wooden painted sculptures, child-size children like these




(this is called ”beautiful as my mother”)


(this is called ”strong as my father”)

(”bloody fruit”)

source

also discovered a beautiful artist at the ADM festival in Amsterdam some days ago. his name is yann keller and his music fits bucharest so well. he built this instrument called the steelbass. and makes sound installations like this
- and this sound is bucharest

the cold song

i don't know if there's any connection btween this



and jmbarrie's melancholic figure and peter pan standing still and me as peter pan and the women in the red light district but i keep on listening to this song on and on and on for a week now, and it sort of gives me the frame for the things i experience and they have a very sharp cold-lit shape through this frame.

wanna be

emotional trouble. this fucked up romantic utopia that makes us see only the nice stuff. if i could find a way to get rid of that sweet flavoured perception of reality, my oh my, that would be JUUUST precious. seein somebody and not seeing just the best in him, but him/her as a whole. no judgement. i guess not attaching judgemental opinions would be the best start for that. there's no good or bad, it is as it is. not what i want to see in it. not what can please my purring ego that transforms everything into a disgusting jelly disney movie .

haha - i want to be evil- listened to her recently wth 2 occasionally friends. peckham wine till 9 in the morning and watchin



oh of course the sweetest tenderest of them all miss

ich clown

Ich CLown - premiera from veioza arte on Vimeo.

- what we have been workin on until now. a play about ourselves, and the beginnging of the programme "write about yourself", which hopefully will encourage people to write about/share their own stories, and break the common belief that "my life's not worth it" when it comes to writing about you. twas the most kamikadze project i've worked on, but it's out there now. and that's good.

http://ichclown.wordpress.com/

back

almost thought i'll never write here again. my brain is still more than half empy after the last 2 months' experience, and now slowly coming to life, bit by bit, pixel by pixel. try to remember parts of the things that happened in order to free some space in my brain cells. in london again. now. after the opening of our performance, which was good but also the most nerve-consuming experience i've been through until now. yes, doing an independent theatre production in bucharest has all the chances to basically leave you in a vegetable condition. right now, selling baloons on the streets of london. yesterday i saw a guy next to me who was literally plucking his hair out while singing a song into a street plastic sign (the orange-and white ones, that look like the VLC icon). he was singing "wonderwall" into that. had black dirty hands and dirty nails, seemed homeless, and had just some remains of hair on the top of his head, which he was plucking every 30 seconds, and then throwing them. he had a bag in front of him and people were throwing money. twas the most disturbing image i've seen in a while. i'll try to take more pictures starting today, in my baloon walks.
decided to come back here for a phd in a couple of years- probably 3. trying to figure out the research theme until then.

remember

some of the last moments of this week listening to this song bright tomorrow

i treat you nice

feel i've been going through a tunnel since i came back. like in those video games, always ready for an enemy to attack. decided to put notes and thoughts together, to see the bigger picture. i'm wondering almost every day about what am i doing, what am i building here - coz many times it feels that you're going on moving sand, and this is the most absurd thing of all. i'm losing so many time to run after all those important people that could make our project work (but they have no real interest for projects though, they're just a bunch of mobsters), that i feel that here everything is set up to stop people from work. i could use that time in so many interesting ways, but still i have to be prepared to show up in front of all those greasy theater-owners, anytime they please to, just because they are the only ones. i hate this old school theater system with all my heart and soul. they don't give a shit about theater, about the people they are workin with , they have no passion for other things than keep their chair warm. there would be many things to write about.it's may, i've been here for 6 months now. or 7. there would be so many things so interesting for this blog, also because when i look at my older posts i see that when i was in london, i had the time and the comfort to write about things i discover, or things i think about. here, it's always like a survival trip, there's no quiet moment to even think about what you are thinkin about. it's also strange, that when in other place, you have the curiosity to discover, all your senses are oriented towards outside, here all your senses are oriented towards inside, sort of trying to protect yourself from the outside world.

yesterday, one of those theater managers invited me to take a sit on his lap, and tell him about the project we're workin at. of course, he said it as a joke. also, i think he pronounced the words "i treat you nice", meaning us, the young kids who came to propose him a project. it's confusing, and it's also confusing that people here seem to take it as "his jokey way", which is totally fucked up. there is no way in the whole universe that somebody you go to talk about a project can invite you to sit on his lap, not even as a joke. it's just fucked up. but he acts like this because he knows you need him. and because he has no fuckin notion of respect. and you go again and again to ask him if he read your text. wtf. duude. wtf. it's just WRONG. the only thing i should be bothered with is my work. and you don't do it with a snap of fingers. you need time, and energy. and focus. and food. i have this sort of vision, since i came back, looking around- that the people around me, me included, we've been so humiliated, our mothers have been humiliated, our grandparents have been humiliated, that the only good thing that could happen now as a burst of this continuous pain, would be a writing outburst, people writing and writing and giving voice to their feelings, and stories, and disappointment, hundreds of stories. to write is the easiest tool, you don't need to rent a space for it, you don't need props, and stuff you can't afford. we also don't trust people. but we could trust ourselves to be honest, each person in it's own autistic way, and then in the end we can discover the things that we really have in common. at least we would get to know ourselves. there's no notion of solidarity here, of any kind. the strongest communities are the ones in villages or in gypsy communities. in the rest of the country, people either create very closed groups (the family- usually mother father grandparents children and maybe some close cousins), protecting themselves against all the others, or just live in a no-harm pact with all the people around (that is if you don't form a family group) sort of a cold war understanding, you don't mess with me and i won't mess with you.

for some strange reason i've been watching america's next top model again in the last few weeks. i can't get those girls out of my mind, and tyra banks, and the competition rules, and the rewards, and the love and hate relationship those girls have while living together. their beauty standards. the political correctness of having one plus-size model in each cycle, or sometimes one lesbian. anyways. i fell asleep, just woke up now. will keep posting, i guess.

sunday morning. inhabit ur own life, space, actions, depressions, joys. everyplace you are in has a reason. pretending it doesn't happen is just stupid.

depression repression

i was wondering these days about the topic of education in ro. it seems incredible how a country can treat the young people so badly, trying to kill any curiosity and teach them that the lesson in life is compromise and submission. before my london experience i was sort of sure that it's the same everywhere, same like here i mean- if you are young, nobody will listen to you, nobody will give you credit, people will just try to fuck any kind of passion, creativity, curiosity creating a system based on power and fear and constant need to "proove" that you deserve to be in that place. in that school. university. institution. and i mean- isn't it kind of stupid like totally stupid to think like that- you as the one who is part of politics and you have to decide things- to fuck the youth of a country it means that you will have a country of emotionally crippled adults. wtf?

i was also thinking to write something about disappointment. it's one of those kind of thoughts that come to you as a very sparkling idea at some point- i should write something about disappointment. seems like the perfect thing to write about, it's so present that it cries at you to write about it. bucharest is one of the places where the word just comes out from everywhere. you experience it. you see it all around you. people are so used to it that they kind of wait for it- they expect to be disappointed and so when they are not, it's strange and it creates suspicion. and it leads in a way or another to a final disappointment. sometimes it's you the one that fucks it up, because you are just not used with things going well.

it's strange. anyways. i ate a glorious food today so i will write about it too- it's some senegal popular food with carrots, peanut butter, ginger, garlic, onion and god knows what, i'll ask the friend who made it and edit the recipe later. i never understood people who were "passionate with cooking". i always thought that at some point it's a huge waste of time. i also felt that i couldn't empathize with the idea of enjoying some "nice food". but in the last few months, this eating and the whole culture of it dimension just opened new gates. i find it a weird and fascinating process of how people create all these things just to eat them. and the rituals around it, the way eating can change your personality. like indians eat with their hands, and it's very sexy and more personal to eat just with your hands.

so... disappointment. when i came back here i was sort of warned that the depression will not happen in the first month, but only after 5-6. here we are, 5 months. she came and sometimes is still here, reachable. just sittin there, somewhere. if you need her, she'll just pop up. otherwise she'll leave you alone. she's a good girl. and the combination with the winter is makin it just perfect. and because you were disappointed last time, you will have higher expectations next time, because of all the frustrations gathered with the older disappointments. you will want revenge. you will want to show them.

it's interesting to see how your brain works in different contexts.

all these things i do

so we go to this smokey place and start talkin the beer as bubbly as always and people the same as always there's something stinky in the air and he says- ok so why do you do all these things? what? i say. what you do, he says. like all these things. theatre, writing and all these things. i think about it and say- i guess after all kinds of searches i found this as my way the best way i can express myself. my form of expression. this is what i do, this is who i am. and he thinks for a bit and says- there's something rotten about all these things with theatre and these exercises you are tellin me about. your answer doesn't satisfy me. i'm like- i suddenly feel like a freak. so i try to explain one more time- it is the best way through which i can express myself. it is my language of communication with the world. wtf. this is my tool. my job.what i do. still not satisfying. and he is- i still don't understand WHY. why do you do all these things. what do you mean to express yourself.
thou shalt not make anymore compromises i say to myself thou shalt not try to explain if people don't get it from the first instant. thou shalt not waste your time in vain. thou shalt not have patience anymore. thou shalt not NOT make the compromise to go out and meet wth whoever when actually you wanted to look at your videos and make an edit.

.

one thousand billion zillion thoughts hittin their head against eachother i ate some ciorba with peppers and i think: be grateful for the affection you receive. cut the rotten branches. here, you see, there's plenty of space for so many thoughts. here in this city. your brain can generate a huge quantity of shit if it is not challenged. take it easy, i say, take it slow. always be greatful every single morning when you get up of ur bed and walk to your brand new white desk. winter's almost over and then spring will come. hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thoughts jumping and bitin eachother's neck, i might as well leave the room and have a beer.

ladies and gentlemen eugene buica

the peculiar sensation that a big blue guy wants to kiss ur ass

8 jan, morning. cat sexually charged. begs for smth no human race could give her.

avtar 3d last night. i don't know if it has any connection but after that i dreamt that i was supposed to have a drink wth Marilyn Manson. maybe i wanted some other effects than the jolly medusas. what pisses me off bout movies like avatar is that they cultivate this escapism, this phantasy that if you were bigger and blue-er your life would be so much interesting riding those flying creatures and gettin in touch with the sacred spirit of the forest. all beautiful, but if after watching the movie you leave thinking oh my life here on earth is so not interesting, and my human body is so not interesting, i wish i lived on pandora- i think this does you harm. of course you could take good things out of it, james cameron was aware of the eco trend and of the anti-colonialist trend as well. but with a budget of $200 million dollars and even more for marketing, i think there were far more interesting things to be done here on earth. and look- i just google pandora and the first article i find says- "The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.".

so i didn't fall under the spell, didn't dream of pandora but of marilyn manson. lucky me.


"Hate today

No love for tomorrow

We're all stars now in the dope show

There's lots of pretty, pretty ones

Who want to get you high

But all the pretty, pretty ones

Will leave you low

And blow your mind"

(marilyn manson- dope show)

.

few days ago a neighbor of mine tells me that he went to london for winter holidays with his family. did you like london? i ask. "what can i say, miss... we are the last people on the face of the earth". this is one brilliant example of the romanian self-hate and self-pity at the same time. you see a city you like and you immediately think you are the last people on the face of the earth.