kohoco

This is one of those times I’m kicking myself for not bringing my camera with me. Most of you know something about artist Martin Zet from some of the work we we’ve done together, or from what I have written about him here, or if you have had the fortune to know him personally. What I like and admire about Martin is his ability to make me wonder, wonder what will happen in the very next moment. Not in the way that dangerous people make you feel, like they’re going to hit you or throw their glass of beer through a window. But as if strange doors in reality are opening and there’s a moment of trepidation before you stick your head inside.

On Monday he had an opening at a small gallery in Prague that is attempting to show contemporary Czech art and artists. His latest exhibition, Fate of the Nation, consists of blown up pictures of busts by Otakar Svec, the creator of the huge Stalin monument that overlooked the city up on Letna hill. Now Martin’s blow-ups are hanging along the main drag just at the foot of Letna. I didn’t much understand the speeches (or the artwork, I’m pretty out of it these days), but I have fun watching all the old faces in the art scene here. After the speeches Martin goes over to the corner of the gallery where he has set up a large pot-bellied propane tank, lit and heating a smelting pot with a long wooden handle, and a backpack with a canvas wrap sticking out of it. Along the wall lie about 50 pieces of lead, alternating in size, short-long-short-long.

As Martin silently drops the pieces of lead into the smelting pot a young woman, thick around the hips with a booming chest and creamy brown complexion picks up a microphone and pours her voice into a small mixer and amplifier. She proceeds to mix and layer the various rhythmic sounds she’s making into a kind of hypnotic music, casting the rest of the scene as a kind a symbolic fairytale. While the lead slowly melts in the smelting pot Martin pulls the canvas wrap out of the backpack and unrolls it. Inside are four thorn branches, still green. He ties the bottoms of the braches together and begins to twine them like a Czech pomlazka. If you’ve never seen a pomlazka, it basically consists of several willow branches twined together, with colored ribbons tied around the top. On Easter morning boys and grown men run around whacking women, who give them chocolate eggs for their effort. (This year, for the first time in ten years of living in CZ, I woke up early in the morning and went down to the local flower shop and bought one. I felt like a kid buying condoms for the first time. I tried to sneak back to the apartment without anyone seeing me in the street. In the meantime, beefy guys strutted proudly past me in the street swinging theirs like it was a baseball bat. Back home, after dutifully beating my womenfolk into fertility, we went down to A.’s Grandma’s flat and I sent her reeling with a couple of blows to the backside and legs. Squealing with pleasure she gave me chocolate and a glass of Baileys.) So anyway, Martin’s taking this tradition to a new level by using thorn branches. In the process he presses his fingers into the thorns, and I wince, expecting blood, which never comes. When he gets to the end he begins to pull multi-colored ribbons from his leather boots, from under his socks, and ties them to the top of the pomlazka. When these run out he removes his old, worn-out boots, places them carefully on the painted gray concrete floor, and begins to cut off his socks in long strips, again tying them to the end of the pomlazka. He’s wearing about 5 layers of socks, so this takes while.

Now barefoot and back at the smelting pot, he stirs and prods the lead. I ask myself, “What now? What could he possibly be doing with the lead?” At this point I notice that the girl making the voice music rhythms has stopped and is staring at Martin’s performance too, wondering out loud, a cluster of faces pressing at the gallery window. Martin, looking like a farmer working on his tracker engine, carefully hefts the pot by the handle and with great concentration pours the contents into his old leather boots. Smoke billows comically from the boots, like the scene in a movie when the guy blows up and only his boots are left behind, still standing and smoking on the pavement. A second later the stench hits the gaping and incredulous audience. It’s nearly too much to stand.. No, in fact for most, it is too much to stand, and the room clears. Over the next half hour Martin continuous to melt lead and pour it into his boots, which leak and spill onto the floor. The gallery fills with stench, a pungent stew of wet cardboard, burning animal fur, mummified milk breath, and sour foot bandages. I go outside to get some air with the rest of the gallery-art-opening-goers and I overhear the exasperated exclamations of the owners, saying, “You’re supposed to bring people into the gallery, not force them out!” “He told me this wouldn’t happened!” Etc.

I do manage to peek in now and then to check on his progress and show my dying loyalty. Though it’s not easy and I’m definitely feeling queasy. I make it for the finale. He tops off the boots, smoking black nubs, filled to the tops with lead, standing next to each other, and quickly hefts the pomlazka in one hand, slamming it down between them so that it stands like an erect soldier, a thorny spinal column, with its gaily colored ribbons fluttering in the noxious fumes.

I didn’t know whether to applaud or vomit. On my way home I had a terrifying moment when I thought that we have all been poisoned. Stalin’s head was blown off the monument in 1962 on orders from Moscow. Remind me to ask Martin just what the hell that was all about. No camera, no camera, slapping my forehead. I’m left with a final image: Martin’s lead boots, permanently, messily sealed to the gallery floor, an indelible obstacle to the fanciful gazing of art on walls.

Just after I took this picture, a gate across the road slid open and an old woman in dirty clothes scowled at me. This is an everyday event in the Czech Republic and didn't at all bother me. I walked ahead a little while and spotted Alice and Isi in the distance, running madly ahead of the gathering storm. I started running after them when I heard rough male voices behind me calling after me, saying, "Hey you, mister! Hey stop!" I stopped and turned around.

There was a group of about 5 guys, but I can't really remember what they look like, as I began to panic, putting the situation together from their perspective. Oh oh. "Hey, you take pictures of something nice?"
"What?" I half stuttered.
"You take some nice pictures?" one asked again.
"Yeah, the stones are nice," I said.
"That's great."
I immediately turned and started walking, slowly now, down the long road with no exits. Dead silence behind me. I seemed to remember a white van they were in the middle of loading. Why are white vans intrinsically suspicious?

The whole walk ahead I imagined the growl of the van pulling up next to me and a couple of arms reaching out and pulling me inside. The last thing I would see is Alice and Isi speeding into the distance away from the storm. (Too many movies? I wish I knew. I read about these things happening in the newspapers.)

What makes me smile is the irony of starting to run just as they called out to me, immediately engendering suspicion on their part.

So, see anything out of the ordinary in the picture?

I know that at one point in my life I never thought I would be married and have a child. And I certainly never thought that my child's first phrase would be (repeated endlessly throughout the day and on her lips as she falls asleep at night): "Hot tea, baby!"

Speaking of Judas, have you been following the story of the recent revelation of his Gospel?

In celebration of Good Friday my wife made a special kind of sweet bread that tastes something like a glazed croissant. It's called Judas' Rope. I asked my kind and intelligent wife why, pray tell, is this piece of bread called Judas' Rope. And she responded that it looks like a coil of rope on the earth and Judas hanged himself after betraying Jesus.

"Did he? Hmm," I said. "I didn't know that. I guess I never thought about what happened to him after the betrayal."

"At least I think he did..."

After a little research I learned that there are two versions of what happened to poor Judas.

In one (Matthew 27:3-8 ) he gives the silver back and goes off and hangs himself out of guilt, and in the second he "purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood." Acts 1:18-19

Man. What the hell happened there?

Just wondering what a bread called: Bowels Gushed Out might look like.

When will it stop raining? Forty days and forty nights. With Easter around the corner and no twinned stick whip ready for some good ol' women beating. Fertility under threat.

So I'm reading this book called Blink (birthday present) the main idea so far is that the intuitive part of the mind is capable of making sounder decisions in the blink of an eye than, say, a computerized analysis of something. Or a decision that has been thought out and deeply deliberated.

In one part he describes this doctor who has been videotaping married couples for the last twenty years. While recording he has them argue about something while measuring their heart rate, sweat glands, whether they shift in their seats or not, etc.

He develops a system of twenty separate categories corresponding to various emotions that couples might have while arguing: Disgust is a 1, anger 7, defensiveness is 10, whining 11, stonewalling 13 etc. (By the way, just for your reference, according to this doctor the four black horses of a relationship are, from worst to less bad: Contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling.) Anyway, he then examines the video and the bodily reactions very closely, second by second, assigning a number to each reaction. Apparently, based on his calculations, he has been able to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether a couple will be divorced within 15 years after working on a one-hour video. His success rate is about 90 percent if the video is just 15 minutes.

After so many years he’s so good at it that he can sit in a café, hear two sentences muttered by the couple speaking in the next booth and know immediately that they’re doomed and should be shopping around for a good lawyer to fight for custody of the children.

Question is, would you want someone to do this to you? Would you sit in the chair with your partner and be filmed, assigned numbers to your emotions and told that, according to the patterns written in your immediate behavior, your relationship doesn’t stand a chance.

Made me think twice about my own “automatic” reactions.

It's snowing, first day of semester. Wish me a happy birthday. I'm going to finish my glass of Ruby Cabernet, 2004 now. Not bad at all.

Feels like the kind of night for lightning high in the clouds. Thunder.

Ok, sandpit rules: you enter with 1.5-year-old child and place her gently on the mound of loose sand. You set down her bag of brightly colored sand toys (bucket, shovel, rake etc), play stroller complete with mini teddy bear… and you get ready to get dirty. It takes not even three split seconds, you look up, and your daughter'’s stroller has been jacked by a three-year-old and who is heading swiftly for the gate. Daughter has a scowl on her face but doesn'’t move or react. What now. You look down and see alien child fingers probing her bag of toys. All this while and no less than 24 pairs of eyes are observing your every reaction: your child'’s, the parents' standing around and all of their kids'.

Issues are raised in these moments. You know your child absorbs reactions: aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, neutral, easy-going, ignoring, pretending to ignore. You know that what you do now could influence a whole lifetime. There is nowhere to go, just be there and let the awkwardness do its thing. Well sweetheart, sandpit rules. One child grabs a toy tractor which is just sitting there, not being used. For his transgression he gets a shovel of sand in the eyes. Both children burst into tears.

I don't think it changes very much as you get older. The situations become more complicated, maybe, but the essence is the same. You've been working as hard as she has, but the manager has not noticed. Later, when he comments on a nice piece of work, you subtly take credit, knowing very well it was your more visible, louder and more confident colleague.

I think the spam may have stopped coming, along with all of my dear readers.

It's been over a year since I last updated this poor thing of a blog, and I have to admit for nearly 99.9 percent of that year I felt no guilt at all about that. Seemed like a good time to let that particular thread go, drift away like a Czech village in the spring.

Don't mistake this post as effort on my part to return to the blogoshere or whatever they call it now. I just had a hankering to put words down in space and wish the world a very good evening.

The year has been full of what it means to go from being be a wishy-washy introspective reader of world literature and newspapers, hanging out with artists, guzzling liquids of various degrees, percentages and origins, and in general not thinking too far beyond the ends of my shoes, which I often tripped over, to... well, being a father and breadwinner. A professional, in the world of work.

What a relief — I thought I would never get out of that particular life. Certain parts fall away, others grow from that, there are these amazing transformations in one's life, easily witnessed in an infant as she sheds her babyness at the speed of a fast crawl, proudly stands and moves in wider and wider circles in the world, circles that spin outward and land you in places you never suspected you would be.

Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. Claw town, ghost town, evil to the stony heart of the dirty river that pours its way through its back streets. You should see her now, all dressed up in glass and concrete. She is certainly undergoing change, an ambiguous transformation I don’t really understand. I know there is more money, more time for work, less for play, all that jazz. And somehow the city stopped being so strongly Prague for me. In bold. And more like, say, Milwaukee, a city with cash, green places for walks, some clubs and bars, theaters doing experimental stuff, with all the ghosts relegated to the closets and sanitariums slated for bulldozing.

In a sense, what I mean is that the ghosts and the past are no longer so strongly in the conscious mind, at least not in mine. We are happier to move in a glass and powerpoint world where money frees us, and our memories are saved for precious moments. In many ways, this can be good. After all, who wants to live in a cemetery. But in our hearts there is the awareness of loss, and the wonder at what we are doing, and who it benefits. I ask myself, who am I benefiting? What is it that I am creating for the future?