“Titoland” is a portrait of  Yugoslavia in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Driven by Tito’s  charisma and political skills, the country managed the impossible: a balance between East and West, Communism and Capitalism. What appear to be loosely connected childhood memories of Summers on the seaside, travels to “the outside,” or the happiness of wearing a self-made (and therefore unique) dress, create a rich literary tableau before the backdrop of the gradual collapse of Tito’s Empire. The childhood does not end abruptly, but breaks up painfully, piece-by-piece, like the country in which I live. What follows is a leap into the unknown.

Book presentation will be on 2 April in Vienna – stay tuned for details.

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Rihanna’s latest video, widely watched in US is banned in France. It is showing, and glorifying, a couple of drug addicts smoking crack, popping pills, drinking, having sex, tattooing each other. All to a funky beat, her happily singing “We found love in a hopeless place”. It looks like so much fun! Her “S&M” video was banned in Europe for glorifying S&M practices. A woman who has the status she could use to fight drugs and domestic violence is doing exactly the opposite. Let’s break all boundaries and just shock. I can see the creative meeting with an enthusiastic young director pitching the premise that hasn’t yet been seen and will break every rule. That’s how you get famous, isn’t it? And if you’re famous, you’re rich. You can buy a Xbox any time, don’t need to use pepper spray.

“The Muppets” just came out. A great film. How wonderful it is that they are back and entertaining kids in a human pace, without aggression, killing, fighting, chasing, explosions. Very refreshing after all latest kids’ movies, which are so packed with action and aggression that I’d leave a cinema hysterical and trembling like after 5 cups of coffee. Well, Muppets need to raise money  ($10 million) to save their name and their studio. They don’t, but they get the equal – they get fame. They get streets filled with people screaming their names. So they win. Happy end. Money or fame. One of them will save your soul.

Rules (moral, religious, legislative) have disappeared. Barriers are lifted, nothing is holding us down and we are drifting in this weightless world of individual “I”s. We are completely free in our search for happiness. We can do everything and the only thing we have to do is take care of our own arse. Others don’t matter. The effects of our actions don’t matter. We are completely disconnected. And wonder why we are lonely and unhappy although there is so much around us. There is too much of everything, things, people, emotions, phases come and go, everything is here, everything is exchangeable. Why bind to something? It can always be different, better. So we need more! Of everything. Trying to cope with and find our way through this chaos we created, we are using ratio. We are analyzing, weighing, trying to understand. Trying to analyze the un-analyzable.

Just like the socio-economic system we created. Try to analyze that. Try to solve the mess. Impossible. We need to start from zero. In so many aspects of our society.

We need to reconnect.

http://www.zib21.com/19438/anataj/wall-street-brennt/#comments

I had to. I am for change. I wrote about things Occupy people are fighting against (and for) in my essay about the financial crisis back in 2008 (see my “Ana Almighty”  article in The Vienna Review, December 2008). I wrote about it in my second book “Knockout” – let’s hope it will come out soon.

I was excited to witness Occupy Wall Street. But it made me sad.

First, the whole neighborhood is under a blockade and there are more policemen and securities than traders. Walking through Wall Street felt like walking through Zagreb during the war – especially during an air raid. That was last year, before Occupy. It is even worse now. How fair and innocent can the financial sector be if it needs an army of policemen to protect it?

Second, Occupy Wall Street is actually Occupy Zuccotti Park – the protesters are squashed together in a tiny park away from the Wall Street and surrounded by Mc Donald’s and Burger King and a million of police cars. There are more police cars then protesters. It looked like they were put there, where they don’t disturb, and left until they lose the drive and just leave. And this is what will happen. It reminded me of Uni Brennt, the protest that started at the University of Vienna in 2009 and spread through Europe. Universities were occupied for months. There were workshops, work groups; famous intellectuals talked and supported, media covered. Students were left to protest until they lost the drive. Nothing has changed.

Don’t ask me how to make a change. I don’t know. Maybe we should all just quit our jobs in the same time.

Unfortunately, the danger is that with every try like this, which ends up in just dying away, people lose hope. Hope in their power and hope in their ability to change things. When we lose hope, we can take a triple dose of anti depressants and turn into robots. And this is exactly what the system needs.

And last, yesterday I found a large article about the big Occupy protests in Okland on the home page of Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard. Then I looked into LA Times. NY Times. Huffington Post. No one covered them. For the US media – and thus US public – they have never happened.

Yes, I’m sad. Still, the fact that so many people recognize problems, have a critical mind, want to find solutions, are willing to protest and say NO MORE – that is hope.

Yes, that’s when you LOVE it.

4 pages devoted to breasts. Not kidding.

It made me wonder (yet again) why the hell out of all cities in the world, I landed in this city. I know it’s supposed to be cool, ironic and funny. Somehow it isn’t.

And then I imagined a November issue of New York Magazine devoted to N.Y. men. And a 4 pages article about their penises. Am sure they’d have much more amazing stories to tell.

Yes, writers here officially learn the recipe for (Hollywood) movies that work. The rules are very strict. You will learn about the 3 act structure, plot turns, beats, set pieces, log lines, character, his/her goal, obstacles, nemesis, points of no return, inciting incidents, the climax… You will learn to recreate the one universal story about the journey of the hero which Hollywood claims works perfectly. And suddenly you will stop wondering why all movies feel the same. Because they all are one and the same movie. Only with different characters and different settings.

So there I was, lounged in the chair of the empty cinema. I knew I was going to see something different and believed it will be, as many friends said, something terrible. “It was like watching screen savers,” one of them said. But I also knew I was ready to challenge my heavy overdose of Hollywood movies (and the life around them). I still wonder if the I enjoyed this movie just because it gave me what I needed at that very moment. Maybe if I watched this move on a different occasion, I would have hated it. But…

The film put its arms around me and started singing a lullaby into my ear. And then it lulled me into a trip. A trip I desperately needed. It slowed me down, helped me concentrate, breathe and reminded me of the magic of … being. And yet it is just a story of one average small-town American family during the 50s, somewhere in the South. Actually, it not even a story – it is a collage of magical pictures accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack including Couperin, Brahms and Berlioz. No goals, no 3 act structure, no points of no return. No set pieces.

This magnificent collage shows (instead of “tells”) how it is to be a child, a son, brother. How it feels to be. Human. Without narration, it shows the complexity and beauty of love within a family. Of creation and loss. Life. Manifested in rays of sunlight slipping through curtains just to land on your wall. Or a play in the garden. Zen.

No, I don’t think it is a masterpiece. There are flaws. It does not make sense. It is not entertaining. The dinosaurs are unnecessary. The story of creation could have been shorter. And I am not sure about some voice overs and the afterlife…. But it did what art should to – it touched me, moved me and changed me. It reminded me of the respect I should continuously feel towards life.

And to do that, art doesn’t need rules. A 3 act structure film is entertained and engaging. But never has such a fundamental impact. And that’s what makes the difference between art and entertainment. Art has the power to touch us, move us and take us on a trip. Connect us with the universe. And this it can do very well (or even better?) without a recipe. Entertainment has to entertain. And yes, there is a formula for this.

The day after I saw the film, Amazon delivered my copy of “Save the Cat”, apparently the ultimate book on screenwriting. I welcomed it with a completely new mindset – I decided to happily learn the rules so I that one day, if I decide to do this, I can (even more happily) break them. Wish me good luck with that.

But why?

We were about to hear works by Rossini (Italian), Beethoven (German), Haydn (Austrian) and Händl (German). Solists were Swiss, Venezuelan, and American (born to Korean parents). The conductor was British. The instruments must have been made in Europe (or am I so ignorant that I don’t know USA is producing concert-class violins and pianos?)

Having experienced a war based on national hatred, having learned (as we all have) about the horrors the world has so recently experienced because of nationalism (WW2), and being aware of two wars going on under the same flag, the experience made me very uncomfortable.

There is no space for nationalism in art. Art should bring peace and break all boundaries. And at its best, it really does – many of those musicians were educated in and have built their careers in many different countries on different continents. A Händel opera in its original form will be equally appreciated in France, Japan or Australia. Warhol’s works hang on walls all around the world.

And yes, we are used to anthems – before sports events. But this has its reasons – national teams often compete each other and have to give their best representing their country.

Art is together and not against each other.

A fact that should be highly respected and valued.

Whose hands?