What was the exact reason why 400 mostly young people bought the newly published book at a promotion in the Belgrade bookstore "Delfi" on October 1 A tense show of rapper Marko Šelić Marcelo - whether the book itself, the eponymous CD in it or Marcelo's dedication to each of them - does not matter at all. Because the news that people are waiting in line for a book is good news in this day and age.
A tense show is a "photo portrait of this society", as written in Teofil Pančić's review, but also a "book-album", as Marcelo says, because this "Laguna" edition, apart from the already mentioned disc, also contains the lyrics of all the songs, photos taken during the work on album, and texts about the themes of songs authored by Marcelo, Kokan Mladenović, David Albahari, Pavle Zelić, Dalibor Đorđević, Draža Petrović, Mihajlo Pantić, Elena Krsmanović and Vladimir Beara.
In addition to four studio albums (De facto, Puzzle shock, The third side of the coin i Children and the Sun) and current books A tense show, Marko Šelić is also the author of novels Alone together i Malterego book one: Rubik's chair, collections of texts About people, dogs and mice and about a hundred columns written for various newsrooms.
"WEATHER": How is your hand?, I guess it's not easy signing books for fans for five hours?
MARKO SELIC MARCELLO: I can't complain, a hand was offered, not just a finger. What can I say except that I am happy and especially proud that all these people, mainly high school students and freshmen, left the impression of a genuinely decent world. Evil tongues would say that only a part of them will actually read the book; based on experiences from literary evenings all over the Balkans, I claim that only one part will not.
However, it's not just young fans of yours, isn't it? Even those who are more than twenty years old listen and read you.
True, but when someone wants to disqualify us easily, they say it's only for younger people, although I rarely see someone "outgrow" us by discovering Bjesov, Nikola Vranjković or Kolja Pejaković - if that were the case, it would be fine. However, a huge number of people around the age of thirty stop listening to anything or retrain themselves to folk music and other kitsch, and then from that sad position they ostensibly write off something as "childish", and go to "have fun" as a mature man with Željko Mitrović's isotopes.
A tense show je, you wrote in the introduction, a reality which, unlike the existing ones, does not aim to divert attention from reality, but reality itself.
True, all over the globe they also make reality shows and silly fairytale series to obscure reality, but I get the impression that only here it has such a direct, effective and dangerous influence on public opinion. If it's benign entertainment for some Swiss, why not: stupid, but harmless. With us, alas, these things are an influential social fact or even a political instrument - because anything that keeps the masses in a state of mind suitable for manipulation is a political instrument. Look at the miracle, the prime minister suddenly no longer quotes Djindjic and Weber, but makes dramatic pauses and pathos - why? Because that is precisely the direction of those series, that is, the frequency for addressing the majority, functionally illiterate people. I don't think that intellectualization will solve all the world's problems, but the entire media landscape and addressing people would be different if the people were not systematically maintained in a state of functional illiteracy. That should be changed.
How? Such books as A tense show?
Oh, I wouldn't ascribe messianic intentions to myself, the airwaves these days are full of unstable personalities who imagine such things. It is important to me that I do not participate in the aforementioned dumbing down and that what I do, even if it misses high creative levels, at least be in writing. Because small steps that contain at least a grain of enlightenment are more honest than big mouths - sorry, mouth full big words with mostly nothing behind them. As my friend Zoran from the band Iskaz said, our intention is not to suffocate people with things they already know, but with things they tend to forget. When a good part of what you write falls into the so-called engaged creativity, it is assumed that you are trying to, as far as I know, fundamentally change society or even save the world - but this is always only a peripheral, completely idealistic goal of your work. At its core, engaged creativity is something else: a deeply personal reaction to perceived injustice. These things almost never create a tectonic movement in society, but they are by no means mere infatuation. A song Iron caused a nice public controversy, and maybe a few kids thought about an important social topic because of it...
... which can be read in your book album. However, except for themes like the one in the poem <b>Iron about a seventeen-year-old Darko who killed a young man who once upon a time was the only one on his side, u <b>A tense show</b> are also topics from personal life, for example about a creative inspiration or an annoying granny from the building.
Of course. If you, as a reader or listener, do not feel that there is a human being behind the text, but rather a robot programmed for ice analysis that tells you what is right and what is wrong from some kind of balcony neither in heaven nor on earth, then it is worth nothing. In popular non-culture, this warmth is faked and traded, it is possible in the world of light entertainment, but in everything that contains at least a hint of real creativity, lying to the audience is practically impossible, the smell of acting overwhelms the entire work. I am aware that it will Iron or Lie or 20.000 to be far more interesting for the public to comment on, but if there weren't those other songs, the story wouldn't be complete.
In one place you wrote that 15 years ago you believed that the XNUMXs would one day be in the diesel museum things, but it turns out that...
... that today we are a museum, and a rather unvisited one at that. It is clearly not clear to us that Change with a capital P is an internal process; there are other words for a change that is only external: mask, cosmetics, deception. I am convinced that the national plan for entering Europe, the plan of both this and the previous government, is not to really change anything (and anyone), but to make all those auditors pass by with an illusion, so that as soon as they turn their backs, the sooner the better and until willingly, let's continue to wallow in the mud of what is not a country at all, but only a settlement, which therefore resembles a primitive settlement. And that's terrible. Being a citizen of the world does not mean only being a citizen of space, but also being a citizen of time - civilization is a concept with four dimensions. And the leaders do a useless service to the people by leading them towards the world as a space, while on the way they mentally return them to the cultural model of the nineties and kill them spiritually with a knife. If it remains like this, we will arrive at the threshold of the EU as a naked tribe without a single spiritual need, with only one ambition: a regular salary, which will suit foreign and domestic capitalists very well. And since the tribe blindly worships the chief, they will build him a totem with a faithfully sculpted buttocks that can receive countless kisses in a row, and it will be the most important cultural monument. A monument on our grave.
Who should have thought of that and didn't? Previous government? The current one? A barren citizenry that allowed us, in the absence of shepherds, led by rams leaders, as it says in your book?
For the current government, the previous one is an alibi for everything that goes wrong, and that is, of course, unsustainable in the long run, but in its essence it is completely, completely correct. After Djindjic, I never heard a vision. His supposed successors were wrong in almost everything, and in the end they committed a fatal mistake: underestimating their opponents. Let's remember the last TV duel between Tadić and Nikolić: on the one hand, there is a man who is impeccably rhetorical, pleasant-looking, all ostensibly great, and on the other, a man who looks tortured, not very sure of grammar, a born loser. And now, if he were up to the standards of rhetoric, Tadić would have won, but he forgot that his political actions led to the fact that the majority recognized Toma. People look and say: I'm not beautiful, I don't have perfume, I can't speak well, I'm tortured like this one - this is my emissary! And they vote for Nikolić.
You sound disappointed, and unreasonably much disappointed for a thirty-year-old. You confirm the lyrics of the song to Shanker?
Quite inappropriately, most of my peers these days would be bursting with happiness - in their heads, for example. I confirm the lyrics, and here's what they're about: when you're 20, you're separated from the horizon of expectations by a large blank space, on which the bashkari hopes; but at 30, the future is here, it's this, and it's devastating for this to be what it's been waiting for. Because some things haven't happened, you feel deep down that they won't. I'll give you an example: the state of pop culture in Serbia. Non-culture has permanently installed itself. Our understanding of humor has turned into Cursadjie, comics are not perceived as art, interest in literature and theater is considered a form of infatuation, a catastrophic number of kids identify with a Sinan Sakić song, even though they have the entire history of music, cinematography, everything in two clicks! The internet is there, but it's only for Facebook. And here one should ask: for whom and how exactly did the famous Fifth October happen...
How old were you on October 5th??
I was a high school student in Paraćin, and if we don't count the highway blockades, my experience of the Fifth of October is indirect, from my family. However, I spent 20 years in the 17th century, that's more than in this one, and I remember very well the XNUMXs, my father's bags that he drags to Bulgaria and back, dried vegetables from which a fuch version of vegeta is made, bland juice from a sachet, electricity restrictions , bombing.
I cut you off, you talked about guilt.
I didn't, I was talking about understanding who actually led to the Fifth of October. In my opinion, Velja Ilić. Not him as him, but as a prototype. When it becomes clear to Veljema what a problem we are in, when it burns out for them, then you get the Fifth of October. Why? Because it was clear to others at least ten years earlier, but you others they make up only 20 percent. I want to say this: in our country, great changes do not come about by thinking and convincing others of the truth, but rather when others come to the truth in a completely different way - the bowel movement finally becomes louder than the demagoguery that is rotting from all the media. It is the same now: the leading branch of our economy is the trade in hope. Hope is a perfect product, you can sell it even to a mere poor man, and to him first. Here is another proof: I mentioned quoting Djindjic and Weber; when you do that, who are you courting politically? To intellectuals. When that didn't work, the conclusion was reached: "Why are we courting them when there are 20 percent of them?" Who cares what they think? We'd better make Velje fall in love with us, and let them shut themselves up in their circles and think what they want, what does it matter to us when we have our 80 percent." But then it was overplayed: "Here's an even better idea: come on we don't let them talk at all!” This with The impression of the week reminded me of the iconic The X-Files: when Smoker was asked why he didn't remove Mulder, he wisely replied that it would turn one man's obsession into a crusade of many. We currently do not have such political wisdom. Society will not forget what happened to Olja, not even a society like ours.
You really think so? Based on what?
I don't know, maybe on the basis that the entire history testifies that repression leads to resistance, such that at the very end even the spineless grow a spine. The best outcome would be the birth of a completely new opposition current that will have no connection with any of the wasted parties. I have already mentioned the equation: first you turn the thinking against you, and then hunger destroys the deranged. It should be remembered that in the end even the grandmother who got up at seven in the morning to vote for Sloba started banging on pots and pans.
You are a welcome guest at various forums and public events from which you need to send the voice of a thinking young man, you are expected to be aware of bad things and talk about them with the belief that they can be fixed in order to influence the public in that direction. Does that make you feel abused??
So be it, yes, everything you and I are talking about now can one day be read as a fight for that second option. But that does not change the truth that it is not there at the moment we are talking and that we are actually talking about basic human rights, such as the right to freedom of speech. Any engaged art runs the risk of eventually ending up in some sort of political basket, especially on a black-and-white field like ours. Countless times, I came across as a "democrat" just because I was against the radical current, although, as I said, my faith in this second current disappeared along with Zoran Djindjic. And here is an example of specific abuse. At the moment when the progressives are the opposition, they play my song at their rally A house in a draft i Moldy bread from Sars. We say - now we will sue you. They say - well, I guess it's an honor for you to be heard by so many people. I'm not interested in being heard that way, I say, and secondly, don't be stupid: when you play the song at your rally, you're unequivocally putting me under your ideological umbrella. In the end, it didn't end up in court, because I had to give a monthly salary for the lawsuit, and who would win politicians in court in Serbia? Then, before the last election, I heard that she was released at a rally of the Democratic Party Iron. And then you realize: for all of them, authors are just instruments and livestock. On the one hand, you have a team that releases A drafty house, although in the 1990s she actively participated in the architectural solution and Houses, and on the other hand you have people who think it's okay to exploit An iron, although the song says that Darko is 17 years old. He is, therefore, a child who grew up in a democracy. So how did he become like that, whose responsibility is it? But that's the world, look at what Studio B is doing. It doesn't even occur to them that a normal citizen doesn't want either Studio Đ or Studio VA, and both of them want to be Europeans. You have convinced me, well done.
When will you start writing about beautiful things, surely there are?
Oh, no matter what, and I certainly will, but the point is something else. Namely, happiness is complete, whole, there is nothing to add to it, and therefore it is not particularly attractive as a topic. Happiness is simply - living. But what is difficult, painful, what is broken in a person - that has always been a better field for art. And that's the paradox of creativity: it strives for heights, but it always goes down to get it descends into man. Down there, it can't be pretty, but that's not a problem of art, but of human nature. The aforementioned fracture in man has always been my central theme. After An intense show, my friend Rastko told me that as the next step he expects a story about a man who managed to do something quite ordinary and good. A man and a chance to do something good - I'm very much in favor of it. However, to write it at this moment would sound like a disgusting joining and complicity in the current demagoguery. Do you know how offended young people are when someone tells them nonsense that they know is not true? A song Lie is about that. At one forum I was a participant in, someone happened to casually ask medical students why they don't report corruption. "And you really think this is happening secretly?", they asked. True, my music is not really for the party, my novels are not for the beach and happy leisure, but if we are talking about any kind of responsibility, I think it would be insulting to tell those young people that everything will be fine if they just believe in themselves. Trust is long earned and hard earned, and I wouldn't want to insult someone who trusts me.
