Stateless

We were about fifteen, we went to elementary school "Ivo Andrić", the world was still our apple, but we already knew that it was a bit rotten in some places and that some worms were hiding inside. In the fall of the 1980s, we were playing basketball behind the school, Nesta arrived with the obligatory drumsticks in his hands, he beat everything with them all day long, practice makes perfect and that's how it would be. He says: "Come to me, I have some madness to let you."

Let's go to Borska 21, right next to the heating plant; by the time Ruzica's keva apple pie was ready, we had already arrived to listen to the first side of the album. On the cover five bare buttocks, A window display of cheap sweets, Boris Bele and the team, Marko Brecelj has already left the band, but he left some lyrics, madness indeed. They play some boogie-woogie, swing, polka, jingle, god forbid, everything is great, but Nesta promised a spectacle, raw hot pepper jazz, that was his label when something was really, really, really good. He says: "Be patient"; while he was turning the record on his "techniks", a philips amplifier, hand-built speakers, the best sound south of Autokomanda, I pounced on the pie.

The other side begins - "Comrades", Bele bursts out, "our task in the transitional future, let's keep the limits of possibilities...! And a gig without any bullshit, what is this? New time, old state, new time, same shit”… Aww. I mean, of course, we knew about Dylan, about the changing times, about CSNY - "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we're finally on our own, this summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio", and for the Pistols, that people rebel and want to mess with the state and the establishment when they do shit, but that was somehow different for us. After all, America and England were not proletarian countries, in Eseferyot Tito had just died, the situation was complicated and complicated, as was said in Dnevniki, and what Brezelj wrote and gave to Boris Bele to penetrate "new time, same shit". I am you.

I borrowed a record and ran to the crate to let Dad Mileta play. For him, rock and roll was Elvis, Miley Cyrus and possibly Jerry Lee, the most that, like his youth, he had three spectacular waves on his hair, not one or two like ordinary dunsters. The bulldozer was a little too much for him, but he still sat down to listen. He was looking at the gramophone in a daze, flipping over the cover, even his bare bottoms didn't bother him, so this is... this is... these are some serious people, who are they? Bulldozer, Slovenians. Well, Slovenians... During the second hearing, Keva, when she recognized the text, ran from the kitchen and began to silence us in a panic, so that we wouldn't all be arrested for anti-state activities; Mile shouted at her not to touch anything, and I laughed, realizing only later how difficult it is when you have old men with whom you normally disagree on almost nothing, but are ideologically, not to say socially-politically, like candy . Milina one.

And it was, I guess coincidentally, the same year, Gdansk in the 1970s, when autumn said no, when Poland was in Johnny's heart, the mazurka was in his heart. In those days, white badges with the dangerous red letters Solidarnošć began to be distributed around Belgrade in a deep conspiracy. The Swiss Olja brought one of these to the crate, she wore it attached to the inside of her fax bag. And really, Poland never gave Quisling, without someone telling me that in the country of my grandfather Pavle, the Thessaloniki fighter, Major Gavrilović and Tanasko Rajić, I would live surrounded by two-thirds of hardened traitors, who were prevented by some virtuous Russian despot from their interests and lives born children, hardly to believe him.

Always thinking about my relationship with the place where I live, I could easily imagine that this country and I parted ways. We weren't really endearing to each other anyway. To set fire somewhere and cut all ties, to set fire somewhere and take a piece with me, to set fire and then come back, to live a little there somewhere - a little here... I could also imagine that the country would somehow reject me or even attack me when I'm sick of it, but I really didn't expect this even in my madness. That I would stay where I am, and that the country would leave me, never crossed my mind. To become stateless by staying in the same place while your country flies away somewhere - that's an evil of epic proportions.

Now I can barely see my country here, mostly in some people. But that's why I can recognize it easily in the cosmopolitan neighborhoods of Berlin, in the modernism of Seoul, in the hunger for the new in Montenegro, in the normality of Slovenia, the freedom of New York, the stubbornness of Ukraine, the breadth of London. And what else is left for a man but to pack as many rags and books as he can carry and set out to find his country. I am sad that here, despite and despite, there is still an incredibly divine world, talented, bright and with a spark in the eyes of gentle people from different sides. Come to think of it, I won't even worry too much about it, I intend to take them with me anyway.