Monday, May 30, 2005
Feelings are always local
One of the people who wrote the book of the above title is a biologist. I have not read the book, i was just surfing to refind Cinema Rex, because of some stories connected to it, in the sense of how to overcome war-nasties, within, or with-after.
On a day, some years ago i met Radovan Popovic from Belgrade at the Expo-Cartoon in Rome. I was invited there by some friends of the Roman Sciatto group.
Radovan is a very tall guy, and although i am not so short and was wearing high heeled shoes, i remember myself jumping up some higher steps of the street inside the festival revenue, in order to get myself at the same hight, to look him in the eyes while talking. It was his first trip out of former Yugoslavia, after years of narrowing minds and ideas, soaked in the violence of the war in the Belgrade settings. We talked a lot.
He told about a night many people do remember, but very probably the people of Belgrade more than others. Popovic: "It was the night of the bombardments on Belgrade. I went to a bar, where friends of me also came. We were the only ones and we started a jamsession, i played the drums. A famous musician from Belgrade came in, and jammed with us. We have been making some hellish music, and it became a mix with the sounds of the exploding bombs. Early in the morning i went home, where my junky neighbor knocked on my door to tell me that the street of my girlfriend had been hit. I run off, to find out that she was allright, so i returned home and went to bed. Then i heard a rumbling sound, as if other attacks and explosions took place. It took some while before i understood that it was an eartquake."
I met Radovan again by coincidence, in Amsterdam, where he had been invited to a conference. That was the night of the Otpor students!
->Otpor! (Cyrillic: ОТПОР! In English: Resistance. Is a pro-democracy youth movement in Serbia which has been widely credited for leading the eventually successful struggle to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in 2000. <-
And exactly that night he was in Amsterdam! So we talked a lot again, until very late, and as a consequence i arrived too late at work the next day. (My then-times Greenpeace colleagues didn't show any sympathy for these coincidences in my life, nor for the latest information from Belgrade. Since we were working environmental problems.)
In fact i didn't work there much longer... ¶ Monday, May 30, 2005
On a day, some years ago i met Radovan Popovic from Belgrade at the Expo-Cartoon in Rome. I was invited there by some friends of the Roman Sciatto group.
Radovan is a very tall guy, and although i am not so short and was wearing high heeled shoes, i remember myself jumping up some higher steps of the street inside the festival revenue, in order to get myself at the same hight, to look him in the eyes while talking. It was his first trip out of former Yugoslavia, after years of narrowing minds and ideas, soaked in the violence of the war in the Belgrade settings. We talked a lot.
He told about a night many people do remember, but very probably the people of Belgrade more than others. Popovic: "It was the night of the bombardments on Belgrade. I went to a bar, where friends of me also came. We were the only ones and we started a jamsession, i played the drums. A famous musician from Belgrade came in, and jammed with us. We have been making some hellish music, and it became a mix with the sounds of the exploding bombs. Early in the morning i went home, where my junky neighbor knocked on my door to tell me that the street of my girlfriend had been hit. I run off, to find out that she was allright, so i returned home and went to bed. Then i heard a rumbling sound, as if other attacks and explosions took place. It took some while before i understood that it was an eartquake."
I met Radovan again by coincidence, in Amsterdam, where he had been invited to a conference. That was the night of the Otpor students!
->Otpor! (Cyrillic: ОТПОР! In English: Resistance. Is a pro-democracy youth movement in Serbia which has been widely credited for leading the eventually successful struggle to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in 2000. <-
And exactly that night he was in Amsterdam! So we talked a lot again, until very late, and as a consequence i arrived too late at work the next day. (My then-times Greenpeace colleagues didn't show any sympathy for these coincidences in my life, nor for the latest information from Belgrade. Since we were working environmental problems.)
In fact i didn't work there much longer... ¶ Monday, May 30, 2005
