On Hopeless Romantics

There exist times when one finds them very selves in the words of a song. Due to its exceptional uniqueness, it is able to perfectly capture the mood, the mindset, the emotion, and the sensibility of the moment. It is one of those rare instances which seem as if that particular song has been tailored specifically just for them, in many ways similar to those unexpected predicaments of the future seen through a crystal ball.

What happens however when one starts discovering themselves in too many songs? What happens on those sleepless nights when you lye in bed, staring at the ceiling while you play out a million different scenarios of life as the shadows merrily play with the light? What happens when you associate yourself with so many different situations that are sung about, triggering hundreds of different moods, ideas, and emotions? You find yourself in a strange limbo and you can no longer make any sense out of it all. It’s as if you got stranded on an island surrounded by a sea of confusion left with nothing but these songs meandering through your head. Is that just a temporary state of insanity or an inkling of hopeless romanticism that has been hibernating deep within?

Hopeless romanticism, on the other hand, is seen as nothing but one’s unwillingness and stubbornness to accept reality. Hopeless romantics create and live a separate reality, parallel to ours. They are looked upon as fools and jesters, scornfully condescended on the side for their very hopelessness. However, hopeless romantics are everything but hopeless. Hopeless romantics are the only ones who truly find themselves and live their lives according to the lyrics of a song. Hopeless romantics are those who have faith. Every single breath a hopeless romantic takes constitutes them as a believer. Hopeless romantics are dreamers. They will forever continue to fight their windmills. The last thing that dies is hope.

Echoes of a Carrousel

Ils disent que la vie est un carrousel
Elle tourne vite, et tu dois rester dessus
Le monde est plein de rois et de reines
Qui t'aveuglent et volent tes rêves
c'est le paradis et c'est l'enfer

Et ils vont te dire que le noir est vraiment blanc
Que la lune est juste le soleil la nuit
Que quand tu marches dans des couloirs dorés
Tu dois garder l'or qui tombe
C'est le paradis et l'enfer

It was windy that night, yet for some reason it was not cold. The air was filled with something beyond words. It was as if there was some sort of indescribable energy came from that old carrousel: the resonant echo of the children’s laughter, the smell of roasted chestnuts, and the careless, yet serene smile on the faces of the passers-by. It was in many ways a return to childhood – a return to innocence, something that is almost nonexistent today, something that only lives in our memories.

Life essentially is that same carrousel which we once rode as children, except that as time moved on we got a little older, and in return, the carrousel got a little faster. We have become so preoccupied with clinging on, that we seem to have forgotten why we essentially chose to hop on the ride in the first place. Irrational fear seems to have penetrated past our flesh and straight into the bones; our raison d’être having become nothing but a means of maintaining the status quo selfishly driven by this foolishly egotistical phobia. In essence, we have deprived no one but ourselves of the real joys of this carrousel by consciously choosing to constrict ourselves to only the flat, two-dimensional aspects within the realms of time and space.

In today’s world, time has become nothing but a shallow synonym for a conniving foe whose only reason for existence is to loot us of our own. However, time should never be condescended and deprived of its profound qualities of relativity and arbitrariness: while some things seem to happen in a second, others appear to last a lifetime. Essentially that perception of time and space, then and there, is what differentiates those who take pleasure in riding the carrousel and those who merely hold on to it with every last tense muscle in their bodies.

Remnants of the Past

There are times when additional words are unnecessary...

Balkan Jazz

So it’s 22:39 on a Monday night and Balanço is currently in full swing on B92, one of Belgrade’s most musically rich and diverse radio stations. I looked forward to the stream, which is as usual a very hip mix of jazz inspired elements with a Latin twist – quite and enjoyable and refreshing for yet another lame beginning of the weekend. I thought about what to write these days, looked for inspiration, but my muse was nowhere to be found. She must have been on grève… after all – this is France. Listening to this jazzy flavored mix, I thought about the title of my blog, which in many ways came out unconsciously. I am therefore almost sure that many of you might wonder what the title “Balkan Jazz” means and whether such a thing indeed exists.

At a first glance, the combination of words that makes up this idiom seems a mere contradiction of itself rather than anything else. To the outsiders, the Balkans are often a stereotype of nothing more than violence, vulgarity, idleness, and bad table manners for that matter. Jazz, a Southern musical art form which originated in the early 20^th century (to that same group of outsiders) is also in many ways watered down and seems to be nothing more and nothing less than brass cacophony. How is it, and above all, why is it that I chose to deliberately bring these inconceivably incompatible elements together? Well, to be perfectly honest, it just felt right. I have a feeling that in essence, the phrase “Balkan Jazz” whether or not it alludes to music (and many times it does), demystifies the Balkan mentality in a nutshell.

Looking at it from an anthropologic point of view, both histories of jazz and the Balkans share a common point in history – the fact that for many years both been have undeniable objects of oppression. The blacks in the Southern United States used this musical genre to express all their grief, sorrow, but as well happiness by struggling to live in a world that was by no means friendly at the time. The Balkans, having faced nearly five hundred years of Ottoman domination have also found methods through which they kept their culture and heritage alive through folklore, spoken word, and of course – music.

Perhaps not everyone in the Balkans is a musical genius (indeed Mozart’s native Salzburg got off easy, geographically speaking), but there exists a trend that many moments in our daily lives are intimately connected with music – whether this involves weddings, funerals, family patron saint holidays, or fare welling someone off to the army (if this ludicrous tradition is at all possible to understand by anyone else but ourselves). Music has therefore traditionally always played a central role in both greeting and farewell. In that sense, it (and especially brass music played by the Roma – essentially the real Balkan jazz) has become a flooding gate of openness, genuineness, and sincerity often creating a thin and fine line between joy and sorrow, the line between reality and the absurd...

Why I chose to do this after so long?

For quite some time now I have been contemplating about whether or not to keep a blog. The reason for this is a long internal struggle about whether or not to publish and share my thoughts publicly; for a very long time I must admit that I have been quite hesitant about this. However, I have realized that everything that makes a man are his ideas, and that fear has no place among them. One day we will all go, and nothing will be left of us but a few fading memories. Essentially, it all sums down to courage as a cohesive factor enabling us to carry on despite obstacles and hardships which are encountered along the way. Ultimately this brings either success or failure, but essentially constitutes us as ourselves and no one else.

For a person like myself who lives a life of “organized chaos” (in my case, this is a perfectly acceptable oxymoron) I could never force myself to note things down on a regular basis. In fact, I hate noting things down, and honestly – I do not think I ever truly have or intend to do so in the future; there simply seems to be a certain splendor in this disorganized spontaneity of mine, which I cherish dearly and guard even more selfishly. Concerning the writing, I have always had bits and pieces of ideas spark out of the blue whether that involved taking the metro, simply gazing outside out of my window, sitting for hours next to Canal St. Martin, or taking long windy Sunday walks that essentially lead nowhere. Today I have decided to take these bits and pieces and incorporate them into to something a little more meaningful, at least for myself.