Ava

 

To avoid this blog turning into perpetual obituary, let's have a look at the very fascinating photo.

Ava Gardner was a celebrated Hollywood beauty and as such she was kind of frozen in time - the industry was fascinated with her good looks, glamour, sex appeal and alluring presence but we hardly ever got a glimpse behind the artificial image.

In the movies, she was the ultimate sex kitten, a ravishing trophy on the elbow of a hero (or a criminal mobster) - in the media, she was jet setting superstar who was marrying and divorcing and marrying again one millionaire after another. There was a hint of restless soul about her, someone who was attracted to excitement, passion and adventure - after all, she left Ernest Hemingway for a Spanish bullfighter. What is much more interesting to me is that Hollywood froze her in time - we see time and time again her photographs from 1940s and 1950s, when she was carefully made up to look like a elegant leopardess but curiously, almost nothing from later years when she moved to Europe and gradually slipped out of the movies completely. Not that she became less interesting - but once she left Hollywood, the media focused on others, new young faces. And when we had a chance to see her (doing usually a high profile cameos, like in "Mayerling" or "The Cassandra Crossing") it was always a glimpse of a former beauty - still striking and still regal, but one could tell this is aged Helen of Troy. And voilà, here is the photograph from 1970s (my guess) when Gardner was well in her fifties - I find it very interesting, in fact probably the most striking photo of her that I have ever seen before - in all the other, famous black and white portraits she was a Hollywood glamour girl, here she looks directly into us - still beautifully made up, still glamorous, still striking - but there is something in her eyes that suggest a woman trapped in her own image. Famous for being beautiful, she was now facing the passing of time, her own mortality and she is almost wondering "Is that all there is?" I like this picture very much, far more than any of her artificial studio shots and find it very interesting psychological portrait. 

P.S.

Just found out that I wrote and published this - by some cosmic coincidence - on the anniversary of her death.

Now, how interesting is this? Why on Earth would I think of Ava Gardner on January 25th? I do remember seeing and saving this picture specifically for this essay a few days earlier. 

Mira Furlan (1955-2021)

Sad news: a wonderful Croatian actress and a true legend of our theatre has passed away. For many of us who grew up in previous Yugoslavia this is a loss of another link with our past - even though Furlan has moved away and later made quite a nice career in US, we will always remember her as one of the biggest and most dependable stars in theatre, TV and in the movies. And of course, there is this shameful fact that her own homeland once treated her like an traitor and made her leave. 

Like many of us who grew up in 1980s, the first time I have seen Mira Furlan was in a now-classic TV series "Velo Misto" which was a wonderfully picturesque saga about coastal city of Split between two world wars - looking back in retrospective, it was very, very ambitious attempt to present people in different levels of society (from a city mayor to a barber, fruit seller and peasant) and the huge cast was just unbelievably strong; it really feels like Who's who in our acting world - amongst all these people, Furlan was a strong-minded girlfriend of a famous football coach and this is how the nation first got to know her, as Kate with her voluptuous "balloons". That first chapter when Furlan appeared in every single local movie made, had also embarrassing distinction of directors getting her naked all of the time - I do remember being very young and aware that our movie directors just love to undress, rape and humiliate the actresses, it was like a constant leitmotif  in our homegrown cinematography and young Furlan accepted it because she thought this is how things are. Much later in life she would look back and discuss this treatment from a different perspective and how US directors treated her completely differently.

Huge celebrity that she was, Furlan still couldn't escape the scars of politics and war: herself a child of mixed parentage and raised as someone above nationalism, she was married to a Serbian theatre director husband and they continued working on a theatre play in Belgrade even as the war started - at the time when both sides were obsessed with national purity, patriotism and "ours against theirs" Furlan found herself being a public scapegoat for not accepting this. Firm believer that art is above nationalism, she tried to continue with her theatre work just to find herself fired from her own theatre in Zagreb (where she was one of the brighter stars), crucified in the media, threatened on every step and finally during her absence the city punished her by taking away her own apartment (inherited from grandparents). I still don't know what is worse, the spiteful, shameful threats or a silence of majority who approved of this. I do remember reading about this in a newspapers and saying out loud to my girlfriend "but I agree with her, what's with this frenzied nationalism?" just to have her say "yes it is truth, but its not the right time to say this out loud now" - that was the moment when I realised that I don't want to stay there anymore. 

Furlan and her husband packed their bags and moved to L.A. where she started from the bottom as a foreigner - miraculously, she did find success in TV series ("Lost"  and "Babylon 5") and by this point her homeland had to begrudgingly accept that she is not defeated but in fact continued to prosper elsewhere. Somewhere around this time I started following the essays she wrote for newspaper "Feral Tribune" and personally this is my biggest connection with Mira Furlan as I genuinely enjoyed what she had to say from her perspective as a actress immigrant - her musings how the person changes when accepting foreign language, the humiliating experiences with auditions and how to survive them, the bizarre obsessions with the status, money and wealth, the realisation that illusions about US are not at all what they seemed from a distance, etc. Years later it was all collected in a book "Total wholesale" that I had to buy in Belgrade because Croatia would not publish it. To this day I absolutely love reading old interviews with her and find her thoughts fascinating and inspiring. She did returned to Croatian theatre to play mythical Medea but found the media attention incessant and distracting - upon the news of her death, this country is now praising her as one of the biggest actresses we ever had, but deep inside I know she was never accepted and the shame of her treatment is not genuine. 

She was my neighbour - I don't think that I ever saw her, but I knew the street where she lived and I remember thinking that I should maybe send her a nice postcard with warm wishes, just to show her that not everybody in this town is a foaming mouth maniac. I never did and now I regret that I haven't done it, she might have appreciate it. 

https://www.lilith.org/2016/09/the-unregretted-decisions-of-actor-mira-furlan/  

Phil Spector (1939-2021)

Just found out that Phil Spector passed away in a prison, from Corona. It is just stunning how far he had tumbled from what once was unshakable throne in the music history - nowadays everybody thinks of him only as a convicted murderer but there was a time when he was the biggest producer in the world. Besides creating a unstoppable series of mega hits in the 1960s, Spector won Grammy for the Record of the Year in 1971, was inducted in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and The Songwriters Hall of Fame and was included on every list of the greatest pop musicians ever - curious as he was not really musician himself but a producer. Spector actually might be the first person who significantly embodied the idea of the producer; since he had such recognisable, unmistakable style, the performers were somehow less important - it was all about the finished product and a grandiose pop symphonies with Phil Spector signatures. 

I need to write a little bit more about why Phil Spector was important. Really, he was the biggest pop producer of all times. Much, much more important than George Martin who, compared to him was very subdued (actually, come to think of it, everybody is subdued when compared to Spector). Until Spector came along, producers were people in the studio who organised and arranged recording sessions but we never heard about them and rightly so - they were invisible, shadowy men mentioned on the LP covers but we never really knew what exactly were they doing. Phil Spector had his own grandiose vision - based on Richard Wagner, no less - that his hit singles must have phenomenal, grandiose orchestration where tinkle bells and flutes and chimes will shine on the top of the biggest orchestra you can imagine. He detested LP albums and stereo sound - for him it was all about hit singles recorded in a glorious mono as you can hear on a transistor radio. It does sound as he was some sort of mad magician dancing around the cauldron, humming to himself and adding more and more magic ingredients - the final touch (performers and the voices) was kind of afterthought, because they were not the stars - HE was the star and everybody understood that. In fact, all these girl groups were coming in & out like on a factory track - they had to do as told and than he moved on to a next project, the new smash hit.

The list of his hits is simply amazing: he started with #1. in 1958 (""To Know Him Is to Love Him", which if I remember correctly was the epitaph written on his father's gravestone) and than it just went bigger and bigger - "Spanish Harlem", "On Broadway", "There's No Other (Like My Baby)", "Every Breath I Take", "He's a Rebel", "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" , "Be My Baby", "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', "Unchained Melody", "River Deep – Mountain High", "The Long and Winding Road", "My Sweet Lord", "Imagine", "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" - in all of this you could always recognise this is 100% Phil Spector and no one else. I mean, The Beach Boys and The Beatles were bowing to him in awe. There is a phenomenal Christmas album recorded in the early 1960s with the whole stable of his than-performers (Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Crystals, etc) which to this day stands as probably the best pop Christmas album of all times - not only that the music is glorious, but Spector really wraps it all in a sensationally exaggerated style. 

And than, we come to Phil Spector as a person. By all accounts - even back in the 1960s - an socially awkward, geeky bully who loved to dominate everybody and was known as a bossy creep. Not someone who gets the best out of people by inspiring them or persuading them but demanding and intimidating them. With the exception of Darlene Love who would tell him where he can stick his little white prick, majority of people accepted this behaviour because they desperately wanted the magic stardust he was spraying over his smash hit singles. Sometime in the 1970s it gets really darker (fists, guns, drunkenness in the studio) and than proportionately to his isolation and reclusiveness it looks as the madness grew bigger and unchecked. There is a very interesting episode from 1990s when he saw Celine Dion performing "River Deep – Mountain High" on TV and he was intrigued enough to suggest a collaboration - flattered and excited Dion invited him as a producer for the recording of her new album (which will eventually become "Falling into You") but as he started showing his old bully tactics and demanded 365 takes, her team quickly told him to pack his bags - they used Jim Steinman instead, who funny enough is one of the many Spector copycats but apparently far more friendly. And than in 2003. he actually did what he always threatened and killed someone - a lifetime of behaving like a multimillionaire madman eventually caught up with him. 

Do we remember him as a genius producer or as a murderer? 

It depends naturally on a individual listener. Those who know him just vaguely from a movie with Al Pacino will remember him as a weirdo because they don't have other points of reference. I have listened his classic 1960s music so many times that for me he will forever stay a mad genius - nothing will make me stop listening his music, which to this day is brilliant. In fact, now I might listen it all over again. Just like discoveries about dark sides of Ike Turner or Michael Jackson, it all comes down to a individual - we might accept they were disturbed individuals in their private lives but it does not have to diminish the pleasure in their legacy. On a simply human level, I hope that Phil Spector is now finally at peace, free from all the demons that haunted him. 

"Raised by Wolves" TV series (2020)

The trailer got my attention. It was genuinely eye catching, had some stunning visual effects and it had Ridley Scott involved - now, I worship the ground this man walks on, he created such amazing movies like "Alien", "Blade Runner", "Thelma & Louise", "Gladiator", "Kingdom of Heaven", "Prometheus" and "The Martian". Really, when it comes down to it, he might be the only movie director close to mighty Steven Spielberg as for the wide repertoire, choices of completely different subjects and a massive commercial success. I read some recent interviews with him and its clear the man is passionate about his work (he is 83 now) which explains his success - when you enjoy your work, it is not  chore or a task but a labour of love. He really creates something new and its amazing because after all the movies I have seen, I am still surprised with things Scott comes up with.

In general I am a bit cautious about approaching big, fat books or long TV series with 75 seasons because it feels like a task. But it is a lockdown, I have really nothing else to do (but cooking, eating, cleaning, walking and sleeping) so I decided to have a look and the first glance was actually during New Year's Eve when I decided to stay in bed with wine and watch "Raised by Wolves". It was fantastic and I was really in the mood for it - so much that I completely ignored what was going on outside (some half-assed attempt to celebrate New Year with fireworks, like there is any reason to celebrate and pretend to be cheerful) and binged on the first three episodes - by the way, Ridley Scott is a producer but he directed only first two episodes, honestly I can't see any difference between his work and other directors because they all respectfully follow his example. 

It starts with a bang - the planet Earth is destroyed and the spaceship with two androids ("Mother" and "Father") arrives on some deserted planet where they have task to grow a little group of human children out of some seeds connected to android mother. Clearly, they are programmed to save the human population and like some robotic Adam and Eve, they do their best to raise these children in the middle of the barren, cold and unwelcoming desert. They are also fiercely atheistic and teach the kids not to believe in religion - this comes as a problem when another spaceship crashes on this lonely planet, brining the whole bunch of Mithraic religious sect who have their own agenda. It raises a very interesting question: what if there is a interplanetary religion that might blindly and passionately follow its own rules? Just like in our own history when two sides first met and inevitably one conquered the other, guided by strong belief - these Mithraic people initially seem as a saviours, just to show their real face very soon - like a mythical Medusa, "Mother" becomes a weapon that unleashes her unlimited powers on everybody and she is so dangerous that even children freak out and become scared of her. So now I am at the point where nobody is sure is she a robot that went crazy or what - its obvious that she is all-powerful and far more dangerous than "Father" who is kind of useless anyway - and Mithraic people are approaching the farm with the children so it would be interesting to see what comes next, I am really into this big time. Its very clever, it has excellent visual effects and like the best of SF it has roots in a mythology. 

Photo of the Day

 

"Ti Si Meni Sve Na Svijetu" by Vjekoslav Jutt (1970)

 

This is a very interesting album - not so much because of the music, but because its historical artefact: for a brief moment in time, this guy was a latest fresh face, poster boy for the burgeoning records buying female audience and a harbinger of the things to come. The recording companies have always been very perceptive when it came to selling the product but trough 1960s it was all about singles and EP records - to my knowledge this must be amongst the first LP albums focused on local teenage idol. 

During the previous decade "Jugoton" was very cautious towards LP format - almost all the releases were either singles or EP records - albums were reserved for compilations; 1970. was the year when this recording company decided to bite the bullet and started presenting its biggest stars with genuine albums. I am still not 100% sure were those compilations or newly recorded versions of old material (it sounds so) but here is a poster boy Vjekoslav Jutt with his lovelorn ballads and you know, even with all the reservations he does sound genuinely fine - he was given royal treatment, with first class composers (Nikica Kalogjera, Arsen Dedić, Đorđe Novković, Mario Bogliuni) and material has been carefully planned and selected for him, I mean Miljenko Prohaska is a conductor, this was really like the best people in the business are involved. In subsequent years Rock critics will push aside with a smirk everything that was not Rock music and this type of mainstream will be dismissed as a lightweight "schlager"  but in reality this was genuinely pop music of its day - no better or worse from what was going on elsewhere. I remember the singer's voice vaguely from the radio in my childhood so he might have been remembered longer, but it appears this was the highlight for him. 

"The Private Life of Henry VIII" by Alexander Korda (1933)

Last night I went to bed angry and this morning I woke up angry. And while making my morning coffee I mused about what happened last night on the Capitol Hill - to keep my mind off these thoughts, its better if I write about the classic black & white movie I saw. It was a continuation of what started with previous two old British movies, where I thought it might be interesting to poke my nose a little bit in a British cinematography - of course I am familiar with the biggest hits and names, but just out of curiosity I wanted to take a look into something that is not part of Hollywood machinery. Interestingly, I saw a documentary about "Dead of Night" where someone mentioned a quite common practice that US editors would often cut out completely a first two reels of UK movies because they thought they were too slow and US audience would not care for them. So even though they share the same language, it seems as we talk about two completely different branches of cinematic family: Hollywood and British.

Hungarian director and producer Sir Alexander Korda is behind this, the movie that put him on a map and in fact the very first UK movie that proved a genuine hit across Atlantic - it was also a first non-US movie that ever won Academy Award. It took me some time to warm up to "The Private Life of Henry VIII" mainly because initially it appeared so darn dated, contrived and exaggerated. It might be a little bit difficult for a modern day audiences to accept this because it was made so long ago - in the meantime we have developed so much of the cinematic vocabulary and our understanding of historical accuracy is completely different nowadays. From a modern perspective this movie comes almost like a parody with never ending mugging, clowning and big gestures: you could count on the fingers of one hand what is really true, like Tower of London and names of the characters. Everything else looks almost like a pantomime. But OK, I had to leave my complains aside and just watch the darn thing for what it is - an old-fashioned slapstick comedy.

It should be story about infamous Henry VIII and his six wives - but to be honest, it feels as one story has much more space than anybody else and that is a story about his supposedly unattractive German wife Anne of Cleves. It turns out that Charles Laughton and his real-life wife Elsa Lanchester actually had only this story in mind, but later producers expanded it on all wives. Actually the story completely skips first wife Catherine of Aragon, literally saying "oh never mind her" and goes straight for beheading of second wife. Like, really, never mind explaining who is who and why Anne Boleyn   is executed - the movie is really focused on the meeting of Laughton and Lanchester, which is genuinely funny and works quite well. But really folks, it should be about much bigger picture instead of mentioning everyone else like passersby. Laughton - who was only 33 at the time of the filming - gives a wonderfully grand and boisterous performance that might influence all the subsequent portrayal of Henry. Of course he is clowning but there is a trace of humanity in the cracks of the mask. For beautiful Merle Oberon this was beginning of the stardom and later she will even marry the director. I must say that after my initial suspicion and prejudice, I eventually relaxed and even enjoyed it. It looks as this was the true start of British cinema in the international waters. 

"Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography" by Andrea Warner

Buffy Sainte-Marie is really important, interesting and trail-blazing artist but for some reason until now nobody thought about writing about her life, until Andrea Warner came along - now, Warner wrote about Canadian women musicians before so she seems a perfect person to approach this + Buffy herself kind of welcomed someone showing genuine interest in her life and career. Two women bonded and formed a friendship that grew around this book - since this will probably be the last word on Buffy (with lots of her own involvement, her personal memories, photos from private collection, etc) it will have to do until someone else comes along and takes a different perspective. 

As the world's most famous Native Indian princess (I am saying this because there was always something regal about her)  Buffy Sainte-Marie have built quite a fascinating career in music, TV and education - all the while being mostly out of mainstream. While everybody loves to talk about her indigenous background, what strikes me much more is that she is true child of 1960s with wide interests, creativity and understanding that go way outside of music - although she works in a field of pop music, she managed to exist in her own sphere and support herself, her family and her charity/political causes without having any major commercial hits. You might say that the secret to her longevity perhaps lies in being outsider and doing her own things without a pressure from the industry. According to the book, Buffy is the first one to admit that she is happiest in her secluded Hawaii home and have always disliked social gatherings that other stars find necessary for their careers. 

It might be a bit unfair to Warner, but she is a bit too star struck for my taste - while Buffy definitely is an fascinating subject (and a very generous interviewee, willing to tell her story) the book would gain from a more objective tone - while Buffy herself comes across as a warm and funny, Warner is a bit too scholarly, preoccupied with tour dates and such - it is a very interesting story but for some reason it does not flow easily.

Basically Werner serves Sainte-Marie as a official biographer (while great lady herself is busy with tours and travels) and writes everything Buffy tells her, without analysing or questioning it - no other testimonies, memories or interviews with anyone who was around to confirm. This is important because it unbalances the perspective and at the end we have only the artist telling her version which (if you read between the lines) is often repetitive.

"It Always Rains on Sunday" by Robert Hamer (1948)

"Dead of Night" had excellent cast but where everybody else appeared more or less ordinary, there was one lady who was actually standing out as attractive and stylish - she appeared in a story about cursed mirror and her name was Googie Withers. Apparently big star in post-WW2 years and unfortunately so far completely unknown to me - in fact, I must say that just right now I realise how much were we conditioned to follow industry of Hollywood, where Europe (in this case UK) had its own production with interesting names, great ideas and original artists. Her biggest moment came with the movie "It Always Rains on Sunday" so  last night I dived into it with greatest pleasure.

To my biggest surprise, it was real British film noir - it used the same ingredients as US cousin (underworld, criminals, detectives, people talking in slang, etc) but this was happening in London's East End, in fact this was Bethnal Green where my good friend used to live, so I recognised the area. When I was around it was drab and grey part of town, where poor people lived and apparently in 1948. things were exactly the same - director Robert Hamer (who accidentally made the cursed mirror story) made a point by describing life in a post-war London, where people hardly survive in their shaky, overcrowded houses and apparently everybody lives in poverty. This time Googie Withers is neither beautiful nor elegant, but rather a neglected, unhappy and nagging housewife married to a middle aged man who also have two teenage daughters in a tow. We find out in a flashback that she used to work for her husband as a barmaid and years ago she was in a love with a handsome criminal (John McCallum, her real life husband) who got arrested so her marriage was basically a defeat out of necessity. It turns out that the guy escapes the prison and is hiding in her garden shed, so now she is trying to protect him from police and detectives who are searching all over the town for him. 

There are many quite fascinating things about this movie, in fact I might watch it again just to appreciate it more: naturally the focus is on stoic and strong Googie Withers who is all fire under the ice, but I must say that all the other characters are equally great. Its interesting to note that its not only criminal who tries to break and escape, almost every character in this movie is desperately wiggling and trying to find some way out of this horrible greyness - both teenage daughters are trying to escape joyless home trough love affairs with their boyfriends, there is a womanising married man, a detective, a naive boyfriend, each one of them having his own subplot and idea of escape. And they all live in a impoverished, crowded place where privacy and freedom are genuinely unknown. Everybody lives on top of each other and they have to move out of the way in order for someone to have a bath or a dinner. Naturally its impossible to hide the escaped criminal in such circumstances. This is now second movie in a row that I am watching Withers and she seems to be real interesting screen personality, definitely not a weepy doormat, she has a great charisma and is constantly overpowering her male partners. I am so impressed with all of this that I might go a little deeper into classic British cinema. As much as I love Powell and Pressburger work, obviously there is much more to explore. 

"Dead of Night" (1945)

Full of energy & enthusiasm for my New Year resolution to read more, I grabbed the latest book by Kate Summerscale ("The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story") that didn't exactly left me breathless so far but it mentioned something really interesting: in her previous book, Summerscale was writing about a murder in Victorian England and this same murder was vaguely mentioned as a part of influential horror omnibus "Dead of Night". To my biggest delight, I recognised the movie, it was a delight of my childhood and before you know it, I started re-watching it again.

It is such an interesting experience to return to something after almost a lifetime - kind of meeting an old lover after many years - I have seen "Dead of Night" as a kid and back than it left a huge impression on me. Actually that is not completely true - it is an omnibus of paranormal stories, as told in a parlour by a group of polite people drinking their tea in a set up that would made Agatha Christie proud. Out of five stories (directed by various directors) somehow I remember the first two - a mysterious carriage with coffins, whose driver says "just room for one inside, sir" and a haunted mirror that drive its owners mad. These two thrilled me to death as a kid and I remember them well with a tingle of excitement combined with fear to this day, excellent example of how our memories are made. Very stylish and sophisticated, mind you. The rest of the movie I don't remember at all - either I was sent to bed or it was simply too much for my little brain. 

So with a biggest pleasure, I re-visited this wonderful omnibus and loved every second of it. The rest of the stories were just as brilliant - a Christmas hide-and-seek game brings a girl in a secluded part of the house where she finds a boy crying and this is no one else but boy mentioned as a victim in "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" by Kate Summerscale (a real case murder). There is a little out-of-place Golfer's story based on H.G.Wells that kind of don't really belong here because its neither scary nor particularly memorable - more as a TV sketch - but the best of all is the last story about the Ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) and his domineering doll Hugo. Interesting that I don't remember this story from before, perhaps it didn't appeal to me because it wasn't about the ghosts but rather contemporary - now I see it differently - young Redgrave was excellent and he portrayed his descent into madness not as a full blown extravaganza but very subtle, we could just sense panic in his eyes and he was just getting crazier and crazier from scene to scene, until the final frame gets really chilling and unforgettable. I was so thrilled with the re-discovery of this fabulous old classic that I instantly went further and decided to check another movie showcasing actress Googie Withers.

A New Year

Dear reader, we are in 2021.

I have entered it very cautiously - quietly sneaked in, almost like a thief, without any celebrations or big words.

We had all of that last year and look what happened. This is why I find it inappropriate to make big fuss of it when in fact we have absolutely zero control over what is going on and repeated parroting phrases "Happy New Year" means nothing, its like the only thing people know to say to each other. Not that 2020 was especially difficult for me - I had some bad years before - but this was the first time that I was aware of the whole world going trough same difficulties. The whole world had to go underground and lick its wounds. 

What 2020 did, it showed us clearly how much we took everything for granted - social contacts, walks, our freedom, just ordinary everyday pleasures of hanging out together in the sun. This was all taken from us and I noticed with regret how even people on the street avoided contact with each other. You can't help the elderly lady with her shopping bags, because your compassion might actually kill her. If some mad scientist from old SF movies planned to mess up the human race, this is something he would come up with. That we would become afraid of each other and avoid embraces, hugs and kisses. That people will hide behind their walls in a perpetual solitude. It will leave scars on all of us. 

We have absolutely no control over what is happening but we do have control over how we react - and to keep some kind of equilibrium, each of us must find his own way how to stay calm and positive. Some people turn to meditation, religion, music, hobbies, anything that will keep them occupied. I discovered how much I am enjoying my solitary walks and browsing through the old streets - admiring the old, forgotten streets and houses full of history. Naturally I miss the real human contact but it seems that people are hiding and avoiding any socialising. We are forced to twinkle in the dark for now.

No resolutions, since life is difficult already without any enforced obligations. There is absolutely nothing genuinely important - everything is so trivial and irrelevant when compared to the main question: when and how will the life go back to some form of normality. I do wish that somehow I discipline myself into going back to reading, because it was really important part of my life and somehow the virtual world seduced me instead - I just lost the passion for reading somehow - but naturally, all these hobbies are not really essential, they are just distractions. Joni Mitchell once said, when asked how does she wants to be remembered, that her legacy is simply a pleasant distraction and I thought how interesting, this is really true - music, movies and books are distractions and comfort, but they are not reality - reality is the life around us, friends we have, conversations and laughter we share. Anyway, I started reading something already last night.