Hello after the holiday break!

I'm glad to be back and to continue on sharing my thoughts and reflections with you.

I would like to dedicate the entire upcoming week to one of the most important cultural events in Poznań - the 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, which is celebrated in our city since October 8th.

First of all, it's essential to point out that it's the oldest violin competition in the world. It was organized for the first time in 1935 by a nephew of the famous composer, Adam Wieniawski. The first winner was Ginette Neveu, an amazing (only) 15-years old French violinist, who beat a legendary Soviet artist, David Oistrakh. Unfortunately, she couldn't take advantage of her extreme success for a long time - she died in a plane crash in 1949, when she before her 31st birthday.

The competition was planned to be held every five years, but it was interrupted by the Second World War. It came back after a gap of 17 years, in 1952, and from that time it took place 12 times. Every edition gives us another reason to be proud of our Polish violinists - there are visible and important amongst the participants and they continue on proving that the so called 'Polish school of the violin' is one of the greatest in the world.

There's a lot to tell about, but let's get to the point. Today was the 2nd day of the 2nd stage auditions and I had a huge pleasure to listen to Celina Kotz's performance. She's 1 of 6 Polish violinists who had qualified to the 2nd stage of the competition, just like 5 years ago, when she was an impressing 17-years-old violinist, promising to be a great artist one day. And today she's proved that this day had already come - she's an extremely mature, conscious and developed Artist, who is capable of telling wonderful stories through her beautiful music.

She started her performance with 'Little Viennese March' by Fritz Kreisler. It was a nice, well-played miniature, which reawoke my appetite for more. Then she played Wieniawski 'Legende' op. 17, which turned out to be a nostalgic, even melancholic story of something left or lost. She finished with Ravel Sonata in G Major 'Blues', which I find very hard to describe with words. The first movement, very impressionistic, full of pastel colors and long brush strokes, took me to the 19th-century France. And then, when I was thinking that it couldn't be better, there it was. The second movement. 'All that jazz'. It was so vivid and real that I was feeling like I were sitting in Blue Note drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and listening to a great, Friday night jam session...

Wanna go there? Just listen:

Hi! 

Today I'd like to recommend you a book I've recently got. It's The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia: the Reckoning by Ed Vulliamy, a British journalist and writer, who was New York correspondent for The Observer for six years and Rome correspondent from The Guardian. It's a reportage which tells about many aspects of today's situation in Bosnia: about its political condition, about how is the life of the survivors 20 years after the outbreak of the Bosnian War (the book was published in 2012), about the needness of justice and punishment for the war criminals who are, partially, still free, and about a problem which is nowadays omnipresent in any kind of historical debate: the collective memory.

The famous slogan: 'Remembering Srebrenica' has a particular meaning and importance for the author. Although he didn't take part in the Srebrenica investigation, he was one of the journalist who discovered the concentration camps in Omarska and Trnpolje and informed the world about them, which was one of the most important and, at the same time, shocking news after the Second World War. 

But does anybody of you know anything about Omarska? About the details of the Srebrenica massacre, which was actually the biggest genocide in Europe after the Holocaust? About the trial of Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić? If yes, you are in the tiny minority of the Europeans. This is also one of the aspects which Ed Vulliamy comments widely. It's unbelievable that Europe decided to leave unsaid the fact that in the very last years of the 20th century the areas of the Former Yugoslavia experienced such a huge cruelty, despite of the declarations of the leaders of the majority of the European countries who promised that the atrocities of the Second World War would never be back. 

Few days ago I wanted to recommend to one of my friends a documentary about the Srebrenica massacre which I'd watched a day before. He interrupted me after I'd told him what the film was about and asked me: 'Why are you watching this kind of films? What for? Come on, I don't want to know anything about it. How can you sleep calmly after watching it?'. OK, maybe I wouldn't recommend watching 'Shoah' by Claude Lanzmann to everybody (although I think it's the greatest film of our times). But I would rather ask how do you sleep calmly pretending that the Bosnian War never happened? 'Remembering Srebrenica' doesn't refer to the past. Neither to the present. It refers to the future - we have to remember that only two decades, only two-hours flight from Paris separate us from the biggest drama of the second half of the 20th century, which is still going on. We have to remember it so we won't let it happen again.

And one more thing. In the Polish preface to The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia: the Reckoning Ed Vulliamy wonders why the Polish translation of the book is the first one in Europe, even though Polish people don't seem to be very interested in this part of history. 

Think about it. And then - read it. 

Hello from Italy!

Yesterday I finally arrived in a small town near to Bari, after spending two days in a (surprisingly economic!) car. If you've already started to hate me because of my geographic location, I can tell you that there's nothing to be jealous of - it's cold, it's raining and I have no time to do anything else apart from playing violin and studying. But during this 2000-km journey I had enough time to reflect about things that I'd like to share with you.

First of all, if you've ever had an opportunity to see a sunset in the Alps from a plane, you might think that there's nothing more beautiful in the world. That's what I thought when I saw it last year for the first time. But this year I decided to change perspective and see the Austrian and Italian part of this incredible mountain chain from below. And I'm not able to decide whether it's better or worse because it's totally different, but still, definitely breathtaking. It's impossible to catch it if you only have a poor LG smartphone camera, but still, isn't it just amazing?

Secondly, I had a great opportunity to actually experience some observations from one of  Marc Augé's texts, which some of you and I were lucky to comment with our professor on the master's degree seminary classes. Here's a fragment from his famous book 'Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity':

'France's well-designed autoroutes reveal landscapes of somewhat reminiscent of aerial views, different the ones seen by travelers on the old national and departmental main roads. They represent, as it were, a change from intimist cinema to the big sky of Westerns. But it is the texts planted along the wayside that tell us about the landscape and make its secret beauties explicit. Main roads no longer pass through towns, but lists of their notable features - and, indeed, a whole commentary - appear on big signboards nearby. In a sense the traveler is absolved of the need to stop or even look. Thus, drivers batting down the autorout du sud are urged to pay attention to a thirteenth-century fortified village, a renowned vine-yard, the 'eternal hill' of Vézelay, the landscapes of the Avallonnais and even those of Cézanne [...]. The landscape keeps its distance, but its natural or architectural details give rise to a text, sometimes supplemented by a schematic plan when it appears that the passing traveler is not really in a position to see the remarkable features drawn to his attention, and thus has to derive what pleasure he can form the mere knowledge of its proximity.

Motorway travel is thus doubly remarkable: it avoids, for functional reasons, all the principal places to which it takes us; and it makes comments on them'. 

It's a great observation, valid for the French, German, Austrian and Italian autoroutes. If you think about it this way, a 2000-km journey becomes a long and incredibly dynamic narration. 

That's all by now because the 'siesta' is already over and I have to dress up as an artist and try to win a violin competition. 

Have a nice afternoon!

Hello!

I was afraid that I would have nothing interesting to share with you, even though I had spent most of the time reading books and press. I've suffered from what we normally call "spring solstice", that is I've been going through a really harsh migraine that made me feel unable to collect my thoughts.

Yesterday, just for a change, I decided to have a break in Virginia Woolf''s 'Orlando' and watch a film with my other half. As usual, it took me some time to pick up one, but I finally decided to watch a film I'd already seen a few years ago, inspired by the International Transgender Day of Visibility that took place 2 days ago.

'The Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story' is a biography television film directed by Agnieszka Holland. It's based on the true story of the real life of Gwen Araujo (1985-2002), born Edward Araujo, a transgender American teenager who was murdered in an extremely cruel way by four men, after discovering that she was transgender. They lured her into a trap and then they spent five hours beating and strangulating her. She died from strangulation associated with blunt force trauma to the head. Her body was covered with dozens of bruises, which showed that she'd been beaten even after dying. The defendants tied her, wrapped in a blanket and buried her four hours away from the house they'd killed her in.

The film touches on many different problems, most of them connected with the (unfortunately, still omnipresent) transphobia. It also reveals the importance of the full acceptance and unconditional love of the family. Furthermore, it's not just another important, worth watching film - it's also very well written, starred and shot.

After Gwen's death, her mother, Sylvia Guerrero, became an important LGBTQ right's activist. Here's one of her speeches, which I truly recommend you to watch. Almost each sentence is a powerful and wise message to all people. I could tell a lot of things regarding this question, but I just think that it is enough to listen to Sylvia Guerrero speaking. 

Maybe just one short commentary. Gwen's mother has said several times that sometimes, especially at the beginning, she found it difficult to accept Gwen, just because she couldn't understand her. That's why the education is so important. I truly believe that, even though there are a lot of adversities in the world, there would be less hate if there was more understanding and social awareness.

   

Shalom!

I hate being sick, especially when I have to stay at home and I'm not able to do anything but sleeping and watching films. That's why the only thing that I can write you about is a film that I watched yesterday (as you might suppose, sleeping wouldn't be so interesting - mostly because all the time I was dreaming about breathing normally). 

'Blue velvet' is one of the most famous films by an American director, screenwriter, painter, musician and author, David Lynch (1946). Like almost every other movie he's made, it's surreal, strange, mistifying and disturbingly violent. The plot seems to be far more complicated than it actually is. However, although we might feel that everything becomes clear at the end, there are some things that remain unsaid and leave the viewer confused and distracted. 

It's really difficult to decide which of the elements play the lead - is it an amazing charcater starred by Kyle MacLachlan, or horrifying and fascinating at the same time Isabella Rosellini, or maybe a really beautiful soundtrack, which can also compete with incredibly genious and poetic takes by Frederick Elmes. 

I've already seen it twice and I can only tell you that it's worth watching at least once! 

And for all of you who has started (or want to start) watching new Ellen's show, the second episode is already available on Youtube. It's very sad, painful and depressing, but still, worth watching.

Another week, another challenge, another reflection.

I've just finished an extremely intense week, full of sound (mostly definitely too loud), people, stress and tiredness. It was also the last project of the Symphony Orchestra of Academy of Music in Poznań in which I had to participate to gather enough ECTS points to obtain a respected (but not so prospective) title of Master of Arts next year. And it was also the first time when the CIM gave out all passes for our concert in two hours (althought they are always free of charge)!

After hundreds of times of rehearsing the part of the first violin in Verdi's 'Requiem' and giving two, utterly tiresome concerts, I assured myself again that being a musician is one of the most devastating things that may happen to you in your entire life. Or maybe I should say 'during' your entire life, because normally you start before you find out how to say 'dog' in English, and it turns out that at the age of 21 you've already spent more than 75% of your life playing your instrument. Furthermore, you have to be aware of the fact that if you accidentally end up sitting near to the concertmaster, what means that you have to play with him (or her, like this time) the unfeasible solo part in the 'Offertorio', and you fail on one of the concerts, other musicians will make fun of you for next 300 years. And even though it sounds like a stupid trifle that should be as significant as the opinion of the Venice Commission for our government, it actually hurts a lot. Mainly because you're never as vulnerable as when you decide to open your soul in front of other people. Especially, when some of them live on other people's failures and derive from them a kind of disgusting and strange pleasure.  Contrary to writers, painters, film-makers and other kind of artists who have the possibility to rewrite, rethink and retake their work again and again, we have only one chance to do it. Hic et nunc. Nothing else. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't.

Few hours after the second concert I came to another conclusion. Being a musician is one of the most beautiful things that can happen to you in (and during) your entire life. Tiredness, stress, mental and physical sacrifice, years of exposing your heart to be devoured by vipers, always hungry for sb's failure... All these things are nothing compared to what you feel when you see tears on the faces of the most important people in your life, or, even more, on the faces of the strangers, who let you guide them to the places they've never been to, deep inside themselves.