Endurance

A recital of a poem, The secret of my endurance, by the poet himself. The poet who notoriously hates jail, because they got the wrong kind of bars in there. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Charles Bukowski!

Sermon

Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild Wild Women, as recorded by the Red Ingle and the Natural Seven (1948).

A preachment dear friends you're about to receive
On John Barley corn, nicotine and the temptations of Eve

Once I was happy and had a good wife
I had enough money to last me for life
I met with a gal and we went on a spree
She taught me to smoke and drink whiskee

CHORUS
Cigareets and whuskey and wild wild women
They'll drive you crazy, they'll drive you insane
Cigareets and whuskey and wild wild women
They'll drive you crazy, they'll drive you insane

Cigareets is a blot on the whole human race
A man is a monkey with one in his face
Here's my definition, believe me dear brother
A fire on one end, a fool on the t'other

CHORUS

O brother repent for they'll write on your grave
"To women and whuskey here lies a poor slave"
Take warnin' dear stranger, take warnin' dear friend
They'll write in big letters these words at the end

CHORUS

The drinking song

Scottish islanders, devastated to find no whisky at the island pub, imaginatively plunder 50,000 cases of whisky from a stranded ship. From Whisky Galore!, a British film directed by Alexander Mackendrick (1949).

Tell tale eyes

The spirit of the people looking at you.
Photographs by Erna Lendvai-Dircksen.
The photograph of the girl is taken from Unsere Deutschen Kinder, a Nazi photo portrait book by Lendvai-Dircksen (1941).
The photograph of the boy is taken from Das Deutsche Volksgesicht, a 7-volume survey of the German people by Lendvai-Dircksen (1938).

Of the teller of tales

Watch the tale of Jan Karski

Jan Karski was a unique man entrusted with the last words of a dying race.
He asked nothing. He just listened and watched.
Then he told everybody.
Jan Karski foretold the complete destruction of a race. He desperately attempted to forestall the unimaginable by telling and retelling his tale. Yet, nobody believed it.
His tale, like the most horrible of fairy tales, seemed to fit best with dragons and witches.
Once the race died, its last message became a stone and a bone.
Jan Karski kept his silence then, for 35 years. He finally spoke to tell his tale when Claude Lanzmann filmed Shoah. This telling of the tale, after 35 years of keeping silence, is what you are watching. In this telling, Jan Karski had to tear words from the stone and the bone, words so alien, words so alone.
Egyptian pharaohs did not do it.
Babylonians did not do it.
It captivates me, this telling, more than any telling of any tale before or since. A tale of people extinct is frighteningly close to myths. It is a fairytale kilometer away from our reality.
Could the words, photographs, songs, movies of Jan Karski’s tale ever cross that fairytale kilometer to your reality? No. Yet, Jan Karski’s unique and compelling telling crosses that fairytale kilometer to my reality. Because he, the teller, tells the story about the teller, about his own nightmarish listening and watching at the time. And because he, the teller, tells the story about his own, teller’s, disbelief - at the time after he heard and before he saw.
Few things, if any, scared me more than Jan Karski's disbelief.

Welcome to Café Müller

Pina Bausch dancing her tale of tales in Café Müller (1978). How many ways of telling a tale are there? Would this tale be equally superb if screamed or moaned in words?

The Lady of Shalott

The Lady of Shalott, a painting by J.W. Waterhouse (1888). The painting is based on a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson of the same title. This influential poem was also made into a song by Loreena McKennit.
The Lady of Shalott, cursed, is bound to an island castle. Eternally weaving a magic web, she can only view the world as it is reflected in her mirror.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.

This is as far as I am willing to take you. The poem will take you further to where the story ends and the painting begins.