I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DEAD KENNEDYS-Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980).

Punks often marry politics to their music.  And none moreso than the Dead Kennedys.  I found out about them around the Frankenchrist album, but it’s this one that introduced Jello Biafra to the world.

What I loved about the Dead Kennedys is that they set out to offend everyone–unless you actually listened to their lyrics. The first track, “Kill the Poor” seems like it a horrifying encouragement to do just that, but if you read the lyrics: “Efficiency and progress is ours once more/Now that we have the Neutron bomb/It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done/Away with excess enemy/But no less value to property/No sense in war but perfect sense at home.”   As was recently commented, Dick Cheney may have seen the sarcasm there.

“Let’s Lynch the Landlord” is a song that Sophia and Yarostan could get behind: “I tell them ‘turn on the water’/I tell ’em ‘turn on the heat’/Tells me ‘All you ever do is complain’/Then they search the place when I’m not here.”

The biggest track of the disc was “Holiday in Cambodia,” a song so catchy that Dockers actually asked to use it in a commercial (!).  Cause nothing sells jeans like: “Play ethnicky jazz/To parade your snazz/On your five grand stereo/Braggin’ that you know/How the niggers feel cold/And the slums got so much soul.”

The thing that I especially liked about the DKs was that although they played hardcore (some brutally fast and crazily short songs), they didn’t limit themselevs to just that.  They had actual guitar riffs, they tinkered with styles and genres (surf and rockabilly among others), and they even slowed things down from time to time (all the better to hear the lyrics).

Even if the band disintegrated into lawsuits, it’s fair to say that they inspired plenty of kids to take an interest in what was going on around them.

Pol Pot.

[READ: Week of June 25, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Yarostan’s Fifth Letter]

Because Sophia’s letter is very long, this week it’s only Yarostan’s letter for Insurgent Summer.  It opens with Yara annoyed about the tone of Sophia’s letters and her surprise that Yarostan is so quick to want to open the latest one.   But indeed, Yarostan feels compelled to apologize for “the way I treated your earlier letters.  I did treat you as an outsider, as a person with whom I couldn’t communicate about my present situation.  I was wrong” (283).  [It’s very nice of him to admit that he was wrong].  But that doesn’t mean that he is going to lighten up in his discussions with Sophia: “it seems to me that …critical appreciation is not an expression of hostility but is at the very basis of communication and friendship” (285).  Mirna also chimes in (with rather high praise):

Sophia is a born troublemaker, just like Jan and Yara.  She shares Jan’s recklessness as well as his courage.  I’m glad for her sake that she was taken away from here even if her emigration caused her some pain.  There’s no room here for people like that.  If she’d stayed she would have disappeared years ago in a prison or concentration camp (283).

And again, Yarostan apologizes for criticizing her work with the newspaper staff, because his experience is that newspapers are no good for anything, and it’s clear that her intentions were good.  However, Yarostan isn’t all sweetness at this point.  Because even though her intentions were good while working for the paper, he doesn’t believe that she could have ever achieved what she wanted by working there: “Every one of your experiences convinced me that the instruments you chose are useless for the kinds of ends you tried to make them serve” (284).  In fact, even though Sophia suggests that her activities were devoid of context, Yarostan argues that “it’s no accident that your co-worker on the university newspaper is now a functionary in the ideological establishment” (284).

In short, this letter radically opposes the idea of working from the inside.  Yarostan seems committed to the idea that it cannot work, and in fact only succeeds in supporting those who are at the top. Near the end of his letter, he offers this metaphor about how he and Mirna and Sophia tried to subvert things, but the likes of Marc, Vera and Adrian actually rose to the top of it:

The extinction of their initial goal became their project: they realized themselves within the appartus that makes self-realization impossible.  Vera, Marc, Adrian and Claude are on the upper levels of a pyramid whuile we’re at its base.  We’ve wanted and we’ve tried to overthrow the pyramid yet we’ve been among those who supported it.  We did it in order to survive….  We sold our humanity in order to keep it.  By selling it we lost it, we merely added to the weight that crushed us” (302).

He also says that newspapers will never tell the truth (but more on that later).  By the way, Jasna didn’t remember what last name they used when asking about her former acquaintances Luisa and Sophia).

Yarostan then tells about his recent encounters with their old friends.  He and Jasna went to see Vera and Adrian speak and the House of Culture.  She spoke first and was critical of the repression that the country has felt for the last twenty years.  Vera spoke in platitudes about the errors and shortcomings of the system and she was roundly aplauded.

Yarostan points out that she is like everyone else by saying that these “errors” are anomolies and not the underlying foundation of the system.   The end result is that Vera will work very hard by doing exactly what she’s been doing in her academic and poitical positions.  And if we agree with her and work with her, “we will cure the system ‘together; by cointinuing to reproduce it” (287).  Yarostan is convinced that speeches, newspapers and institutions are antithetical to any real goal.  And the thing is is that Vera’s not particualrly brutal or unscrupulous she’s just doing her job.  [This is such a succinct criticism of politics, certainly all politics that I have ever particiaptaed in, and yet it is so simple and obvious that it points out how ingrained it is in the system].

After Vera’s engaging speech (she was always a very talented speechmaker, like what she says or not), Adrian was dull, dull, dull.  He reiterated many of Vera’s idea but he followed them up with statistics.  He was actually booed and hissed many times.  He would have been less pathetic if he had simply begged for support.

Yarostan is puzzled by the hisses because it reminds him of people in the carton plant who condemn “old school” bureaucrats and politicians, but applaud those who are on “our side.”  He can’t seen any difference between the two.  This is the same as when he was in prison.  Some prisoners argued that there were guards who were on “their side” because they were less brutal, but literally that argument means that “prisoners have no ‘side,’ that our fate depended completely on the wills and whims of the guards” (289).  So what’s the difference between any politician or guard?

Jasna wanted to speak to both Vera and Adrian.  Adrian “remembered” her but blew her off, while Vera acted like she didn’t remember her at all.   On the way home Jasna bemoaned this to Yarostan and his family.  Everyone felt bad for her.  But then Yara jumped in and asked if Vera and Adrian (she used their last names) were lovers.

There’s a amusing and disturbing diversion here in which Yarostan asks Yara if she even knows what a lover is.  She replies that she is eleven and if he doesn’t believe her, she’ll bring her lover, Slobodan, over.  In fact, she and her friend Julia are well-versed in the love lives of all celebrity politicians, thank you very much (Julia is 10 1/2, but is in the same grade).

Yarostan’s reaction was quite different from mine:

What distrubs me is not Yara’s sophistication but her frame of reference.  She and her friend have unbelievable insight into the private lives of the ruling bureaucrats.  They’re familiar with the most intimate details of a world that’s completely alien to them” (293).

The problem with this is that they’re not interested in the individuals, just the placeholders, which makes all of them immortal: not as individuals but as politicians.

He also makes a persuasive case for one of his earlier arguments by noting that Luisa had said that slaves were not responsible for their misery nor workers for their exploitation.  Yet he wonders, “Where do masters derive their mastery? From the stars? Where do the rich get their wealth if not from the poor?” (294).

Yarostan does approve of Sophia’s criticisms of the academic world (he calls them “devastating” and “very instructive and novel to me because I know so little about it” (295)).  And yet despite these criticisms, he’s annoyed becuase Sophia proceeds to claim that she desired to work within that community.  Just by being there, wasn’t she unintentionally supporting that very regime?  Yarostan tells Sophia that he thinks she doesn’t quite understand the nature of the commitment they share.

What I liked best about this whole letter was this definition: A community of free human beings is first of all a community in which every individual defines reality, and it is on this basis that the community builds its own environment” (297).  [Whenever I think of a real community it is of people accepting everyone for who they are.  All of the planned communities and faux developments are fake beyond their architecture.  A community is not a group of people who believe exactly the same thing, that’s a club.  And there’s very little room for growth in such a club.]

He wants them to create a new community, not to resurrect one, not to reanimate a corpse.  Although he understands the desire to resurrect the past–he felt the same way when he was released from prison.  He was convinced that there was some missing element from the past, that he has once been whole and alive and wanted to get that back.  And he believed that Mirna did too.

He knew that Mirna’s family had been driven from their village and he thought she wanted return to those idyllic times and away from the awkward suburban-type land she inhabited with her parents.  But he was completely wrong about her.  She wanted nothing to do with her past and couldn’t wait until they moved her to the city.  She hoped to never see chickens running around again.

Back when he and Mirna were first married, they lived in her parents’ house…he was basically like her brother, the young man in the building.   When Titus secured him the job with the busses, (and just what gave Titus the ability to pull so many strings, anyway?) they decided to get an apartment.   Mirna was thrilled to be in the city.

Yarostan even enjoyed the work.  For a little while.  Until he began resenting the bus riders.  He used to tell a story over and over about the workers who rose up against their bosses.  They removed the shackles that their oppressors had put on them and they ran the factory themselves.  He was amazed at the strength and fortitude that they had.  But everyone just snickered at him because he never bothered to look at the big picture:  that the workers were still chained to the factory.

Despite Yarostan’ internal struggles, Mirna was thrilled with her potential new life: a new apartment, a baby girl (Vesna) and ever increasing steps towards the city: a chance for Mirna’s journey to her dream and for Vesna to grow as an urban worker.  After several months (and growing frustration) they finally secured an apartment: or more like half an apartment which they shared with someone else.  And then Mirna fell to the trappings of city life: looking better meant dressing more expensively and buying curtains (which she spent ages trying to pick out).  And finally the hugely expensive baby carriage.  Which was so big and expensive they mostly just stared at it: “the object confirmed our purpose and our worth” (308).

This bliss, this happiness, this material wealth lasted for all of two seasons.

Yarostan and Jan worked at the same factory and, knowing Jan, we knew this would end badly.  The new foreman at the plant treated all of the workers like automatons.  He was pushy and bossy and had no respect for anyone.  But he himself knew next to nothing about fixing vehicles.  And so he was largely ignored.  Of course, Jan was not to be pushed around.  Whenever the foreman called his name he immediately dropped everything (literally) and ran to him asking what he wanted.  And he would do again literally what the foreman said, even if it was wrong.  And so, “Jan did exactly what the foreman told him to do and two days later the bus returned with a burned out engine” (309).

Of course the foreman yelled at Jan who answered that he was doing just what the foreman said, until Yarostan jumped up with a crowbar.  The foreman backed down and eventually left, so the workers sat and smoked for the rest of the day.  One of the workers argued that they’d show everyone what they could do without the foreman–they’d be so much more productive.  But Jan shot back: “Do you think I’d repair these contraptions if no one forced me to do it?  What on earth for?” (309).  [I have to agree in spirit; however, if Jan needs the money he needs the work, right?  I mean, no one is actually forcing him to work.]

The next day Yarostan went to work and was grabbed by plain clothed men.  He was brought to the police station with Jan.  Yarostan was told to stop pretending to be Miran Sedlak.  And they were both told that threatening a boss again would get them ten years.  They would not be arrested now (the police didn’t keep ‘wild beasts.’)

When he got home (much earlier than usual, Mirna began crying–she knew he’d been fired, and that their dream was gone.  But worse than that, they were harassed from that day on in their very apartment.  The neighborhood council kicked them out, just like what happened to Sophie.  Even the neighbors turned against them.

What else could they do? Mirna swallowed her pride and they moved back to her parents.  And that expensive baby carriage had to be shipped in a truck, where it was totally useless in the old community streets.  It was a symbol of their foolishness.

Mirna grew more and more angry and she decided to do something about it.  She got her own job.  She became part of the working class but as a wage slave.  Soon, Jan told Yarostan about a job in a steel plant quite far away.  Mirna refused to move to where the steel plant was (which was th emiddle of nowhere), she insisted on living in the city.  And so, Yarostan decided to travel the 100km every morning and night, barely seeing his family, resigned to work at a hot, desperate job.  But on that train commute, with all of that free time, is when Yatrostan began to read and to learn and, as Daman suggested, to get an eductaion.

Mirna had been plotting all along to buy a house in her name, one without Yarostan’s baggage attached.  The clothing shop set up a housing program for workers there.  It would take years for her to save up and buy one, which the men scoffed at, and yet she never wavered.   Eventually, she saved up and they moved in.  It was a brand new house, built for them on a dirt road.  They were like survivors from a shipwreck.  And, best of all, they could not be evicted.   And this is the house they live in to this day.

They had been there about a year when they heard stories of an uprising in Magarna (alluded to last week–I can’t find anything about this, so I assume it is fictional).  He says that Sophia blamed the reporters’ bias for for the press’ falsifications of the story.  But Yarostan disagrees [and from here to pretty much the end, he rails against the press]: “You fail to understand that instruments of domination and destruction can’t be used for anything else….  A newspaper destroys communication as a certainly as a bomb destroys life and this was plainly visible during the Magarna rsing” (324).

Yarostan criticizes newspapers both in a repressive regime like his and in a “free” one like hers.  He argues that journalism can only exits where there are no free human beings, because “The newspaper is an instrument by which the ruling minority shapes the conceptions of the majority.  ‘Honest journalism,’ is not its function but its mask” (328).

Indeed, he ignored the news about the rising because he heard about it in the paper.  Then one of the steel workers went to Magarna to visit his family, and he came back with the real story.  He didn’t have a  lot of details, and the m0st important questions (“Are they doing this for themselves or for the productive forces?” (325) couldn’t be answered, but it was clear that the workers were rising.

Yarostan explains that the workers couldn’t really talk about the uprising at work (foremen would never allow it), and obviously newspapers were out, so they did the next best thing:  they met in bars and at people’s houses and had face to face communication.  And that was the one thing that he loved about the idea of Sophia’s first letter twelve years ago. Even though she had been working for a newspaper, “You letter was an attempt at direct communication between two individuals separated by impenetrable political and geographical barriers” (324).

The Magarna workers ultimately turned to intermediaries for help, and the intermediaries turned against them:

Workers in tanks murdered their brothers on the streets of Magarna….  They aimed and fired without scruple or hesitation because they couldn’t see their opponents; their vision was blocked…by the ideological casing that gripped their minds.  They fired at images.  But they killed human beings (329).

The people of Magarna struggled in isolation and they were defeated.  And yet, Yarostan ends his note in the most cryptic (and positive) way thus far: “We were isolated too, but we weren’t defeated.  We hadn’t even begin to struggle” (330).

COMMENTS

This is one of the first times that a letter feels like it ends on a cliffhanger.  And I have to say the story is growing more and more exciting.  Those first chapters were very interesting and enjoyable, but there’s real action brewing here.

I feel like there has to be some revelation about Yarostan that he’s not willing to give.  Although he’s lightening up about a lot of things, he still seems to be very critical of Sophia, no matter how much she explains herself.

It’s funny how when these letters started out, there wer many similarities between what happened to them and now the stories are so different.  And because we haven’t heard much about Yarostan in prison (for eight years, lets not forget), it actually seems like Sophia has had a harder time of it.  Yarostan has also been downplaying his hardships–the long commute and time from his family suck, but they don’t seem as bad as Sophia having nowhere to live.

I’m also so intrigued by the back and forth of past happenings and current events–that things are happening right now, too.  I really can’t imagine how this book will end.