Apparently “I Will Survive” (written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris and made famous by Gloria Gaynor) has been top of the pops with karaoke fans for years now. It’s been parodied often enough and performed and remixed any number of times. It’s turned up in films, served as a hymn for women’s solidarity, as support for AIDS sufferers, and has served many purposes and been used on many occasions. It’s entirely possible that CDs with the song lie scattered underground, with the corpses of the deceased, irrespective of whether they believed in reincarnation or not. It’s easy to imagine that “I Will Survive” has already been catapulted into outer space as a contact message, the earthling hymn sent out to life on other planets. It’s also easy to imagine the video clip: billions of people opening their mouths like fish and singing. Actually, the people are the song. They’ve all got the right to a voice too.
I’ve always had an inkling that there was something in “making one’s voice heard”—whether this voice be collective or individual, amateur or professional. In 2005 the artist-activists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen initiated the “Complaints Choir” project, bringing people together irrespective of nationality, race, class, gender, religious, sexual, or other identifiers. Choir members start by making a list of their complaints (their “complaints’ book”), which are then set to the tunes of well-known melodies. The project began in Birmingham, and since then choirs have popped up in Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Hamburg, Melbourne, Jerusalem, Juneau, Chicago, Malmö, Budapest, Philadelphia, Vancouver, Florence, Singapore, and even on Gabriola Island. Zagreb recently got a choir. They sang their lists of complaints at the main train station. The local authorities wouldn’t let them sing in St. Mark’s Square, in front of the Croatian Parliament.
I’m joining the ranks of this rhapsodic Complainers Internationale. I’m making my voice heard against lax public services; traffic lights that don’t work; overcrowded trams; lines in the supermarket; long queues in doctor’s waiting rooms; expensive dental services; the antiquated school system; the unbelievably thin bags in supermarkets that you can barely prise open and which send your blood pressure through the roof; the racket caused by mobile phones and their owners; price increases on public transport; corruption; low salaries and small pensions; rubbish in the city streets; narrow seats in aeroplanes; complicated telephone messages that click in when you’re trying get hold of a public service; loud advertisements on television; television; 3D films for children that give children nightmares; against the mass (ab)use of deodorants; against preservatives. .
And then I stop for a minute and add karaoke to my list. I raise my voice against karaoke: kindergartens are karaoke, newspapers are karaoke, television is karaoke, fashion is karaoke, books are karaoke, values are karaoke, the education system is karaoke, religious faith is karaoke, the free market is karaoke.
I raise my voice against cosmetic plastic surgery that produces karaoke people; against political plastic surgery that produces mentally identical individuals; against religion, because it produces sectarian lackeys; against karaoke politicians; against karaoke states and state systems; against karaoke ideologies and ideas; against the global karaoke spectacle and the millions of us who are birds of a feather and karaoke devotees. Totalitarianism is dead, long live totalitarianizing freedom! And that’s why, earthlings, complainers of the world — unite! Let’s clear our throats, raise our red fists, and sing without risk. Because even our protest is nothing other than karaoke.
Do we have any other choice? We wanted freedom, we got the freedom of a game, and we even thought the game was the freedom to just clown around. We wanted individual freedom and achieved the freedom of imitation. So let’s tighten our vocal chords, there’s no quick and dirty exit from this game. We voluntarily got ourselves lost in a house of crooked mirrors, and there’s no way back to our authentic reflection. Our bodies move of their own accord, and our mouths do the same. A voice emerges from our throats, but nothing is under our control any more, although they constantly reassure us to the contrary. In the mirror we see our distorted image: what initially filled us with childlike glee has turned into our nightmare. We spin around like an old gramophone record, our hopes pinned on hearing a benevolent click signaling the end, but an invisible hand has already placed the needle back at the beginning. And we again open our mouths. It’s too late, there’s no going back. This is our glorious age, the age of karaoke; we embrace it, sink down into it like quicksand. There’s no cause for alarm, we won’t drown, but we won’t swim our way out either. We will remain, we will survive. Survival is, in any case, our only purpose on this earth. Sure, we will survive.
2009–2010
2. BUY THE JELLYFISH THAT STUNG YOU
MY DIGITAL LIFE
Someone said that God is disinformation, and someone else that God is Google. For a long time I believed the former, but recently I’ve been more inclined to believe the latter. They say only God is all-knowing, omnipresent, and invisible. Oh, hold the phone — that’s Google!
Despite my atheism, lately I’ve been having these strange, inexplicable “spiritual” cravings. I go to bed late, get up early, and in the time between navigate the Internet like a demon in the hunt for divine vitamins, a metaphysical supplement to nourish my famished soul. I glide over the online newspapers, American, Macedonian, English, Serbian, German, Russian, French. . their menus, news, and pictures all the same. I’ve got a habit, and local newspapers are no longer enough for my daily fix. I set a course horizontally and vertically, eastwards, and westwards, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but the same vacuity and same abundance await me everywhere. Maybe the excess of information is actually the cause of my unrelenting hunger. I dive into Internet forums with a passion. Maybe divine revelations are buried in the screeds written by the studious folk who like fly-fishing, cooking, tarot cards, and who knows what else. I recently stumbled upon a site about underwater gymnastics. There are no metaphysics under water. I checked.
The computer screen is constantly flashing junk in my face, about Shakespeare, Tutankhamen, Seinfeld, Sarkozy, the economic crisis, Thai resorts, Italian pasta, child molestation, herbal remedies, and budget flights. Sometimes I get the feeling that the Internet is an enormous global gossip-driven soap opera. I look for the truth hidden between the lines, exhausting myself watching American films with Russian subtitles, Russian films with Korean subtitles, Korean films with Azerbaijani subtitles, you name it. I feel like a penitent, flagellating myself from morning to night, without ever knowing the point of it all. The only thing I do know is that a deep hunger drives me to it all; I’m constantly on the prowl for a metaphysical morsel.
Scientists tell us that our brain’s ability to adapt to new experiences is called neuroplasticity. They claim that from an evolutionary perspective this elasticity can be useful, but that it also means that left unused, brain function simply atrophies. Tests show that the brain structures of London taxi drivers have changed since they became reliant on GPS navigation systems, their own sense of navigation having simply shriveled away. I sympathize with those London taxi drivers, and in future I’m going to leave them a slightly bigger tip than usual.