Facts and figures was not rescued by neither Britain nor America. They will not help us. If we have no history, for us there is no truth.
Now it’s just a dark stripe on the pavement, which is reminiscent of the Meridian, one end passing to the subway station at Potsdamer Platz. There was a wall that divided the city into Eastern and Western parts. Today there is new construction, but some places still have a small reminder: the stones in the pavement of a different color or a wrought iron sign on the sidewalk that says Berliner Mauer years “1961-1989”.
A reminder of the days when the East was clearly separated from the West, military heritage, clean lines, made from concrete and wrapped with wire where the guards were shooting without hesitation and incited the dogs.
However, in addition to this, a very clear, unforgiving geography, there is another level: the West and the East have said. Were artifacts, bits of information, of which were composed of history, food for the imagination. “You have a washing machine!” — exclaimed the astonished Mrs. Marie Novak, when he came from America to Slovakia to visit in his old age his family to see grandchildren, which sometimes sent a dollar in an envelope… And they live here in the house and even washing machine! At home she imagined everything differently.
And The West? We had ideas about the crowded store shelves, glowing neon signs, the geraniums on the balconies and sidewalks, it was like someone vacuumed. And because there was evidence that Western city really vacuumed in the morning, the toilet seats in the toilet to wash themselves, it is necessary only to rotate, and an abundance such that even may become ill.
Anthropologist Alexei Yurchak University of California, Berkeley, described what is this imaginary West. The poem Lasike and Satinsky, “I remember Paris, but never been there” accurately reveals the concept of the West. In this poem — and the memories, and nostalgia for the city where the author has never been. He only had part of: stickers, brochures, jeans, photography, but never had the whole. The sounds, the colors, the style he learned, and he missed it, but he didn’t understand what exactly.
Drones over Moscow
The drone flies around the facade of a tall building, and offer views of a group of skyscrapers. For the first time comes to mind is Manhattan, but the building is new, so the second thought — Shanghai. However, when the camera flies between the buildings, we see an Orthodox Church. The Golden domes seem just for a moment — and now we face again the glass facades of offices. Scurrying down a yellow taxi cab in new York.
“This media will not show,” says the voice-over. One lady shared video Modern Moscow, taking it directly from the profile of Putin. She wrote on the website of Matica Slovenska, she should transform into a political party. Because no one else will save Slovakia.
Her avatar is cut from a big picture, found somewhere on the Internet. In profile, a few dozen “friends”, and on the wall links to the Donbass, Putin’s speech, the streets of Paris, covered with dirty mattresses, with the comment: “the Refugees stood up and went to Breakfast. Maybe we should have the new, Mrs Merkel?” So Paris probably saw “buddy trump Jim”, which is supposedly more dangerous city will never come.
“When I go online and see there stuff, I wonder where the “suns” take such incredible confidence that I know everything. In this video, because the Imam said it… let’s see what he says,” — the woman of years of fifty is viewing a movie in German and stops it on a laptop, like we’re on course. If this were a movie, it would play Isabelle Huppert — best impersonation of a frightened but stubborn woman who shoots home porn geopolitical.
Some accounts and profiles are authentic, some are inspired by the reality, as the Pani, which has shared Moscow taken with a drone, and dirty streets of Paris. They popularitybut imaginary East, remember Paris, which, they say, is not what it was, and Moscow, which rises from the bottom, where it turned out after the fall of the Berlin wall. Gilded domes next to glass skyscrapers everywhere, the silence and grace. “Luxury, peace and pleasure”.
Colonization of no man’s land
Some time this territory was abandoned. Our people erased the paintings of the imaginary of the West, seemed to throw the old furniture from the attic. At some point, I thought there was a void, but then began to accumulate new clutter. And based on this social subconscious managed to make a new map, which gave hope that there was some place, some education, all the trim, pieces and fragments will make up the whole — a Holy unity. All that lurking can be expressed, all the empty — filled, and the secret will be revealed.
Imaginary East filled the vacated space, walked into the Packed track before she disappeared. The calculation is done on the habit of our people to read between the lines, so today consider yourself a skilled interpreters of texts, seeing, allegedly, not only the text and the context and ideological background. Our people have long mastered this creative paranoia, which the West learned in special courses in the Humanities. Second nature. It was enough to fill the space between the lines of new content.
And it was enough to replace the samizdat, rotators, publications that roamed like a magazine “Burda”, which copied the fashionable styles. The whole place, which left gray economy, the economy of relationships and trust, ambiguity, and ironic consent, “after all, we all know how to do things”, remained empty as no man’s land. And before the infrastructure built under socialism, began to deteriorate, it again started to use.
Imaginary East — not a real place. Links to geography are: modern Moscow, filmed with a drone, as opposed to Paris’s face, strewn with mattresses. But basically some hints. East is a place of storage desires, the virtual cloud where you can upload a doubt, unfulfilled dreams, disappointments. It is the place where civil critics from all ideological corners. Green, left-wing, new age, conservative criticism, nationalism in history textbooks, romantic fascism.
All defects visible to the naked eye, become here part of a greater whole, history truly starovskogo scale of a triumphal East, which can meet all these requirements and to heal wounds.
America of independent cinema
And we are not the first who believes the fictions of the East and the West. The French and the British, too, dreamed of the East, carried the mummies and obelisks, fabrics and spices were stored in pattern memory, were inspired by fictional scenes of Oriental tapestries and according to them satisfied with their present.
What else, if not proof of the visit fabulous places, are those tons of pictures, which carry tourists from South-East Asia from Europe. Copies of the Champs elysées or the Eiffel tower being built in Chinese cities to those who want to remember Paris, but who have no money to go there, could do wedding photos. Over a couple of decades after the war, the Europeans imitated America, opening milk bars and installing the jukebox.
Anyone who has struggled with this escape from reality, inevitably lost and even on the contrary made way for fantasies even more attractive. In vain we gave figures voted for Pexit in vain said that the portrait of America that draws trump, does not correspond to reality. “Trompowsky” America with broken roads, dilapidated factories and voters, which left those who had to create a better future for them, you could see in independent films. For Example, “Gummo”. Remember, the boy is a sadist, rotating among the degenerates, living in a trailer?
The authors of the social dramas I have no doubt that it is also possible to depict and Slovakia. Suddenly, the fairy images came to life in the election campaign of right-wing parties. They know how to handle the imagined East, the store hopes, with which everybody associates that he wants, so it’s easy to promise improvements.
No, facts and figures will not help. Imagination will easily pass and will continue to aspire to the gilded domes, under which everyone imagines anything. Facts and figures are not wealthy themselves — they work within a story. And history win. If we have no history, for us there is no truth.
