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Authors: Robert Perisic
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know all that stuff! But that’s how I get paid, and I’m having to take out that fucking loan. I know what’s possible and what’s not!”
“I’m lecturing you? You keep talking. Stop yelling .”
The Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack sounded through the speakers. I’d seen the film and realized something was wrong with the Cubans. They were so much better than us.
I had a nose for talents and starlets, relatively gifted individuals with their hearts set on recognition and fame. Maybe the point was that for years I’d spent too much time in bars and knew every idiot. In a nutshell, I volunteered as the newspaper’s human resources agent because whenever they needed someone young and enthusiastic they’d ask me.
That’s how fresh blood arrived in journalism, including even the Chief. It may sound strange, but I picked him up too, straight from a bar, back in the dawn of the democratic changes,and led him by the hand to the paper. Poetically put, his success was faster than the wind. Because our country has great social mobility. We don’t have a stable elite. Socialism destroyed the old elites—what little bourgeoisie and provincial aristocracy we had, war and nationalism in the ’90s destroyed the socialist elite. And then democracy happened and the remnants of the nationalist elite had to be done away with.
Defeated elites can survive in nooks and crannies. Oh yes, they can conduct their businesses and pull the strings from the shadows; but out in the light of day, in representative media we constantly needed new people. New columnists and opinion-makers, new faces, new photos. So, in the ten years of feverish change we’d gone through three media paradigms: socialist, wartime, democratic.
Uncompromised people were in short supply. If until recently you’d listened to Lou Reed, worked as a waiter, or studied viticulture, you now had the opportunity to put forth those new values. Democracy, pop culture, slow food. Without questioning capitalism, of course—we’re not Reds!—so there was nothing you could do about the privatization that was pushed through in the ’90s by the shock troops of happiness. The dough was safely stashed away and young media cadres came along to portray an idyll of Europeanization and normalization. After all, what else is there to do after the revolution has been carried out and the dough tucked away? What we needed now was harmony, security, consumers, and free individuals who paid off their loans. We could promote a little hedonism too, let people enjoy themselves, but within limits, of course, so as not to displease the Church.
We were a new society, a society with constantly changing backdrops and new illusions. We were all new at the game. There was no House of Lords, landed gentry, or old bourgeoisie, only the former socialist working peoplewho’d spruced themselves up and now crowded forward in a carnivalesque exertion, grasping for the stars. The Eastern European post-communist version of the American dream did exist. Success depended on chance amidst the general turmoil and rapid repositioning. One of the ordinaries would be shot into orbit. But who?
The Chief had outdone me, there was no doubt about that. He became the great editor, while I was still collecting losers by the roadside. And Pero, as we know, was no longer the same person.
I’ll never forget when Pero began to progress; for a time he shunned my gaze, greeted me hurriedly, avoided sitting at the same table as me. Had he forgotten who’d brought him to the office in the first place?
I always made the same mistake: I inadvertently reminded people of what they used to be.
Later I accepted him as a new person who had nothing to do with the waiter from Limited. Then he, in turn, accepted me again.
Logically thinking, I must have changed in some way too, despite my best efforts. If Pero became my boss nothing could stay the same.
I mentioned these things to Sanja, I think, but always with a laugh
“I’m lecturing you? You keep talking. Stop yelling .”
The Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack sounded through the speakers. I’d seen the film and realized something was wrong with the Cubans. They were so much better than us.
I had a nose for talents and starlets, relatively gifted individuals with their hearts set on recognition and fame. Maybe the point was that for years I’d spent too much time in bars and knew every idiot. In a nutshell, I volunteered as the newspaper’s human resources agent because whenever they needed someone young and enthusiastic they’d ask me.
That’s how fresh blood arrived in journalism, including even the Chief. It may sound strange, but I picked him up too, straight from a bar, back in the dawn of the democratic changes,and led him by the hand to the paper. Poetically put, his success was faster than the wind. Because our country has great social mobility. We don’t have a stable elite. Socialism destroyed the old elites—what little bourgeoisie and provincial aristocracy we had, war and nationalism in the ’90s destroyed the socialist elite. And then democracy happened and the remnants of the nationalist elite had to be done away with.
Defeated elites can survive in nooks and crannies. Oh yes, they can conduct their businesses and pull the strings from the shadows; but out in the light of day, in representative media we constantly needed new people. New columnists and opinion-makers, new faces, new photos. So, in the ten years of feverish change we’d gone through three media paradigms: socialist, wartime, democratic.
Uncompromised people were in short supply. If until recently you’d listened to Lou Reed, worked as a waiter, or studied viticulture, you now had the opportunity to put forth those new values. Democracy, pop culture, slow food. Without questioning capitalism, of course—we’re not Reds!—so there was nothing you could do about the privatization that was pushed through in the ’90s by the shock troops of happiness. The dough was safely stashed away and young media cadres came along to portray an idyll of Europeanization and normalization. After all, what else is there to do after the revolution has been carried out and the dough tucked away? What we needed now was harmony, security, consumers, and free individuals who paid off their loans. We could promote a little hedonism too, let people enjoy themselves, but within limits, of course, so as not to displease the Church.
We were a new society, a society with constantly changing backdrops and new illusions. We were all new at the game. There was no House of Lords, landed gentry, or old bourgeoisie, only the former socialist working peoplewho’d spruced themselves up and now crowded forward in a carnivalesque exertion, grasping for the stars. The Eastern European post-communist version of the American dream did exist. Success depended on chance amidst the general turmoil and rapid repositioning. One of the ordinaries would be shot into orbit. But who?
The Chief had outdone me, there was no doubt about that. He became the great editor, while I was still collecting losers by the roadside. And Pero, as we know, was no longer the same person.
I’ll never forget when Pero began to progress; for a time he shunned my gaze, greeted me hurriedly, avoided sitting at the same table as me. Had he forgotten who’d brought him to the office in the first place?
I always made the same mistake: I inadvertently reminded people of what they used to be.
Later I accepted him as a new person who had nothing to do with the waiter from Limited. Then he, in turn, accepted me again.
Logically thinking, I must have changed in some way too, despite my best efforts. If Pero became my boss nothing could stay the same.
I mentioned these things to Sanja, I think, but always with a laugh
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