"Whenever
I am invited to write ‘a few words’ about a new piece,
ready to be premiered on radio, I feel a sense of unease. It
reminds of the time when, as a theatre director, I was inevitably
forced to expose my concept to the cast and, even worse, to some
theatre authorities, the dreaded apparatchiki, who also participated in
the process. Apparatchiki, of course, being the Russian colloquial term
for full-time professional theatre officials responsible for the
political correctness of the repertory ensemble. Fortunately, my
theater life in my ill-fated country revolved mainly around Belgrade
and its surroundings. Our apparatchiki were quite milder compared to
their Soviet counterparts. However, the apparatchiki syndrome remains
embedded in my memory as a chronic incurable frustration. It triggers
in me a sense of revolt and resentment at having to explain the concept
behind my work.
Why I am writing this? Because I have sort of transposed in my mind
time and events. Today the apparatchiki are non-existent and so is any
mandatory disclosure of concept in the theatre and radio. Yet, whenever
I am asked today to write ‘a few words’ about my new radio
piece, I am immediately and involuntarily transported back to the times
of ‘koncepcija’. It causes me a distinct discomfort to have
to explain my works with words, like a producer of goods at some
market. I could talk about ‘Okeanide’ for hours and what I
could convey in these hours may make some of my listeners happy, but
not me, and surely not everyone. ‘Okeanide’, or any other
work of art is borderless, like a flowing river, never the same, never
to be repeated, a river that flows in the minds of the listeners,
different from mine. So there are many rivers and many Okeanide.
According to the Greco-Roman mythology, Okeanide were three thousand
goddess nymphs who presided over the sources of earth's fresh-water,
ranging from rain clouds to subterranean springs and fountains, lakes,
seas and oceans. In radio space there may be many more deities
than in any ocean around the globe. The listener’s mind with its
river-run imagination is a limitless space. Why should an author, with
a ‘few words’, interfere with it at all? His job is done
and the rest is silence. Any subsequent words or long monologues
can only muddle the clear waters flowing naturally outside of his
control."
(Arsenije Jovanovic)
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