Perhaps Churchill was right when he asserted that journalism is the most beautiful profession if left in time. After the great German publisher Axel Springer snatched Blic from his hands and pimped him out of the new Lord of Serbia, Vesko remembered Churchill and just crossed the street - instead of Blic he went to build Dorćol plac. He tried to escape into art, but 90 or 120 minutes of a play or concert was not enough to beautify or cover up the rest of the day and the tragic reality. And in those other 20 or so hours, every day, every year, all these decades, with short and almost invisible surrenders, since that now distant 1989, truth has been killed, justice trampled on, shame promoted in Serbia and the region. Patriotism was a refuge for scoundrels, and society a dungeon, Abu Ghraib for the few honorable individuals.
One of them was Vesko. My friend and brother. Mate by life, brother by pen.
"We, in the editorial office, made an agreement not to play some crazy patriots, but to record, purely documentary, what is happening. We agreed to constantly do interviews with some moderate, normal writers, directors, actors. To give the readers something else, which is not war and not bombing, and survive that period without being instigators. And so, somehow, we saved Blic", he said in an interview.
Nothing like this sentence of his reflects what he did for 36 years in Yugoslav and Serbian journalism. Like the inimitable Benini in the unforgettable La vitta e bella, in which a Jewish father in a concentration camp tries to offer his young son something else, something other than war, a camp, a gas chamber or a firing squad. The father tried, like Vesko, not to be an instigator, not to make his little son hate the Germans because of a handful of Nazis and usurpers of power, just as Vesko saved the honor and dignity of Serbia all these decades by showing Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians, that you should not hate Serbs because of a group of National Socialists in the 90s or radicals all these recent years.
He remained steadfast even after the fall of the first dictator.
"They thought we were theirs after the Fifth of October. No, we're not yours. We are journalists", he said even then, in that brief respite, during the transition from the Milosevic dictatorship to the Vučić dictatorship.
"In addition to the need to be educated and literate, it is necessary for a journalist to be brave, to always ask questions and seek answers for his readers, to reveal the background and not just be a mere transmitter of other people's statements and messages, he needs to 'straighten his spine' ' and has an attitude. I chose those," he explained shortly after launching Nova.rs. Because that's the only way Veselin could defend the motto of his editorial principle all these decades - that we don't deceive people!
This is what happens when you live in a devastated country and a humiliated society. Where journalism requires courage, fear and trepidation prevail. And silence. Everything that happens is expected, nothing that is said is shameful. No matter how contrived and false. We live on a desert island where cowards rule, the powerful and rich decide, the worst curse.
A couple of naive people don't give up, they don't want to see the desert around them and show the pain they feel from the crucifixion. We are brave in public, we cry in silence. Because if we were to show fear, what would be left of those for whom we are the only hope. Who are not allowed to speak or write, but who have not stopped believing.
"They bought the media with dubious money, and they bribed private and commercial ones with the money of public companies and companies behind which politicians and mobsters are hiding, both domestic and White-world. The phrase 'everyone is the same' is the best excuse not to think for yourself, not to hear a different opinion. Our goal was to give something new and different and for people to have a choice. To offer them a daily newspaper that is not edited by secret services, cabinets and mobsters. This government cultivates primitivism and obedience among the majority of the media and rewards it with money from the citizens of Serbia as well as the mafia. They corrupted their kerbers and turned them into moral freaks," wrote and spoke Veselin Simonović.
How can we not whistle, Veseline, my brother. Even the Lord of Serbia, and only this Montenegrin, for life, would agree - this is the best way to dispel fear in the darkness that surrounds us. Let's chase away the black clouds over the desert island by barking. To the stars. But nothing is in vain, you know. That's why you said - if I were to go back to the beginning of my career, I would do the same thing again.
The master thinks that force and money are more powerful than principles and values. That's why he's confused that he hasn't won yet. His men spew but it doesn't help, his men threaten but none of that, his men racket but it's in vain, his men also know how to beat, but we survived that too. That's why, my friend, in fact, writing is a dance with death.
Even though it wasn't, you know, we talked about it sometimes, in private, it was easy to handle. After the followers of both your and my Lord published 1422 articles in the infamous Minut, dva, about Miško and Željko, the founders of Vijesta, a town joke arose - if it weren't for Mishko and Željko, this would be called Sekund, dva.
When a similar warm rabbit or, even more picturesquely, a sačekusha was organized by the same crews and in the same format for his friend and brother Vesko, his mother was even more humorous - "Kuku son, you are more on TV than Milo"!
It looks funny, and only we and our closest people know how serious it was. Almost four decades. Years of living dangerously, whistling in the dark to ward off fear. Writings and defiance, again because we were afraid. Turning behind us before we enter the entrance of the building or the car, because we are human and fear is stronger than man...
And only our mothers, wives and children - how was it only for them.
Vesko and I watched the killing of cities and people, Vukovar, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Mostar, at the end of Belgrade, Novi Sad. So many deaths, but life is one. La vitta e bella.
That's why I've always said - it's not how long you live, but how you live. My friend by life and brother by pen, my support and my strength, Vesko Simonović, lived in such a way that his 63 years should be celebrated. The passion he showed in his work and the love he gave in his family - is there a more beautiful and serious justification for one life. The story of a man who, with a smile on his face and a pen in his hand, defeated dictatorship, then democracy, then again dictatorship, will live on for a long time, because he did not agree to be anyone's, but only to be a journalist.
The poet resembles the king of storms and tempests,/ who laughs at the creator from the cloudy sky,/ banished to the ground where the world pushes him with scorn,/ he cannot walk because of giant wings...
That's why you decided to fly away, my Albatross. Fly, Veseline. And he smiles at us from the cloudy sky.
Bonus video:
