Milija Pavićević will have an exhibition this year with a Japanese accent and a beautiful geisha... So I have to remind myself (and prepare for the performance) of some footnotes regarding his exhibition from February 2007.
I saw Milija P towards you in Titograd, in Cetinje, in Kotor. I remember him for his high school slimness and his English costume. And by the big umbrella. An umbrella that has the ability to open itself so that the MP flies to Odyssey in space or to the depths of Tarkovsky's Mirror. I remember Pavićević by the early oils Koitus I, II, III and IV, by quotes-homage to El Greco, Zurbaran, by Van Gogh's hand and Milija's hand. According to the large autobiographical exhibition in the Bogdanov kraj prison. The exhibition as an interpretation of death, and as a great feast. All the deacons and good, good wines are on the table. I remembered all that because of the absolute sincerity, because of how close MP was to himself and his family at that exhibition. I remember the portraits of Milija Pavićević and Saša Čelikov, great alcoholics, on Marks and Engels Square in Belgrade and on Lokanda Square, on Artists' Square, in Cetinje. I remember Pavićević's installation Black Rectangle, like Hoffmann's Black Gate in the story The Golden Jar. During the Cetinje Biennale, the installation was placed between the Blue Castle and the border of the City Park. I see Pavićević choosing delicacies at the morning market in Cetinje: olives, young goat's cheese or garlic, tomato, basil, ukleva, dried figs, pomegranate... like an endless sea.
In an interview with Bild, the MP was asked how to master reality: Friendship is one way, and imagination is another. Friendship or being the closest to yourself and recognizing someone who is even closer to you. Being yourself on the last track. What a beautiful audacity to start the exhibition on the central alley of the Cetinje cemetery... A harmless, endless walk of two friends with suitcases in hand... Milija Pavićević and Saša Čelikov. Well, that walk lasts like the walk in the film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Luis Buñuel. A walk of half a century, and another year or so. On the last journey with a child's dragon in the heart and the peace of a dervish. A heartbeat can barely be heard in the distance. If they continued walking towards the sea, the two friends would also walk on water.
In the State Archives in Cetinje, section of the Cetinje Gymnasium, I found Pavićević's exercise book from 1967. This is what the MP wrote in the spring of that year on the subject of Speed and infinity: As a boy/on a too short road/because he fears the destination/which shortens his step/and makes his arrival difficult/I have to be cunning,/so that, when infinity/is divided by the smallest distance,/from the string to the bow,/I would create a space/similar to infinity.
From death to the sound of childhood, to the humor and lyricism of consumption. From death to marketing to the chocolate company MilČik (Mil+Čik). To the chocolate factory. Well, I tried that chocolate, it can be compared to the best Belgian chocolate. Or, from hell, from purgatory to paradise, to heaven, to business heaven. Or, as one of Ljub Đurković's haiku goes: The heart thinks/where it left/its chewing gum.
There is in the works of M. P, in his early works, a higher principle of elegance of spirit. Tragic in masquerade form. Tragic always rhymes with humor in the real ones. Pavićević's friends, friends from elementary school, asked him if he measured the temperature before he set out on the big blue road: Of course we measured the fire and performed all the other medical work: the thermometer under the mouse showed the temperature of the ocean.
The affairs and days of Milija Pavićević are important for Montenegro as a media and anti-media shock, as a cure for romantic, national and economic fever. As a challenge, as an Olympic challenge, because on the four faces that are viewed along the axis of the table, along the axis of the exhibition, you can see the map of Montenegro, the map of the world. Heavy alcoholics look at the two boys from the wrapper of MilChik chocolate. It is a personal card of friendship, a map of the lives of two heroes, in which more than half a century of companionship, traveling, and hajduking of M. Pavićević and S. Čelikov stopped. Sometimes I would see two friends walking in Rijeka Crnojević. And once our story along the vine, went to nowhere, or to infinity. Those two boys used to launch paper boats on the Cetinje ponds, during the mythical rains. And the sails of the ships fluttered with the color of their hearts. Together with Pablo Neruda and Desperate Poem: In you wars and flights gathered/in you the birds of song took wing./You absorbed everything into yourself like distance/like the sea, like time. Everything in you was a shipwreck!/It was a joyful hour of competition and a kiss./An hour of stupor that burned like a lighthouse...
Milija Pavićević is obsessed with what he does. He has that elegant narcissism of a ravisher: I have an obsession with preserving absolute childhood, curiosity, wonder. Absolute silence reigns in the print of two friends. Silence and musicality. One night in Talia near Đonović in Bajova Street in Cetinje, MP played with a knife, like a bow, on wine glasses. We drank homemade Crmnica wine. We were accompanied by a young actor from Kosovo, Aljban Ukaj, with a beautiful girlfriend. I recognized on Pavićević's knife and glass the sound of Mozart's Symphony in F major. Did I guess? We were also accompanied by Douglas Barnett Smith whom Pavićević met when he exhibited at the Biennale in Venice. During the breaks of the concert, MP spoke the lyrics: One oboe brings us down to pain,/into notes that stammer death,/into the dream of a nine-year-old boy/who makes his way through/a long winter night,/to sleepwalking pastures/so far/that even angels/can't imagine/such a distance...
Angels can't, but a drunken angel, Milija Pavićević, can.
And what was in the suitcases that Milija Pavićević and Saša Čelikov are carrying on the long journey. I know, but I'm not going to tell you. Ha, maybe there will be exhibits for this year's Milija Pavićević exhibition. I can't wait to see the part that will be the story of Ljub Đurković: Don't leave anything but small things/whose owner is a naked soul,/and let others judge/whether it is from a beast or from a man.
Is it Yates, or Đurković? Or the two of them and Pavićević on Innisfree Island on the lake: I will have that peace that falls, drop by drop,/From the morning until the hour when the poppers start to celebrate the world,/Midnight is full of glitter, noon – a burning waterfall,/And the evening is noisy and thick like the flight of a hemp plant...
And then Pavićević continues alone: I will get up and leave, because day and night unfortunately/A wave arrives, and it splashes, from time to time;/It doesn't matter if I stand on the path or on the pavement, that wave/From the depth of my chest rises, like a breath.
On the 75th birthday of Milija Pavićević, Madonna will perform a concert on the Summer Stage in Cetinje. And who will be the first to dance the waltz with Madonna M. Pavićević or Lj. We will see Đurković.
And on the margin of that written assignment from M. Pavićević's high school it was written: The cherry blossom/tonight will scatter/under the blade of the new moon.
And yet it's not the end... I enjoy listening to Milija Pavićević's story about the beauty of Mariza Berenson's dark circles in Bob Fosse's movie Cabaret. Three nights in a row MP went from Cetinje to Danilovgrad to watch Cabaret and admired the acting and under-eye circles of the actress who plays a classy Jewish woman in occupied Berlin. Or the beauty of dark circles against fascism. Nevertheless, someone in such a Berlin wanted to save the Jews. If something will outlive us, it is the kindness and artistic fantasy of the under-eye circles. A symbol of eternal sleeplessness: Blood rushes through our bodies like a heavy flood/And purer than the candle that burns in front of the Crucified is Hoolahan's daughter Kathleen.
Katlin, Milija Pavićević, or freedom.
I would like Aljban Ukaj to sing a song by Mijo Raičević in Talia in October Oh heaven, from his new book, and the four of us to enjoy:
There is no better feeling
Than when you jump out of a plane
...........And you play in heaven
Jimi Hendrix
Why should man lay claim to eternity
and don't the rabbit, the raven, the viper kill him?
Neither the thrush nor the nightingale lay it
and only a parrot can speak, asks Aristotle.
Why should only a man lay claim
to that luxury, the only one unpromised by God?
And in heaven, in that supermarket of God,
there would be the most birds, chosen by consensus,
with incredible voice capabilities.
(The viper would stay down, a nasty trade for him.)
A man would have Eve, in a bed of flowers,
in youth that never passes, in life
in which memories would not exist because they would
each subsequent day was more consistent
of the preceding, and in the veins, brothers and sisters,
instead of blood, wine would flow, eloquence
of the gods would finally be accessible
to every human being.
So everything would be like on earth,
only now in heaven. There, there, above us!
Ah, heaven, man, when the years fly by,
he often thinks. Those pictures are comforting
tweaked in photoshop. He rarely wonders
man is he who invented paradise,
raja ever seen - there is a lot of ambiguity.
Story, quite simply, does not drink water.
But if God so commanded,
then there is no flaw in that job.
Ha, bro! And what if it isn't?
To summarize:
We ask ourselves: Why there, if we have to,
wouldn't a living man go? That with the earth,
you will admit, it is an unpleasant thing.
And why death if it has no meaning?
Why heaven if life has no meaning?
What the hell is all that for?
if you and i are not together?
Bonus video:
