Amalgamation

St. Paddy's day in Belgrade at the Three Carrots, where the Guinness is really bad and over priced. A couple of guys were dissecting my nationality, and no answer was good enough, except that there was some Irish blood in me from my Gran. "Oh, that is to bad" they kept saying. On of them had been in the Balkans since things went south in the early 1990's. It's amazing how many internationals you meet, who are like this guy. Partly it is the work, I am sure, but there seems to also be something attractive about being in 'conflict' regions.

"It's the Wild West out here." He said this as if we were a million miles from 'civilization', not in the heart of Belgrade, a cosmopolitan city. When I think of Wild West, I think of Deadwood and Clint Eastwood, not Kneza Milosa or Boris Tadic. One might be forgiven for thinking that about Pristina and Kosovo, but Serbia? He listed things like the bad driving and danger of crossing the road as to why he thought this was the Wild West.

~~

Aleks and I were talking about how to do what interests you in life, and still make a living. You have to bring the system to your interests, he said. We used the example of TKV, a local artist, who is doing great street art, and basically making some money doing what interests her. It's not so much that she created a demand, rather, she focused on what she liked to do and then found a way to sell her skill.

It is no easy thing to do, particularly for a social scientist, who can't do much with his hands, except tap on a key board! But I was thinking about this conversation again last night as I listened to Moondog. Moondog made his own music, his own instruments and his own clothing. He was fiercely independent from mainstream music and society, but he lived as he wanted. He is an example that you can do whatever you want, or, as Aleks put it, an example that being crazy is really beautiful.