Mariola invites to her Pantry. – We’re going to go with Biruta to the meadows, to her magical garden, and then we’ll try to make frankincense.
We’ll need it for Saturday.
Wojtek describes the way he envisages the choir work. – In all this event we are heading for – there should appear a voice. One to be sounded out. I don’t know how to achieve this – he admits – it’s my first time. I imagine, however, that we depart from ready-made songs and create something to express ourselves, from our own voices, to produce polyphony that will be set within the space to be built here.
It will be on Saturday, they talk about it again. From today on, they will talk about it more and more often as each meeting leads to the grand finale. Nobody knows yet what is going to happen, but the pressure is on: something is drawing near.
Some people raise hands, they get enrolled in Wojtek’s studio. Others choose Word Workshop – they will work with Agata, Loreta and Ricards building an installation. – During our workshops, we are looking for an answer to the question of the symbol of the bridge, one readable to all, and its graphic representation. From all inspirations we wish to build a construction able to express it. All the time – adds Agata – we are searching for its form and shape.
Some people volunteered to join us, they will help us in the search.
The pottery workshop told us about their preparation for Saturday, you can see there more and more and nip off a bit of the mystery.
Krzysztof Czyżewski says: - This tale still continues, though, each day, each evening, we add something to it. There’s still a lot of work ahead of us. We need to build a common tale from the work of all workshops and think about how to pass it on. At the moment we are still looking for the language and form.
The new rhythm settles in. There’s time to sit on the grass in the sun and listen to why they come here.
Joanna Szwedowska started over a dozen years ago and returns each year. – Even more often. The first time it was in winter 2001, I remember – we walked on the frozen lake. Borderland was opening the Old Post Office then. Krasnogruda still did not exist for a long time in the form we see it now.
And me – Katarzyna Nowak joins in, I remember the celebration of the granting of the Borderlander Award. The first to receive it was Jerzy Ficowski, but for me, the most emotional was the award given to Arvo Pärt.
Borderland honoured the Estonian composer with the award in 2003. He hasn’t performed his work himself for many years, but then, for us, he made an exception. He played “For Alina,” a beautiful piece written about the daughter of Irena Veisaite, Borderland’s friend who was to emigrate and say goodbye to her mother. They knew this was going to be a long separation – remembers Katarzyna Nowak.
Excellent was also the Musicians’ Raft – adds Rasa Rimickaitė who has also collaborated with Borderland for many years – or the events commemorating Czesław Miłosz. Remember the brilliant “Issa Valley”?
I was attracted to Sejny by my interest in Jewish stories. Borderland published my book about Szewach Weiss, there was a meeting with him organized here. There were crowds - Amazing was also the story of Max Furmański. A Sejny Jew who miraculously survived the war and later went to South America. Only after 2000, his son, or perhaps grandson, persuaded him to come to Poland. He came to Sejny and made his way to the synagogue where he used to pray with his father before the war. And he couldn’t believe his ears when he heard the sounds of Jewish songs coming from the synagogue - it was Borderland rehearsing for "The Dybbuk". It was very emotional to him. And with this emotion he became close to Borderland for years, he used to come here each time he came to Poland.
- And I was touched by his story, too, and its next part. A few years ago - adds Dorota Sieroń-Galusek – he had a stroke and was struck with aphasia. He was unable to speak , but started to recall Polish words. He began to sing Polish songs, too.
- And the “Sejny Chronicles” Bożena performs with successive generations of kids? - asks Rasa reminding the project dedicated to the former Jewish hosts of this land. - And concerts? Shlomo Bar in the White Synagogue, remember? And David Krakauer? You know how nice it was to hear him mentioning Borderland during the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow? After all, here he started his great career in Poland, here composed his most famous pieces.
- Well, meetings are meetings, and projects are projects, but the most precious thing I got from Borderland are contacts with people. The fact that we sit and meet here and that our relations continue - is due to the power of this place, and that’s why you keep returning here - explains Katarzyna. And Łukasz Galusek echoes her words: - Here you really a r e with the people, and you could hardly have time every day for such meetings: true and unhurried. Here time flows differently, and the constellations of characters and experiences exchanged are totally unique.
He is right. Time passes completely differently today. Looking for a new momentum for the Village.
Afternoon
After lunch, Natalia Jeromenko, from the Ukrainian Rosa Collective, talks about practices that have their source here, but moved further abroad. She has taken part in the Borderland School and last year, in her hometown, Chernivtsi (eastern Ukraine, right on the Romanian border), undertook a project “Dżesta talks”. - In the previous century, our city belonged to the Hapsburg Empire, Romania and the Soviet Union. Designed according to the nineteenth-century principles, including usability, accessibility and friendliness of the common space for residents, it went through a number of metamorphoses, the last one was a capitalistic one and the twenty years of independent Ukraine. The result of all these changes is the disappearance of the public space, public and open to residents. My parents - says Natalia - and my generation do not use it at all. We were told to believe that you can only meet for money - in a restaurant or cinema - and we had no money. We became symbolically deprived of parks, lawns and squares that in the Soviet times were used mainly for propaganda purposes, and we did not have the courage to reclaim them.
Temporarily. Natalia and her friends are trying now. Under the “Dżestra talks” they held a series of meetings with residents trying to take responsibility for the place where they live and function. It is not easy, sometimes the inviolability of the public space is protected by city guards, sometimes by the city authorities. But Natalia’s collective is not giving up. They try to take care of no man's land and reclaim it for themselves, for the residents of the city.
And a new turn again, today’s schedule still meanders. Krzysztof Czyżewski invites you to his Tale Workshop. The tent on the lake fills right away - Christopher Merrill, writer, translator and poet suggests a workshop exercise. He throws some words at the audience - he picked them from random pages of books, some were added by Gwen, some by others, and says: create a narrative out of them. Bridge, camel, chocolate, guitar, umbrella, yellow sari (or maybe: sorry?), Patagonia.
And unexpectedly, to some surprise of the participants themselves, everyone manages to compose their own story. Some are funny, some sad, there is a comedy and tragedy, limerick, poem and a tale. They sound in English, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Spanish and Swahili.
Evening
We are in the place that Czesław Miłosz, one of my masters, used to spend his summer holidays. Let me tell you about the place where I spent my vacations - that’s the beginning of another meeting with the Master Chris Merrill, the same who, a couple of hours earlier, told everyone to spin stories from chocolate, umbrellas and Patagonian inspiration. This time, he was to tell his own. He began with his childhood memories, then he took his audiences across the bridge in Mostar and the siege of Sarajevo, China, Iran, Turkey, South Africa and then up to Iowa, where at the university, he runs his course of International Creative Writing. And to Krasnogruda, because - as he repeats after Walt Whitman – the end and the beginning, you and I, here and there have the same origin.
Magdalena Kicińska