When you get in your forties, you swear that the whole male world is moving in a more or less predictable way: you have stories to tell which make young women gaze in wonder, you can count some important work experiences, fulfilled personal projects or at least clear ones, a secure job, a company, children, wife, one mistress or more, each depending on the case, lots of travels, cars, motorcycles, an apartment, a better house.
Not only this is predictable and rather common, but somehow also the more determined look, the more resolute spirits, a certain power, implacability or concern, inquietudes and some other signs that give to the faces that special something which makes them jump suddenly from “what’s up, mate?” to “how are you, sir?”. With both its advantages and disadvantages.
This is how I have recently seen my high-school classmates, and while I was trying to match up the present faces with the older days ringlets, I was all of a sudden surprised by an unchanged figure. He still has the same high-school nickname, after the name of a rock star, a black T-shirt and all-in-one jeans & jacket. Physically speaking, he is 12 years younger than all of us. Ah, it isn’t about sports, he isn’t doing any sports and he isn’t on vegetarian diets either. He has the happiest face in the world and he gives out so much light and warmth as I have never seen on anybody’s face, so much the less at this age. I thought that look couldn’t possibly come out of the blue, but from someone who was occupying all his time with something he enjoyed. Maybe he is in the music business, I said to myself, he must have a recording studio, he must have a band and be on tour all the time and I don’t know what other combinations with musical productions and events. In a way, I couldn’t wait to talk to him, to find out about him, especially since everybody remembered him as an intelligent and well-read guy.
„It’s true I like everything I do, a lot actually … but I’m not doing anything and this is what I like. Literally nothing.” Do you play music? „Yes, but, just for my own pleasure, band… mhhh, no, it’s not for me, there have been many offers, but I’m not interested in it. I’m not working anywhere, I haven’t been working since ‘97, I live with my mother, she has a good pension. I’ve had plenty of love affairs, I am a guy who gets emotionally involved, but…each in our respective houses. Sometimes I fix things and people want to give me money for it, but I always feel strange. I can fix anything, computers, fridges, TVs…anything.” Who knows, maybe you are Big Lebowski, I am thinking loudly, he is somehow amused and we jump up through cinematography two footsteps away to another Terry Gilliam film, also starring Jeff Bridges. It’s clear, he has time to see them all. A whole discipline of unemployment, of staying aside, of doing nothing, it’s a personal option, probably everyone is asking him how he can hold up, how he is dealing with it, but he knows all the twists and turns. It’s a little hard to get such a life strategy into an architect’s mind. I’m going over the film of our education, the history of architecture: the world is a construct, life is a project, success, visibility, pride, fight for recognition, or just as simple as that, a certain dose of determination to physically change what you see are the ingredients of which we all seem to be made; only the proportions are different. The parallel non-action universe is unknown.
The boy who was pulling the crocodiles by the tail and Europe as a shopping center
Next to the merry rock star there sits his friend, a really adventurous spirit, a man who has changed his jobs in a truly spectacular way: from the scrupulous bank clerk he passed on to be a DJ in discos, at night, or he acted as utility man in Korean films. In Korea. It seems we are going to listen to him, though it is very, very late and the next day most of the people of this age I was talking about leave their houses in the very morning with something important to solve, with their mobile phone fully charged and their mind humming „To do lists“. He says that from Korea he got to Singapore. And from Singapore to Malaysia. To an island. He is talking to us, but his mind is there, on the island where he was pulling a Varanus by the tail with the Malaysian fishermen. Then he talks about Africa, about wild animals. „Where have you been?“ he asks one of the girl classmates. „Have you travelled through Europe? Europe is a shop! Have you been shopping, have you seen museums… this is Europe. Life is not Europe“.
Right, this is a simple and clear perspective: UE is a big shopping-center, a retail one, a wholesale one, huge and complicated, with many languages. A museum with airs and commerce, another jungle of rules and power relationships.
No, I don’t have a business card. But no matter, one day we shall resume our discussion.
