Relics of St Salami

Or

Portrait of the English from the Inside

Local. Branded crazy. Crazy, so to speak. Urbane. Easy. Miserly-go-unlucky. Much easier, for example, to be crazy, internationale.

Home is constantly on the mind and reaps its rewards from bewilderment and admiration to public censure or hatred. But it’s damn’d hard to reap such benefits, especially if you are dealing with any interlocutor or used to watching him on the hoof. Too much attention. At international level it is somehow the same; you can afford to appear in whatever country, but not for long.

I took advantage of local legends about the eccentricity of each ethnic group, how being Russian means adopting the West European myth of the East Slavic bastard. Then, figuratively speaking, made a mattress out of crap and,without waiting for a reply, would snore happily away, leaving the receiving party in mute admiration ( or not?!)  I.e. An idiot abroad never attracts much attention, thus spake the prophet!!

… I could have been a contender: a promising journalist, a great artist, a talented animator ..  maybe I should never again communicate with anyone not of my own calibre ..   such people are a bad influence on my “epic” (soundtrax? re: Swell Maps??) biography .. I dropped a beat. Gave a financially embarrassed civil servant whom I met secretly in the underpass a hundred rouble note.

Once, leaving a tour, I got involved with a circle of strangers who were genuinely interested, (or “sympa”, as one of those French frogs would say). Transformed. Touchy. I would joke with them sometimes about whether it would be worth it to come to Berlin next time in a fucking tank. I got so drunk before some show in Kreuzberg that I confused the front of the stage with the back, as if I were a dyslexic.