Cultural baggage on board the express: some of the motifs used in Laikonik Express
Destination board from the Lajkonik Express train
Note the Polish spelling. I chose to change it so that people reading in English would be able to pronounce it comfortably. Krakow to Gdynia is a long way - it's definitely not a train to fall asleep on.
No poetry after Auschwitz
‘No poetry after Auschwitz,' Don Darius remembered. 'Wasn’t that what the fellow said?’
‘Well, yeah, he did, but…’
‘But what? What’s to say, after that?’
‘Uh.’ Kennedy tried to think of the context of Theodore Adorno’s famous statement, but couldn’t remember it. He grinned, stated, ‘He was in a bad mood that day. He didn’t mean it. And nor do you.’ Laikonik Express p59
‘Well, yeah, he did, but…’
‘But what? What’s to say, after that?’
‘Uh.’ Kennedy tried to think of the context of Theodore Adorno’s famous statement, but couldn’t remember it. He grinned, stated, ‘He was in a bad mood that day. He didn’t mean it. And nor do you.’ Laikonik Express p59
Cargo cults
‘I left the States to see other people’s cultures, right, and I come here, and what do I see?’
‘Well, what?’
‘Cargo cults.’
Kennedy could have sworn later that the little corner of Warsaw they were on had conspired to eavesdrop on them. Cars and trams calmed their engines for a stop light, and yet the people around them had not yet started to walk, and had reached a lull in their talk. Music blaring out of a place near them came to a between-cuts silence. Had there been a dog barking, even it would have stopped too, to listen to Don bellowing the two words. From every direction, heads turned. Kennedy felt as if he and Don were on a stage.
‘Hey.’ Don spread hands, and grinned. The heads turned away, and people crossed the road, vehicles coughed into life and were on their way.
‘Cargo cults?’
Kennedy had heard the term, he was sure. Don told him then about the cargo cults that had sprung up in the Pacific islands after the second world war, once all the colonialists had been kicked out. He did not understand the phenomenon completely, he had to admit, but, as he saw it, some of the islanders believed that, if they observed certain rituals to qualify them to deserve it, a bunch of freighters would make a line for them from the horizon and, basically, dump stuff: food, whiskey, rifles, cars – he didn’t know – Barbie dolls, cloth of gold, Siegfried and Roy videos, for all he knew, Snickers bars – whatever. Where beliefs like that had arisen, Don had not been able to work out though, there in Warsaw, he thought he was beginning to. ‘It’s the same thing here,’ he elaborated. ‘They think all these things are going to come to them, just like that, and that they’re never going to have to pay for them.’ Laikonik Express pp54-55
And see here for a video exploring this odd phenomenon.
‘Well, what?’
‘Cargo cults.’
Kennedy could have sworn later that the little corner of Warsaw they were on had conspired to eavesdrop on them. Cars and trams calmed their engines for a stop light, and yet the people around them had not yet started to walk, and had reached a lull in their talk. Music blaring out of a place near them came to a between-cuts silence. Had there been a dog barking, even it would have stopped too, to listen to Don bellowing the two words. From every direction, heads turned. Kennedy felt as if he and Don were on a stage.
‘Hey.’ Don spread hands, and grinned. The heads turned away, and people crossed the road, vehicles coughed into life and were on their way.
‘Cargo cults?’
Kennedy had heard the term, he was sure. Don told him then about the cargo cults that had sprung up in the Pacific islands after the second world war, once all the colonialists had been kicked out. He did not understand the phenomenon completely, he had to admit, but, as he saw it, some of the islanders believed that, if they observed certain rituals to qualify them to deserve it, a bunch of freighters would make a line for them from the horizon and, basically, dump stuff: food, whiskey, rifles, cars – he didn’t know – Barbie dolls, cloth of gold, Siegfried and Roy videos, for all he knew, Snickers bars – whatever. Where beliefs like that had arisen, Don had not been able to work out though, there in Warsaw, he thought he was beginning to. ‘It’s the same thing here,’ he elaborated. ‘They think all these things are going to come to them, just like that, and that they’re never going to have to pay for them.’ Laikonik Express pp54-55
And see here for a video exploring this odd phenomenon.
The figure of the Lajkonik, snapped in 1992
A man on a horse… or more accurately a horse on a man. This is the Lajkonik, a symbol of the city of Krakow. They named the Lajkonik Express train after him.
Not the greatest or clearest of photos, but it's of a folk-dancing troupe in the Rynek, the main square, in Kraków, and at its centre is the figure of the Lajkonik. I took this photo on my first trip to Poland, in the summer of 1992, years before I took my regular journeys on the Lajkonik Express, and before I thought of writing a book with that same title.
The Lajkonik represents a Tatar, a bearded, turbanned man from the east, perched on a horse. The Tatars are a people that originated in central Asia, and have strong Islamic traditions. You can read a summary about them here, but basically they were part of Genghis Khan’s hordes who devastated various parts of Europe from the 13thC on. The word Tatar began to be applied to any people from the east who had designs on your cities, goods and chattels. There are Tatar communities across the former Soviet Union, and in parts of Europe such as Poland and Turkey, and even in America.
Various stories are attached to the Lajkonik in Krakow. The figure may represent the time the Krakovians killed a a Tatar khan, or leader, and dressed in his clothes to show their victory and rub it in. There is also a story that some locals dressed up as Tatars inside the city walls to play a joke on their fellow city dwellers and make them think they’d been invaded – I honestly cannot see this going down very well. Whatever its origins, the Lajkonik stands as a sort of ‘bogeyman from the east’ figure – fear of alien cultures; funny, but this is beginning to sound familiar. The bogeyman has been de-bogeyed to a certain extent, rendered into a good luck symbol, the Lajkonik name being given to hotels, foodstuffs, dancing troupes, and at least one train.
Not the greatest or clearest of photos, but it's of a folk-dancing troupe in the Rynek, the main square, in Kraków, and at its centre is the figure of the Lajkonik. I took this photo on my first trip to Poland, in the summer of 1992, years before I took my regular journeys on the Lajkonik Express, and before I thought of writing a book with that same title.
The Lajkonik represents a Tatar, a bearded, turbanned man from the east, perched on a horse. The Tatars are a people that originated in central Asia, and have strong Islamic traditions. You can read a summary about them here, but basically they were part of Genghis Khan’s hordes who devastated various parts of Europe from the 13thC on. The word Tatar began to be applied to any people from the east who had designs on your cities, goods and chattels. There are Tatar communities across the former Soviet Union, and in parts of Europe such as Poland and Turkey, and even in America.
Various stories are attached to the Lajkonik in Krakow. The figure may represent the time the Krakovians killed a a Tatar khan, or leader, and dressed in his clothes to show their victory and rub it in. There is also a story that some locals dressed up as Tatars inside the city walls to play a joke on their fellow city dwellers and make them think they’d been invaded – I honestly cannot see this going down very well. Whatever its origins, the Lajkonik stands as a sort of ‘bogeyman from the east’ figure – fear of alien cultures; funny, but this is beginning to sound familiar. The bogeyman has been de-bogeyed to a certain extent, rendered into a good luck symbol, the Lajkonik name being given to hotels, foodstuffs, dancing troupes, and at least one train.
Sopranos and seafood - Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito
If Kennedy was remembering rightly, La Clemenza di Tito was one of those operas that, as far as a schleb like he was concerned, got opera a bad name. It featured a few bona fide arias, but it was mostly just people warbling phrases over an annoying keyboard. Kennedy did not mention this to Don; a harpsichord was tinkling an alarm to remind him that in Istanbul Don was always dragging people off to the opera, then grizzling the whole time about it boring him shitless. Kennedy lied, and said, ‘I saw that one already.’
‘You did?’ Don did not look too disappointed. ‘Does it work?’
‘I hesitate to recommend it, man. A good tune or two, but…’ It bugged Kennedy, just in passing, that he could not remember any of the arias from Tito. ‘You know, it’s like eating a seafood salad, see, and you only got one mussel in it.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Don looked wistful, and pained at the same time. ‘I ate that salad. Spare me another.’ Laikonik Express p47
One of those bona fide arias from Mozart's Roman opera La Clemenza di Tito (according to this schleb): 'Torna di Tito al lato', which I thought for years meant 'Go and get Tito a milkshake.' See sopranos Maria Höglind and Lani Poulson rather unconvincingly playing chaps here - you just can't get the castrati these days...
‘You did?’ Don did not look too disappointed. ‘Does it work?’
‘I hesitate to recommend it, man. A good tune or two, but…’ It bugged Kennedy, just in passing, that he could not remember any of the arias from Tito. ‘You know, it’s like eating a seafood salad, see, and you only got one mussel in it.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Don looked wistful, and pained at the same time. ‘I ate that salad. Spare me another.’ Laikonik Express p47
One of those bona fide arias from Mozart's Roman opera La Clemenza di Tito (according to this schleb): 'Torna di Tito al lato', which I thought for years meant 'Go and get Tito a milkshake.' See sopranos Maria Höglind and Lani Poulson rather unconvincingly playing chaps here - you just can't get the castrati these days...
'Roman thing? Got a fellow in a toga on the poster, anyhow.'
The mis-spelling of names - Ellis Island
Once everybody was seated, Jack’s mom was demanding to be told about Don’s name. He went into his raconteur part and told the story of how his grandpa on his dad’s side made the damp crossing of the pond from Gdynia to New York way back in ragtime. He had the Christian name of Dariusz, pronounced dar-ee-oosh, and the family name of Pszczynski, which went pish-chins-kee, both of which just looked fearsome and barbaric written down. The Ellis Island officials had as little success as Kennedy in getting their tongues around the names, and wanted to knock off for the day and go home, so they just put his first name down on his papers, and, unhappy too with the s and z combination, chopped off the z. It was a familiar tale to them all, but they found themselves caught up in it all the same. Laikonik Express p135
Have you ever dug windows?
‘So tell me.’ Kennedy had the feeling that Don was probing back into his psychology major for the right tone of voice to adopt. ‘What did you think about when you dreamed of hitting Europe? The exact thing, I mean.’
‘Windows,’ Kennedy said, with no hesitation.
‘Windows?’ That spluttered Don out of the Viennese shrink shtick. ‘Eh?’
‘The exact thing, you said.’ Kennedy thought about Neal Cassady asking, Have you ever dug windows? Cassady didn’t ask Kennedy’s dad that, he asked Kerouac, though he was Sal Paradise at the time, and Cassady was Dean Moriarty, and it was in On the Road. But, come to think of it, he probably asked Kennedy’s dad the same thing, had begun to recycle his wiseguy asides by the time Kennedy senior had run into him. ‘Glass, in frames,’ he teased, then spelled out, ‘Like, tall, narrow apartment buildings with tall, narrow windows that led onto tall, narrow balconies with iron rails.’
‘Oh. But…’ Don seemed mightily perplexed. ‘That’s all?’
‘With the sun on them,’ Kennedy remembered.
‘That’s all? Windows? But…I mean…Where were they, these windows?’
‘Paris, France.’ Again, no hesitation from Kennedy. They could only have been there, in a city lost in time and place to Americans, embedded in Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. Laikonik Express, p53
‘Windows,’ Kennedy said, with no hesitation.
‘Windows?’ That spluttered Don out of the Viennese shrink shtick. ‘Eh?’
‘The exact thing, you said.’ Kennedy thought about Neal Cassady asking, Have you ever dug windows? Cassady didn’t ask Kennedy’s dad that, he asked Kerouac, though he was Sal Paradise at the time, and Cassady was Dean Moriarty, and it was in On the Road. But, come to think of it, he probably asked Kennedy’s dad the same thing, had begun to recycle his wiseguy asides by the time Kennedy senior had run into him. ‘Glass, in frames,’ he teased, then spelled out, ‘Like, tall, narrow apartment buildings with tall, narrow windows that led onto tall, narrow balconies with iron rails.’
‘Oh. But…’ Don seemed mightily perplexed. ‘That’s all?’
‘With the sun on them,’ Kennedy remembered.
‘That’s all? Windows? But…I mean…Where were they, these windows?’
‘Paris, France.’ Again, no hesitation from Kennedy. They could only have been there, in a city lost in time and place to Americans, embedded in Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. Laikonik Express, p53
A song not heard on any radio station for at least three decades
Surprisingly, for a town nobody had ever heard of, Ostrava had an airplane hangar of a station. Over the PA system Kennedy heard what he thought was Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers singing I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent. A song not heard on any radio station for at least three decades, that seemed bizarre and downright impossible, and indeed it turned out to be Cyndi Lauper with her Girl Just Want To Have Fu-un. Laikonik Express, p15
Everybody knows Girls Just Want to Have Fun, but here's the lesser-known I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent. Of course, it's arrogant of Kennedy to assume that 'nobody' had heard of Ostrava, and also a little snotty of him to believe that this tune had not been heard for such a long time, so I'd better say that they are both songs I love - there is something about the voices that really strike through, and I was struck several times when hearing the Cyndi Lauper tune out, in a crowded place with background noise, that something deep in my brain had mistakenly made out the strains of the Frankie Lymon song.
Everybody knows Girls Just Want to Have Fun, but here's the lesser-known I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent. Of course, it's arrogant of Kennedy to assume that 'nobody' had heard of Ostrava, and also a little snotty of him to believe that this tune had not been heard for such a long time, so I'd better say that they are both songs I love - there is something about the voices that really strike through, and I was struck several times when hearing the Cyndi Lauper tune out, in a crowded place with background noise, that something deep in my brain had mistakenly made out the strains of the Frankie Lymon song.
Chet Baker's last appearance
Monument to Chet Baker, Hotel Prins Hendrik, Amsterdam
It fell to Kennedy to remind Don that it was honestly not the best time for him to be heading for Amsterdam. Kennedy knew it was Don’s kind of town, knew that Don got there at least one time a year. His first visit, Kennedy remembered, was in the summer of eighty eight, and Don saw über-beat Chet Baker’s last ever gig. The next day, the craggy junky trumpeter had fallen out of a window and leaked his last notes away on the cobbles. Don had even seen the last crowd Chet ever pulled, up a side street, people gathered around the dying jazzer. Since then, Don had fixed on the city as a place where he could go and get truly wrecked without having either to try too hard or to answer to anybody. ‘But not as wrecked as Chet,’ he was fond of adding. Laikonik Express p198
King of the Dumb People
Photo by Wally McNamee UT Center for American History
"Do you know, I went to Moscow on a visit, and I was presented to Comrade Brezhnev, and this man who would one day be king of the dumb people, this hulking, murdering petit-bourgeois, he shook my hand - I was one of his pet Poles, one of his loyal and foolish subjects - and he told me that the world he was directing could not exist without me. For a minute, I believed it, and for that minute all was good with that stupid world." Laikonik Express, p162
JFK's last trip - November 23rd 1963
That day in November sixty-three, Don’s mom and pop packed the kids and the picnic lunch into the Buick, festooned it with Democrat pennants and hit the road for Dallas. They rubbernecked in the crowd – and were captured fleetingly, in fact, in Benjamin Zapruder’s movie of the shooting – and of course heard those shots whiplash through the day into the schizoid dreams of a whole generation. They felt the wild will of somebody’s agenda make a frenzy that played out in every face around them before it rippled into the rest of the world. Don started to recount all this, though in truth there was little to tell; he was six at the time, after all. So did he look up at the windows of the book depository, he was asked, and said, ‘No. Nobody told little old me the shots were supposed to have come from there. Now, next question from the floor.’ Did Don’s dad take any photos that day? ‘Nope,’ he said. But why not? ‘Didn’t have a camera.’ But it was an historic occasion – did it not feel like one? ‘A historic occasion,’ teacher Don corrected. ‘Not to me. I was hungry. And we ate right after the killing.’ Laikonik Express p73
Sound, vision, wallpaper
‘Hey.’ Don leaned into Kennedy in the square and said with some enthusiasm, ‘I saw David Bowie here.’
‘You did?’ Kennedy did not want to be drawn from the subject of their doings next day, if he could help it, but he was intrigued. ‘You mean, like, doing a gig?’
‘No.’ Don’s frown gave it some emphasis, and Kennedy could not in truth see Don wanting to watch David Bowie, not even if he were performing in Don’s kitchen. ‘Just saw him walking along the sidewalk, like I see you right now.’
‘Just…walking?’ Kennedy could not imagine David Bowie just walking along the sidewalk, pictured him travelling only by limo.
‘Just one foot in front of the other.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Eh?’ Don combined a smile with a frown. ‘Looked exactly like that David Bowie cat.’ He helpfully did Bowie for a second, guy with a microphone.
‘Maybe it was just a guy looked like him.’
‘Well.’ Don seemed to consider. ‘That’s one explanation. No,’ he established happily, ‘it was the bard himself. Trust me.’
Kennedy stared. He would like to have trusted Don; specifically, not to talk him into anything that would take the form of trains and coastal towns and churches and stray women. He was about to say this, but then all he said was, ‘I used to think the best song ever in the world was Sound and Vision.’ He did not know why he was telling Don that; heroin had spoiled the song for him.
‘Oh. How does that one go?’
Kennedy treated Don to a line of the song, which got Don smiling, saying, ‘Oh, okay. Best song in the world, says you, is about a guy’s wallpaper?’ Laikonik Express p83
The original draft of Laikonik Express included a few lyrics by David Bowie. There was a very short snatch from Sound and Vision, the 'blue blue electric blue' line. There were a few more from his China Girl - Kennedy's almost estranged girlfriend in Istanbul is Chinese, and I thought some of the lines in the song added to his angst about her. Stephen Knight, one of my tutors on the Writing MA I did at Goldsmiths, warned me off using them. He'd wanted to use the lines 'Ground Control to Major Tom' (from Bowie's Space Oddity) in a novel, and Bowie's publisher had agreed that he could, for a fee of a thousand quid - two hundred per word and one of them a lowly preposition. I'm not complaining: copyright holders are allowed to set their own rules for their work, and to charge as much as they want. I now think using song lyrics is a bit naff, anyway, and it's much better to just hint at them, hence Don's line about Sound and Vision being a song about wallpaper.
‘You did?’ Kennedy did not want to be drawn from the subject of their doings next day, if he could help it, but he was intrigued. ‘You mean, like, doing a gig?’
‘No.’ Don’s frown gave it some emphasis, and Kennedy could not in truth see Don wanting to watch David Bowie, not even if he were performing in Don’s kitchen. ‘Just saw him walking along the sidewalk, like I see you right now.’
‘Just…walking?’ Kennedy could not imagine David Bowie just walking along the sidewalk, pictured him travelling only by limo.
‘Just one foot in front of the other.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Eh?’ Don combined a smile with a frown. ‘Looked exactly like that David Bowie cat.’ He helpfully did Bowie for a second, guy with a microphone.
‘Maybe it was just a guy looked like him.’
‘Well.’ Don seemed to consider. ‘That’s one explanation. No,’ he established happily, ‘it was the bard himself. Trust me.’
Kennedy stared. He would like to have trusted Don; specifically, not to talk him into anything that would take the form of trains and coastal towns and churches and stray women. He was about to say this, but then all he said was, ‘I used to think the best song ever in the world was Sound and Vision.’ He did not know why he was telling Don that; heroin had spoiled the song for him.
‘Oh. How does that one go?’
Kennedy treated Don to a line of the song, which got Don smiling, saying, ‘Oh, okay. Best song in the world, says you, is about a guy’s wallpaper?’ Laikonik Express p83
The original draft of Laikonik Express included a few lyrics by David Bowie. There was a very short snatch from Sound and Vision, the 'blue blue electric blue' line. There were a few more from his China Girl - Kennedy's almost estranged girlfriend in Istanbul is Chinese, and I thought some of the lines in the song added to his angst about her. Stephen Knight, one of my tutors on the Writing MA I did at Goldsmiths, warned me off using them. He'd wanted to use the lines 'Ground Control to Major Tom' (from Bowie's Space Oddity) in a novel, and Bowie's publisher had agreed that he could, for a fee of a thousand quid - two hundred per word and one of them a lowly preposition. I'm not complaining: copyright holders are allowed to set their own rules for their work, and to charge as much as they want. I now think using song lyrics is a bit naff, anyway, and it's much better to just hint at them, hence Don's line about Sound and Vision being a song about wallpaper.
Telephone Road
Telephone Road, circa 1948
Krystyna had stayed in a motel near Houston with a girlfriend, another scientist. They had been meant to hook up with some other people someplace in Houston itself, but they had not shown. A confusion of highways and turnings had led them to the motel, and they had called for a takeaway and turned in early. What they did not know was that they were on the notorious Telephone Road, which was a twenty-mile strip of bars, poker dens, strip-joints and cat-houses that grew up to cater, initially, for the body-and-soul demands of itinerant oil-workers. Rip-off artists, grifters, panhandlers, psychos, pimps, muggers and murderers were the strip’s natural by-products: Krystyna and friend had wandered into the whole Tom Waits songbook. Laikonik Express p173
See the fabulous Steve Earle's wonderful performance of his tune of the same name, here.
See the fabulous Steve Earle's wonderful performance of his tune of the same name, here.
Humphrey Bogart in Sokół Maltański
Kennedy had a memory of how he was at home in summer vacation and he was watching John Huston’s movie of The Maltese Falcon on TV, fascinated at the story unfolding before him. What he did not know was that his dad had decided to drive him into town to see The Jungle Book. Kennedy did not want to go. He wanted to stay home and watch The Maltese Falcon and see what the black bird looked like. The unfortunate thing was that he had been bugging his dad the whole summer to take him to see The Frigging Jungle Book, and there he was being the kid from hell, and that made his dad even more determined to drag him there. He never got to see the falcon, nor what happened to the decadent and greed-haunted cabal in the movie, until a long time after. Laikonik Express p127
I bet Humphrey Bogart never thought he'd end up in a movie called Sokół Maltański... Sam Spade eyes the black bird - a poster for the Polish version of John Huston's 1941 debut film The Maltese Falcon. The story of a greed-and-murder-driven quest for 'the stuff that dreams are made of', a discussion of it features in Laikonik Express, and a mention of the digression - usually referred to as 'Flitcraft's Existential Lives' - in Dashiell Hammett's original novel.
I think the film is astonishing as a debut, a perfect coming-together of story and characters, as they messed about with Hammett's original as little as possible, brought to life by exactly the right actors: Bogart as Sam Spade, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet as Caspar Gutman and Elisha Cook Jnr as Wilmer, the gunsel; they slipped this description past the censors, rightly guessing that they'd assume a gunsel was a gunman, as Wilmer is - but its original meaning is something like rentboy.
There is a DVD with The Huston version, a 1931 version often called Dangerous Female (to avoid confusion with the 1941 version) and a 1936 version, partly played for laughs, called Satan Met a Lady. In technical and esoteric film-buff-speak, Satan Met a Lady is generally described as "shite". Dangerous Female, however, is excellent. It doesn't have the personalities of the Huston version, but it was made before strict Hollywood censorship, and gets the atmosphere of greed and sleaze around the falcon-seekers exactly right. [Funny how the titles of the first two films plant the blame for the whole thing on the Brigid O'Shaughnessy character - I mean, she's definitely trouble on legs, but it seems kind of unfair, as there are plenty of other characters who are plain out-and-out baddies.]
I think the film is astonishing as a debut, a perfect coming-together of story and characters, as they messed about with Hammett's original as little as possible, brought to life by exactly the right actors: Bogart as Sam Spade, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet as Caspar Gutman and Elisha Cook Jnr as Wilmer, the gunsel; they slipped this description past the censors, rightly guessing that they'd assume a gunsel was a gunman, as Wilmer is - but its original meaning is something like rentboy.
There is a DVD with The Huston version, a 1931 version often called Dangerous Female (to avoid confusion with the 1941 version) and a 1936 version, partly played for laughs, called Satan Met a Lady. In technical and esoteric film-buff-speak, Satan Met a Lady is generally described as "shite". Dangerous Female, however, is excellent. It doesn't have the personalities of the Huston version, but it was made before strict Hollywood censorship, and gets the atmosphere of greed and sleaze around the falcon-seekers exactly right. [Funny how the titles of the first two films plant the blame for the whole thing on the Brigid O'Shaughnessy character - I mean, she's definitely trouble on legs, but it seems kind of unfair, as there are plenty of other characters who are plain out-and-out baddies.]
Ereway inhay the oneymay
The TV woke him up, some of that corny Hollywood jazz Don liked. His attention hovered around it, and he was just about to close his eyes again when Ginger Rogers' face filled the screen, big-eyed, mouth full of teeth, lips full and fat, singing, We're in the Money, in Polish, he thought at first. Laikonik Express p84
Ginger Rodgers sang We're in the Money not in Polish but in backslang, or Pig Latin, as it's sometimes known, in the Busby Berkeley film Gold Diggers of 1933. Kennedy catches sight of this opening scene on Don's TV as he avoids nodding off to sleep.
The film opens with a rehearsal of a new show, a huge production, with all the Busby Berkeley gals wearing large cardboard dollar coins, and a backdrop motif of the mighty dollar. The scene, and the song, is meant to be thumbing its nose at the Depression. A grumpy-looking bloke sits in the stalls watching, seemingly unimpressed.
It goes quiet when Ginger steps out centre-stage to sing the backslang bit. You can almost see her going, "Whose idea was this?" [However, "a man on the internet" has this to say on YouTube: "As I understand it, Ginger Rogers came up with it, herself. Between rehersals for the film, she sang the song in pig Latin, to entertain the other actors. Busby Berkeley heard it, thought it was clever, & had her do it in the film." So that's me told.]
They go through the tune, which is ridiculous, but very watchable. I can't make out if it was meant to be ridiculous at the time, how knowing people who went to see musicals were assumed to be. They get so far into the song, and then a bunch of cops and bailliffs come in and break it up; it turns out the producer - the aforementioned grump - hasn't been paying his bills, and his assets - the show and the props - are being repossessed. You can't really help but think, 'Go on, cops - put poor ole Ginger out of her misery.' There's a clip on YouTube here.
The film opens with a rehearsal of a new show, a huge production, with all the Busby Berkeley gals wearing large cardboard dollar coins, and a backdrop motif of the mighty dollar. The scene, and the song, is meant to be thumbing its nose at the Depression. A grumpy-looking bloke sits in the stalls watching, seemingly unimpressed.
It goes quiet when Ginger steps out centre-stage to sing the backslang bit. You can almost see her going, "Whose idea was this?" [However, "a man on the internet" has this to say on YouTube: "As I understand it, Ginger Rogers came up with it, herself. Between rehersals for the film, she sang the song in pig Latin, to entertain the other actors. Busby Berkeley heard it, thought it was clever, & had her do it in the film." So that's me told.]
They go through the tune, which is ridiculous, but very watchable. I can't make out if it was meant to be ridiculous at the time, how knowing people who went to see musicals were assumed to be. They get so far into the song, and then a bunch of cops and bailliffs come in and break it up; it turns out the producer - the aforementioned grump - hasn't been paying his bills, and his assets - the show and the props - are being repossessed. You can't really help but think, 'Go on, cops - put poor ole Ginger out of her misery.' There's a clip on YouTube here.
"Well, Victor Hugo's not going to come out of his house and tell you to fuck off." Laikonik Express p198
J D Salinger in his late hermit phase. He wasn't as much of a hermit as we believe, and I'll share my Salinger story on this site sometime.
In Laikonik Express, Don Darius and Nolan Kennedy talk about J D Salinger and his status as a recluse, and, I guess, how that status seems to 'add value' (as they say about anything these days) to his work. Is that right - does it? I don't think so, but I'm a bit entrenched in my views. I like writing, not writers, really; what I mean here is that if a writer writes a crap book, I really don't care how many great books he or she has written in the past: they're not able to demand our indulgence in whatever they might want to churn out. Judge books by their contents, not by their writers, and whatever genius they might have produced before. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a wonderful book, in my opinion. I wasn't so impressed by JDS's short stories centring on the Glass family, BUT I want to read them again - it really might have been my shortcomings that stopped me appreciating them. (I've started reading them now, and find them, like Catcher in the Rye, 'of their time' - some of them are great, though.)
I don't believe for a second that whatever Salinger scribed in his hermit years and stashed away will be hidden forever. I await it all eagerly, and am convinced that at least some of it will be impressive.
In Laikonik Express, Don Darius and Nolan Kennedy talk about J D Salinger and his status as a recluse, and, I guess, how that status seems to 'add value' (as they say about anything these days) to his work. Is that right - does it? I don't think so, but I'm a bit entrenched in my views. I like writing, not writers, really; what I mean here is that if a writer writes a crap book, I really don't care how many great books he or she has written in the past: they're not able to demand our indulgence in whatever they might want to churn out. Judge books by their contents, not by their writers, and whatever genius they might have produced before. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a wonderful book, in my opinion. I wasn't so impressed by JDS's short stories centring on the Glass family, BUT I want to read them again - it really might have been my shortcomings that stopped me appreciating them. (I've started reading them now, and find them, like Catcher in the Rye, 'of their time' - some of them are great, though.)
I don't believe for a second that whatever Salinger scribed in his hermit years and stashed away will be hidden forever. I await it all eagerly, and am convinced that at least some of it will be impressive.
Romantics
"These romantics." The look on Krystyna's face betrayed her enjoyment of sharing in people's foolishness. "We have here a modern Keats and Shelley. "And here we are," she went on into Jack's silence, "driving them to destiny." Kennedy thought how Keats had been immortal for four years by the time he got to Kennedy's age, and Shelley, a guy who loved the sea but who, fatally, never bothered learning how to swim - well, that kind of said it all about him. They were Laurel and Hardy, more like, he thought, just two dumb hicks who should have stayed back on the farm. Laikonik Express p 167
Fukier's restaurant
They were led to a table off to one side, not one of the best ones, Peter said solemnly. The concept usually went over Kennedy’s head – if they had it in restaurants, though, then again, who was he to kick up a fuss? It had legs, and was flat, and covered with a white cloth that dared you to put elbows on it, had candles, napkins and enough silver to upset the commodities market, had all that was needed for a guy to make a meal of things, so it was fine by Kennedy. Laikonik Express p79
Fukier's Restaurant, Warsaw, nice video with home-cooked English and music.
Fukier's Restaurant, Warsaw, nice video with home-cooked English and music.
Chatchkas
One side of the room was taken up by two glass-fronted display cabinets that would not have looked out of place in a large store, cluttered with china and crystal, sets of cups and saucers, plus kitsch bone china chatchkas. Laikonik Express p123
Zenon Jaskula
Enough sponsors, Zenon?
Human-powered billboard!
At the heart of the group was a guy who could have been any age between twenty and forty, gaunt and blond, features cut with diamonds, a mouthful of big, bright teeth.
‘Is he a count?’ Don laughed.
Kennedy laughed too, but in fact he was just thinking that the man really did look like what you might imagine to be a count, one from Dostoevski, maybe: very spare and aristocratic. He asked, ‘So who is he?’
‘He is Zenon Yaskula.’ Peter said. Kennedy and Don made blank faces. ‘He is a famous bicycle rider.’
Just to make certain, Kennedy guessed, Don asked, ‘He rides bikes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ Kennedy put in. ‘Bikes.’ He glanced over at the countess’s wobbling décolletage. ‘I know a great place he could park his bike.’
‘What?’ they said, but then Kennedy wanted to leave those forgotten aristos forgotten; he also felt slightly ashamed of his crude joke.
‘Not one bike,’ Don wanted to get clear, ‘but bikes? I’d pay to see that.’
‘He will race in the Tour of France this year,’ said Peter. ‘You know, this important bicycle race?’
‘Ah yes.’ Don was impressed, at last. ‘Those guys are just the most amazing athletes.’
‘They sure are,’ Kennedy had to agree. The thought of going around a country the size of France on a bike was pretty awesome, and he said, ‘Well, here’s to him.’
They drank to Zenon Yaskula, rider of bikes, and at that the man himself looked over at their table and bowed his pedigree head a little. Laikonik Express, pp81-82
‘Is he a count?’ Don laughed.
Kennedy laughed too, but in fact he was just thinking that the man really did look like what you might imagine to be a count, one from Dostoevski, maybe: very spare and aristocratic. He asked, ‘So who is he?’
‘He is Zenon Yaskula.’ Peter said. Kennedy and Don made blank faces. ‘He is a famous bicycle rider.’
Just to make certain, Kennedy guessed, Don asked, ‘He rides bikes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ Kennedy put in. ‘Bikes.’ He glanced over at the countess’s wobbling décolletage. ‘I know a great place he could park his bike.’
‘What?’ they said, but then Kennedy wanted to leave those forgotten aristos forgotten; he also felt slightly ashamed of his crude joke.
‘Not one bike,’ Don wanted to get clear, ‘but bikes? I’d pay to see that.’
‘He will race in the Tour of France this year,’ said Peter. ‘You know, this important bicycle race?’
‘Ah yes.’ Don was impressed, at last. ‘Those guys are just the most amazing athletes.’
‘They sure are,’ Kennedy had to agree. The thought of going around a country the size of France on a bike was pretty awesome, and he said, ‘Well, here’s to him.’
They drank to Zenon Yaskula, rider of bikes, and at that the man himself looked over at their table and bowed his pedigree head a little. Laikonik Express, pp81-82
Chinese characters
Inspired by the arabeques Don had doodled down some of his margins, Kennedy got out brush and ink and tapped into his own talents to make barbed wire ladders down a page for a half hour. He came up with thirty halfway good Chinese characters. Laikonik Express, p10
