Broken Records

BROKEN RECORDS BROKEN RECORDS Snežana Žabić punctum books earth, milky way BROKEN RECORDS © Snežana Žabić, 2016. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transform- ation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. First published in 2016 by punctum books Earth, Milky Way https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-0615949468 ISBN-10: 0615949460 punctum books is an independent, open-access pub- lisher dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing across a whimsical para-humanities assemblage. We solicit and pimp quixotic, sagely mad engagements with textual thought-bodies, and provide shelters for intellectual vagabonds. Cover Image: Gretchen Hasse, “Honest Friend” (2013); used by permission of the artist. Facing-page drawing by Heather Masciandaro. Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contributions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad/venture is not possible without your support. Vive la open-access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490-1500) x This book is dedicated to the memory of Mika Šušnjar, Milka Vinčić, Nikola Vinčić, and Stoja Žabić. ; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The following pieces, as they are in this book or in different versions, have appeared in these publications: “Meet Satan” in Copper Nickel 9 (2008) and reprinted in COIN 1 (2011) “My Dad’s Lens, Borovo Naselje, 2004” in Little Red Leaves 2 (2008) “Neo AFŽ: Revolution without Premeditation” in Feminist Review 99 (2011) “Factory Girls” (excerpt of “Neo AFŽ: Revolution without Premeditation”) in Neo AFŽ 1 (2001) “revolution without premeditation” and “the amount of serious love- sickness” (excerpts in “Neo AFŽ: Revolution without Premeditation”) in the book Po(jest)zija/Po(eat)ry by Ivana Percl and Snežana Žabić (SKC NS, Novi Sad, 2013) “Failing Haibun” in Wreckage of Reason II: Back to the Drawing Board (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014) “Why Wichita” (excerpt of “Failing Haibun”) in Marco Polo Arts Magazine (2012) TABLE OF CONTENTS ; 1 WITHERING 13 MEMORIES OF [STATE] 14 MEMORY OF [STATE] #1 15 MEET SATAN 23 MEMORY OF [STATE] #2 24 CARAVAN 2002 32 MEMORY OF [STATE] #3 33 REFUGEE FUNERALS 43 MEMORY OF [STATE] #4 44 DRAFT DODGING 56 MEMORY OF [STATE] #5 58 POWER SUIT AND STILETTOS: HOMECOMINGS 71 MEMORY [OF STATE] #6 72 NEIGHBORHOODS OF POETRY 85 MEMORY OF [STATE] #7 86 MEMORY AS QUOTING 89 BUGS BUNNY, OVERDUBBED 91 CAPSAICIN HEAT UNITES 93 MY DAD’S LENS, BOROVO, NASELJE, 2004 95 MEMORY OF [STATE] #8 96 SKYSCRAPERS 103 MEMORY OF [STATE] #9 105 SINGER 111 MEMORY OF [STATE] #10 113 NEO AFŽ: REVOLUTION WITHOUT PREMEDITATION 124 MEMORY OF [STATE] #11 125 FRAU X 135 MEMORY OF [STATE] #12 136 FAILING HAIBUN 142 MEMORY OF [STATE] #13 143 IN SEARCH OF GABI LUNCĂ 148 MEMORY OF [STATE] #14 149 DIASPORA MIXTAPE 161 MEMORIES OF STATE, OR OUR SERIES ON FUTURE 168 MIKA COMES OUT OF THE DARKNESS OF HISTORY 173 MEMORY OF [STATE] #15 WITHERING ; Recently on the phone, my mom proclaimed she was still a Communist. “I ran into our old neighbor, MM. Remember her?” she said. “Vaguely,” I told mom. It’s been over twenty years since I’d seen this particular neighbor; she moved with her family to a different part of town even before wars broke out. “Well, anyway,” mom continued. “MM and I talked for a while, and she had this white blouse on and a kilo of golden necklaces, but no bra. That’s in poor taste. I still believe in the old ‘From everyone according to their abilities, to everyone according to their needs.’ She needs a bra.” ; Yugoslavia ended in 1991 with the secession of first Slovenia, and then Croatia, followed by the Serbian retaliation and its attempt at conquest. While the Yugoslav Army warred with the newly seceded Slovenia for only ten days, during the somewhat unimaginatively named Ten Day War, the war between Croatia and Serbia lasted from 1991 to 1995. Croatia and Serbia were also involved in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995, when NATO intervened. Meanwhile Kosovo was perco- lating, and the war erupted there in 1998 and lasted—NATO intervened there too—until June of 1999. Fast forward to 2008, and Kosovo is the last one to become an independent state. Now 2 | SNEŽANA ŽABIĆ there are seven states in place of Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Mace- donia. But what happened right before the break-up? Before the break-up, the Yugoslav state was in the process of withering away. What a poetic term: withering away. Yet it’s an actual term Marxists use to describe the second phase that happens en route to communism. In the first phase, right after the revolution, the state takes on mighty, mighty strength to nationalize most important branches of industry previously held in private hands, (finance, transportation, manufacture of producer’s goods, agri- culture) as well as to squelch any dissent. There you have it, the first phase, a.k.a. the dictatorship of the proletariat, Yugoslavia 1945-1974—check. Then comes a time to ease up on the state control, and to oversee a gradual, but determined withering away of the state. The second phase, a.k.a. worker’s self-management, Yugoslavia 1974-1990—check. The third phase marks the time when the new society emerges: there is no state, no remnants of old class divisions, nobody owns or lacks anything, there’s no currency, no hierarchies. The third phase, a.k.a. communism, a.k.a. “from everyone according to their abilities, to everyone according to their needs,” a.k.a. never happened in Yugoslavia or any other nation state. We spent Yugoslavia’s final years in an economic crisis, learning about our growing external debt, experiencing gas and other shortages, dissent coming from all sides, but especially from the well-funded and seductive ethnic nationalist ideologies. Some say the withering away project was so successful that the state became too weak to fight nationalism and prevent the break-up and the war. ; Around 1987, when I was just thirteen, some strange new graffiti began appearing in my hometown of Vukovar, declaring pride in murkier, ancient parts in the history of the graffiti hacks’ ethnic groups. Those strange retrograde symbols soon covered up the older kids’ hippie peace signs and punk anarchy signs already BROKEN RECORDS | 3 fading on the façades. Still, it was also a couple of years before the local police began looking like robocops, before the kiosks of two competing state-owned newspaper companies were blown up down the street from me, before the façades turned ugly with the explicit graffiti like: “Croatia to Croats!” Or the one on the post office: “This is Serbia,” under which someone sprayed: “This is the post office, moron!” During peacetime, my teenage years had been unfolding just as they were supposed to, a textbook case of a slightly mal- adjusted, self-conscious, budding semi-nonconformist. On weekend evenings I’d go to Mala Sala where a DJ was spinning the Eurodisco Top-40 music I refused to dance to. My brown hair was big and spiky, I often wore washed-out jeans and an over-sized striped sweater on my then-100-pound shadow of a frame, and equally oversized red-rimmed glasses. About 98% of the teens at the time wore jeans paired with jean jackets. I look at a picture of a group of kids circa 1988, standing on an Adriatic beach one sunny, early spring day, and the jean-clad bodies are blending with the blue backdrop to the point of vanishing. I was a pretty good kid. I would cut class every once in a while, but it was usually in order to practice or perform with the local poetry club, which equaled automatically excused absences. With my teenagehood came a bit of a chill between my parents and me: mom, dad, and I were learning the fragility of trust. Their faces wore a film of worry. I know now it was the 22- billion-dinar debt and the 200% inflation; it was the decreases in the production at the factory, and the missing bonuses, and the threat of bankruptcy and joblessness already happening in other companies; it was politicians spinning their spider web speeches to disgruntled workers and farmers; it was the TV saying more lies; it was my dad’s traveling for work; it was my mom’s quiet. But at the time, when I read worry in their eyes and in the new lines on their faces, I read my name over and over again. I was as dramatic a teenager as they come, and I remember walking with a few of my high school friends across the tracks to go catch the bus to school, the time I said out loud that I wasn’t even certain there would be a city here in the near future.

Load more