Features of a hanging robe

Funny ways of creativity

2009-10-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

I have been writing in my mother language from 2004. Having published 4 novels and 1 book full of beautiful short stories, I have always been used to writing whenever the fountain of ideas would be open. But every artist also, at some point in time, faces months of thinking and not creating. In my case I have deliberately devoted my life to the career when I was offered a position in London. Moved to another country, created a new home with everything that comes along, battled with the bureaucracy and I have found new friends. The city has made me feel more isolated than anything I have ever experienced in my life. Evens the solitude in Kirgizstan mountains has not felt so obstruct to my heart, I must say. Facing this new challenge, I have shut my fountain and decided not to write anymore but just live. I would go to the theatre, watch a film in one of the numerous small cinemas, walk along the Thames and learn how to live my new life. The creativity has been sleeeping all this time.

As I also have to travel from time to time, I find myself completely different when on a plane. During take-off I can feel my brain going numb and I am always struck by the fact how did they manage to get my one more time in a state of mind, similar to a trance. I know how trance feels like, at least until the moment it starts and the moment it ends. Not in between, of course. The serenity of one's body is complete. My picture of life, wherever it may be, is lost with all other unimportant things. My mind is blank and I cannot feel anything but a feeling that I am thinkin nothing. I know that underneath the ice, my mind is always processing all the things it needs to chew, the old bones from the closet and similar things, but everything seems surreal, almost as if the world does not exist anymore.

And this state of mind is very familiar to me. I can write when my thoughts are absent and my fingers do their own work, however they want to. As if I had nothing to do with it, except the name at the beginning of my work.

Yesterday I was thinking that it might be the buzzing sound of the aircraft or that the airline company fills the air in the aircraft with some sort of tranquiliser so that the passengers would stay calm regardless of anything. This does not matter when sitting in my seat. I open my mini laptop and write. Passengers look at the pages that are created and try to understand the story however they usually can't. The language is Slovenian.

Creativity comes in funny ways. Many of us carry around a small notebook in our bag just in case something crops up in our mind. We cannot control it, the fountain of ideas, but we can most certainly use it. I am using it only during my flights. Seats from 6A to 13E are the most realiable source of the ideas I have for my new novel. But that is another story ...

In the embrace of freedom

2009-10-06T13:06:00.001-07:00

An extract from the novel

IN THE EMBRACE OF FREEDOM,

By Matej Pollick

»Spring flowers are sitting at the bus stop like they are waiting for a gust of wind to come rushing around the corner.

Standing at the bus stop and shifting from one foot to the other, I wait for the Five to take me to my make-believe home, where there is no one who will generously welcome me with a warm embrace, with their arms wide open, stretching all the way between the doorposts.

Always the same passengers,

always the same, empty, teary-eyed and heavy-footed people.

I get off, walk some hundred meters and go in. »Hi, how are you«, I say, in an attempt at politeness, though I think this flat would need an exorcist to create a universal order. »Great«, she replies, half-dancing.

My mind keeps echoing
that mankind,

lacking time

for a world

different from their own,

forgot to consider

that the world consists of much more than just the tiny bit

that has been

bestowed

upon them.

Maybe I am becoming less tolerant with the years
and maybe I made the decision to withdraw from the battlefield.

Before I go there, they throw a pile of weapons in my lap.

Choose! They say.

I am a pacifist.

I do not want to take up arms!

Give me light and I will turn it into liquid peace

which shall flood the entire world!
Give me paper

and I will turn it

into pure bravery!«

Redo Pakistan @ Deptford X

2009-10-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

TRYST (WITH DESTINY)

A short play by Akkas Al-Ali, inspired by Saadat Hasan Manto's short story, Toba Tek Singh. Directed by Erica Miller and starring Sonia Kaur and Marlon Day.