Scribblings with Green Chalk

Not the gentlemen in power, not the notoriously underfunded universities, not the rise of fundamentalism, not the intolerance that it brings, not the starve-yourself-salaries and fully European prices, not the despondency of tower-block estates, not the metaphysics of hardship, not the ugliness of unlit city nooks and crannies.

But, god, do I miss the music that speaks about it. And the concerts.

Sitting in my CD player for several weeks now is Hey’s MTV Unplugged. Part of my brain lives in a time-warp, in mid-nineties’ Poland, reading Nosowska’s columns in women’s magazines while heading for another gig. A friend from Szczecin told me that after their debut, just before the band moved to Warsaw, fans would seek out the shop where Nosowska worked and ask her for advice on life and love. It was a shoe shop, or a butcher shop, or something equally evocative.

Musical biography romanticism aside, Nosowska never really accepted the guru role. Fifteen years later (between tracks one and two), she explains that she won’t try emceeing because it would be out of character for her and hence unconvincing. Yet you can’t be disappointed, it’s all there: the melancholy lyrics and the melancholy music.

I have a history of missing Hey shows: at home with a temperature, misinformed, finishing my BA thesis. That last time, when they were playing at the juwenalia, I actually heard them. I was living by the river and the water carried the sound. It was much like pressing your face to the display window of a patisserie, but still a comfort that dreary evening.

It’s my modestly arrogant observation that it’s a great loss not to know this music. I don’t quite understand ‘language barrier’ arguments since the night I caught a cold standing barefoot on a wet lawn, listening to Lithuanian folk chants, transfixed. For the unbelievers, Nosowska and Chylińska singing PJ Harvey’s “Angelene.” (A post in Polish about this video would be limited to the two names followed by ‘wow.’)
 
 

 
 
With this video I’m hoping to deal with the “my idea of the artist” theme by means of an old (I’m told, Chinese) method: an image worth a thousand words. Since the post about the artist with a feline pseudonym still attracts crowds, I hope some visitors think to look here for the dot over the i. This is what I want: brilliant voices and dark coats.