LIMINAL?

June 12, 2025

Spaces in between. Hallways without destinations, staircases without steps, shopping malls at three in the morning. Lobbies with curtains too long and a TV in the wrong place. Lawns inside rooms. Empty waiting rooms without a clock. Or small rooms with an oversized clock. Children’s rooms without children. Closets with shirts no one wears anymore. Familiar, yet strange. Like you’ve been here before, but not you — someone else, in a stranger’s memory.

Stairs that lead to a closed ceiling. Slides… toys… balls… frozen in time. Transitions from one world to another. From night to day. Gentle nightmares. Nostalgia for something that maybe happened, or maybe didn’t.

Liminal spaces don’t know time. They are always now and never. Like a frame that never ends. Like a sentence without a period. The creak of a door that won’t open. Tightly squeezed chairs waiting for a conversation that won’t happen. The whispery moment when you wake up but don’t yet know who you are. When you are you, but you’re not.

What else is liminal? Dreams are liminal. We all dream liminally. Liminal is within us. We are liminal.

So much for liminal.

 WHEN BIRDS FLY BACKWARDS

Angoulême 2025

Cypressionism

 

Cypressionism June 11, 2025

Childhood... ah... yeah. Childhood. I wouldn’t exactly want to go back there. Always with that hair sticking out like I’d been struck by lightning. Sometimes so thirsty and hungry I could’ve drunk the whole fountain in the park — pigeons and all. Hunger used to push me toward the bakery window, where the pastries smelled like magic, and my stomach growled like a broken radio. And my eyes — huge, like frisbees.

Who wants to go back to childhood? To feel all those dog bites again, cat scratches, falling from trees that brought no wisdom... just bruises and scabs. All those first fights, punches, sleepless nights waiting for a fight with someone who was usually bigger and stronger. Who wants to go back to the places of first heartbreaks, where my heart would sink — all because of those first loves that taught me how deep pain can go. Places where telling stories got you punished. Unless they were boring. And boredom is a lie — it doesn’t really exist.

Yeah... stupid childhood. Always with ripped pants and shoes that didn’t want to be tied. And those ugly glasses... no matter how many times I threw them or tore them off, they always came back. I hated them. And then school. Who in their right mind liked school? That screeching chalk on the board, magazines you didn’t subscribe to, and while others ate their sandwiches at lunch, I’d climb the cypresses. That’s how Cypressionism was born. Long before Impressionism, Expressionism, and all the other -isms. But of course, nobody cared. Just sports. And sports. And more sports.

And then all those weddings I’d watch and try to escape from — but with cake stuffed in my pockets. All that photographing, where I’d always look like a fool. Boring trips to church, bad singing, holding candles, collecting money... sometimes something would end up in my pocket — the only perk of those times when I accidentally became an altar boy.

Childhood... who wants to go back there? All that noise in your ears and buzzing in your head. All those ear tugs, pinches, slaps, kneeling in corners. And then they say: “I knelt on corn as a kid — what are you whining about, you had it easy.” All those moments when someone older made a fool out of you, and you were too small to do anything about it. If you hit them in the balls — you were done. But that’s all you had left.

All those punctured soccer balls, broken skateboards, torn ninja costumes made from black trash bags, all those bruises from badly made nunchucks. And yeah, they hurt. All those kicks to the head with a shoe in the morning when you just wanted to keep sleeping, and no rain, nowhere to hide. On the contrary — the big sun was grinning straight into your face.

MEMORY OF THE FOURTH LETTER

I put this poem to music. The guitar sounds like an old broken-down tram. But passion doesn't choose. Everything else is just noise.

MEMORY OF THE FOURTH LETTER

The Singing Anchor: On Toma Bebić and What Cannot Be Tamed

My Text and painting about one of the greatest artists to me – Toma Bebić.

In a time when everything must be explained, when every act is measured by numbers, and art is reduced to formulas — the memory of Toma Bebić is a small act of rebellion. Not just against forgetfulness, but against the hidden forces that want to tame the artist.

Toma Bebić was a poet, singer, sailor, footballer — a philosopher without a degree. But these are just surface titles. Behind them was a man who could listen to the waves and see what others could not.

He is one of the few Balkan artists I truly respect. Not out of nostalgia, not because he was “one of us,” but because of something he carried inside. Something rare — even today, anywhere in the world.

Maybe Tom Waits never heard of Toma Bebić. What a shame. And maybe Toma never knew about him. He didn’t need to.

Because what others tried to fake, Toma lived.

He spoke his own language. Few understood him — but those who did carried him their whole lives. He was ahead of his time, though he would never say that himself. He never called himself an artist. He was just there. Always a little on the side, where the lights don’t shine. Because he knew — spotlights don’t seek truth. They seek entertainment.

When he sang — everything would fall apart. But in the best possible way. Because what breaks before the truth was never strong.

I heard him as a kid, by chance, on the radio. The world stopped for a moment. Then it shattered. And I asked: “Who is this?”

In a country that often wants to copy something bigger, Toma was original. In a time when artists could still be themselves — when comics, music, and cartoons from our region burned with the same passion as those from Berlin, Paris, or New York — Toma appeared. And stayed wild.

After the war, this place — the Balkans — became a quiet ground for new dictatorships. People who had something to say no longer had anyone to say it to. They withdrew. Their hearts broke somewhere on the city’s edge.

Toma, thankfully, left in time. Leaving just enough for us to know he was real. He didn’t leave many works, but what he left still strikes — and holds. Like an anchor.

To me, Toma is a mystery. His art is not for everyone. And that’s okay. It hides in the hearts of the few. Those who still see beauty in the ugly, hear the whisper, and feel what cannot be explained.

If it weren’t for Toma’s voice — that stranded ship that sings…

I’d probably be even farther from where I ended up. And if I had ended up even further…

Maybe I wouldn’t even be here.

Thank you, Toma.

PARADE OF PARADISE: IN THE WORLD OF WONDERS

 

I HAD A HOUSE INSIDE ME