A talk on Totalitarianism with Czech artist Mirek Wanek
Interview with the Czech composer and legend Miroslav Wanek of the band Uz Jsme Doma
Interview with Miroslav (Mirek) Wanek by DAE’s Joshua Kohl (composer/music director)
Už jsme doma (Czech pronunciation: [ˈuʃɪsmɛ ˈdoma], /ʊʃmeɪ ˈdoʊmə/) are a Czech progressive rock band from Prague who originally formed in Teplice in 1985. The Prague Post has termed them one of “the two great bastions of the Czech alternative scene” (along with Psí vojáci).
Cited musical influences include the Residents, the Damned, Ebba Grön, Pere Ubu, Uriah Heep, Omega, and the Rock in Opposition movement. Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke referred to them as “an amazing Czech quintet...that rattled like a combination of Hot Rats-aphonic Frank Zappa and John Zorn‘s hyperjazz. Critics have also compared the band to Fugazi and Men at Work.
As of 2022, Už jsme doma has released eleven studio albums, two EPs, three live albums, one compilation album, as well as several video albums with documentary footage, and a pop-up book. The band’s name literally translates to “we’re home now” but idiomatically means “well, there you go” in Czech conversation.
Until the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1990, the band was considered illegal by the Communist state and was forced to hold secret concerts and risk arrest if caught.
Mirek and Uz Jsme Doma have been gracious hosts to Degenerate Art Ensemble when in Eastern Europe over the years and the groups have played some truly wonderful shows together, and Mirek is a dear dear friend of the DAE family. I decided to zoom Mirek as he and his artist friends have lived through totalitarianism first hand and also experienced it’s dissolution in the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Mirek’s stories have always been an inspiration and I wanted to share it with all of you friends who I hope will find them equally inspiring.
Read the transcript here, or you can find the video below.
Joshua Kohl
The things that are happening in the U. S. right now, remind me of kind of the unimaginable situations that you talked about experiencing prior to the Velvet Revolution (in Czecholslovakia) and how paranoid and how universities were getting... The thing that I could never have imagined is all happening here. It’s the universities getting elbowed down and pressured and actually largely obeying orders from the administration…TV networks folding under the slightest pressure and all these tech giants just shifting over to whatever position is going to be most profitable for them. And just the systematic transformation that’s happening is really alarming. And it’s also at the same time, I feel like a lot of us are, the conversation that people are having is, “let’s make sure we take care of each other and let’s make sure we look after each other in the community” - very kind of local way of thinking. Localized perspectives, and it reminded me of you know some of the things that you had had talked about— the ways in which musicians had to adapt, under totalitarianism, and as well as the ways in which even professors, who lost their jobs, found ways of of still sharing their knowledge and things like that. And I feel like a lot of us, we comfort ourselves by saying many, many different things, but I think a lot of people don’t really know what to think or what to do. And things are so surreal and moving so quickly that it’s difficult to process. And so I was curious, seeing this from afar— what this brings up for you. And also, from a, especially from an artist’s perspective, having not only experienced it in Czechoslovakia, but you experienced this all over the world as an artist too. And, and, you know, you have friends on every continent as well, you know, so. I’m just really interested to hear what’s going through your head right now.
Mirek Wanek
Well, first of all, I have to say that this is a very strange situation for me. I couldn’t imagine one year ago that we would be talking this way, me and you, you as an American artist. And you asking me to to tell you my experiences not only as, like, an historical excursion but as an experience which might be useful for you know, that’s itself, it’s just horrible. I couldn’t really imagine that, you know, that this is something really nonsense to me. The second thing is that, of course, it might seem like a similar situation or becoming a similar situation, but there are one difference, maybe several differences, but one difference is that I was born in that system (Soviet Communism) and all my experience up to my 27 was only that. So I didn’t have experience as you have had...
Let’s talk in simple sentences – like freedom. You have experienced freedom for a long time of your life and now it’s becoming something different. So that change is much more strange for you than it was for me when I was born in that, and I grew up in that.
I had only one experience, so my reactions— and not only mine but artists’ reactions—during that time was sort of like: there is no hope, there is no way I have but to survive; I have to just do something that I want. I have to keep my internal freedom, and that’s all, you know. And of course, with constant danger of being in jail or being punished somehow, you couldn’t study, you couldn’t travel. But it was sort of normal because I didn’t know anything else. It was just like what it was, you know.
And being in your situation is, from my point of view, is much more difficult because, you know what you know and now you’re— you fear that it will change to something what you don’t want to and so also your reaction might be slightly different than than it was mine because you have all your experiences, all your knowledge, or your life experience, and and so on, you know, so you will be probably—if that would happen, I hope not, you know, but if that would happen, and you will need some reactions, so you will be probably much more powerful and much more educated for that or a much more experienced person than I was when I was 20. That’s one thing.
And also when I had no other experience then. So that’s— I just want to point out the difference between these
situations and I just mentioned the internal freedom was a very important word (or two words) which we were talking about a lot and and also if you’re familiar with the band Plastic People of Universe who stand it it’s a whole story you know that they stand it on the beginning of charter 77 and so on you know and they were in jail several years for playing music and for for being free, and they constantly said that they can put them to jail, they can they can do whatever they want to them they can even kill them but they never can steal their internal freedom freedom in your mind you know and you just keep it and you just do what you do and that was also our also kind of way of how how for example I was like 18 and I started to play punk music you in that time you know in 1980 and and of course police immediately noticed that something new is coming. In the very beginning, we were okay because we had short hair which they thought was not as dangerous as long hair in their experience at the time. But later they discovered, oh, it’s the same thing. It’s not about hair. And so they started to complicate our lives, and they started to put us to jail temporarily for 24 hours or 48 hours. And they started to cancel our shows. They’d bring police and dogs, you know, to our shows and control IDs and grab people from the shows and put them to jail. Or they put them in a car and they’d bring them 40 kilometers out of town and leave them in the forest without money, without anything, and they’d have to just walk back. I wouldn’t really call it like punishment, but more like disturbing. Just make it as uncomfortable as possible to prevent you from doing it.
But we kept doing it. And that was our answer to that. That was, as I mentioned, the internal freedom couldn’t be stolen.
They can do many very bad things, but they cannot really steal your internal freedom. It’s a major value with what you have. And especially artists, I think they are sort of sensitive to their freedom, to their ability to do what they search for - try to discover, and so on. You know, art is discovering, art is searching. You know, it’s like a science of the soul, and nobody can stop you with that. Like, really, you know, of course you know, they can kill you, but I hope and don’t think it will come so far in the US but I’m very surprised and very scared of what I hear is going on. You live in that, but I only hear some news from France and so on. At some point, it’s very similar.
And one more thing, maybe I can...
One more point I was thinking about (a film) that I just watched.
Before we met, I just watched some documentary about Hitler, about the group of people around him, you know. And there was one person who was a doctor, and he was his personal doctor. And Hitler, one day, he just mentioned, he didn’t put any comment to that or something. He just mentioned, well...
These disabled people, you know, these mentally or physically disabled people, they shouldn’t live. They should be kind of eliminated, you know. And this doctor had the same feelings, the same opinion. And he didn’t get any comment from Hitler or something. He just did it on himself because he was thinking like that. And he was also thinking, Hitler may like it, and it would be nice for me to do something that he likes, you know. So it was his own activity that he started a process of 100,000 people killed and they called it euthanasia. But they gave them some injections with some poison. About 100,000 people in a few months, you know, were killed.
And Hitler was innocent. Hitler didn’t say that. Hitler didn’t give any command, anything like that. He just mentioned it, maybe like a joke. Who knows, you know. But these people around him, I don’t know if you have this proverb in English... “These people are more Pope than the Pope”.
Joshua Kohl
Yeah.
Mirek Wanek
So my feeling is that, you can tell me your experience, but my feeling is that this is the time also here, but especially now in the US, that these are people who were kind of hidden, but always existed... I call them drunkards in the pub. They always complain, oh, this government is bullshit, and all people are bullshit, and gypsies are bullshit, and black people are bullshit, and Jews are bullshit, and so on. They were always talking like that in the pub, drinking around the table, with similar friends. But now, with the internet and with a leader who says,, ‘oh, I didn’t say that. Maybe it’s wrong, but maybe black people shouldn’t be in certain offices or something.’
But some guy like that is taking the power in government slowly, step by step, you know, and trying to be nice in the eyes of his boss, you know, is starting seriously that kind of process and starting to do violence and really bad things.
Uh, so I don’t know if you remember, we released an album, uh, Ice Flows about six years ago, and one song there was called Garbage.
And that was about escapers, about people who escape from war, from hunger, from whatever reason, serious, really serious reasons. And they just escape. It’s a natural thing.If you are in a burning house, you just escape. And if you are not in that house and you see the escaper, it’s natural to help him.
This kind of process is kind of, it’s not politics. It’s just a natural human reaction.
But for some people, these escapers are garbage. It’s just something they want to sweep somewhere. They don’t want to see it. They don’t care if they drown in the ocean on these small boats and so on. And I wrote a kind of introduction into that album in the beginning (of the liner notes). And besides other things, I mentioned again this second world war, people, these German guards in concentration camps, you know, that was a just imagine there was a person, 40 years old, nice family, nice wife, three kids, like age 5, 8, 10, something like that. Nice house, nice garden.
And in the morning, “hi, wife, beautiful kids. I want to kiss you, blah, blah, blah. And I go to work. Bye-bye.” He gets maybe some snack to eat. And he’s going to work to his job. And his job is to be guard. In a concentration camp. And all day long, up from 7am to I don’t know, 3pm or 4pm. He’s killing people and beating people. He’s cruel. He’s taking eyes off. He’s burning little infants, you know, and so on, you know, he’s making some doctor research you know on pregnant women and so on and some such unbelievable cruel things and all day long and then 4 p .m. he’s coming back home to village where he lives, not far and ‘how are you’ ‘how did you’ ‘how you felt all day long’ you know’ ‘and’ ‘really nice time’ you know. And I was at work, yeah. It was hard today, kind of, but I’m glad I’m home again.
And he’s going to garden and grow some flowers. So I don’t know, you know, what I mean, he’s he’s playing with his kids and he’s a very nice person, very nice father, very nice husband. So what’s wrong? Where? Where is the border between a nice person and a cruel person, this stupid kind of creature?
Joshua Kohl
And in a weird way we are now in a society that has such extremes, we’re not in that situation quite yet, but we’re in such an extreme situation where, you know, people are being rounded up, immigrants and shipped to some random country, you know, these kind of things are happening all around us. And not only that, but in our daily life, the homelessness situation is so extreme. We had an art studio last year, right in the middle of downtown Seattle, which is in really bad shape. We were having to step over people who have no shirt, no shoes, in the rain, lying on the sidewalk, and walk over them to get into the studio. And there’s a part of us that is that same person... We’re not this guy you’re talking about exactly, but our soul is being closed.
Mirek Wanek
Yeah.
Joshua Kohl
Closed and compartmentalized. No, I’m on my way to my art studio. So it’s not my responsibility. So I’m going to go here and I’m going to do my thing. And more and more we are, in a sense, like being expected to be able to compartmentalize our empathy, our compassion, our... sense of what’s normal and what’s beyond our control, and it’s this this situation that we’re in right now, it feels you know even more and more of these things are being put on us, you know… and then functioning particularly as an artist, it’s not as if we don’t have enough to already express or talk about but I think there is a slow corrosion in our situation, but II feel like there’s a role for every kind of artist. And it’s not everyone’s role to do social commentary necessarily. But (for all of us artists) it is that being a defender of that internal freedom that you talk about, is like something that is contagious in a sense, maybe.
When someone is expressing that, that internal freedom and sharing it.
A few years ago,I was in China and visited a theater company in Beijing. And they had a censor that would come and meet with them for coffee before preparing for each production.
And the censor would read their script and read their introductory speeches.
And they would tell them, ‘This is okay, this is not okay,’ before they could do any of their shows.
One of the examples (of censorship) was in their opening curtain speech, the director had said that he was talking about materialism and capitalism in China and how it’s eroding a sense of ethics in their culture..
in his curtain speech, he said, ‘We are in a dangerous time here in China.’ And the censor said, ‘The whole speech is fine. Just change the word dangerous to challenging.’
And it was basically like taking a sharp tooth and just filing it down to something softer. I asked him about it, I said, ‘Why do they bother making this effort to censor? Do you think that the government thinks that theater is a threat?” And he said, ‘I don’t think they think it’s a threat, but it’s just that they are bullying us and letting us not forget that we’re that they’re watching, and don’t step out of line”.
Mirek Wanek
I’m sorry, but that’s exactly it. That was my experience, you know. Especially in the 70s and 80s, it was not as dangerous as it was in the 50s.’ In the 50s, they were killing people and punished people with the death penalty. In the 70s, 80s, it was... You could be in jail even for making art or doing whatever. Everything was forbidden. But generally... The main mood in the country was fear. Fear and distrust. One person didn’t trust each other because you never knew who was a secret police helper or and so on. And probably there were not too many of them, you know, but just that fear.
That relativity of trust and distrust, just that mood was created and it occurred your feelings and your doing things as well. Not some people, like I’m not a hero, but myself, I was kind of not okay with that. But as I said, I just kept my internal freedom and I just did what I wanted, no matter what was going on. But most people don’t have that kind of power. They fear. They are scared of their lives, of their families, you know. And some people, of course, they even felt like it was a nice opportunity to be more rich or more powerful, especially these guys from the pub, as I was talking about, you know, these talkers.
So, and I think that might be similar in the U. S. now, that this kind of... I don’t want to say small or tall, but let’s say these people who were sitting hidden in their pubs, they now, through internet and through examples from top politicians, they kind of get out of the underground and they take power. They take more and more powerful functions in the hierarchy of state. And they have no excuse for anybody, if they get enough power, they could be as dangerous as these guards in concentration camps you know and what I wanted to say with that example was that anybody of us could be a guard in a concentration camp in some moment in some circumstances.
Of course, it’s very up to your own integrity, up to your own power and humanity and also how you were raised and so on. It’s all up to you to keep your own integrity or not...To collaborate or not. Not to break your own soul with going to that way because to be in that situation that someone will tell you okay now you will be guarding concentration camp and if not i will kill you or i will kill you your kids or your wife - who knows how you will react you know, generally people how they react to this kind of situation. So it’s not easy. But again, integrity and internal freedom is a major, major thing which people can keep, you know, and especially artists.
It was also at that time, we felt a little bit— maybe it’s not so; I don’t know how to explain. But we just felt ourselves a little bit like a spokesman for some groups of people, you know. There’s a nice sentence in some song of one folk singer here, he was talking about some older writer, but he said that he knows how to describe what we only think about, you know. He knows how to say that in words what we only think about, you know. So he was like a spokesman, sort of, for people who dream about that.
And it’s not only about this dangerous situation; it’s generally about all human dreams and human imagination, and so on. And some people, and we call them artists, are kind of sort of chosen to say that, or they have ability to. to find the right words for that or right tones or right paintings or whatever you know. So and they try to describe something that many other people only dream about or think about and that’s why it is kind of popular sometimes - if there is big enough group of people who have similar dream and you kind of touch that moment then you know, connection is ready, and this is how art works, you know. But in this situation, or let’s talk about my experience, we just did what we wanted, and there were two ways to do it. One was kind of maybe too basic. One was you were absolutely against it, against the system, and you clearly, in an open way, fight with them, which was the Plastic People (of the Universe) case, and you don’t collaborate at all, or (the second way is that) you pretend that to collaborate or you follow some rules, but you don’t, in fact. So it’s something we call cat with mouse you know which was our way, because as i said you know plastic people they are one generation older and they they had experience with 68 and with 60s generally so they they had some some touch of freedom that we (the younger generation) didn’t, we never got that. We were always in a non-freedom situation since we were kids. So we never even dreamt it would change. That’s another moment, you know, that we didn’t know that this would change. We just tried to find a way to survive in it and how to do what we wanted. And so we tried to do whatever… fake weddings… we made shows when we wanted to play in front of an audience. We pretended to have a meeting of bachelors... Very different ways how to (create a performance)... It was breaking the law, we had false stamp (musicians had to have official government stamps to be allowed to play), you know, for a permit for a show you know, and of course sometimes it happens that they discover it and you could go to jail for two years. But we tried any any possible situations any possible moment to make it happen, because my personal feeling was that once it happens, I mean, the show once you are on stage and you sing to people and you tell them your thoughts and you describe them your feelings and so on, once
that happens, nobody can steal it. So we did everything possible to make it happen, you know. What happens after that, I don’t know— maybe I’ll go to jail, maybe it’s okay, you know. Maybe nobody’s taled about it, nobody will discover it, you know. Maybe if I’m lucky, you know if nobody will discover it. If I’m not lucky, I’ll go to jail, and many things in between, but we didn’t think about. I was thinking, make it happen. Just whatever is on stage and it’s done. The end of the show, perfect. It’s there, and nobody can really steal it from the heads of people over there. You know, and that was probably a very simple way to say it. Was almost all we’ve done. We tried to find a way to make it happen.
Joshua Kohl
And I think it’s interesting that the way you articulate it, basically, that moment of being on stage is taking what’s inside, and maybe inside of people who are in the audience and putting it outside.
That, you know, when I was saying that, you know, artists all have sort of a different role to play in a certain sense or a different story or a different feeling that they’re articulating. And some of them have a directly confrontational ideology. And some of them are creating something very abstract. I’m just interested to hear your thoughts around, the way that artists played such a big role in the transformation of Czechia and the kind of dissolution of totalitarianism in a sense. And it wasn’t just people who are singing songs about bring down the wall, you know, it was all kinds of expression. I find that to be very, inspiring, and very, very powerful.
And I think a lot of times when people I’ve come up against multiple times in my experience where artists that I know in a difficult time almost lost their sense of why they’re making art because of some external occurrence. I remember, you know, when 9-11 happened, Crow and I were in Berlin and with a group of artists and half of them just wanted to stop and not do anything because they felt meaningless because we were making something that had nothing to do with 9-11. And then the other half of us were like, actually, this is exactly what people need, regardless if it’s going to be on topic or off topic. And so I feel like, as we are navigating this crazy moment, and, thinking about whether what we’re doing is relevant or meaningful, regardless of are we writing folk songs about, you know, this very specific topic, whether we’re recreating some dream… how do you see all those things playing into this bigger picture.
Mirek Wanek
It’s very important, you know, because you, as artists, you have ability, as I said before, you have ability to find the right words for what many people think about. Definitely. You know, you’re not alone. I’m sure. With these kind of thoughts, you know, now in the US. And maybe I gave you two short examples.
Maybe I told you already that story, but in 1996 was the end of the Croatian and Bosnian war. And we played in Gorazde, which was a small village in the middle of Serbia. And surrounded with Serbians, but inside were Bosnians in the little small town. And for four or five years they were surrounded like that. So they had no food, no medicine, no electricity, almost, you know, like very few opportunities.
So very, very, very bad situation in the town. And especially in winter, you know, they were very cold and frozen.
So, in the end of war, they didn’t know it’s the end, but close to the end of war, they finally made some kind of corridors of international army going there and bringing them food and some medicine. And of course, it was very, very helpful for them. But when we got there, we got there also in that convoy with tanks. And when we got there, we were superheroes in the town. And every single person in the town, they knew us by name. They were greeting us on the street and so on. Because we brought them culture. We brought them art.
I just felt really realistically how art could be powerful and important for people, in the same way, definitely the same way as food and medicine. Because we were a symbol that something normal, normal life is coming back to our town after four years. Completely isolated and completely like nightmare, you know, experiences, you know, killing people and so on and so on. Finally, music, something very absurd, in fact, but no matter what kind of music, you know, just music is coming, a band, you know, like these teenagers, you know, they were so excited. I was like, oh, I see live band, you know, and I discovered culture and art is very important for people for especially in bad situations especially in Terezin for example Terezin is a town it was a concentration camp but sort of like a town camp you know here in czech and there were thousands and thousands jews and and of course, many of them were killed, many of them were transported back to Auschwitz and so on. But there were groups of musicians, they played music there, they did opera over there, they did theater over there, they wrote books over there, you know, and so on and so on. And art was just helpful for people constantly, all history, you know, and especially in this kind of situation, you know.
And the second example is an American one. There is a group of people, maybe you know some of them as well, around the art car society.
Joshua Kohl
Yeah.
Mirek Wanek
And we have very good friends all over the US, especially one guy whose name was Tom Kennedy from Houston. I was talking to him exactly this way. I told him the story about how to bring art and how people need it and so on. And he was so impressed by that that he decided... to collect money and collect broken bicycles all over the country. He made some advertisement and he collected about 60 or 70 bicycles. Oh, 600, I’m sorry, 600 bicycles. He repaired them all and he made them as fish. He put their fish mouth in the front and some tail in in the end, hes a hard core art cars guy you know, he just created fish out of these 600 bicycles and then he found he collected some money and he found a way how to bring them to Mostar and Mostar was a Croatian town it is still Croatian town which was divided by river into Bosnian and Croatian part. And during the war, these two parts were enemies. They fought each other, they killed each other and so on. And this happens, it was almost the end of war, but nobody knew if it’s real end or not, but it’s still kind of tricky time, you know. But so the river had several bridges on it, you know. And these bridges were closed, heavily closed, because they were afraid, you know, one part from another to be attacked. And Tom was bringing these 600 bicycles as fish near these bridges. Somehow, I don’t know how, he made— he talked to mayor of town or something, I don’t know. to the army, to open these bridges, the gates you know they were open, and he invited children from both sides to and he gave them as present these 600 bicycles and he wanted them to to ride bicycles over these bridges back and forth you know from Croatian side to Bosnian side and
back, you know, and the whole evening, you know, parents, of course, were around and watching, you know, and it was such a nice way to describe how absurd is that to be enemy of your neighbors, you know, across the river, you know.
Joshua Kohl
And it’s also a kind of... I love that story. It’s almost a rehearsal for normalcy again.
Mirek Wanek
Yeah, exactly. And again, to display the absurdity, because when you are in a fight, your mind sometimes is especially full of propaganda and fear. And that’s, again, I’m going back to my experience in my country in the time, propaganda and fear, two major weapons. And maybe in that point... could be a little similar now, what’s slowly leaking into the U.S. Now, that propaganda and fear, you know, like fear kind of aggressivity and so on, you know, all these things. And that’s a big danger, you know, from my feeling, you know, because in my country in that time, that was a major weapon which kept people in, in fear, I mean, that they didn’t really fight.
Some of them, yes, but not too many, you know, because most of people, they don’t want to fight. They don’t want to be punished. They don’t want to be hurt, you know, and so on. So they are scared for their families, for their property, blah, blah, blah, and all these things. So this kind of weapon, this fear, is propaganda. And propaganda... Can turn your mind into again being a guard in concentration camp, you know, if propaganda will be enough strong to your head and they will tell you, ‘Oh, these people are not people, it’s like an animal, you know, you can kill them, no problem, you know.’ So you do it and you don’t feel it like something is wrong, you know, and that’s why you can come home, back and be nice to your kids and your wife, and you don’t feel any problem with these two worlds, you know. Like your own kind of integrity, you know.
Joshua Kohl
There’s two things that really stuck with me when we were hanging out with you and stories that you had told. One was just kind of a general idea of all these professors who had been fired, laid off. And if I remember correctly, you were talking about them teaching their classes in their apartments for anyone who wanted to come.
Mirek Wanek
That’s right. That’s exactly, that’s again, it’s like a circle all the time, like keeping your own internal freedom. If you, if you want to play, they forbid it.
You play, you can play with danger or some knowing about some.
Next coming steps, you know, but, you do it, you can do it. And you can, you want to write song, write a song. You, you want to be educated… on university, they forbid it to you for some reason. So they started, flat universities, like apartments. They, there was some professors, like real professors, like very top professors you know of universities and they were kicked off their jobs after ‘68, so they taught these interested people in apartments for like 15– 20 people sitting on carpet and writing that it was like a class you know and in fact it doesn’t matter if you’re in the huge hall, you know, or if you’re in carpet, you know, in apartments, it doesn’t matter. The information is going like that, you know.
But I was living in a small town. We didn’t have those kinds of contacts, you know, like to have a professor from university, you know. So I was 18 when I started a small secret organization called Filipo Philosophy. Literature and politics. And that Filipo was like a group of people, six, seven people. And we had curriculum from philosophy, curriculum from literature, curriculum from politics, and the history of politics. And we chose some books and we read them, and we read them together. And I discovered much, much more later, I discovered that Franz Kafka and Max Brod and that group of people, they did the same thing.
They meet not for danger of something forbidden, but they just wanted to be educated more than school can give them. So they had, like, like a group of six, seven people, and they, for example, they decided to read Kant, some books from Kant. So they met once a week, and they said, ‘Okay, till next week, we will read this chapter, and next week we will talk about that, you know, and they met, and they talked about that chapter of Kant, and slowly they read the whole book together. That idea was in my Filipo as well, you know, that we will read the same books and we will talk about that, and we are to educate ourselves, you know. So it was like a self-educated education, and the same was happening the theater. We did home theater also in Prague, there were these professional actors from the National Theater and so on, that were kicked-off as well from their work.
They decided, especially in Václav Havel’s apartment, but also other apartments, and they played Shakespeare or they played whatever place, but flat theater, you know, like apartment, you know, the 20, 15, 20 people sitting there, they were drinking beer, mostly smoking cigarettes, you know, and watching Shakespeare, you know, in apartments. So why not, you know?
It was not amateur; it was a really high level. Yeah, well, you can do always something.
Joshua Kohl
Yeah, can I ask you one? There’s one my favorite story of yours is the ferry boat concert. Do you mind sharing that?
Mirek Wanek
It was the first Uz Jsme Doma show, actually. I was not yet a member of Uz Jsme Doma at that moment. I was member of FPB, and it was kind of common thing at the time that we tried to prevent the police from coming to our shows. So we rented a boat and we were on the river. Of course, the police were around, but they couldn’t really stop it, you know, for the moment. You know, as I said as long as it happens, what happens after is okay. So this one was starting. But before starting, police came to the port and they arrested about 80-90 people. So none of the three bands were were complete (because members of each had been arrested), so nobody could play really. The boat, because it was like a public transport, has to depart, so it went to somewhere with the rest of people.
And then, from jail, they investigated us a little bit. And after all, they let each person go out slowly, one by one, you know. So after about two hours, all of the people were finally out, including me. But when we came back to port, it was empty, no boats, you know. So we took a tram because somebody told us, oh. The boat is maybe somewhere there. We can take a tram and you can maybe find it. And we did. We took a tram. We found the boat. It was in some little tiny port over there. And the captain was saying, ‘Well, okay, you can do the show, but I’m afraid of shaking the boat.’ So bands could be on boat, but people would have to be on shore. So people were sitting on shore. and we were playing for them and we were constantly looking around if the police will appear because it was obvious they must come but they didn’t for some reason. I don’t know why but they just didn’t that so again it happened. I make a
short interruption now because just two two three months ago almost three months ago I found that very boat.. I found it. We did a show on that boat exactly the same day and same way on the road and same boat on the same day. It was July 6th. So we made it like a 40th anniversary of that happening. So it’s just a few months ago. It was Beautiful. Anyway, uh, so we finished the show at that time, and the boat finally came back. It was already dark, and the boat came back to the original port. At the end, kind of, so the boat was coming to the port, and we saw, from like, maybe five six hundred meters, when we saw we saw hundreds of police in the port waiting for us. We couldn’t escape really because the boat was just going there, and a few meters before landing, the boat turned off the engines and there was an absolute silence, dark, and there was just a tiny pier. And the police were standing person by person, like a, like a path kind of, you know, and each policeman had a dog. So, and so it was all silent, you know, no engine, no talking, just silence, you know.
And they had some lights. It looked like a scene from a movie you know. And there is a behind the shore, there’s a huge wall with mirrored stairs going up in two directions. And Police were standing also on these steps, all the way up. So we finally stopped, and the first person walked through the tiny path like that, you know, one yard wide maximum. And dogs, but nobody talked, nobody provoked. Everything was very silent. And we were finally going. Person by person through this path and going upstairs or that way or that way. And finally, some of them were on the street upstairs and there was a tram and you jumped on and escaped and it was gone as if nothing happened.
Nothing really. In the end, it was only like a miracle scene, like a scene from a Hollywood movie. I would say maybe not very nice movie.
B or C, you know, was kind of, how to say, kitschy, you know, like a thing, you know, but it was like that. Like very surreal. It was surreal, really like something. But fortunately, in that case, the end was not painful. Like, they didn’t arrest people and they didn’t beat them in that moment. Maybe because of the silence. It all just disappeared in a way.
And we had 40th anniversary just a few months ago.
That’s amazing. I found the boat and even the captain of present captain is the grandson of the original captain. And he told me, ‘Oh, I remember my grandfather talked about that.’ Even he was talking about that from the opposite side a little bit, he was not a fan of this music or something. It’s like, oh, we put him into danger with the police, you know.
Joshua Kohl
Knowing you, it doesn’t surprise me, you were able to find the boat because you have that, you have that, uh, yeah. When you have a clear purpose, there’s really nothing that stops you.
Mirek Wanek
Yeah, I made really heavy researches.
But, you know, and I also found money because you have to rent it now. And, you know, it’s like several thousands of dollars, you know, to rent a boat. But I found sponsors for that because I like the story.
And so they gave me the money: “okay, get the boat”.
Joshua Kohl
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I’m going to stop the recording, but thank you so much for sharing. I think it’s, it’s very, very valuable.
Mirek Wanek
Good luck. And I’m so sorry that we, we even have to do this kind of dialogue, you know, it’s not have to, but you know what I mean? Like it’s something I’m glad to do. I’m always glad to be with you. Of course. At the same time, it’s very strange for me, like, to be in this kind of situation. And I really hope it will be gone soon as possible, you know.
But as I said, you know, nobody can really get into your head, you know, or your heart, you know.
You just, you will continue to do what you do, you know. Think, you know, but still you can do. They can’t really avoid it. They can’t really stop it. Yeah.
Thank you. And that’s more corrosion to them, you know.
If they do now corrosion to your system, you can also do corrosion to their system as well. And they know it. That’s why they are so cruel sometimes.
They know we have power.