Vaclav Havel leaves the room

I dialed a number. She immediately picked up the phone.
- Hi, this is Pawel, I said.
- We’re are all crying here, the Czech woman in Warsaw responded.
It was a few hours after the news of Vaclav Havel’s death went public.
- Can you help with a bit from the unused Havel’s interview?
- I’ll be right over.

With the subsequent help from an American we managed to prepare a few minutes from the final moments of the interview conducted in Prague in the spring of 2010.

In the piece, Havel’s final words before leaving the room seem to be: “Please edit my words properly.”

Can we do that?

Can we honor the spirit and the vision of this man?

The video is available at http://youtu.be/Sv1i2yfgpb0

Documentary truth, part 1

On the set of "Citizen Havel".

What is truth in a documentary? What does it take to accurately portray a person on the screen? Does the term “accurately” relate to the way a person sees himself, the way others see him, or both? Are we who we think we are, or who we are in the eyes of others?

“Citizen Havel” by Pavel Koutecky, Miroslav Janek provides some food for thought on the subjects.

Some say this film is a “fly on the wall” documentary, or the ultimate “cinema-verite” of political films. To me it is more of a showman’s piece where the hero is most of the time “on” and fully controlling the message.

Despite statements from the filmmakers that Havel could “tune out” the camera there is always a clear indication that there is something between his very own self and the way he present himself to the public/camera. Yet even though this obvious barrier exists as a thin film over the screen we get the sense of Havel’s earnestness and his noble nature. It happens largely I think because we sense his efforts to be right.

Vaclav Havel is all about making an effort to be better, “to keep vertical” (as Kieslowski used to say, according to his friends), to improve the world around by leading, providing an example. That can’t be done without self examining and self consciousness. In this respect Havel by his very nature and his calling uses the presence of the film crew to telegraph his essence. Some say he forgets the camera, I would say he plays it as a good director or a stage play writer designing the story. His theatrical sensitivity should not be a surprise, he is a dramatist and probably, more than many of us would be capable of, sees himself as a character in a life's play. Luckily, Havel is congruent in his message and in the way he is. That’s why, the more the director gives him screen time, the more president Havel reveals his true self - a warm, genuinely carrying guy with an surprising sense of theatrics.

Overall this documentary film is a creative effort both on Havel’s and the director’s part to present a certain class, an attitude which Havel employs in his life and makes an effort to articulate and strengthen via his public appearances, to which the film clearly belongs. There is a noticeable effort on his part to be “right” - in things small and big. He wants to be always prepared because he knows that everything he does sends a message. We “civilians” could only learn from him.

There are two scenes in the film where the camera retracts mostly to high angles and watches cars from above: during the arrival of president Clinton and at the funeral ceremony of president’s Havel wife - Olga. Both times - with different moods of course - the filmmaking eye catches the essence of events in a very cinematic way mostly via the mechanical movements of soulless machines, yet the spirit of each occurrence is precisely telegraphed.

I’ve briefly met mr. Havel during a half hour interview for “Lawnswood Gardens”. He was exactly like the person in the documentary: thoughtful, sensitive, precise, concerned, slightly shy yet with power inside. It was a professional situation which at the same time spoke plenty about the private man. I may soon post on my youtube channel another “Lawnswood Gardens“ making of with a clip from that meeting.

Are you dangerous?

Stanislav Grof, MD

In his lecture “The Future of Psychology” Grof, an accomplished psychiatrist and a researcher of consciousness, offers a view of the world that is an alternative to the prevailing mechanistic, industrial, “scientific” reality. In this new (or old but forgotten) paradigm the consciousness is not only separate from the brain but also superior to it. Clearly, medical, therapeutic, social and cultural implications of such a stand are enormous. For example: Grof’s work on para-natal and pre-natal trauma offers a new insight into wars and other social calamities.

To those who are already shrugging their shoulders with dismissal, here are the words of Vaclav Havel as he presented Grof with the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation Vision 97 Award:

“The Foundation also tries – in the spirit of its name - to orient itself in the direction of what in a certain way points to the future, what is – I would say – farsighted, what transcends the horizon of momentary attractive opportunities, but may not be appreciated and validated until some years pass. What is in a certain way visionary and pioneering.

It is a risky endeavor, because it usually has two groups of opponents. Perhaps not directly opponents, but two groups of dangerous people. One group consists of the hard scientistic traditionalists, who are unable to imagine that modern science could transcend its own boundaries and traditional paradigms; they engage in a great determined fight against that which eludes their grasp. It is interesting that their fight undertaken in the name of rationality often reaches fanatic proportions; they tend to have a peculiar obsessive gleam in their eyes.

The other group that is dangerous, even though probably less, consists of a wide range of madmen, sectarians, and members of various strange fringe groups wanting to attach themselves, by their little claws, to this kind of scientific exploration, so that they could test and validate their various, more or less interesting, delusions.“

To the Havel’s list I would add a third category: religious fanatics and various warriors of “I have the only correct way to perceive The Mystery and if you don’t follow my dogma you are clearly in cahoots with evil.”

I hope you do not belong to any of these groups. If you do and somehow are reading this line - hang on - you have a chance of liberating yourself. Just open your eyes, ears, heart and mind. Do not fall into the “deaf ears madness”, which is the inability to hear what the universe constantly attempts to reveal to us. Constantly, as in “all the time.” This includes now.