In collaboration with Michal Solarski
We come from a little town of more or less four thousand people, in the southern edge of Poland. This is the place where twenty years ago, both of us were coming of age. It was nothing unusual, growing up is a process everyone goes through and there are certain things we all must encounter and discover at some point or another, and people of a certain generation find themselves going through the same fads and trends as fashion, attitudes and politics enter our awareness, well, at least that’s what we think.
It was the early 90’s, and if you really wanted to be cool, there was only one way – to declare war on your hairdresser, wear anything stripy and dive into the very depth of the Grunge revolution. Of course, we had our own band and dreams of bundling off to Seattle. How the hell would we know back then that the rain there can be as persistent as acne?! One way or another, achieving rock star status was only a matter of time for us. We were keeping our fingers on the pulse of affairs – even when the intricate plan to bone our friend’s older sister went haywire… The commotion when the parents came home earlier than expected – what a story! Oh yes, losing our virginities was the priority, it was even more important than the stage career.
One day we decided to make the world a better place – then and there, just like in the musical about hair, before we reached 30 and lost all faith in ourselves. We cut our hair short and became vegetarians in an act of defiance against mainstream society. You have to realize that in those days, in a place like our town, you were risking public outcry for openly rejecting meat! Did we mention we cared little about conventions?!
All that counted was our friendship and our dreams. And always, while listening to another new CD, somewhere in between the first and second bottle of cheap wine, that absolute certainty of having our lives under control was coming back. Time had stopped. But, before we learned the rules of the game, it was already over. Fate pushed to the front row unannounced. It wasn’t the first time fate had played unfairly. We happened to choose different schools, we started to eat burgers and to visit hairdressers from time to time. Both of us went to find our own happiness far from the little town we once used to call ‘home’, choosing different places in different parts of the world. Something else happened along the way, something that was not at all part of the plan – we both started taking pictures.
Today we return to the familiar place with Dominik and Marek. With their help we are trying to reconstruct past events of our lives. We are playing the scenes, one by one, trying to remember every possible detail, each gesture, each word, but still we have to improvise. Many of the places we used to know, either don’t exist anymore or have changed completely. Slowly, we are back in the game. Sneaky fate – you better play your cards carefully this time!