One day they went for a walk. Son-of-a-bitch placed
a bottle of beer on the grass, Loony Lady took out some sausage.
Son-of-a-bitch sneezed and took a sip.
Loony Lady:
– Dear God, what have they done to you!
Son-of-a-bitch:
– Eat the food.
– Are they going to kill us?
– I don’t know.
Loony Lady:
– Although it wasn’t a good life – we have lived.
Son-of-a-bitch:
– Yes.
Loony Lady:
– Do you still want to be independent?
Son-of-a-bitch:
– Yes.
Loony Lady:
– Let us sleep then.
With eyes open hepaticas bloomed behind the back.
It is important to feel the great silence, beauty is not necessary.
How does the yarn of your life roll?
Geda, Sigitas. Šunsnukis ir beprotėlė. In: Jotvingių mišios. Eilėraščiai. Vilnius: Andrena, 1997.
Son-of-a-bitch and Loony Lady is the first poem by Sigitas Geda in The Jatvingian Mass (Jotvingių mišios, 1997) selection. It is from that period of his when he began rearranging the language anew after breaking it into atoms. This text proved to be a perfect libretto for such an implicit nanoopera, it needed no adjustments whatsoever. Like much of the latest texts by Sigitas Geda, this one is uniquely simple and clear, but rather peculiar and not easy to understand on the spot. It tells of loneliness of people and of irreversibly wasted life, in a way that is both witty, incorporating and mocking some motifs of modern mass culture. I tried to express it with this music in a rather frivolous way, but I would not dare to call myself it’s author for I had much help from Janas Maksimovičius, Julija Karaliūnaitė, Christian François, and, well, Edvard Grieg.
Composer Linas Paulauskis