A broken light, or a handful of comments on independence

Some people, or, actually, most of us, need a sudden flash of inspiration to take a decision or realise something that may provide a breakthrough. Such a flash not only casts reality in the right light but – and this, after all, is what we are waiting for – indicates a sensible course of the road to tread. It may also be that such a sudden thought comes as a warning. After all, we say, “warning lights came on in my mind”.

My case was quite the opposite. The light mentioned in the title had to go out, and quite abruptly. But let us begin at the beginning, as the King said to Alice.

We therefore go back to a time distant enough for its circumstances to cause something bordering on fear among today’s youth. For who of the young people of today can remember the no-frills summer camps of yesteryear? Unmistakably Polish, they were as far from the postcard palms and azure-blue sea of foreign climes as you can imagine. Held in distant and forgotten corners of Poland, they offered absolutely basic conditions. And who can even imagine sleeping throughout the summer holiday in some kind of a camper van with bunk beds? Save perhaps for the most ancient storytellers, and only those with unfettered imagination. These are no nostalgic or tearfully sentimental memories. Nothing of the sort. I rather write down these reminiscences out of a diarist’s duty, for, like it or not, with age everyone becomes a chronicle of what they lived through.

It was at such a summer camp – and I must have been seven or eight at the time – that somebody broke a light that had been merrily dangling over the heads of the denizens of said camper. As I occupied the upper bunk, the one closest to the scene of the crime, the investigation our teacher conducted was not excessively long and unambiguously pointed to me as the perpetrator. Even though so many years have passed, I remember the words he addressed to me perfectly well.

“All the costs will be covered by your parents!” he cried.

All costs… All? That would have been the costs of the bulb and the fitting. I had no clue how much they could cost, but bouncing off the insides of my child’s skull like a ping-pong ball was the word COSTS. A sense of injustice and injury burnt deeply into my mind and heart, yet the threat aimed at my parents, of all people, was even worse. “All the costs will be covered by your parents!”

I came from what is known as a decent home, but kindness hardly ever counts among the coveted solid currencies in the exchange offices of this world. Or, in other, brief words, my parents were not of the wealthy sort. As I only realised years later, I witnessed their steady but relentless decline in status. A chief accountant before the war, thereafter my father never joined the Communist Party, which is why the ruling party delegated him to ever lower professional positions. The price he had to pay was high, yet he never regretted the decision he took. He realised what the consequences were and accepted the blows that he was certain to receive. He did suffer, beyond doubt, because in the canon of culture he was born to, sustenance of the family and home were the man’s duty. Yet, to quote the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, he held his head high and went on. Independently.

Today we’re quick to use and abuse this term without much thought.

I’ve somehow remembered a comment from a young American director, a rising star of what is known as independent cinema. “Independent cinema?” he asked during an interview, baffled. “There is no such thing as independent cinema. I don’t finance my films myself. I look for someone who will spend money on them. So what kind of independence is that?”

He expressed precisely what I’d felt since the moment when the glass of the broken bulb in our camper van cracked under the feet.

I knew I had to stand solidly on my own two feet to be able to cope with any circumstances, and fulfil my own rather than somebody else’s plans. Not burden others with myself, but also not allow myself to be dictated to.

I believe that becoming increasingly imbued with the idea of independence was the reason why I discontinued my musical education. I hesitated between higher education in arts and sports. Finally, I made my choice, recognising that an academy of music could give me the knowledge and skill in using the instruments, but would certainly not give me the foundations to be independent or trigger this particular impulse which sport instils in us. For fair sporting competition is a highly universal foundation on which you can raise many different structures.

I jumped over the glass from the broken light and, without so much as looking back, carried on.