Jonas Mekas Quotes

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life.

And I sit here alone and far from you and it’s night and I’m reflecting on everything all around me and I am thinking of you. I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you. (from As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 2000)

I read a lot. I listen a lot. I think a lot. But so little remains. The books I read, their plots, their protagonists fade. The university lectures that I had found pretty impressive on first hearing, have faded away. Now I am listening to one on Pirandello. Names of people, books, cities. They are already fading away. Even the titles of films I’ve seen recently — they have already faded. Authors of thousands of books I’ve read... All that remains are the colours of their bindings, their covers. I don’t remember much about Beauty and the Beast, but I remember clearly, vividly the hear of the day as we were crossing the Rhine bridge, to see the film. Everything that I see, or red, or listen to, connects, translates into moods, bits of surroundings, colors. No, I am not a novelist. No precision of observation, detail. With me, everything is mood, mood, or else —simply nothingness.

Kartais aš jaučiuos kaip šuva. Aš prisirišu prie kiekvienos vietos, kurioje aš pasilieku ilgiau negu vieną dieną. Numeskit, sakau, mane dykiausioj dykumoje, palikit mane joje. Grįžę po kelių dienų jūs rasite mane jau įleidusį į ją šaknis, į patį jos vidurį.

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bits of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly trying to return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and syntaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me. (from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000)

Ak, visa, ką davei, trokštu išgyventi, kiekvieną daiktą ir pojūtį - visą save ir pasaulį - kol ateis mirtis, kol ateis kita.

mano namai yra visas pasaulis, visa naktis yra mano guolis.

nėra kelio atgal, niekados nėra kelio atgal į vaikystę niekados negalima gyvent savo gyvenimo vėl iš pradžios ar eit atgalios.

How to live? To fall, to fall, with eyes closed, to fall into every occasion, into everything.

People were rushing by, all hurrying to die

Mes gyvenam ir atrodom, lyg gyventumėm nuolatiniam proteste prieš šio šimtmečio idiotizmą.

Pasaulis ima viską per rimtai. Pasauly žmonės žudos dėl idėjų. Idėjos pasidarė per rimtos.

pasidaryt mažesniam reikia daug laiko.

A meeting with nature means to me sometimes more than meeting with a person. It wakes up feelings, memories. Its arrows shoot deep, always on target

So what? Don't we have enough ugliness already? And don't we know these things already? Why always fight ugliness with ugliness, stupidity wit stupidity, displaying still more and more of it? Why not create something beautiful to fight the ugliness with? Not that I am for escapism (although there is nothing wrong with it). René Clair was not an escapist in A Nous la Liberté. And Chaplin never was. No poet ever is. Neither are tulips, willow trees, Louise Brooks, or cranes. But they fight ugliness just by being there, by emanating beauty, peace, truth.

Some day, years later, in our memories, we'll return back to these places, and we'll toss about and we won't be able to sleep, thinking, remembering...it will all come back and we won't be able to change anything... So I wish that then, years later, you wouldn't regret anything and you wouldn't want to change anything at all - a life lived perfectly, a perfect memory...

Kodėl mes vis užmirštam širdį, lyg ji būtų mėsos gabalas? Mes kalbam apie traktorius, ir apie roką, ir apie sūrius, NATO, bet užmirštam širdį, kur viskas prasideda ir viskas pasibaigia...

Education is the resistance to everything that is bad today.

I do not understand, I never really understood, never really lived in the so-called real world. I lived… I live in my own imaginary world, which is as real as any other world, as real as the real worlds of all the other people around me.

Bet aš negaliu palikti nei vienos vietos be žaizdos savo prisiminimuose.

o kad taip visi nustotų dirbę lygiai trečią valandą kasdien ir išvalytų visus kambarius tai Niujorke nebebūtų tiek tarakonų.

seni namai išsilaiko ilgiau negu nauji.

prancūzai klydo sakydami kad kuo daugiau viskas keičias tuo daugiau viskas pasilieka kaip buvę nes iš tiesų niekas nepasilieka kaip buvę.

Mano gyvenimas yra šakotas, chaotiškas, ir be plano. Visi planuotojai nuvedė pasaulį labai blogais keliais.

Miestuose per daug cemento ir batų, batukų. Kultūra yra basose kojose.

aš niekada nefilmuoju gerų performansų ar intensyvaus gyvenimo aš filmuoju tik blogus performansus ir kasdieninio gyvenimo fragmentus su kuriais aš tada kuriu intensyvų naują gyvenimą.

Yra laikų, ir mano nuomone, mes dabar esam tokiuos laikuos, kai konservatiškumas, „atsilikimas“ yra kur kas pažangiau, kur kas avangardiškiau, negu bet kokie viešai pripažinti „pažangūs“ judėjimai ar reiškiniai.

Daug keliauju. Tai žmonės manęs vis klausia, iš kur aš. Tai sakau: aš gimiau ir išaugau Lietuvoj. Gyvenu Niujorke. O mano kraštas dabar yra kultūra. Tai jie žiūri į mane, mirksi: a, juokdarys. Bet aš kalbu labai rimtai. Dabar aš įdomaujuos tiktai kultūra. O kultūra yra visur ir niekur.

Namo ėjau pėsčias , žiūrėdamas, galvodamas. Aš stebėjausi savimi, kaip aš toks vienas galėjau išaugti, kad man visų šitų žmonių ir viso šito gyvenimo nereikia. Tačiau kartu taip skaudžiai ilgėjausi žmogaus. Nedaug - tik vieno, vieno vienintelio man užtektų.

And I sit here alone and far from you and it’s night and I’m reflecting on everything all around me and I am thinking of you. I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you. (in 'As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty')

Aš neabejoju nei pradžia, nei pabaiga. Tiktai nežinau, kur esu.

Muzika visados mane kankina, kaip gamta - jie plėšo mane, aš negaliu pernešti jų stiprumo.

Aš galvoju, kad visai nesvarbu, kokioj gamtoj, kokiam gamtovaizdy žmogus, tauta gyvena. Kas svarbu, yra tai, ką jis į tą gamtovaizdį deda.

Long lines of birds are flying over the city. Freedom in their wings.

You want me to be rational. The most rational thing is the machine. Go to the machines. All their separate parts work together. But I live with no purpose, irrationally.

I just sit. Or I walk and walk. Or I stand somewhere looking at one spot. And it seems to me as I stand here that I am totally disconnected from the rest of the world around me. Nothing, absolutely nothing connects me with it. The world around me goes on being busy, conducts its wars, enslaves countries, kills people, tortures. The real world... My life till now seems to have slipped through this real world without participating in it, without caring about it, without any connection to it. Even when I was in the very middle of it, I wasn't really there. My only life connection is in these scribbles. Here I stand, this moment, now, with my arms hanging down, the shoulders fallen, eyes on the floor, beginning my life from point zero. I don't want to connect myself to this world. I am searching for another world to which it would be worth connecting myself.

Ateina Kalėdos, ir aš pradedu galvoti apie sniegą. Rimti, praktiški žmonės pasakys: tai sentimentalu. Bet tas nieko nepadės. Aš vis galvoju apie sniegą. Kalėdos ir sniegas man beveik tas pats. Labai labai nekrikščioniška, kai kas pasakys. Bet tai netiesa. Aš žinau, Dievas myli sniegą lygiai kaip aš... nes jis jį padarė...

My life is as confusing as the mountains. You can't get to the top of a mountain by walking straight. You walk through and around the fields, up and down, narrow passages, paths - the road that is ten times longer than the actual straight distance... And it always looks as if that peak, that summit is so near, maybe just minutes away - but you walk for three more hours, and you look up and the distance is still the same. The mountains upset the logic of lines, perspectives, time, space, distance. Everything's so different, in the mountains. So then, what about life?...

I talk very often in my films that Paradise is not yet lost, there are little bits of Paradise preserved. I am very interested to keep and protect what has really come to us from the past, and to protect what is essential to human beings. I have one song on that subject, and that song you know I was singing three weeks ago with the Big Band group. I was singing, "We are not going to betray you/those who were before us/I am with you here and now/we are not going to betray you/you who did everything to make sure that humanity would go to some other more subtle direction..." So, in that sense I am very conservative. I want to conserve the best that has been done before us by others before us, in that sense.

Aš sėdžiu šį vakarą, rašau, ir galvoju. Tikrai pasakius, aš negalvoju. Aš ne galvojantis žmogus. Su galva toli nenueisi. Aš tik sėdžiu taip ir klausaus, kas ateina iš erdvių gilumos, bandydamas atspėti, kas yra tikrai svarbu. Ir lyg girdžiu, kad tikrumoje niekas nėra svarbu, kad viskas praeina, kad viskas yra lygiai svarbu, ir kad mes visi esam tik lašeliai pasaulio ir gyvenimo vandenyne - tik ašara ant Fatimos veido - ir kad visos mūsų galvos ir idėjos ir sistemos yra tik niekas, tik niekas. Niekas, palyginant su širdimi, švelniu geru žodžiu, švelniu palietimu, pabučiavimu, žmogaus su žmogumi susitikimu, atviru žodžių pasikeitimu, padrąsinimu ar draugyste. A, visi tie nedideli žmogiški jausmai, emocijos, padainavimai kartu, ar eini ir išgeri alaus su kuo, gal net ant peties, kaip sako, paverki gal net. A, kaip viskas tai svarbu, daug giliau ir svarbiau, negu visos politinės ir ekonominės sistemos.

Ah, you realists! I am not ashamed of my romanticism. Ah, you, abstractionists: I will confess to you my passion for objects, earth, nature. Should I pretend I am a stone when emotions, memories surge and overflow me, and I am dreaming of home, and melting snow?

Let us build our houses with our own hands. And grow the wheat, and bake the bread. Then we'll know what the earth is. Now, we turn the knob: the water runs. I have no idea from where or how. Electricity... We buy the bread: we don't know who bakes it, how, where. The same with our lives now. We live, but we don't know how, where, why. And it has no taste.

Ne viskas turi esmę. Yra akių be dugno, yra širdžių išsekusių, kaip sausmedis, ištroškusių. Tikrovė?- miražas dykumoj kartais tikresnis, negu mes patys.

Menas žmones įskiepina. Jis juos pakeičia, meno skiepais, iš šunobelies į obelį.

Jeigu neturi žemės, tai tu esi niekur.

daug sapnų jie ateina ir vėl pradingsta išblunka iš atminties

It's more difficult for a mother to forget one child than for living humanity to forget all the millions who died in this war.

<...>What a hell am I doing here? Why do I need a degree? I haven't heard a single sentence during all these lectures that would inspire one single line of poetry.

The hygienic slickness of our contemporary films, be they from Hollywood, Paris, or Sweden, is a contagious sickness that seems to be catching through space and time. Nobody seems to be learning anything, either from Lumière or from the neorealists: Nobody seems to realize that the quality of photography in cinema is as important as its content, its ideas, its actors. It is photography that is the midwife, that carries life from the street to the screen, and it depends on photography whether this life will arrive on the screen still alive.

I am in every image of this film, I am in every frame of this film.The only thing is: you have to know how to read these images. How? Didn’t all those French guys tell you how to read the images? Yes, they told you. So, please, read these images and you’ll be able to tell everything about me.

We try to hide it every way we can, but it always comes out, the lyricism. A Lithuanian connot live without nature. You can't detach him from the wide, green fields, from the brooks, the snow, the cobwebs flying through the air in late September, or from his forests, fragrant with moss and beries.

We have learned to eat like snakes. When there is something to eat - we eat enough to last for a week. When there is nothing - we don't eat. Now, when we get our food supply, we eat it all, right there, we leave nothing for tomorrow. Like the birds. And then we read our books. We go after spiritual food...

Reason? When you touch a ball charged with electricity, does the electricity have a reason to discharge itself? Or an apple, to grow, to ripen, to fall? Or to do good to a child? Or to be a mother? To love? To create? The best things have no need, no reason, they happen, the same as when you release an object and it falls.

All nature is full of hatred for humans. I don't think man has any friends among plants or animals. I suspect that even dogs and cats, those so-called best friends of man, are only pretending friendship to man in order to spy on his misdeeds, and they would betray him without blinking an eye the first chance they had. They know that Man is the worst of the beasts.

Yesterday Leonas was telling me that he has never seen me in love yet. "Fall in love", he said. I think I am always in love. Falling in and out of love, constantly. That's my trouble. Everytime I see a girl, my heart goes tuk-tuk-tuk. Leonas says, that it is not normal. What kind of love is this! Nothing really! Eh, what do we know about love? It's more difficult to love a woman like a flower than to love a woman like a woman, and rarer, too... The love of flowers is the love of children and poets... Poets can love unseen subtleties that they glimpse here and there, that are missing in the world but which they want to bring back into the world... One such quality is innocence. Eh, they are like dreams, the young girls, they come and they go...

I am living with these pigs, with these horses and with these cows. Every day I have to look at their blank eyes, their stupid bellies. They call themselves by the names of various nationalities. As if that would make any difference! Germans, French, Italians, Croatians, Russians, Poles, and other animals. Thank you for the pleasure! I love animals, but only real animals. I love animals who do not pretend to be humans. You should look, sometimes, into the eyes of real cows. They are serene, quiet, round. They are good, so good. Like medicine. I like being with cows. I have spent much of my life with them. They do not know greed, they do not play politics. I love them. Protect me from human beings! Let me live with cows! I'll live as a shepherd, if that's the only way. You are driving me out of my mind, you, the Thinking Animals!

What is the total sum of autumn? What is its content, form purpose? Its style, certainly, has unity. But what does it amount to? Eh, but what did the summer amount to, with all its greenery and flowers and sun? Fountains of red and brown will shot out soon. That's what the summer amounted to. And you ask me about movies. I don't know what any movie amounts to. I am looking more for some light behind it, behind the images; I am trying to see the man. It was Barbara Wise who said to me the other day—and she was right: The film critic should not explain what the movie is all about, surely an impossible task; he should help to create the right attitude for looking at movies. That's what my rambling is all about, nothing more. Where was I? Yes, rambling. I will tell you the real truth: All that I have learned in my life (and I have seen many movies) amounts to this: Leaves are falling every autumn. I will be there with my camera when they fall.

Today it's snowing, so beautifully, all white! And only yesterday I was very sad, I thought there won't be any winter this year. I can't imagine a winter without snow. Can a Lithuanian live without snow? Could a Lithuanian ever live only with green and brown and red? In Brazil, or Australia? Oh, my God, how would that be possible, without snow, without ice flowers on the windows, without the biting cold? You look at those white distances and something wakes up in you, something so close to you... Or when you listen to the wind banging outside, how it spills on the window glass with thin cold icy snow flakes. You put your forehead against the night window and you stare into the dark and see the snow fall, and hear a soft thumping of feet in the street below.

Once there was a man who was asked by God to do some little thing. It was just a little thing, and I don’t know what it was. Do this, he was told, and this earth will again turn into Paradise. There won’t be any kings, nobody will have to work, everybody will be free and happy, etc. Now, this man kept thinking: to do it or not to do it. One day he thinks that he should do it, next day he isn’t sure, he thinks that maybe he shouldn’t do it. “Why do we need a Paradise? Let the people work, a big deal? It’s good for your system.” Next day again he thinks: “Maybe, after all, it would be nice not to work, not to do anything.” And so it went. He couldn’t make up his mind. Day after day he thought about it. And so he died, one day. And it’s a pity. He could have brought Paradise back to earth.

Ir nieko nėra pastovaus - kaip mūsų širdys - ir viskas, kas tariam stovi ant tvirto pagrindo, yra tiek tikra, kiek mėnulis šulinį. Ir viskas plaukia ir siubuoja visatoje, kaip japonų nameliai. Toks yra mano sielos pasaulis - ir jis nėra jūsų.

Sakė - tavyje nėra gyvybės ir jokio judėsio. O mano siela ėmė šokti, mano širdis atgijo, žiūrėdama į tavo veidą, gyvybės pilną, ir tavo lengvus judesius. Kadaise menininko rankos tavyje paslėpė gyvybę- judesį ir sielą - ir ji staiga atgijo ir ėmė šokti.

What is the total sum of autumn? What is its content, form purpose? Its style, certainly, has unity. But what does it amount to? Eh, but what did the summer amount to, with all its greenery and flowers and sun? Fountains of red and brown will shoot out soon. That's what the summer amounted to. And you ask me about movies. I don't know what any movie amounts to. I am looking more for some light behind it, behind the images; I am trying to see the man. It was Barbara Wise who said to me the other day—and she was right: The film critic should not explain what the movie is all about, surely an impossible task; he should help to create the right attitude for looking at movies. That's what my rambling is all about, nothing more. Where was I? Yes, rambling. I will tell you the real truth: All that I have learned in my life (and I have seen many movies) amounts to this: Leaves are falling every autumn. I will be there with my camera when they fall.

Aš turiu laiko - visas laikas yra mano, aš metais žiūriu į geltoną liepos žydėjimą, neskubėdamas ir nesirūpindamas.

En estos tiempos en los que todo el mundo ansía tener éxito y vender, yo quiero brindar por aquellos que sacrifican el éxito social por la búsqueda de lo invisible, de lo personal, cosas que no reportan dinero, ni pan, y que tampoco te hacen entrar en la historia contemporánea, en la historia del arte o en cualquier historia. Yo apuesto por el arte que hacemos los unos para los otros, como amigos.

We shot The Local Stigmatic for a few weeks in Atlanta, with David Wheeler as our director, and a principal cast of myself, Paul Guilfoyle, Joe Maher, and Michael Higgins. When it was finished, we showed the film around to people we admired. We had a great dinner gathering of artists and literati in London. People like Tom Stoppard and David Hare, who all sat at a long table. Harold Pinter had seen the film twice at this point; he sat at the head of the table, and when he wanted to speak to everyone, he rang a little bell and the group fell silent. “Every once in a while,” he said, “we see something different. We come into contact with art in film.” I just sat there stunned. Heathcote was in the room, fiddling with a coin and not looking up at anyone, playing the role of the shy genius. He’d been described as a protégé of Pinter’s, but to actually be in the same room as his literary idol, I guess it all was just too much for him. I ran the film once for Elaine May, the great actress and filmmaker, who told me, “I liked it very much. But don’t you ever show this to the public. You don’t know your fame. You don’t understand it, and you don’t understand how it registers. You must recognize it.” And she was right. You’re too well-known for this sort of thing. You have to be careful, because you’re going to startle people. Don’t put this in a theater. I showed it to Jonas Mekas, the independent-film impresario of downtown Manhattan, who ran The Local Stigmatic at his Anthology Film Archives and told me, somewhat optimistically, that I was going to win an Oscar for it. I kept calling Andrew Sarris, the film critic for The Village Voice, to come and see it. And he said, “Stop bothering me, Al. I’ve seen it three times already. I’ve told you what I think. Just show the thing already.” I was trying to get the confidence to screen it for wider audiences. I never did. I’ve come to realize that when I do my own things, nobody goes. Those avant-garde influences that I was brought up with never left my brain. When I’m left on my own, that’s just what seems to come out. It’s a drawback. People come in with expectations, and they leave angry. The Local Stigmatic is such a specific distillation of me and my take on this subject. It’s 150 proof, which can be a little strong for some people.

Kuo skiriasi žmogus nuo gyvulio? Žvėrys drasko viens kitą - žmonės taipogi. Vilkas neėda vilko - bet žmonės ėda viens kitą. Žvėrys puola pasalom. Žmogus planuoja, klasta. Žvėrys neturi sąžinės. Bet kur yra žmogaus sąžinė? Žmogus sugalvojo savo didybės, savo viršystės ant visų kitų gyvių mitą, o iš tikrųjų jis nieko negali... Didieji žvėrys minta mažesniais; didelės tautos smaugia mažas, turtingi žmonės spaudžia milijonus vargšų.

Žmogus turi gyvent kur gimė ir vaikas augo. Kitaip jis gyvena be kvapų, be garsų, be prisilietimų prisiminimo. Jis taip neturtingas, taip biednas. Be kvapų, be atospalvių, be garso nuskambėjimų, atoaidžių, be daiktų atsiskambėjimo. Jis tada išauga įšiaurus, piktas, aštrus, kaip peilis.

Kultūra yra basose kojose. Kultūra yra šaltuos ryto rasos gintaruos. Ir arklio prunkštime. Neužmirškime savo arklių!

Aš, vaikas, sėdėdavau ant lauko ežios ir žiūrėdavau, kaip mano tėvas su sėtuve ant kaklo eidavo per lauką, lėtai, vienodu žingsniu, mostas buvo sujungtas kartu su žeme, su lauku, su tom sėklom: joks jogas niekados nebus arčiau šito pasaulio, šitos žemės, kaip ūkininkas.

i’m a displaced person on my way home, in search for my home, retracing bits of past, looking for some recognisable traces of my past.

i’m a displaced person on my way home, in search for my home, retracing bits of past, looking for some recognisable traces of my past.

What a hell am I doing here? Why do I need a degree? I haven't heard a single sentence during all these lectures that would inspire one single line of poetry.

I’m totally disinterested in politics.... Yes. I live outside of the political world. Because I have no control. Because all my interest is in cinema, and not even all of cinema.

In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life

Keista švytuoklė žmogus. Atrodo, kiek išsimeti žvėrin, tiek sugrįžti žmogun. Kartais pamanau: net kad Dievą pajustum, reikia pirmiau būti geru velniu. Po momentų, kada nejučiom pasileidi, ištirpsti kurion nors padugnėn - tokiu ryškumu stojas prieš akis priešingybė - švytuoklė jau kitoj pusėj.

I go for a long night walk, in order to get out of the factory day. I walk and i wander through the network of the streets, neon lights and night crowds. This woman on the corner, she was shouting at me: ''Ay, why are you so sad?'' Lady of the night, you haven't see me really sad. Right now i am in my happiest mood. I continue walking. How could she really understand the depths of my sadness.