video

PREVIEW-TRAILER: 

Street art undoubtedly enlivens public space. Misho the mime is a spiritual sculpture
reflected in the eyes of passersby. It is both paradoxical and funny how truthful and close to life this
sculpture can look. Certainly just before it comes into motion and rattles the gathering onlookers. I can
warrant you tuning in to his frequency is only a matter of a few seconds.  

Has it ever happened to you to be willing to do something, to have a few things in your
live materialised, and yet not to know how you can do that.  And you just forgot about it and applied
yourself to something else, and here is someone you meet, something you read, somewhere you go …
and there is an opportunity to breathe life into your dream.  

My encounter with Misho was not a sheer accident by any means. That moment my life was
somehow steered by an unfathomable force edging me closer to something unusual – like an acquaintance
with the pantomime student Michael Velkov. An experience carrying a mystical sensation, and excitement
that makes one feel really alive. His effect on my senses could be defined as hygiene of the spirit. 

HYGIENE OF THE SPIRIT

MOTTO: “Keep clean!!!
Clarify,
purify,
and clean
by a simple 
sprinkling and brush up.
E-e-thics.
Aesthe-e-tics.
Ethics warmed up by aesthetics.
Aesthetics magnanimously brightened up by ethics.
.
Re-e-ference.
La-a-bel
on human packaging, reading:
“Please pursue your personal legend!!!”
***
Santiago, Santiago, my shepherd,
please forgive a rhetoric question:
Is morality the only purpose of living?
Where have we stranded
the disasters,
the big fires,
the quakes,
the explosions,
jumps from high towers,
blinding glow,
howling of the enraged,
self-assertion of the ignorant?
Who are our friends –
the toads,
the schmucks, 
the tarts,
the usurers,
the opportunity hunters,
the second-hand dealers,
the gangsters,
the theologians,
the vagabonds,
the snitches,
sleep-walkers come awake,
lovers bidding good-bye?  
***
Body temperature is the only thing to keep.
Don’t lose yourself in the pulse of modern days showing their teeth.
Instantly take out the bones of past’s seductive body. 
Look through the window to the present.
HERE and NOW.
***
We never lose our faith entirely.
Our hope is infinite and gnarled, 
it finds its sight in the black of an obituary.
Our hope is to elope from triviality  
and squat in the phenomenology of daily life. 
. 
How shall we recognise her?
There are no visible signs about her.
She is an internal triptych
caught by the occasional passerby.
One of the unraveled wonders of the world.
The momentum of the acolyte.
The intervention of the magician.
Lord’s protection.
The prosthesis of Immortality.
The guide-dog for the blind man.
The intolerance to silence
shot far away into the infinite Cosmos.


(the interlocutor – interviewer)

What are you preferences, madam?
What are you looking discontent?
Anything amiss?

(by the echo of one’s own bored voice)

I scorn the ill-willed curiosity
prying into my privacy
sheltered behind an oxygen mask.
(I am screaming…)
HELP 
RESCUE me!!! 

(the interlocutor – silently)

Wades in, goes wild and
leaves my privacy breathless.


(by the echo of one’s own bored voice)

Shudders down my spine, 
I am festering,
going pale,
 going old
at the thought
of putting off
the disaster.
Did we not already drive
up the highway
to THE WORLD BEYOND… 
***

CAMERA : Iliana Tsakova
SOUNDTRACK: 
“Take My Wings Away”, an original ethno-piece of the Bulgarian “Band of Mad Women”

CONCEPT & SCRIPT: Desislava Tomova

NARRATIVE: Desislava Tomova

The poem “Hygiene of Spirit” was published in one of the best known national literary
issues, “Literary Newspaper”, with Georgi Gospodinov as editor in chief. I enclose a
copy of the publication. The poem is narrated throughout the film.

TRANSLATOR: Georgi Pashov (from Bulgarian to English)

ACTOR (mime): Michael Velkov – major in pantomime National Academy of Theatre and Film 

Technical features:

Camera: professional Panasonic
Duration: 5 min. – the film + 1 minute of trailers.
Carrier: mini DV

N.B. : Desislava Tomova author and host of the magazine art and culture show In One Breath.
This short film is an inseparable part of the show, in its Art in Action slot.