Kočkování aneb Proč ještě zpívat (vyprávění z let 2019-2022) – Burian Jan (2023)

What now? What should I sing about when a few hundred kilometers to the east they are bombing apartment buildings, and even maternity hospitals? Among the weapons, the muses are silent, I remembered. But we are still in the rear, and the role of culture is to help us not to go crazy with fear, not to become dull with indifference, and not to lose our minds altogether. To be sufficiently perceptive and sensitive to ourselves and to the people who need us, and not to think only of our own comfort," writes Jan Burian in one of the texts collected in this book, which follows the previous four book editions of regular essays originally written for Týdeník Rozhlas – namely, A Ghost in the Shopping Center (2009), A Plea for Today's Times (2013), A Cat's Perspective (2016), and The Tempest and Bubbles (2019). In just three years, so much has happened, and two chronicles from the years 2020 and 2021 logically revolve around the pandemic and life within it. However, while reading, we also find ourselves in many other places at home and around the world, we experience the author's seventieth birthday, and we meet a number of interesting people. An essay from March 2022 is dedicated to Ukraine and also answers the question posed at the beginning of this paragraph: "There is still something to sing about, even though it is difficult now and not as obvious as when nothing is happening next door. When I was in Jihlava after...