Remembering Juriusz
I was surprised when Mar-mey told me one day that Juriusz had an accident during mountain hiking and died. While I was out of touch with Juriusz at that point, he was still out there in my mind, taking the world as bravely as ever and travelling to far lands, somehow managing to finance those trips to Russia, Canada, China, Kazakhstan, and probably other places. And then, all of the sudden, he was not out there any more.
A Facebook page has been created for people to share their memories of Juriusz and this led me to thinking what I could write. And it struck me that I didn't have that many memories of him. We didn't meet all that much. And yet, I felt that there was something brewing in me, a story which I would like to share as well. I didn't write anything in the end, but I also never stopped thinking about it. So it kept brewing. Until it was ready.
But let's take a little detour first.
Disclaimer
I read in a Łukasz Najder's essay that "the memory belongs to the one who remembers." Remembering is not an act of restoring facts but rebuilding the memory anew. Every single time. This provides a tempting excuse: I can safely deviate from what really happened because, after all, it's in our nature to misremember details or even larger things. "I don't claim to present the reality. Reality's gone. Over twenty-years old at this point." But it's not that easy in practice and this is another thing I took from yet another Łukasz Najder's essay: while my part of the story is largely mine, other people's stories are theirs and it would be disrespectful to just share it without reaching out to them. Therefore, I should stick only to things about me and maybe Juriusz, whose memory I am trying to share here. And that is an interesting writing challenge. So, let's remove all the names and nicknames of anyone who's not us two (and maybe Mar-mey (and maybe Spooky Kid)). I will still use those other people's fragments for context and background, but this will be my only purpose. It's not possible to isolate oneself fully from events where other people were present too, and there would be holes in the narrative without it.
Full disclosure: I have no clear plan of what I want to write, just a bunch of loose scenes and images and pieces of conversations and I am going to gather all that and shape it in front of your eyes, dear reader.
Furthermore, I want to reproduce the style in which we blogged between 2002 and 2005, before it started fading, until being served the final blow by social media 5 years later. This feels like the right choice for the protagonist of this text. And speaking of that time, let's reach out for a phrase coined by either Noth or Olka. (I promised no names, but this is paying credit where it's due. As much as I loved and used this phrase, I did not come up with it.) We used it on at least some of our blogs to identify our loosely connected group.
Under The Dead Cracow Sky
[alt-text instead of an image: lightnings seen on Cracow's blue skyline at dusk]
The beginning
I met Juriusz in person on April 16th, 2003. It happened to be Wednesday, which is irrelevant to the story but important to my mental mapping of the events. We met in one of those pubs for heavy-metals. I don't remember its name and it's very possible that this was the only time I was there. A cellar in an old building near Rynek, with a couple of tables, dense cigarette smoke, and loud music. It wasn't even the destination for the evening, just a place to wait for us. He was sitting there, I imagine more than remember, in a black T-shirt and drinking a large half-litre glass of Żywiec from the tap, which was the usual choice of students as it was the cheapest option: 6 złotys and extra 50 groszes for a synthetic red juice (a tradition I do not miss). There is nothing spectacular about our introduction. By some sense we knew each other already from the Marilyn Manson forum as well as Black Locust Forum and of course our blogs, so we paid each other pleasantries like these people from the 17th century, who were writing letters to each other until finally meeting. Then we moved to another venue. Or maybe to Vistula's banks... Funny thing about human memory: you think you have something stored, but it's merely a façade and once you look underneath it, it's not there any more. Gone.
(So, the river banks were a week later on Friday. On that first day, we went to one flat, where I met even more people, and then another flat. Then we drove back in Spooky Kid's car and I managed to wish my father all the best on his birthday shortly before the midnight.)
But that's not where it started for me. It started on April 1st when my first girlfriend dumped me. Quite April Fools. Instead of leaving me heart-broken and devastated, it made me think of another girl whose blog I started reading the previous year. Six months tops. Long story short, based on her writings, I autistically came to a logical conclusion that I could fell in love with her. I couldn't have, however, reached out to her, despite reading her blog and commenting it, because it felt like a recipe for a failure. If not a disaster. But she mentioned Juriusz a couple of times and Juriusz I recalled from the aforementioned discussion fora. So, I further concluded, this was my way in. It sounds nefarious in the written form, but he wasn't meant to be only a means to an end. I held him in a very high regard, but I had no reasons to meet him in person. I like people, but I am a very domicile animal. At the time, if I didn't need to leave my house, I would be the happiest person in the world. Gimme good music and a book or a movie or a computer game and I'm content. But in April 2003, I had reason to meet him. So I could meet more people. Very specific people.
I don't want to build unnecessary tension around that part of the story, so let's go over it quickly. I didn't meet my intended love interest for the next 9 days. In the meantime I started a relationship with another girl, but it wasn't really a relationship, although I wanted to, and it ended abruptly. Then there was yet another girl, her friend, and that collapsed too. I finally managed to invite the original girl to cinema for a rom com many months later, only to find out there was no spark. So much about logical conclusions based on someone's blog. Anyway, if all that sounds confusing, don't sweat it, dear reader. The main takeaway for you, to circle back to Juriusz, is that my history with him is heavily intertwined with various romantic endeavours that probably kept me around for longer. I honestly suspect that I would be gone earlier if not for them. We would shake our hands with Juriusz and go back to forum discussions and blog comment sections (it sounds exotic now, even for me, but that was our main communication platform).
These first couple of months were something. Being this domicile animal, I wasn't partying before. I wouldn't even drink much alcohol because I did not trust what it could do to my cognitive powers. And there I was, 20-year-old me trying to figure out a new type of life. I did some reckless things and I did some cruel things even, although no one died in the end. To a degree, I was an alien in that world where people would take drugs and heavily intoxicate. At the same time, they were tolerant of other lifestyles, so when someone wanted to stay sober, it was fine. There was no pressure to do anything. And I liked that. I could observe and I could interact and learn in my own pace. But enough about me because I'm stealing the spotlight from a dead man, and that's not cool.
The name
On that first meeting, which should rather be described as a continuous series of three meetings, I learned the origins of Juriusz's name. I might have been thinking it was a variation on Juliusz, or was it only my friend whom I was telling about These Crazy But Positively Crazy People I've been meeting recently, but no. It was linked to a short videoclip, which was played to me in the final partying place, somewhere between 2 bottles of Goliat, a kinda famous at the time cheap wine. One bottle was apple mint, which reminded us of fermented Hortex juice, while the other one was called crystalic and bore no connection to any other drink. But the videoclip.
The videoclip presented a moustached man who jumped from a rock onto a sand below. More accurately I should say that the man fell flat on his face, not landed. And that was it as far as the action goes. There was, however, a commentator. Because, you see, it looked like a weird sport competition. Mind you, I saw it once while being half-drunk and I am now restoring it as best as I can. For years, I thought it was in Turkish, but I wouldn't vouch for it now, being more accustomed to Turkish. The man kept saying something which could have been transcribed in Polish as "juriusz." And thus, the name of a great man was conceived.
I think that's a pretty cool origin story.
For some, he was known as Anti, after Marilyn Manson's song where the artist sings "anti this and anti that and anti something else and anti something completely different, etc." (but not anti people, that's too far). I guess I remember this because the girl I was after used to call him that on her blog. "Antiosza," she would say, which would make us laugh with Mar-mey because it was a cute Russification of that nickname.
And now, finally, the Vistula's river banks
The next time we saw each other, on Friday of April 25th, we briefly drank alcohol on river banks of Vistula, near the bridge connecting Kazimierz with this other part of Cracow, whose name I don't remember now. This is a big surprise when you start forgetting names of streets and bridges of the city that you were born in and in which you spent over 30 years of your life. And then, 10 years after leaving it, it becomes a façade. A whole city. Crazy. We either had beers or another round of cheap wines, but more likely beers.
One thing worth immortalising from that meeting was Juriusz calling Mar-mey a "wódz." Apparently, it was a big deal to be called a wódz by Juriusz.
For reasons that are not important here, I am writing this in English and not in Polish. Juriusz was quite an international persona, so this can theoretically reach further than just writing in Polish, but that's a bonus, not the reason. In any case, this creates situations where I have to stop to explain that some words don't translate well. "Wódz" can mean either a tribe chief or a leader of the nation, very much like Adolf Hitler or, which would rather be the case of Juriusz, Joseph Stalin (as his blog made it clear). And don't think about genocides but a cult of the person. That's wódz. Chief. Führer. But also a compliment from Juriusz.
"I am going to call you a wódz now, and that's not something I do lightly," Juriusz said to Mar-mey in a theatrical manner. Mar-mey tried to maintain seriousness, but this was a lost battle because the tension was so high that you could slice it with a knife and so Mar-mey laughed.
I can't remember now if Juriusz ever called me a wódz. But I think we used to call him like that sometimes.
Later we ended up in one of the flats we were in the first time. I went to sleep to another room earlier than the rest but couldn't sleep, and I was listening to amphetamine-induced conversations and I came to a logical conclusion that I hate drugs for what they do to human brain. Every x minutes, I would hear mumbled words, "And that is when I went to study Russian philology," and no one in the room would object to that, they were all that high. Horror, horror.
Birthday
Came May 9th, a party was thrown. Juriusz invited a tonne of people to his house, including me (which felt like climbing up on this unexpected social ladder). We took a tram to a far end-of-the-line station with Mar-mey and from there walked distance that seemed very far but probably wasn't, looking back from a position of a long-term dog walker. It's like trying to fit memories of someone else into the perception of someone different. But then again, that is exactly what I am doing here. I mean, like, twenty minutes? Thirty? That would be nothing nowadays.
Juriusz had a three story house where he lived with his mother and grandmother. I was there only once, so it's blurry, but I believe he was on the top story. Seems fitting, as his life was a top story. I'm not sorry for that. We were early, so he invited us upstairs, but later we were all supposed to stay on the ground level.
Slowly people started pouring in. If I were ever to adapt it into a movie, the whole thing from that point on would be a seamless MTV-like kaleidoscope of short clips with loud music over it. I remember two guys who were talking in a corner about movies and by the time I stumbled upon them, they started explaining to me how to properly pronounce the title of "Amores Perros" (which I now think was wrong because the movie is Mexican and they were insisting more on the Venezuelan or Argentinian pronunciation for some reason). It looked like they were explaining it to anyone who would approach them. I also remember surprising confessions after the alcohol, or because those dispensing them thought I might have been drunk (which I still wouldn't do much, having a beer or two to pass as "one of the guys"). Then there was this guy from my high school who was generally aggressive towards me for some reason and he physically attacked me this time, breaking my necklace with Atlantis ring, and for a moment there I thought it was gonna get ugly, but Spooky Kid, who brought him there in the first place, dragged him off, completely oblivious to what just happened, assuming we were just fooling around. Later he would even ask me if I wanted to return with them in his car, but I turned the offer down. And there was this girl, which I would later see on various occasions, that was laying on a bed in the main room, and I was tired, so I laid next to her. There was nothing forthcoming in it and I wasn't "making a move" or anything, but she told me to fuck off, which I ignored, so she started yelling on top of her lungs and so I backed off. No one really paid attention to the scene, but I was worried it could escalate ugly. I never liked her after that, she, however, never acted as if she remembered this situation. We sort of existed next to one another. In one room a group of people was doing amphetamine. For weeks afterwards, I had on my wallpaper a picture of a girl from that room, with her eyes as big as teacup plates. The funny thing is they were trying to be discreet about it or maybe even secretive when there wasn't really any need for that. Nobody cared. But perhaps they didn't want to share. It must have been an expensive stuff, after all.
But I was merely a footnote there, so let's get back to the hero of the evening.
In a spirit of Marilyn Manson, Juriusz had tights, a skirt, black T-shirt (this comes rather conservative in this set), and a make-up with a black line across his eyes, very much like Marilyn Manson during concerts of the "Antichrist Superstar's" era. If you don't know what that means, think of Darryl Hannah in "Blade Runner." (If this doesn't tell you anything either, you're out of luck and need to google it with a search engine.) He was probably the most extravagantly dressed person there, but heroes of the evening should be.
We stayed with Mar-mey till the first tram, when everyone else was pretty much dead, and that allowed me to see a funny scene. Juriusz, at his ends, got to the stereo tower and started playing something heavy-metally loud and dancing to it. Very soon his mother came down and asked him to turn this off because she needed to wake up early (because she was going somewhere later). Her voice was clearly showing she was longing for conciliation and half-conscious slash half-intoxicated Juriusz agreed, but as soon as his mother was out of the picture, he turned the music up again and returned to dancing. This brought his mother downstairs again, but this time she was rather begging.
"Son, please, I need to get up for a train today and I wanted to get some sleep," she cried.
"Yes, yes, mum, of course, but this is my favourite song and I wanted to listen to it," Juriusz replied, not really getting her point.
"Yes, naturally, listen to your favourite song, but not so loud," she said, also not getting his point.
Then she left and I'm pretty sure he summoned her one more time like that, after which she either gave up or somehow made her room sound-proof. But she never showed downstairs any more. So I don't know when was her train. It generally wasn't an easy night for her. Earlier I heard her screaming at Juriusz or his neighbour, I think, who was sort of a concierge bringing beverages from the kitchen and was entrusted with access there. She was angry that someone ate her kielbasa that she had prepared for the trip.
Somewhere around that time I found Goran Bregović's the-best-of among CDs laying everywhere and started playing "Ederlezzi," which Polish version, "To nie ptak," I knew and liked and wanted to hear in the original. Then I started singing the Polish lyric to it and I think I might have impressed a certain girl because I remember this positively surprised look in her eye when I turned around. Obviously not with the singing but with knowing different words.
I don't remember what we got him for a present (I suspect the best of Dedektyw Inwektyw), but he got a sado-maso harness, like for horses, from someone else and was running in it for a while that evening and later posted his picture in it on his blog. It composed really well with Marilyn-Manson-like make-up and torn tights.
I was suppose to have an English exam to get an official paper stating what's my level and I assumed I'll be fresh enough in the morning to do that, but upon reaching home I knew that wasn't going to happen. The first tram was too late and I haven't slept for 24 hours. This was already the second of three possible dates that I could do that. (I made it for the third time.)
Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi (which I know under the name Boże Ciało, which always meant to me God's Body, due to "ciało" meaning "flesh" being somewhat archaic in Polish) is a day off in the Polish calendar, which means that a bunch of students and other people could organise a small party the evening and night before. This time we hit an apartment rented by a couple of people and which windows would go out to Józefa Dietla Street. As always, everyone would bring their own alcohol or whatever they were having, and I think it was already crowdy when we got there, but people were mostly sitting in groups and talking: on beds, on floors, wherever. Back in 1920s we would sit in a cafeteria, but the times they are a-changin. There was this one guy who was telling everyone where he went to school, but he was using only an acronym, so I asked him what it meant and he expanded it to me, but it still wouldn't tell me what that was, so I asked more and then he explained it was this school for people who didn't finish school when they were young, and I replied with something like "Ah," to which he started telling me that I didn't respect him and he wouldn't have it any other way, which pissed me off, but I lost this battle (in all fairness, he was so good at it because he was probably having this discussion with everyone). I think I saw him later playing Windows solitaire (so, with a deck of 52). He was sitting in the middle of the loud and crowded room. I even pointed it to someone, but to no reaction. I also remember late in the night that two, three, or even four guys were standing in the windows and peeing through them out on the street. Quite early on I had another semi-physical encounter with a guy who was a bit of a football hooligan, which was pretty strong trend back in the days. When I wanted to leave the room and go to the kitchen, he told me that he won't let me unless I play him specific music (was it "Celina" by Kazik?), which I didn't want to do. I don't react well put against the wall. Instead, I tried to pass through anyway and he stopped me with his hand and I realised I am in a bad position for a fight. I had glasses on me and my shoelaces were untied, an experiment at the time. The shoes meant I would have a bad grip. Luckily for me, one of the people renting the place started shouting at the hooligan to stop fucking around and it defused the situation. This, along with another incident, taught me to always tie my bootstraps. Funnily enough, 8 years later I ended up with the said hooligan at work. He toned down by then and was a rather pleasant person who, of all people, would not tie his shoelaces around the office. I told him why I found this funny, but he didn't remember our almost fight from the party. And then there was the police. Being drunk people of certain age, we made enough noise to grant us a neighbour reporting on us. People renting the place told us to be quiet. And we were. Well, almost. One guy, who was sleeping on a sofa on the balcony from the courtyard side, woke up at this point and decided to go to the room, but to do that, he had to cross the antechamber where the colleague, who saved me earlier, was showing the rent contract to the police to prove that we're not squatters. Some people tried to stop the woke-up guy (always problems with these woke people), but this was causing even more noise, so they just let him. The policemen didn't mind and I don't think they saw anything that they hadn't seen before. Some time after it must have calmed down because I remember sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor. Or more like trying to sleep. But it's also where I saw a red light bulb for the first time and I immediately liked the idea, but another person who was renting the place was surprised when I asked where did they buy it, and she said something like, "It's just a light bulb painted red." Somehow, in my memory, there is morning then and we're leaving. I don't even think Juriusz was there, to be honest.
That was the night of June 18th, 2003.
Placebo
Back in May there was Marilyn Manson's concert in Poznań and I decided to skip it, given that he "betrayed" his style with "Holy Wood" and barely improved on "The Golden Age of Grotesque." Ah yes, to have 20 years and problems like that. But then, the day after the concert, a picture was published on one of the Under The Dead Cracow Sky blogs. A photograph of people who went to that concert. They looked so cool there and so bad-ass, but also a part of something larger. Seeing that, I felt I made a big mistake. I could have been on that picture. Maybe this was when I realised that attending a concert is not purely musical experience but also a social one. So, when the group decided they're going to see Placebo in Warsaw on September 6th, 2003, I knew I was going too.
In a fully autistic approach, I went all in and bought "Sleeping With Ghosts" to know songs before the concert. These days I listen to the whole discographies on the streaming service of my choice, but back then we had limited options: buy CD (or, dread I say, a cassette) or download it, but downloading was still tedious, so I decided that the last album plus knowledge of a couple of earlier singles would suffice.
A lot of things happened during that trip to Warsaw, but they have been richly described on Under The Dead Cracow Sky blogs plus some others, so I don't feel like opening this can of worms here. I have to admit, though, that I liked how someone following all those blogs could see a polyphonic story told by many people from different angles. Sadly, all those writings are probably lost to time. In any case, it was a nice feeling to be a part of it, perhaps even more than a group picture. A picture that we didn't take this time, by the way. But let's not do another Corpus Christi chapter with everyone's antics and focus on our main character instead.
Juriusz brought an outsider to the concert trip. While it might sounds strange because we were all outsiders from different timelines, the new guy showed me that there were still new types of people who could be mixed in. In all his atheism, Juriusz was probably the most ecumenic person I can think of, being able to communicate with virtually anyone. I saw him discussing people on different topics and I mean really discussing, not "debating" to prove his point, something that plagues the modern times. He would have real interest in the person he was talking to. I can't remember if I noticed it then, but looking back it impresses me a lot. The New Guy was studying with Juriusz and they started having discussions and he was able to hold his liquor and so a friendship was conceived. The New Guy didn't know nor care about Placebo, but when he was offered to join, he agreed.
Both of them had a little adventure including the police just before we got into the concert and later breaking into the venue without a ticket, but as one of them is still alive, I have to play the "Not My Story To Tell" card.
After the concert we hung around Warsaw, trying to get into a single club, only to learn that the nightlife of the capitol is nothing in comparison to the vibrant Cracow, and then we split into return groups at dawn. What's interesting from the ecumenical point of view was that one more person joined us after the concert after taking a train from his city. This, however, could be too much of mythologisation here. We were young and partying and we were doing things on a whim. But it fits nicely into the picture.
Fallout
By fallout I mean me falling out with the group, not some total collapse. The beauty of our congregation was that it was not a congregation of any sort, rather loose individuals keeping in touch. Very much like Fediverse. Therefore, the total fallout of everyone with everyone else was very unlikely. But by December 2003 something was cooking and tension was growing and I decided to back off and wait it out. And it worked terribly well for me. The last chapter was the first Einstürzende Neubauten concert in Poland two months later, which included me and two other people. And then it sort of just ended. No big finale, no finish line, no spectacular row, nothing. It's as if I lost my will to pick up the proverbial phone and make a call, while the other side did the same.
In any case, there were no hard feelings and being a very affable person, I found a new company (or rather moved more with the lot from Black Locust Forum, even causing some dyplomatic incidents with my choice of clothes). Life moved on. I would still see Juriusz every now and then as our circles continued to overlap, but I would no longer aspire to be a part of his circle any more.
If I were writing a book about these events, it would probably be The End here.
THE END
I actually tried writing this book a couple of times, but having a remarkable memory, I would drawn myself in details and abandon it pretty early on. Also, there really wasn't any convincing arc to build and having simply a coming-out-of-age story was not my interest. I definitely fared much better with this smaller scope here.
However, this is not a book about those events but Juriusz and remembering him, so let's continue. We're almost there, anyway.
Loose pieces
I have memories of Juriusz that I cannot easily place in time, but I don't want to leave them out either.
Blog, the blog
One of the first impressions of Juriusz as a person I had was his blog: with red background and white font and a tonne of movie posters just about everywhere. Although, the very first image was a photograph of Joseph Stalin taken during the Yalta. The original wódz. For some reason, Stalin was omnipresent in Juriusz Internet presence and speeches, despite not condoning his criminal activity. Ironically, as they say now. And far reaching: for instance, when John Paul II met his end, for weeks Juriusz would have this status on his communicator: "On March 5th, 1953, a heart of the great father of the nations has stopped beating."
And at the top, the blog had a quote written in "Fight Club" letters (it was an image as well):
I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not.
Later Juriusz would move to Facebook posts with his writings because all the social life moved there, but initially his blog was one of the places to check when logging in to the Internet. I would see if he wrote anything new and check comments. A bit like a morning coffee kind of experience. (But of course right after checking comments on my own blog.)
How to stay longer in a movie
The best pro tip that I learned from Juriusz was how to stay longer in a movie. Perhaps it was just the best pro tip ever. In his own words (albeit quoted from memory):
"I was watching a movie once and it was so amazing that I didn't want it to end. And so I didn't. I paused it and I went to wash the dishes or do something equally mundane because as long as I didn't finish the movie and I haven't seen the ending, I was still in it."
It was mentioned somewhere in a party as a footnote to another discussion. Whenever I think of him saying this, I see him doing that in the flat from the first and second meeting. But you know how memory works. I could have been there later too.
I took his advice twice ever since. First was when I was reading Cormac McCarthy's "Suttree" and I didn't rush it at all, which allowed me to live in the story for months (which I additionally extended afterwards with Buddy & The Huddle's faux soundtrack). The second time was a handcrafted novelisation of "Planescape: Torment" that spanned for over 1,500 pages and later I learned it was largely composed of text extracted from the game itself. I had been reading it for over a year. I never did that intentionally with a movie, though (I watched "Until the End of the World" in three goes, but it's because it was too long).
Perhaps that's why we like shows. We have to watch them with breaks, thus being locked in their worlds for longer than the time spent on watching them. The movie or a binged show just ends and kicks us out back to reality.
Small meetings
I would usually meet Juriusz in the larger meetings, but I managed to score some more intimate evenings, sometimes even double dates (like us and our girlfriends, not with other couples).
One time I met Michał Zygmunt, who became a published author later, and I always promised myself to read one of his book (the one with "Ubik's" Jory). Actually, I met him not once, but twice in person. I even had a picture with him in a men's toilet of a bar we were at, although I remember him to be reluctant to take it.
The last time
The last time I saw Juriusz in person, as well as a couple of other people from Under The Dead Cracow Sky, was the first Nine Inch Nails concert in Poland in 2009 (and their last one ever at the time, and it wasn't anyone's belief they would return afterwards). Those first industrial concerts would create a nice theme in this story. Bonus points for again being in Poznań, just like The Marilyn Manson Concert That I Skipped Only To Regret It Later.
I don't think there was any exchange between us apart from greetings. I was travelling with my wife and another friend and his wife or fiancée at the time, and it's like these scenes in movies where people meet years later as a sort of late epilogue that provides no real value other than showing that the characters moved on.
Virtual life
He also showed me that I can have a Facebook account without my real name. I'm a very private person and I avoid using my real name (do not google my LinkedIn profile!), so I was avoiding Facebook. But it turned out Juriusz registered there as Juriusz Jebaka and survived that. "Jebać" translates as "to fuck," among other meanings, and "jebaka" would be something like "fucker" understood as someone fucking a lot. A real ladies' man (seems fitting for a late Leonard Cohen fan*). I thought that if he could have been Jebaka and not get banned, which surprised him as well, then Jon Krazov should survive too (and as of 2025, 15 years later, I still have an account there).
*I discovered Leonard Cohen in 2003 and listened to his songs a lot and even bought the best of, but eventually moved to other musical pastures. Some years later Juriusz discovered that artist in relation to his interest in Canada, where he also travelled, and started listening hard to him, documenting it on his blog. I remember being jealous of this meticulousness that I myself didn't exhibit. It's as if I felt ashamed seeing him going the whole nine yards about an artist that I was internally considering to be among my favourites. It got better ever since and thanks to various streaming services, I picked up on some full albums. "You Want It Dark" is pure gold.
He later changed Jebaka to Jenot when he moved to Russia because "jebać" is a generally Slavic word, but is considered much more rude in Russia and it could make his life harder there. And you don't wanna make your life in Russia harder because Russia does job good enough in this regards. And thus, he became Juriusz Jenot ("jenot" is the Polish name of raccoon dog).
Facebook, as well as his blog and the Nine Inch Nails forum, was like another life. I would read his stories, sometimes terrifying (like when he got death threats in Kazakhstan from a fellow teacher) but always educating about other countries customs and habits (like curing everything with drinking hot water in China). We definitely commented each other. He wrote a lot about movies, some of which I even saw this year, still remembering his recommendations. When I finished writing a science-fiction book in 2017, he offered to read it and share his thoughts. Many people promised me that, but he actually did it. If I ever get to redacting that story, I shall start from digging his email with notes.
After that, alas, there was only the dreaded message from Mar-mey.
And that's how we're getting to the last stop of this nostalgic journey.
Orbiting Juriusz
This was meant to be the first title of this text, but I realised that it reveals too much too early and I ditched it. The title then became simply "Juriusz," but that sounded like a post about him and while largely it is, it was not true to its core. But I did not let myself to get blind-sided by technicalities like that and kept writing and its form and shape eventually emerged. It turned out that I was writing down my personal journey of backtracking my experience with a person important to me. Despite of what I wrote initially, I had more memories than I have thought. After scratching the façade of the memory and digging in a little, I managed to recover more.
When I first thought of writing something like what you're reading now, I planned to frame it as a story told from the point of view of an outsider, which would give me a unique perspective. An outsider whom I largely was there. As mentioned earlier, Juriusz had this talent to attract people of many different backgrounds and backstories to him, thus becoming a centre around which we would orbit. In this allegory, I would be Pluto to his Sun, extending to Pluto losing its celestial status: I thought I was among the planets, but I wasn't. :D
But orbiting Juriusz I definitely was and whenever I read about various artistic collectives, I see something like that. He wasn't the leader (albeit that's how he would title us sometimes), he was this force keeping us together. Many of the meetings were without him, but I don't think we would meet in those configurations if he wasn't there to pull us in in the first place. I am probably overdoing it, as every person driving down the memory lane, but that is how I decide now to remember him. In the end it might not have been true to everyone, but it was true to me. Without him, a large experience defining me would miss me. I would most likely have different experience, but this one I had and this one I liked.
If I had managed to write a post for Juriusz Facebook Group shortly after his untimely demise, I would thank him for all that, for he has played much bigger role in my life than he probably ever realised. A seasonal reminder to share it with people while you can because you never know when it's gonna be too late.