I think I visited Bauhaus – not the famous German art school but the even more famous retail chain – maybe once in my life. It must have been for one item, and it lasted maybe 15 minutes.

This time it was different. I still didn’t have a driving license, so Predrag drove the car with newly installed roof rails and we went to Bauhaus with a list of 70 items. At first it was a labyrinth. And it lasted around 4 hours.

Predrag was doing pretty well. But for me it was a completely new world filled with anxiety provoked by not knowing anything about most of the things I saw there. I have used this or that on some occasions in my life, but during the last two decades my pen was my tool, and organisation – from theatre to building movements.

Suddenly, there was this “real life”, something very physical and practical. How many times did I hear that line from sceptical friends like the one “But you never had a chainsaw in your hands!”?

Well, I really didn’t, but neither did I have a pen in my hands before I actually had it and learned how to use it. For better or for worse. It’s like learning a new language. And you need help. Curiosity. You need to play with your own insecurities and not know shit about most of the things you see.

While being completely lost among so many new things, I could hear Dionysus in Nietzsche’s Ariadne’s Lament: “Be clever, Ariadne! …You have little ears; you have my ears: Put a clever word in them! – Must one not first hate oneself, in order to love oneself? … I am your labyrinth”.

Bauhaus was my labyrinth. Until we learned something new and left equipped for our new adventures.

This is how we used some of the first generous donations to ISSA. Thank you, Pamela, Valerio and Bobby!