Jonas Mekas

DEAR FRIENDS,

When Jonas, in 1964, got me a grant of $ 10 a week, he helped me,
when he brought me to New York and showed my films he be-
came one of my fathers,
when he beat me in a vodka drinking bout, he astonished me,
when he kept my bicycle in his living room for years, friendship
assumed a new meaning for me,
when he established his diary style of views and glimpses, he
forced me to put him into my category of special rascals like Bu-
ñuel, Brakhage, or Anger, whose work I have to envy,
when I saw him prepare yogurt for his daughter, I understood
why: out of a small container, he was cutting yogurt with a spoon
and placing the slides one by one on a cool white plate, careful not
to break them nor to destroy the consistency. Very slowly, very,
very carefully. Such love in the preparation of each single bite I had
witnessed only once before. It was in a Viennese early-morning
market kitchen. "Imagine every piece as a bite in the mouth, don't
just chop," the great cooking lady had said, as she cut the meat for
the goulash.
Jonas has realized that, whatever paradise there is, it should be
here and now. Loving care is a key to it. Like Arlecchino, the never-
resting lover, he moves on and moves in.

SINCERELY,

PETER KUBELKA

[Texte publié dans To Free the Cinema. Jonas Mekas & The New York Underground, David E. James ed., Princeton University Press, 1992]