"75 wishes" project
/after The Fisherman and the Goldfish/
CD-ROM and Multimedia Screening Project
 
ventsislav zankov

"75 wishes"  on

 

 

75 wishes CD-ROM /interactive video/
/after The Fisherman and the Goldfish/

CD-ROM and Multimedia Screening Project

The wishes
/translation/

 

1.

-        Do I start now?

-        It’s up to you.

-        All right, I think I only have one wish to ask the goldfish for, I don’t have three wishes, and my only wish is… it is whenever I… Hang on, how do I put this in a logical and coherent sort of way… my only wish is that the goldfish fulfils all of my wishes as long as I live.

 

2.

-        Money, money or something… it takes hard work to earn it… three wishes is too few…

-        Right, but they are important, it’s the three main wishes which are… you know, for the rest of your life… wishing for something that is…

-        So, the first one goes … the first one is… the first one is…

-        I can’t hear you

-        The first one is… wait a minute… Ventzi, that’s not a simple question, it’s rather a global one, it’s about existence, about life… it’s about…

-        Well yes, that’s right.

-        It’s not a simple question

-        No, it isn’t

-        It’s not a simple one

-        It isn’t, but you should keep on trying to find out the answers for yourself… constantly… so that you know exactly what you’re doing…

-        So my first wish is… my first wish, for the time being, is to make it up with a friend, whom I haven’t seen for quite a while…

      And second… I’d like to make friends with my sister again… ‘cos that feels almost impossible                too, and the third one … my third wish is…

-        come on, tell me about it

-        My third wish is… to have my own house at the seaside. That’s it.

 

3.

-        Well, if I had this goldfish, or if I caught this goldfish, actually…

My first wish is … it is to realize my professional potential; my second wish is… to have lots of love and many beautiful women around me, and one of them, the most beautiful one…

And my third wish refers to my son, you know, I wish he’d have the same, I mean the two things I just mentioned.

 

4.

-        Three wishes…

-        Right, the goldfish… OK, I want to be independent… of anything, I mean independent of society… men… women… parents… anything… I want to be independent of society, which is impossible… I want to be independent – that’s my first wish, and my second one is… I’d like to experience and live through every single bit of the world! You might find this hard to understand, but I do want it…

 

5.

-     Just three wishes, and nothing more specific about them?

-        Right, just as it happens in the stories; no wishes referring to health; imagine you’ve got the goldfish

-        Perhaps I’d ask her to give me a higher standard of living… well, with all the implications like money and so on… a car… but… it sounds rather unpleasant when you put it in these words…

-        So you want a higher standard…

-        A better standard of living, a better Internet connection… and… beautiful women as well… what else can anyone wish for… that’s all…

-        You have one more wish left

-        Oh, come on, I think I listed all three of them: a better standard of living… … ah, right, the Internet connection is implied in the standard of living, so that’s even better: a higher standard, which implies all the things mentioned; beautiful women… and… I don’t know… perhaps something nice… an event…

-        A single event?

-        Yes, I mean something like a trip; something to remember… like an excursion to the Philippines

-        And that’s all you wish for in your entire life, that’s it, right? I mean these three wishes are for life… and they’re enough for you.

-        Well… I wouldn’t exactly say they’re enough but…

-        What else do you want…? If you had good standard of living, pretty women and travel… what more could you possibly desire…?

-        It’s just occurred to me that after those three wishes came true, I’d start feeling bored again and I’d ask for something else.

-        Well, yes, that’s it, that’s the tricky part of it…

-        I think I’d like to go away somewhere for New Year’s Eve… for example… to Budapest… this New Year celebration…

-        You mean 2001?

-        Mm… you know, the new millennium and all that stuff.

 

6.

-        Can I have just one wish fulfilled three times?

-        One wish coming true three times? What’s that?

-        No, it’s nonsense, I was kidding

-        My three wishes are very simple. First… I’d like to have… an air raid shelter underground.

-        But you should make wishes for a lifetime…

-        Sure, I could use it any time I wanted, that fits in with the definition, right… And the furnishing of this shelter would be… terrific … that is… very… Well, my second wish is… I want to have loads of money

-        I know, that’s… rather…

-        And my third wish is… at this point I’m a little superstitious. If I announce my wish, it might not come true… so I won’t express it in the way which… so, it goes like this – whenever I take up doing something, I’d like it to come out just the way I want it to… And is it possible to make a wish for having five wishes?

-        Ok. Give me two more wishes then.

-        So, they’re kind of secondary wishes… I wish I could give up smoking and start it again whenever I want… no, that’s not true… and I wish I could… die exactly when I want to… well, perhaps I should define this more precisely beforehand…  No, without any… well… I mean… sometimes you could just blurt out “I want to die”, but this is said by your ego, you know; your under-ego is not involved in that…

-        You don’t know exactly how it is involved…

-        You can tell… but if you know it, then you must be absolutely sure…. you see? I mean…

-        This certainty…

-        Well these are my wishes after all!

-        Yes, what’s the second one

-        The second one…

-        … three wishes plus two secondary wishes make five

-        … I wouldn’t like to be… /inaudible/ ……. But still, when you set your mind to think in this direction, so many wishes occur to you, you get all kinds of ideas and whims…

-        … they…

-        oh, it’s nonsense, why would I need an air raid shelter… bla bla bla… underground. I’d rather have a flying saucer.

 

7.

-        “Gitannes”, “Absolute” and more “Absolute”…

-        What?

-        Lots of “Gitannes” cigarettes, plenty of “Absolute” vodka and even more “Absolute”…

-        “Absolute”?!

-        Blue label, if possible…

 

8.

-        I’d like to know what I want… It’s a really tough problem with me, I don’t ever know exactly what I want. Wherever I am, I always wish I were somewhere else; whatever I’m occupied with, I wish I were doing something else… So that’s my first wish…. And then… I don’t know… I guess that once this first wish has come true, I’d take pains to work out the other two wishes… Yes, I just can’t figure them out now because of this problem that’s always been torturing me…

-        I see, you don’t know…

-        …. That’s right. I always feel like I’m standing somewhere “in-between”… I’ve always felt out of place…. I want to find the place where I belong… and if the goldfish could help me…?

-         When you were a little girl, what did you want to…?

-        I wanted to be a dustman.

-        That was when you were young…

-        Yes… so that I could find different sorts of things in the dustbins… and maybe in this way I could understand more about people because I used to like, and I still do like to peer into the lit up flats as I walk along the dark streets at night…

-        Yes, you stare at the flats on the first floor…

-        Right, on the first floor /laughter/  So I might ask the goldfish to fulfill this kind of wishes for me…

-        OK… thanks

 

9.

-        What would you wish for yourself and the people you love. Make a wish for yourself – this means…

-        …. Of course it’ll be for me!

-        … right, for you. Because… imagine the kids would have to answer the same question, you know, what they would like to have, you see, which means that you can’t answer for anybody else but yourself.

-        I’d ask for ordinary things, rather ordinary actually…

-        Go ahead, ask for them. What’s your first wish?

-        So… I want my children to be healthy…. That’s most important to me…

-        Yes and what comes next…?

-        Next… I’d like to fuck you…. and in the third place… in the third place erm… and third…..

-        Come on, say it!

-        I’d like to fuck somebody else too but I won’t tell you this person’s name…

-        No, don’t tell me

-        … not in front of the camera.

 

10.

-        Well, I’d like to be the owner of “Pirin Blagoevgrad” football team; I’d like to be the team’s manager and… I want them to win the European Championship Cup

-        Two more wishes

-        No, I’ve got just one left… the European Championship Cup was my second wish… erm… and… the Club Championship Cup too… I want them to win the Club Championship Cup as well… and that’s it, these are my three wishes…

 

11.

Mateo /speaking in Italian/

 

12.

-        Oh, I’m not prepared to do this right now…

-        That’s the way it should be, come ooon….

-         Nooo…

-         Come on, come on…

-        Oh stop it…

-        Come on… tell me one wish…

-         I don’t have any wishes. I make them come true all by myself. There’s just one – I want CSKA to be the football champion, which doesn’t really depend on me… /laughter/… I can deal with all the other things by myself.

 

13.

-        What do you want… for you personally… in your life…?

-        I want to see Michael Jordan play basketball live. Unfortunately, that’s not possible any longer… I had two dreams about Bulgaria and I’ve told you about them…

-        Tell me again…

-        One was to buy an album by the “Army of Lovers” and the second one was to eat pastry at “Rosa Bella” sweet shop. I’ve realized them both. That’s why I haven’t got anything to look forward to here. It’s not possible to see Jordan either because he’s already quit playing basketball… I’ve seen Metallica perform live in a concert… what can I say… What do I want? I want to speak and write in the same alphabet as the rest of the world – that’s one of my biggest wishes… And I also wish people wouldn’t take things so seriously… People shouldn’t be so serious themselves…

-        No, I’m asking about your personal wishes…

-        Personally… well yes, that’s what I want. I mean I want to have a social environment I can fit in with.

-        I see.

 

14.

-        Imagine the goldfish and your three…

-        I can tell you a joke about it immediately…

-        No, no, no, tell me your three wishes…

-        I haven’t got any wishes.

-        Why not? What is it that you don’t want then…?

-        OK, here’s my first wish: I don’t want Ventzi Zankov to paint a nude picture of me.

-        You don’t want that?

-        Nooo…

-        What else?

-        I wouldn’t allow that…

-        Your second wish?

-         in your dreams… I mean the other two…

-        Is that all?

-        Yes.

-        Why do you look so embarrassed?

-        What? Well I’m not used to standing in front of cameras, perhaps you are aware of that…

-        No I’m not…

-        Hmm…. I’m kidding you silly thing…

 

15.

-        I’d like to meet a prince… riding a white horse. And I want my child to do well in life. In the third place…. I want all my friends to be extremely happy.

-        If there were a goldfish, they could be…

 

16.

-        So give me your three wishes.

-        Three wishes…?

-        It’s about…

-        Three wishes…? Well… my wish… is… to…. marry a very rich husband and to be able to have  all the intelligent men brought together in the same place, communicating with each other because it gives me enormous pleasure to watch some nice guys who complement and help each other; they give each other inspiration and they are always up to something new. For this reason I need a rich and open-minded husband.

My second wish… I’d start immediately… I have an idea for… I want to paint some… I’ve got an idea for a specific kind of painting but I’m not going into details about it… and I’ve got a third suggestion – to make a film about women, erm… they’ve already stolen my idea… John Malcovich….  The camera shows everything as seen through the eye of a woman – just as it is in “Being John Malcovich” and various women are presented in a different state of mind; different themes… something… something like that…. erm…… I can’t remember which film I saw that in, but it was fragmentary… small fragments, states; women who…erm….. this state is presented just….. a woman watching the world around her and all of this is revealed in front of the camera; it’s not… it’s not acting; there’s another way that I’ve figured in my head……..  Well, that’s what I’d like to do now… but that’s quite a lot for me to do…. I’m a bit too lazy in general… If I do all of this, it’ll be… well yes, for the time being… And as for a lifetime… it isn’t… it surely isn’t realistic to make plans for a lifetime…. For a lifetime… I think it’ll take me rather a long time to fulfil the plans I just mentioned.

 

17.

-        Well, there’s something I can’t tell you about; it’s an intimate kind of wish, and I put it as my first wish…. And it’s really really…. personal… What else do I want to have? … First, I want to go away… erm…. second – I want that thing I’m not going to tell you about; and third, I’d like… to have my own art gallery, for example… That’s all.

 

18.

-        Right now!?……………. oh! – I’d like to have a better intuition… and settle my affairs…………. Of course, Ventzi, I’d like to discover my true self – my true self integrity………..

…………. where… there……… My wishes aren’t so pragmatic!……. I want to be a terrorist ….. I mean a true one.

 

19.

-        So I must produce three wishes!?……… the first three wishes that cross my mind? .. Well… I wish I could fly, for example…. erm…. Many wishes have occurred to me but none of them is worth saying…. The other two wishes just aren’t worth saying and I don’t know if…. They’re not just two, they’re a thousand… I should ask the goldfish for something that’s exclusively in her powers to fulfil… So, first, I want to have wings and to be able to fly; second, I’d like to be able to swim under water; and third, I want to…. to… walk underground and breathe there. These are…… that’s all; there’s nothing else. You don’t need a goldfish for anything else.

 

20.

-        So… my three wishes… number one – I’d like… I’m not sure but….oh…. perhaps I’d like to become a star.

-        In which sphere?

-        Which sphere… erm… I don’t know – a star in photography

-        I see…

-        I’d like to be a photographer; that’s something I strongly desire…. My second wish is to… naturally, just like any other person, I’d like to do well in life…. and…. my third wish is… ah?… So, my third wish is……. well…. I don’t know!

-        Come on! Say it!

-        I really don’t know; I’ve no idea…. No, it’s not that I don’t want….. I don’t know….. But!…

-        What?

-        Will the goldfish fulfill these wishes?

-        Oh, I can’t tell you that…

-        OK. My third wish is: if for some reason the goldfish fails to fulfill my wishes, I want somebody else to come into my life and make them come true.

-        That’s great!

 

21.

-        I’ve got three wishes, which are… the three wishes that I’d make – and these are: first – I want to be… I want to live…. forever; second, and maybe this should actually be the first one, I’d like to be able to travel in time and space, to change my position in time and space simultaneously, that’s it…. And third… my third wish is to be able to change my form – my appearance… to change my appearance and my biological kind as well – that’s something… I guess that’s all. These three wishes are absolutely… sufficient.

 

22.

-        What would your wishes be, apart from “long life and good health”…?

-        You mean the goldfish story…?

-         Yes, what would you…?

-        Oh, what a great question to ask!

-        … wish for?

-        Let me see… what would I wish for… first… my first wish is to have a never-ending youth… never to grow old… but…I don’t mean to live forever, I just want to be young forever …

-        Right, I see… you don’t just want to live forever, you also want to be young forever…

-        No, I don’t want to live forever… I’d rather have a normal length of life, only I’d like to be 20 all of the time. That’s my first wish; and the second one is to have love, much love in my life… that’s what I want… and of course, I’d make a wish to have gold, money and riches – you know, this kind of things, because no one can do without them. I’ve got all the other things that I need; there’s nothing to moan and groan about. So these are my wishes… yes, that’ll do.

 

23.

He speaks in Greek, which is his native language, and then he translates in English

-        OK, I’ll say it in English now… Well, actually I was thinking that if I find this fish, my first desire would be to have as many as desires I want… anywhere, in any place, in any time… the other second wishes I’ll just give’em to the poor people; to the… to the dogs; to the fish as well, so… can do I want OK…… basta

 

24.

-        … three wishes… beyond life!?

-        … apart from “long life and good health”. I mean everybody wants to have “long life and good health”, so that’s something we should ignore.

-        Nooo, I…  I know what I want.

-        OK

-        I’d like to be assured of what I do and why I do it, and to be fully devoted to it.

-        So that’s your first wish…

-        Yes, that’s my first wish – I want to make sure I do what I really want to do; my second wish is… to feel that I’m alive… to be aware of… to know that… that I have children, who… I guess the children will give a real meaning to my life.

-        Aren’t you trying to project your personal failed dreams upon your children…?

-        No… I’ll never do that…

-        Why do you consider your children as the meaning to your life then?

-        Well that’s exactly what I mean… I want to find the reason to live and to be assured of what I do and to manage to… give them… to provide my children with everything they need… 

-        Don’t you think they could find a different meaning for their own lives, erm…. which isn’t exactly your meaning….

-        Of course … of course they could…

-        So they can’t possibly be…

-        … never! Never…

-        the meaning to your life…

-        it’s my parents’ example that I’d like to follow… my mother and my father’s. They’re musicians and I’m sure that… they’ve never tried to manipulate me in this way – they’ve never wanted me to realize their own failed dreams and plans…. and I know…. it’s that model I’d like to copy; I want to make it possible for my children to make their own choices…

-        What is it that you’d like to do? Apart from your children, leave alone the children…

-        Well I’m a romantic kind of person… I used to have a talent when I was young. I play the violin…

-        What was your third wish?

-        My third wish is… to… die without regretting anything; I want to be sure all my life has been…. /laughter/

-        Wow!  That’s great… that’s simply…

-        … and I’d rather not ask questions about why I have to die, just because I’d be happy and content with the life I had…. /laughter/…. that’s all… /laughter/

 

25.

-        I can still remember one… evening… in Sozopol. We were three men and a woman. The woman’s name was Katia. She was very beautiful. I…

-        … perfect body…

-        …perfect body… her zodiacal sign was Aries…. she was extremely attractive… and assertive…  There were Emil Valev – “the Violet General”, Ventzislav Zankov – “the Bloody… King” and hmm Orlin Dvorianov – I don’t know…

-        and so…?

-        the village teacher…

-        hahaaahahaa…

-        right. So, we get together and start courting this lady …erm…

-        /a voice coming from aside/ … all three of you at the same time?

-        Of course…

-        The three of us courted her and I got this marvelous idea to pretend that we were women and she was a man because otherwise we were three men and it would have been too tough – we would have killed each other over her, ermmm…

-        /a voice from aside/ ….there’s this thing by Jung …

-        …and when some…

-        / a voice from aside/…the thing is that…

-        and so… wait a minute….

-        …. well I’m not exactly Jung but I’m close to his kind… you know… juuunnn…

-        … ha!

-        … /in Russian/ “junii” artist  (a young artist)

-        right, a young artist… what happens next?

-        Well yes… so.. haha ; I’ve held Ventzi in high esteem ever since…

-        Mmmm…

-        You’re going to publish this…?

-        Sure. Absolutely…

-         /everybody’s laughing/

-        while he was… he was being rude and he said “let’s see if she has any tits” and he rushed ahead of her to check how she looked at the front; then how she looked from behind; and at some point he sank deep into contemplation and… was overcome with a romantic mood – I guess the moon exerted its influence upon him. He started talking about the high tides and low tides, and the moon, and romance… It was then that each one of us made his three wishes…

-        ..that’s right…

-        …erm… Ventzi’s wish was… actually he had three wishes but they could successfully be reduced to just one version of a wish: “I want to keep getting a hard-on”

-        Hahaaahahhahaaa….

-        This was Ventzi’s wish… hahaha… I have such good memory!…..Ermm… Emo Valev’s wish was to have his own studio; a music studio… and… perhaps something else too… an artificial extension for his dick… I don’t know…

-        Hahahaha…

-        Ermm… I … my wish was to have a frying pan full of hot oil and the goldfish to plop into it…

-        Hahahahahahahahaa…

-        At this point they all got angry with me, for no obvious reason…

-        Hhaahahahaha…

-        … and they said I’d ruined their evening…

-        Hhaaahahahaa… Orlin, you’re just perfect, man!….

-        … what else is there to say… no, I’m not. If I were perfect, I’d always be getting a hard-on… /everybody’s laughing/

-        /a voice from aside/… oh come on…

-        hahahahaha

-        /a voice from aside/ What about the woman…!?

-        Look, this refers to “past, present and future” … /laughter/… these are the three forms of getting a hard-on…

-        /a voice from aside/ What happens further in the story…!?

-        … let’s go and get drunk together some time soon…

-        … The woman… later on she called us on the phone from Plovdiv. She was an economist and she was involved in some kind of…. komsomol business, whatever it was… and she said: “Here’s a mermaid calling…”

-        hahahha…

-        … from the seaside…”

-        hahahahahahaa…

-        it was Kateto…

-        ah right, Kateto….

-        … She was pretty cool!… And there was another striking event; it was…

-        Tell us about it, it was the crucial moment…

-        … and it was the very struggle…

-        /a voice from aside, speaking in Russian/ I can hear you…

-        It was the competition between us – three stags…. while we were trying to get off with the lady, pretending to be women ourselves. Ventzi was a bad young girl who had been locked away in a school for underage criminals … erm…

-        Juvenile delinquents institution.

-        That’s right, a juvenile delinquents institution… the “Violet General” pretended to be a punk chick and I was an aging… hahaha… lady in her forties, and I acted as if I was drowning in the water, so that the man would rescue me…

-        What kind of man did she pretend to be?

-        She was just an ordinary guy… a guy that had to pick up one of us, you know, and had to rescue me from drowning… but then she and Ventzi swam out into the sea… I don’t know what they did there; the only thing I know is… I suspect… because Ventzi found it really hard to get out of the water afterwards  hahahahahha…. He got caught in the waves and he moaned “oh” and “ouch”, as he was struggling to… to conceal some parts of his body underwater…. After that he said he dreamed a strange dream about dolphins which had been slaughtered with an axe and he was rescuing them… the rescuing of the dolphins. Later on Ventzi… Ventzi and the “Violet General” erm… got ill with the usual…. Having diarrhea when on holiday at the seaside is quite a natural thing. When… when you got that… ah… that’s the most curious part of the story. It’s… it’s what happens when you’re unable to foresee the oncoming events; so, I expected you to get the diarrhea and I was on the watch for that!… And you started to feel sick one by one – the “Violet General” was the first because of excessive drinking and shitting; then it was Ventzi’s turn… I comforted him, I was a friend in need, he surely remembers that; I gave him pills…

-        That’s right…

-        … pills for his diarrhea and headache and so on… afterwards I abandoned him ‘cos we had a date with the woman I was telling you about. We had a date on the beach…

-        ……….

-        No. She had a date with the tree of us together. However, I got rid of them, you see, ‘cos they had diarrhea…

-        … and how did you manage to…

-        I guess I drink more... or perhaps I can hold my bowels longer at times. I don’t know…

-        Hahahahaaaa

-        And then I rushed to the beach… he was suffering badly; he was left lying on a couch – it was a terrible situation, you see – some wretched narrow couch and Ventzi was rolling writhing on it. The “Violet General” was with his bassist Evgueni, writhing there too … So I rushed to find the lady… Alas! She! Had! Diarrhea! Too!

-        Hahhahhaahaha

-        I was the only one to survive… hahahaha… and I was left alone – it’s my karma – I always find myself standing alone because everybody else is shitting…      

 

 

 

Ventsislav Zankov 2000-2002

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