It is very early morning in Kraków and a taxi plus Marek Choloniewski with his little van come over to pick us up.  On our short way to the train station, Choloniewski talks.  It is obvious that he must be aware of what the other musicians told us about their—totally negative—feelings regarding, among others, insufficient rehearsal time, missing microphones, cables, administrative impotence of those involved etc.  He is not exactly apologetic, he is just finding excuses to offer his take on what happened last night, or, rather, what was happening for many hours the fateful day before.  Concurrently, he seems to be sorry – and not to be sorry.  Either way, we sense in him an admixture of relief we are going away, but also discomfort, lack of confidence, stubborn denial, honest regrets.  Too little too late, we think; finding fault with other people—like some Polish musicians whose expectations were apparently "too excessive''—is not a good thing, either.  But again, we cannot stress strongly enough that we do not blame him personally, only the colossal sack-full of work he willingly put on his shoulders while reserving all the decision-making to himself. 

It was obvious from the beginning that Choloniewski's assistants, including the friendly Marta, did not feel they were empowered to make any decisions – and he ended up doing practically everything by himself.  The man does not know how, or does not want, to delegate.  Delegating is an art in itself and it takes a lot of goodwill and experience to let others do things for you.  To believe that other people are capable of helping you project your own vision onto reality, that they can help you make it reality without compromising your values and, more than that, that they can enrich the process through their own contributions, is hard.  Personalities as strong as Choloniewski's often seem to be immune, even impervious, to such beliefs. 

Disappointingly, it does not look like Choloniewski can ever do any better, unless he overcomes his insecurity and decides to share his "power" and, even more importantly, to reduce the number of artists whom he invites to perform at his festival, ridden as it is by financial problems.  There is no point, really, to push for more when it is being proven time and again that less is, and in this case certainly could be, much more.  Also, there is no point in making hurtful decisions as to which artist is the "more important" than others for it will only lead to conflicts.  And this was our main complaint: Choloniewski chose to ignore our needs—our programmes take several hours to prepare them well—and, for some inexplicable reason, decided that the French noise creep needed and deserved more time than us (probably because he and his video partner used eight computers in total for the garbage they showed, versus our two).

Jerry summed it up best: 'Choloniewski totally underestimated us and then did not want to, or could not, find the right balance between the two acts performing on the same bill.  He refused to acknowledge our needs to the very end'.

The most harshly felt aftermath of the concert in Kraków is Piotr's behaviour.  He practically goes bananas.  Even the Buddha which he carries all the time cannot help.  He is so scary the others run away and hide in the dining car.  You chuckle?  You should've seen him then.  Lucky those who didn't.

Some time later, when the stress abated and his conduct became more appropriate, he admitted freely that on that evening in the Bunkier Sztuki and the following morning he was revisited by the demons he had left behind years ago.  He could not stop giving in to fears that the whole tour would be hell, like during that very first Audio Art performance.  This was Poland of Piotr's early years, Poland drenched in a maze of ignorance, arrogance, indifference, combined with envy, anger, contempt and rudeness towards anything out of the ordinary and, to make things worse, unprofitable.  Being there with five other people, for whom he felt he was responsible, and whom he 'dragged' into 'all this' (his words), only added to the incredible emotional pain and mental terror, which then resulted in the outburst of misguided and misplaced aggression.

That was later, but at the moment things are close to a snapping point.  The group is falling apart – and this is but the beginning of the tour.  Piotr walks in what he afterwards calls 'a physically felt cloud of negative energy' and all the others avoid him at any cost. The tension is unbearable.