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Fly (upper third of the picture, in the middle on a white surface): "I would like to remain anonymous."
Photo: Julio Cortez / dpa
SPIEGEL:
Ha!
We finally have you!
Fly:
I congratulate you.
How did you do that?
SPIEGEL:
We approached you from behind with the cupped hand and then in one quick movement, anticipating your trajectory ...
Fly:
I see, I see.
The old trick.
I condemn your journalistic methods, but I can understand your journalistic interest.
It even flatters me a little.
SPIEGEL:
You are the fly that landed on the Vice President's head during the TV debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence and stayed there for two minutes.
Fly:
That's it.
"We benefit from the shit you build and otherwise fly our own way."
Fly
SPIEGEL:
May we use your name ...
Fly:
I would like to remain anonymous.
We don't get too much attention.
I speak from experience.
Let's leave it with Musca.
SPIEGEL:
Musca?
Fly:
Musca domestica.
Anyone who knows our curiosity and our urge to move can gauge the strength this performance cost me.
It was a political statement.
And I don't want my performance to be instrumentalized by the wrong side in retrospect.
SPIEGEL:
It doesn't often happen that a housefly addresses itself directly to a larger readership.
Fly:
We insects usually do not have much to contribute to human beings.
On the contrary.
We benefit from the shit you build and otherwise fly our own way.
SPIEGEL:
Your appearance is interpreted as a break in the real world into the political circus.
You are not on Facebook, you are not tweeting, you are neither a bot nor a "deep fake".
Fly:
I'm small and black, admittedly.
But I am real and I am there in all of my creatural unpredictability.
Like the virus, if you will.
SPIEGEL:
You transmit dysentery, typhus, cholera ...
Fly:
But no Covid-19!
SPIEGEL:
Was this appearance planned?
Fly:
Of course.
I slipped into the garbage can behind the TV studio five days ago.
The US elections are no longer important to me.
I'll be dead in five days at the latest. But they are crucial for my children, my children's children and their larvae.
Believe me, that's a lot.
SPIEGEL:
Did you follow the debate?
Fly:
Very attentive, at first from a spotlight above the stage.
Glaring light is very attractive to me.
And the vice president's hair is very white.
But that was not the reason for my decision, I want to underline that here.
I could have landed on Kamala Harris's head too.
In the end it was a conscious choice.
SPIEGEL:
Your timing was indeed terrific.
Fly:
Yeah, right?
I was just circling the two candidates, undecided, when Mike Pence mentioned the allegations that the president was prejudiced against minorities.
That was my cue.
SPIEGEL:
You wanted to ridicule him with the touch of your skull?
Fly:
where are you thinking?
I am a Republican housefly!
I wanted to underline the pence statement.
I approached at a fairly acute angle, with 300 wing beats and a speed of three meters per second, and landed softly on the vice-presidential crown.
SPIEGEL:
That is also a sporting achievement.
Fly:
child's play.
But I like to admit that I immediately felt at home in the snow-white dunes of his hair.
It smelled of the fat from the sebum glands, of course, but also of butyric acid, petroleum jelly and sweat.
An irresistible mixture, plus the spotlight, the world public ...
SPIEGEL:
Didn't you consider that this could harm your candidate?
Fly: In
what way?
SPIEGEL:
Insofar as he looked like an old white man who is already haunted by an ambassador of his own impermanence, by a universal symbol of decay, decay, decline ...
Fly:
I have to ask very much!
SPIEGEL: But
that's what it looked like.
Fly:
As a representative of a marginalized species, it was not my intention to make Mike Pence look like a zombie.
But on the contrary.
Here, too, it depends on the speaking position.
We flies are not interested in reason or arguments, and certainly not in humanity.
We can smell who is speaking in the name of Beelzebub, the lord of flies, who is sitting on his right next to the throne of wickedness.
SPIEGEL:
But did it have to be two minutes?
Wouldn't a short stopover have been enough?
Fly:
A valid objection.
I assume that human entrepreneurs support their preferred candidates to the best of their ability.
With a lot of money, without keeping an eye on your own benefit.
As a fly, I don't have the financial means here, and I can't deny a certain egoism.
SPIEGEL:
What are you getting at?
Fly:
Well, Mike Pence's hair is hard as concrete.
The whole world was watching.
It wasn't easy to find a place and a moment where I could put all my 300 eggs ...
SPIEGEL:
Musca Domestica, thank you for this interview.
Fly:
Already over?
Now if you would be so kind as to open your fist again.
Icon: The mirror
