| Today marks ten years since the death of Viktor Tsoi Early in the morning of August 15, 1990, Viktor Tsoi died in a car accident at the age of 28. On a deserted highway near Riga, his Moskvich crashed into an Ikarus. Death came instantly. The examination showed the absence of alcohol in the blood. “Analysis of brain cells indicates that he fell asleep at the wheel, probably from overwork” (this is from the medical examiner’s report). Ten years is not such a short period of time. Even more than the entire history of the Kino group, whose first magnetic album was released in 1982. Over these ten years, the word “film fan” has come to mean not those who love films, but those who love “Cinema”.
The girl Katya, 21 years old, is a convinced film fan from St. Petersburg. I came to Moscow by hitchhiking for two days - collecting money for a bouquet. “You have richer people here. It is best to ask after six in the evening on Novy Arbat from drunk men. If you ask “for a ticket”, they don’t believe me, so I say that there’s not enough for beer, then they give it willingly and a lot.” Of course, who wouldn’t want to treat a pretty girl to beer? When he returns to St. Petersburg, he will buy a huge bouquet of yellow roses and go to the grave. “Vitya loved only roses. And yellow is actually his favorite color. The color of the sun." Asks to spend the night. My apartment is full of people, so I ask you to wait in the yard - I need to consult. We collectively decide to let Katya in for the night, to put her on a cot in the kitchen, and in the morning to wash all the dishes. Katya is reluctant to wash dishes, but then she gets carried away and washes the stove on her own initiative. Nice girl.
Tsoi in Korean means “height.”/ He comes from a noble family./ But what attracts people about Tsoi is simplicity,/ And others have more sophisticated words.// Descendant of the noblest blood,/ You sang among us, head and shoulders above everyone else,/ And, dragging people along with you, / You remained our guy... She writes such poems. She’s embarrassed to read out loud, so she first writes it down on a piece of paper, and then asks hopefully: did you like it? A poetic critic would note that exact rhymes alternate with assonance ones in the correct order.
It really is simplicity. Today you can’t listen to the sophisticated texts of BG without getting bored. In the songs of “Kino” there are only the most commonly used words. “There is time, but there is no money, and there is nowhere to go for a visit” - with this line the glory of “Kino” began, first underground, then semi-official, and then nationwide, when in June 1990 more than 60 thousand people came to the concert in Luzhniki . Then the cult began. And the good thing about the line is that there is no subtext in it. Saving money. Pure impressionism of a city dweller at the end of the century. If Tsoi comes across a metaphor - one for ten songs - then it will certainly be simple, accurate and unexpected: “And in the kitchen the gas is burning like a blue flower”; “I’ve worn down more than one pick on a string grater.”
The plots are just as simple: walks around the city, forced idleness, cinema, tea in old apartments, rain, night. I come out of the front door, open my umbrella./ I go out into the flow of precipitation . Sometimes a small amount of restrained oriental irony is added, which suddenly begins to sound unexpectedly weighty. Tomorrow, somewhere in one of the hospitals/ The hand of a young surgeon will tremble,/ Someone in the forest will run into a mine.// Watch yourself, be careful./ Watch yourself . This is not at all like what enthusiastic fans call rock poetry. Tsoi always adequately assessed his texts: “I don’t write poetry. Only songs." But some lines are so precise and concentrated that it’s simply impossible not to call them poetry: I knew it would be bad, / But I didn’t know it would be so soon.
Katya is going to buy a pair of wedding rings - she will wear one and bury the second on Tsoi’s grave. “I want to go to Vita. I was even going to commit suicide, but suicides go to hell, and Vitya goes to heaven. That's why I started shooting up heroin. I decided: I’ll die at thirty from an overdose.” Then, apparently, straight to heaven. She doesn’t need anyone: “I’ve already fallen in love once.” The face is clean, bright and smiling.
Tsoi is called the singer of loneliness, depression, and loss. This is not true. The depressiveness of his songs is apparent. But if you have a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, / It means that everything is not so bad today. / And a plane ticket with a silver wing, / Which, when it takes off, leaves only a shadow on the earth. Even his most hopeless songs sound, if not cheerful, then calm and confident.
Katya checks to see if the documents are lost. Behind the cover of my passport I notice a pension insurance card. “Why do you need her? You're going to die at thirty." - “It will come in handy, this is a document.” Then he sits down in front of the mirror and combs his incredible mop of blond curly hair for ten minutes. He takes deodorant out of his purse. No, after all, real drug addicts don’t behave like that. “What are you saying, I can’t live without drugs,” says Katya. “My hands are shaking.” She holds out her hands. Hands don't shake. God bless you, Katya, with health and a good groom.
Paradox: Tsoi became a legend of Russian rock, essentially having nothing to do with rock. Film buffs will kill me, but the sound of Tsoi’s music is almost pop, pop. I don’t know what to call the music of “Cinema” - new wave, indie pop, lightweight gothic romance, but it’s definitely not rock. No excesses, no confession, no frantic screaming. The “Russian rock” that sounds today - “DDT”, “Aquarium”, “Alice” - is heard as a petrified exhibit of a cabinet of curiosities. Kino songs, on the contrary, fit perfectly into the format of modern FM radio stations. They are more modern than Zemfira and Bi-2. So Kinchev recalled: “I don’t want to say bad, but Tsoi was very aware of the situation. He listened to, tracked and analyzed everything that was fashionable. “Tender May” is in fashion, which means we need to take something from there.”
But Kino, of course, is not Tender May. There is some incomprehensible purity of the genre in Tsoi’s music, which is also evident in his biography. And in the songs, if you read all the lyrics in a row, the motif of a forced path stands out. “You go there / Where you don’t want to go” (“The Last Hero”); “The train is taking me / Where I don’t want to go” (“Electric Train”); “My place is on the left, / And I have to sit there” (“Trolleybus”). And finally, an excerpt from “Strange Tale” that explains everything. And then she will come./Get ready, she’ll say, let’s go,/Give your body to the earth.../Well, the body didn’t finish singing a little,/Well, the body wasn’t given enough love./It’s a strange thing...It’s just that Tsoi was a man who knew what duty was. He felt that there was something in life worth serving. What kind of depression is there?
In the morning we buy Katya a baked potato at Kroshka Potato, have a final beer, and say goodbye. “It’s a pity, under Vita there were no such potatoes yet. I know he would definitely like it."
Photo captions:
The photo is old, black and white, but you can be sure that Tsoi’s scarf is yellow. His favorite color
"I am alone. But that doesn't mean I'm lonely." Alexey MEDVEDEV |
|
