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For ideological reasons, the author does not consider it necessary to use any leads and headings for this text. In addition, the same ideological reasons dictate the absence of any links and images in the text. This is the fundamental position of the author, and it does not need comments, being part of the author’s statement.

I think everyone present watched Twin Peaks, because in our business we can’t live without it. And, of course, everyone remembers the famous scenes in “The Black Lodge” (which, of course, is never black and never a wigwam). And, of course, everyone remembers the Man from Another Place, who happily lived in this very Black Lodge.

In general, the Black Lodge itself is not a Lynchian idea at all, and it appeared for the first time in our Aleister Crowley. Around the same place, Crowley also says that the entrance to the Black Lodge opens only under favorable astronomical circumstances. And the Black Lodge itself is the home of some chthonic forces that accumulate in its wilds - what? - That's right, Gnosis.

The Man from Another Place, Lynch's resident of Wigwam, is a dwarf, as you and I all remember very well. In general, if we take some ancient cultures, then one way or another a dwarf appears there, who either keeps secret knowledge or is responsible for the sin. This may give rise to the idea that there is only one step from secret knowledge to gross sin, but I don’t want to develop this idea, sorry.

Stories about dwarfs and secret knowledge in some form appear everywhere - from the ancient legends of Italy or Finland to Yamal, Chile, India, or, excuse me, Guadeloupe. The same motif is repeated everywhere - there is some kind of chthonic dwarf (his name, of course, changes depending on nationality), who lives underground, and at night seduces those who manage to be on his path, if they agree to the sin, promising to reveal secret knowledge, or promising to pay for the refusal with a generous portion of nightmares. What is symbolic is that in most cases those who agree to intimacy with a dwarf disappear somewhere, leaving behind only a memory. The alternative here is public humiliation, as in the case of the African sodomite Popobava.

Armenian myths about Gnostic dwarfs have a special eschatological charm. In the Armenian version, these dwarfs live at the end of the world, and they appear in a very original way - these are the same people, with the only difference that they received the Same Knowledge for their use in exchange for growth. If you believe these legends, the more knowledge spreads across the planet, the fewer people there will be. Eventually, all people will achieve the ability to pass through the eye of a needle, and then the apocalypse will come. Apparently, everyone will die in line through the eye of the needle. A charming end to human civilization!

Once, when I was at school, one of my classmates survived an attack by a dwarf on a trolleybus. He doused her with some liquid from a tiny bottle and ran out the open doors. I don’t know whether it was an attempt to share secret knowledge, or just a little psychosis, but there was a lot of noise. However, who knows, maybe the path from trying to share intimate knowledge to psychosis is shorter than it seems.

But this whole excursion was just a saying; the fairy tale, as they say, is ahead.

Many years ago, director Steven Spielberg shot the wonderful film “Close Encounters of the Third Type,” where the Incomprehensible suddenly bursts into the lives of bored, well-behaved residents of a provincial American city. The incomprehensible is embodied in the form of a huge number of flying and shining objects, which ultimately turn out to be not just illuminated pots, but messengers of an alien civilization. It all ended in the most epic way - a full-fledged contact took place, the flying saucer glitched heartily with light and sound, humanity responded with an equally worthwhile glitch - and that’s kind of where it all ended. Why am I saying this? Moreover, this film perfectly shows what the Incomprehensible can bring when it invades our lives.

This is just one example. I don’t want to go into rather abstract and dubious discussions about the causes and sources of such Incomprehensible, let’s leave this to the will of dreamers and visionaries. The essence of my statement today is different.

Imagine that ordinary life for you and me is actually surrounded by a huge amount of the incomprehensible. Much of the time it lurks in the fog of the unknown, and only sometimes breaks through into everyday life, raising its tentacles above the swamp of routine. Agree that this way life can be much more interesting and unconventional, which, in general, is what is required of it.

Have you heard about the Kyshtym Dwarf?

The story of his heroic and incomprehensible fate is complicated and sad, especially in the context of that very epic Russian Despair, against the backdrop of which this most worthy plot unfolded. It is beautiful in itself, and it has everything you need, but even more is necessary in the documentary film dedicated to it, shown on the NTV channel a dozen and a half years ago. Perhaps this is the best thing that Russian television has created.

A crazy old woman goes to dance in a cemetery during a thunderstorm. In the rumble of thunder and reflections of lightning in the cemetery grass, she finds Something. She brings him home and calls him grandson.

Alyoshenka.

It's hard to imagine a better start to a sinister and tragic story. Considering that everything is happening in a tiny and hopeless city in the Southern Urals, this takes on a completely macabre color.

The beginning of this story already makes you understand. And it doesn’t matter what exactly we expect to understand. The scene of finding the Dwarf is worthy of either the best of film noir or one of Lovecraft's classic plots.

Some kind of field. Three sorcerers. “Our entire street was illuminated from that well over there. Like a spotlight. And it flew away." Then these same people perform some incomprehensible ritual, butting each other with deer antlers. And immediately the next scene, where a man with the appearance of a typical tractor driver declares that the alien creature looked like dry undergrowth, and would be quite suitable as a snack.

Alien creature. Podleschik. Snack.

All this happens in the city of Kyshtym. I think that a visit to this city can be included in the program of studying the Russian Spirit. Abandoned buildings, dust, red rivers from industrial emissions, complete decadence in the air. Do you remember Veleentor’s album “Pus of the Earth”? Sak-Elga and everything else? This is right next door. But with a completely different flavor.

“Sergei did not see the alien guest, since at that time he was imprisoned for robbing a dumpling shop.” What do you know about decadence? WHAT?!

Country kitchen, woman reading poetry. The half-dead drunk man is carefully laid on the floor. Is this postmodern? No, this is Russia!

“The daughter-in-law went to weed the garden, and Tamara’s neighbors sent her to a mental hospital.” Apparently, only the lazy did not see the alien spawn. "Acute schizophrenia." What, everyone? There's an unknown thing walking around her apartment, and they're talking about acute schizophrenia.

Filming from 20 years ago, thoroughly imbued with the aesthetics of post-Soviet footage and VHS video. A very strange combination. In front of the camera, they twirl a mummified something in their hands - too small even to be called a dwarf. I don't know what it is, honestly. Immediately I remember Conan Doyle's fairies, or heaps of fake mermaids, skillfully assembled from monkeys, horse mackerel and copper wire. A bald woman talks to a doctor about how she lived with an alien dwarf. He complains that the dwarf refused to breastfeed. She seriously considered him her son. Existential nightmare, loneliness and decline.

Of course, this could not but interest the Japanese. Do you even know anything perverted that might not interest the Japanese? However, the Japanese, suffering from aesthetics, did not manage to communicate with the main heroine of the celebration. Why? On the day of their arrival, she went to dance in the middle of the road. For what? But I wanted to. Of course, when you are an old woman suffering from schizophrenia, you should dance in the middle of the road with extreme caution. She may not have known about it because she was hit by two cars at the same time. She died, of course.

“While my husband was finishing his sentence, a certain Slavik took his place. He also saw Alyoshenka.” Slavik appears. And he declares that what he saw was a blue-eyed “pure alien.” He ate, sat and stood. And he was hairy. Despite the fact that past witnesses claimed that he was bald, and they said nothing at all about his eyes. “He looks like a Japanese,” Slavik declares authoritatively, and goes off to collect non-ferrous metal on the street.

“And at that time it died out!” — Slavik reports about the sad fate of the mysterious dwarf. Apparently everyone just forgot about him.

This strange creature, if it really existed, could not find peace even after death. They dried him in the sun, mummified him, and then tried to bribe him from the police. An alien dwarf, yes. Pay off the police. I can't even imagine how majestic this scene was.

And here the Investigator also appears. Almost like Agent Cooper, only in Russian. “He was the only one who tried to understand this story soberly.” Comprehensive characteristics.

In general, it turns out funny - judging by the accumulation of characters and the dubiousness of their actions, everything that happens can be quite imagined as a Russian version of Twin Peaks. Unless instead of a dead schoolgirl wrapped in cellophane, who knows what, and perhaps alien. But, comrades, this is Russia, there is no other way here.

“- You came and you drank?
- Certainly!
“Then this creature appeared?”
“Yes, it came out!”

An interview with another witness to the existence of an unknown creature is interrupted by drunken screams. These people are extremely unlucky with their place of residence. After all, one of the largest nuclear disasters in the Soviet Union occurred very close in the 1950s. However, how does this relate to the almost universal intoxication of the participants in the drama?

“What was that?
- Ejection.
- Where?
“From there (the drunk woman points up with her hand).”

The frame slowly darkens.

Too eloquent to need comment.

The investigator states that he kept the dwarf in the refrigerator in his kitchen, which earned him the wrath of his own wife. Alyoshenka had to be given to the sectarians. Recordings of conversations with sectarians can touch everyone. Of course, they don’t talk about Nibiru, but the general vector of development of the idea points there.

“Exit is difficult due to annihilation-light activity.” The sectarians are ultimate in their madness. And that's great. A desperately vibrating woman with bunny ears on her head howls to bombastic music. The investigator claims that sectarians use the dwarf as a witchcraft fetish. Well, what else can a dwarf be used for?

“Tell me, can aliens live on earth?
- Of course not. They are not masochists!”

Now let's go back to the beginning and restore the chain of events. A crazy old woman in a remote Russian province finds a completely incomprehensible creature, which sectarians and the Japanese begin to hunt for, the old woman dies, the mummy disappears, the Japanese are disappointed. And all this happens against the backdrop of the absolute indifference of those around him to what is happening and intoxication, in comparison with which Boris Yeltsin is a great ascetic.

“Are you sorry that Alyoshenka died?
- What do I care? Is he my man or something?”

Devastation, alcoholism and hopelessness. Yes, people die from this, but here is an incomprehensible alien creature.

On an old videotape there is a bald woman aged from sixty to infinity. She's obviously insane. They tell her that the dwarf has died. She begins to sob inconsolably. Without further ado. Behind her is the building of a provincial mental hospital, almost rooted into the ground. Perhaps she was the only one who took what was happening seriously.

Against the backdrop of a slowly dying city, above which factory chimneys stick out like quills on the back of a porcupine, a woman with a touch of abstract intelligence on her face walks through the hills. She talks about hope and chance that is worth believing in. At home, her unconsciously drunk roommate in desperately dirty clothes is waiting for her, sleeping on the floor.

I don't know what it was. A drunken hallucination, mass hysteria amid the discovery of banal bio-garbage, or, what is completely incomprehensible, an unsuccessful attempt at an alien invasion. Nobody knows. By and large, it doesn't matter. Whatever it was, it, to use the terminology of the participants in the events, “died away,” and solely due to a collision with the reality of an ordinary city somewhere on the outskirts of Russia. And it seems to me that it is hardly possible to find a performance more symbolic than this.

The Belgian Situationist Raoul Vaneigem once recently stated that anything can still happen in Russia. It really can happen, now you know it yourself.

Anything can happen in Russia. And, moreover, I am sure that this will not surprise anyone.

“Where is the dwarf?

- He died. But he did not live in vain. »