Tsoi and emptiness

Even the “Pioneer Truth” wrote about the death of Viktor Tsoi - the print body of Pioneer, in which there was not a single sincere word. Until on August 15, 1990, a dark-blue “Moskvich-2141” entered the Bely Ikarus-250 at the mysterious Latvian Teytup.

I vaguely remember that note from the “pioneer” - a naive text to piercing about how people cried and crying rain that fell on St. Petersburg on the day of the funeral. I was 9 years old. I discovered the songs of Tsoi for myself in the stuffy summer of the same year - from the cassettes of the older brother, who returned for the holidays from Moscow with Baul of new records. “45” and “chief of Kamchatka”, into which I did not really enter, hooked “this is not love” and, as it seemed to me then, the absolutely knightly “blood group” and “star named the Sun”, in which the hero in the black cloak went into a mysterious crusade. In June 1990, I gained a new hero for myself, and after two months he was gone-he fell, scorched, as he had been inuper. He fell as a star, with a supersonic speed, leaving in the souls of children who have grown up in the 1980s, a vacuum trace, which still sucks emotions. "Follow yourself, be careful, take care of yourself."

“Simple words, intelligible images, uncomplicated melodies,” wrote journalist Yevgeny Dodolev about Tsoi's songs in the 1988 Moscow Komsomolets. This article is recognized as “film scales” by the first of the “cinema” in the Soviet press. In it, Dodolev compares the rock hero, already abnormally popular, with Amanda Lear for the similarity of cat plastics. Now it is unlikely that it would occur to anyone to liken Viktor Robertovich a bigborn of the Italian disco-diva-the cult of Tsoi over 25 past years has become sacred. But about the simplicity of the songs "Cinema" is still repeated. She is confused in Russia, weighed down by searching for meaning. “Tsoi is simple” - an elementary mnemonic rule is difficult to get rid of. Despite the fact that many songs of Viktor Tsoi, who was in a very masterfully operating sentences from two or three words and was carried away by paradoxes, can hardly be decrypted. A quarter of a century has passed, and the song “I am Asphalt” from the very first and considered the weakest album “45” has not become less enigmatical, and the Tseva infinite war, which goes between the earth and the sky, is more explained.

The mystery of Tsoi lies in the dash between the “I” and “asphalt”, in the space between “earth” and “sky”. In the void, in the dash, in the gap. In the absence of a verb, which is unfolding a protracting abyss meanings. In fact, this is not easy - since then no one has been able to defeat Tsoi in the laconicism of the expressions of feelings and aphorism of the message in the song. There were no more such writers in Russia-and the era of the 164-symbol twitter did not give them. And the laconic songs of Viktor Tsoi still ask questions that there is no answer.

Tsoi, a professional wood cutter, operated not with words and sounds, but a place where they were supposed to be. He was a great lord of void, who, like Michelangelovsky Testament, skillfully removed all the superfluous. “Mmm, the eighth-grader” or “U-o-o-o-o-o, tranquilizer” -here it is not necessary to explain anything. Tsoi did not explain, did not load the songs with images and their interpretation, but only cut himself out from everywhere - in songs, at concerts where he does not speak in a microphone of an extra word, at meetings with the audience, in rare interviews. There is an eloquent story on this subject, which flashed in a recent biography Victoria Tsoi, who published in the Lavra of the series “Life of wonderful people” (in which the leader of the “Kino” appears as an ordinary and even ordinary guy). The performance of Tsoi in the concert hall of the Simferopol Music School named after Tchaikovsky. Question from the audience: “Tell me, please, what does it mean“ U-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh, tranquilizer ”?” “Victor, without even thinking, answered:“ U-oo is a meaningless set of sounds, and a tranquilizer is a medicine ... ”” ”

In the iconostasis of Russian rock, except for Tsoi, there is no one. He is a gaping emptiness.

Music "cinema" is also the music of meaningful pauses, gaps, defaults, to which, in the words of Pushkin, the imagination draws the rest. Victor Tsoi dreamed a lot about the right sound. He lacked accessible opportunities - the old equipment of the house at Alexei Vishni and the portastudios donated to the group by the goodwriter Joanna Stingrey. Tsoi worries in almost every famous interview: “If we had premises, equipment, an operator, then you can work with sound. And so as long as the listener has to think out how it would, in principle, sound. ” During his lifetime, he was unable to sign up the way he wanted. The posthumous “black album”, which came out with a million circulation, contains, in fact, sketches of songs. But accustomed to think out the listener and does not distinguish, which he hears only the general idea of ​​Tsoi about a sound in which there are many gaps. The songs "Cinema", memorized by generations as prayers, turned into a canon.

In the iconostasis of Russian rock, except for Tsoi, there is no one. He is a gaping emptiness. They have a whole host of rock and roll martyrs-Baddy Holly, Brian Jones, Kit Moon, Jimi Hendricks, Jim Morrison, Jenis Joplin, Sid Vishez, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain and others. We have all the martyrs-alone. Even Alexander Bashlachev, the life, the song and the death of which were truly mystical, for some reason did not count the saints. In the mass consciousness, Viktor Tsoi is the only hero of Russian rock, the first and last. (It is funny that in the Leningrad rock club Tsoi was considered a “pop-up”-even before he contacted Yuri Isanshpis. Yes, and he himself did not hide that he was doing commercial music, and respectfully treated, for example, to the “affectionate May”, with whom he spoke at the same stadiums.) The death of Tsoi shocked his suddenness-only ascended the star. I exploded and turned into a black hole into which it still drags on. Many were imitated and imitated to the leader of the Kino - from Alice to Zemfira, but no one succeeded in “getting up and singing together”. There were no more such - internally free, smart, fashionable, affordable, laconic and mysterious.

Tsoi disappeared, but the emptiness remained. Like this.