"Streets, my sisters"

The passers -by new Peterhof, looking, like most citizens, under their feet, recently began to see quotes from books on asphalt instead of cigarette butts and garbage. This cultural phenomenon is started, as its author says, "with timid hope to change, if not the world, then at least a separate city"

Marina Ishina, or, as she calls herself, Mara-a young girl who once arrived in St. Petersburg to study at the department of the organ and harpsichord St. Petersburg State University, lives in Petershof for several years, teaches a game on the organ at the school of ancient music, lectures on baroque performing for all comers and writes a newcomer-colored newspaper under the open sky, which was called under the open sky, which she called The first line of the favorite poem of the Polish poet “Street, my sisters”. There are different headings in the newspaper. Under each inscription - whether it is a poem, a fragment of an article, an explanation of a rare foreign word or even a quote about life - a hashtag so that you can find a newspaper on the Internet and read what has already beenhed off with rain or fall asleep with snow.

Go around the obstacle

The idea to publish an open -air newspaper hit Mare in the head when she rolled on a scooter for bread, but not in Peterhof, but in Samara. There was bought and the first pack of chalk. And the first poem, which was published on the asphalt of Peterhof, was the Gospel of the bush of Zhasminova Alexander Kushner. At 12 lines, exactly one crayon left.

Mara was born in Murmansk, raised in Samara, in a family where there were equally engineers and humanities, and the center of the family was a grandfather, an engineer-designer. He told his granddaughter a lot of feeling about nature, taught that the answer should be asked from the river to any most insoluble question, he rolled down under the verses of Russian poets, and fed the soup under the stories of Prishvin. Grandfather shared professional observations. For example, about how the facade of the palace was created on one of the squares of the city and the space in front of it. To the question of the chief architect, what is better to do - a ramp or step, grandfather (then the peer of Mary) said with confidence: “Of course, steps, otherwise the boys will drive bicycles!” “That's why we will make a ramps,” said the chief architect, “to drive, rejoice and do not know any obstacles.”

It is the obstacles to the feeling of both joy and sadness, feelings in general - what is trying to get around or go around Mara, with all the forces of confrontation between the framework and templates of society. And if in childhood it was encouraged and called the “creativity of the child”, no matter what this child did (and Mara wrote poetry, played and invented drawings of a polo, when she was lazy to weed a garden), then at school it suddenly turned into freedom. “When I studied in the eighth grade, an English teacher called my mother to school:“ What happens in the child’s soul if he writes such poems? ” The ill -fated poem was called “My Soul Is Close to the Death” - this was my ordinary mood at school. ”

Mara in her office in the school Cantorum Photo: Alexey Loshchilov for TD

In a word, the way the world was explained at school, Mara categorically did not like it, and for some time she hoped that she had gone and, probably, would resolve soon. After all, Mara could not, people could not be so flat and boring when they have landscapes of Rubens, Froberger Tokkates, Tarkovsky’s poems ...

“Once, when I wrote on the asphalt, a noticeably drunk person approached me. "Wow, what is it?" - "Poems of Tarkovsky." - "Wow, why?" “So that people read.” - "And you think it will work?!" - "Sure!" - “Yes, it cannot be, they need it! Or do you think it will work? " For several minutes he repeated these questions, not taking his eyes off the inscription, and stood above her for some time, after I left. "

Baroque fitness and dress code

When Mara realized that he was “not dissolved”, I had to escape from school to a music school for the theoretical department.

The territory of music, where it seemed to breathe easier, and people around understand you better due to the developed mental organization, in fact it turned out to be not so simple. Despite the constant access to the beautiful, it turned out that theorists, with all due respect, almost completely believe that it is necessary to serve the high art of music - and at the same time suffer and suffer, otherwise what kind of ministry is this. The performance was very given to sports, and from the inappropriate, but present at every step “faster, higher, stronger”, Maru quickly began to shake. But then there was a turn. The girl went to the faullet of the organ and was carried away in earnest both the instrument and the music of the Baroque era. Baroque is the oasis where incredible depths and open spaces were opened for expressing feelings and thoughts. Another thing is that these feelings are not screaming, "not poster." Apparently, that's why there are few people at concerts of baroque music - people are used to the fact that there should be “move” at concerts (even classic ones).

Mara performs with concerts-lectures, often under the open air, which 10 people come to average. For the sake of these ten, or even three or four, the harpsichord, taken from his colleagues for free use. Barorals have a secret brotherhood, they often give each other tools just like that, without rent. The harpsichord weighs from 50 to 80 kilograms, another option is to take a spinet or a clamp for the concert, its weight is half as much, but you still need to load, unload the tool, pay to the loaders, or, if the concert is free and there is no money for the loaders, to call friends and, putting down the sleeves, drag the tool on your own. Sometimes the harpsichord gets stuck in the front doors, and the first spectators who came to the concert help to pull out.

Mara plays on the clavichord before the concert. Photo: Alexey Loshchilov for TD

“Curious situations constantly arise with these concerts when the wind takes off the pages, and the assistant in a panic runs along the nearby surroundings behind white leaves, trying to return everything to place and have time to turn the page in time. And sometimes, when you play in the open air, in a piercing wind, the listeners sympathetically hand you their scarves and sweaters. And in old Kirsh it is cold even in the summer, so there is my concert suit - a hat and a jacket, and not a baroque dress and a wig at all. ”

Gurus of actionism

“I am adding. A man drives up on a bicycle: “So there will be rain! They promised tomorrow! " “So what,” I say, “until tomorrow someone will have time to read.” And then it leaks into the bay. And this is not scary: we use only environmentally friendly materials! ” He went on. And then he returned. "Are you one of those who have recently been banned?" (He could not remember who exactly, said, “like Jehovah's Witnesses”). Then he spoke for a long time that recently they began to ban a lot, instead of solving real problems. He gave examples, reasoned. He also asked: "Are you not a feminist?" I said: from the point of view of ideas - of course, yes, it is close to me, but I do not belong to any public movements. And I write only what tells me life experience, observations and my own conscience. In my opinion, he definitely thought that I was a guru of oppositional actionism. ”

I will wait for you

When Grandfather Mara died, she first encountered real loneliness. Loneliness in its loss. “You feel feelings, and they forbid you to express them, saying“ time heals, ”or“ you have to be grateful and be able to let go, ”or“ everything goes away, and this will pass too. ” And then and which is worse: with an expression of memorized humility, they interpret the care of a loved one in a religious aspect. And here the absurd conventions begin again: “If you eat porridge well, then you will go to heaven and meet your loved ones, if, of course, you also ate porridge well, and it’s not a fact”, ”Mara recalls and adds:“ ”In one of the publications, I wrote about this only one phrase with which I walked inside for several years and listened, grinding these words about what happens with a person further: "I believe that a person after death turns into color, timbre, space, sympathy and inspiration."

Listeners gave Mare after the concert flowers photo: Alexey Loshchilov for TD

After this loss, the girl knows that any conflict - personality and society, or her internal one, is more easily experienced if there are resources to support. “An open -air newspaper is just such a resource, and even to a greater extent, the necessary empty enlightenment.” Support is needed not in the form of girlfriends who will say: “Do not worry”, but in the form of lines of the Rhine: “I will wait for you, how much you have to wait.” This is not a love lyrics. “This is about us, about our disunity. And I understand that these lines can save someone if he is experiencing an acute internal situation. ”

Photo: from personal archive

What is love

"" Girl, what are you writing? " - "Poetry". - "Oh, these are yours?" I do not turn around, but by intonation I understand that they are trying to flirt with me. He asked something inaudible. "What, excuse me?" - I raised my head. Seeing my face, he exclaimed: "No!" And quickly retreated. ”

Mara sometimes happens in Europe and, when it ends up in Munich, goes to an old Pinakotek with friends and acquaintances. Once we went to watch French painting, and unexpectedly the company began to talk about it from the point of view of Freudism. Mara, which this concept is not close, especially in the aspect of the definition of “love”, slowly broke off and went to the Rubens hall, to her beloved portrait “with the wife Isabella”.

"" Unhappy love "is not about the fact that" you like the boy, but you do not. " And the situation when you like the boy, and you immediately tell you: here, you, they say, need to be “determined” - bearing in mind the embedding of your feeling into a certain socially accepted model of relations. And you are sitting together at a desk, talk about music, read books ... And your future that you imagine is not at all like an average idea of ​​a family, an intimate life. And when you try to talk about it, you meet a misunderstanding and, moreover, a huge alarm for you. And this love is in no way inferior to the family with children, houses, nannies and dogs. Rubens, it seems, understood this. Whenever I look at this picture - I understand: their views and arms are what love is for me. And do not "determine". "

Mara photo: Alexey Loshchilov for TD

And in case someone suddenly feels the same, Mara writes on the asphalt that Rubens has this picture, and not just “puffy naked women” with whom the famous Flemish is firmly associated.

“In the process of working on the inscription (about Lorren), they ask:“ Why are you writing this? ” I raise my head - a girl of about ten years old, next to her a younger sister, both on scooters. Apparently, they took me for a high school student. “So that people know who Lorren is,” I say. They stood a little more, devouring their eyes to the text. “Cool,” the eldest summed up. ”

On the streets with a textbook

With the onset of cold weather, the newspaper has to be published less and less. But next year, the Napoleonic plan, in the peak of the Ministry of Education, is ripening in Mara. Recently, the minister said that to study two foreign languages ​​at the school is unnecessary, and that textbooks should be released from foreign borrowing. Mara was inspired: “This means that it is time to implement the nominal headings of the newspaper #Likbez_inaz and #NE_PO_SUSSY. The state has no money to teach languages ​​in schools? So, we will study them on the asphalt! I don’t know how it is - personally I have them not at the level to teach. But this is in any case the case of next year, there is time to think. And buy a textbook, after all. Walking the streets with a textbook! ”

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