"The soil that I have under my feet, I created myself"

Alexander Gorbachev talks with Boris Grebenshchikov about the war, music, emigration - and when the pain passes

In mid -September, the Aquarium group released the “House of all saints” - its first album with new songs over ten years. There is only one song written after February 24, but the album is still felt as a statement, including the war in Ukraine. The leader of the Aquarium Boris Grebenshchikov immediately after the beginning of the invasion publicly condemned what was happening; All his performances in Russia and Ukraine are canceled - but the musician is now performing in different countries of the world with charity concerts in support of Ukrainian refugees. At the request of the publication of The Village, the editor of the cold and music journalist Alexander Gorbachevtalked with Grebenshchikov. "Cold" publishes this conversation.

In order not to miss the main materials of the "cold", subscribe to our Instagram and telegram .

I was struck by your post on Instagram on September 23. Well, that is - everyone around repeats the word “fucked up” in different ways and are completely immersed in the surrounding darkness, and at this time you congratulate on the day of the autumn equinox. Is this some kind of attempt to resist what is happening?

- No, no attempt. I just congratulate everyone on the equinox. As for the darkness: you know, I am striking in the naivety of people who all this time believed what could be different. It could not be otherwise, and it was clear almost from the beginning of the century. So it was necessary to cry then, and not now. But then everyone was happy.

But the fact is that, no matter how bad and terrible, no one cancels neither the sky, nor the sun, nor life, nor love, nor everything else. And when everyone is crying, wave their hands and shout, this is just in the hands of the demons. There is such a category of creatures - demons: they promote evil, live at the expense of evil. What do they need? They need that we, all other people, feel bad, scary, in the mud, crushed, killed. War is war, it is impossible to cancel it with our emotions. It happens anyway, so it makes no sense to tear your hair about this. It is better to think about how each of us can help the victims of the war.

And when it became too late, in your opinion? We met in New York seven years ago, and then you said that while Russia was a free country.

-I probably meant something else. The country cannot be free. Only people can be free. What is the country in general? This is the earth, or it is people, or perfumes, or the whole complex of relations between them - what?

I would say that this is a combination of people and the apparatus that they built to maintain their association.

- Here you go. And if there is an apparatus, then there is no freedom. Any viable system primarily takes care of maintaining itself intact and safety. And this means - to punish those who can be a threat to this.

I have to admit to you. After February 24, I, like many, indulged in complete decline and despair. And one of the thoughts that somehow supported me was this: when the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Boris Grebenshchikov composed songs for the “Blue Album” in Leningrad and, in general, did the right thing. In this sense - how much is the current situation for you?

- The situation is completely different. In the 1980s, the war in Afghanistan was somewhere very far. It was important not to get into the army. Life in Russia, in fact, the war concerned only in the sense that sick, killed and crippled people passed from Afghanistan. And against this background there was an ordinary life in which no one thought about Afghanistan. In any case, I can answer for those with whom I talked: Mike, Tsoi, all-all-all.

You see, Soviet people grew in a situation of doubles. Officially, it was necessary to say this, but unofficially - completely different. We absorbed it with mother's milk. I remember that. Here on TV they show something, and everyone knows that this is a lie. That on the streets they say completely different, think, feel. And there was no connection between one and the other, between the fictional Soviet Union and the real life.

So what was said officially, no one obviously believed. There was no question of this. This is not the situation, as it is now, when a huge number of people living in Russia are fighting to make a demonic dream by their own, because they were processed so that they completely forgot that they have a soul, consciousness and conscience there.

That is, now more filthy times?

- Now it has become scary for the souls of people. And I worry about those people whom I know and who are now in Russia. We want it or do not want it, but there is serious pressure on the psyche.

And what do you think, why did it happen at all? After all, this is a paradox-in the Soviet Union, where there was no Internet and at least some freedom of the press, there was duality, and now a lot of people believe in the same TV, theoretically having the opportunity to choose.

- Honestly, this question is simply impossible to answer. In general, I am a little surprised by the topic that we say.

Let's talk about music. “The House of All Saints” is the first album of Aquarium with new songs after “Arkhangelsk”, so I mentally compare them all the time. And now what conclusion I came: “Arkhangelsk” also began quite gloomy, but there was a feeling that this album paves a certain way from darkness to the light, to a certain conscious acceptance of the environment and the ability to live with it. “The house of all saints” is felt differently: there is no way from darkness. The album exists, as it were, in the flicker mode between one and the other: there is no way out of the darkness, and there is no shadow in the light. What do you think about this crazy concept?

- This is not a crazy concept, you are absolutely right. There is what is now fashionable to call the word "dichotomy". There are two different states. Everything that is associated with a body is doomed because the body dies. This is the law of life, and this is very good: if the bodies did not die, then there would be nowhere to live on Earth. And there is what is our main single source of nutrition, charging: call, as you like - our true “I”, heavenly soul, an unbeliever light, from which we, by and large, will be awarded.

These two conditions do not intersect. All the beautiful and terrible experiences associated with our physical body exist so that this very unbeliever inside us has the opportunity to know the universe in the form in which it is. And the experiences of the physical body - absolute happiness or absolute trouble, grief, horror, demonic invasion, anything, are just different colors with which we draw a picture of our life. It cannot be said that brown paint is worse than bright red or bright blue, they have an equal place equal to the right. The question is what colors we choose and how we draw our picture.

The life of every person is an accurate reflection of what appears inside. And as all the sages said in the history of mankind, before changing the world, look carefully at yourself. Change itself - and the world will change. This is the process of our training. That's all. Each album is a portrait of its time and how we live in this time. Songs always appear not from the head, but from the heart, without words, without everything, therefore, the album is a picture of our soul today. And there must be both that and that. I would really like to write an absolutely bright album, but it will be impossible to listen to it.

I would prefer completely dark.

- And I can’t: it will not be true.

What you released like BG was much darker.

- Well, there is always a way there too. Why would you prefer completely dark?

I would say so. After February 24, I - and, it seems, not only me - at times covers the feeling of doomed despair. There is music that I turn to in this state, but I have not yet met the album in Russian, which would record it and thereby helping it. I personally lack him.

- Clear. Then the question: from dark music in the dark becomes lighter?

Well, there is a notorious catharsis, purification through suffering. I personally happened that dark music helped to survive dark times. But it is clear that this is an individual thing.

- From dark music, playing it becomes very bad. You pass the darkness through yourself, and it burns you off. So I would not talk so easily about the healing of suffering. But, on the other hand, I have no choice; I write what is written naturally. Otherwise, it will be a lie; Not from the heart, but from the head.

Do you know such a concept - metamodernism?

- No.

There we are talking about the culture paradigm that came after postmodernism. The point, if very rude is that if postmodernism said that there is no truth and in this regard we will freely juggle with some discourses and styles, then metamodernism says that there is no truth, but at the same time there is truth. On the one hand, everything is not serious, and on the other, everything is serious. And the culture is in a state of such constant flicker between opposites. Just like your album.

-Well, I would advise here to read the "Upanishads" ( ancient Indian religious and philosophical treatises.-Approx. "Cold" ). All this is said a few thousand years ago. Why invent new words is not very clear, but if you want - please!

I was greatly struck by the song "Mahamai." It seems that you have never had such. Can you tell me where it came from?

- Unfortunately or fortunately, I have no right to impose my vision. I can only say that it was written completely in addition to my desire. I had one line: “Oh, Papaya-Marakuya,” which I tried to adapt differently for several years. It was clear that this was some kind of Russian song. The irony, laid down in the fact that it is Papaya and Marakuya,, in my opinion, obvious. And so for several years I tried to complicate this line differently, and then at some point the door suddenly opened, and the words went so that I barely had time to record. A few hours later the attack ended. And a few days later - it began again. That is, in two tricks the song was written. And this irony there completely disappears, because it just begins to cry.

The only thing I was able to recall the similar in Russian is separate songs by Bashlachev and Letov. How correct for you are these associations, related souls?

- Sashka was absolutely his own. We had no problems in communication, we understood each other, and I heard his new songs one of the first when he still sang them on a notebook. And I just never met Yegor. We lived in completely different universes. I am glad that some things coincide with us, I am glad that sometimes we loved the same music. But I can't say anything about him. At the same time, his song “ About the Fool ” really at one time greatly influenced the creation of a “Russian album”.

Well, that is, after all, there is some kind of common field.

- Yes, and we were all in this field.

When we talked in 2015, shortly after the release of Salt, you said that the album was partly the release of despair caused by the situation around Ukraine ...

- I do not remember experiencing despair about this; There was no despair. Just when songs are written, they cannot but be present in what is happening around. But there is no emotional involvement in this and cannot be. If I am emotionally involved ... You know, it's like a surgeon. If the surgeon is emotionally involved, he will not be able to do the operation.

Now, as if the surrounding condition is much worse, and the album is much lighter.

-When a person gets tired of despair and sob, the time comes to do something; Something to contrast the tragedy. As stated in one old song, "Two can play this game."

The album has one song written after February 24, “Vorozhba”. Is this the only thing you composed at all during this time?

- No, why? There is something else; Just no one has heard this yet.

Some of your colleagues told me that the beginning of the war was such a shock for them that they had a numbness, non -meta, shock. Have you had this?

- Once again, I will say that the naivety of people amazes me deeply. Many terribly cute people talked with me about this, and I ask: did you not notice this before? And everyone says the same thing: well, we noticed, of course, but we thought that it would somehow cost ... I had no shock. I knew very well where it all goes. And moreover, we all knew. No one could assume that it would end well.

But it could probably end differently.

- No. If we keep in mind the whole layout of the one who does what, it was clear that it would end with this. And it hasn't ended yet. It will be worse. And that is why you need to not allow yourself to trample, do not let yourself be immersed in a puddle of despair, not to allow yourself to humiliate.

That is, you did not have the moment when you lost the soil under your feet?

- It was not. You do not forget, I was brought up in the Soviet Union in conditions of zero trust in the state. We have been banned from the 1970s. And therefore, we lived in a different space and tried not to meet with the state; Nothing good could get out of the meetings. Therefore, I created that soil that I have under my feet.

After all, in these 20 years you have been communicating with those people who are now part of this state, approve and welcome the murders. How do you see it, they were always like that-or something happened, did someone do something with them?

“There is no one who could do something with them.” They gave their consciousness and their souls to the forces that are not going to do anything good. And they did it for reasons of their own benefit. In other words, this is the standard situation of Faust.

Faust was just lucky ( in the final of Goethe’s tragedy, God saves Faust's soul; in the traditional version of the legend, the doctor who concluded a deal with the devil falls into hell. - approx. “Cold” ), but they don’t.

Now they talk a lot about the cultural roots of what is happening, about imperial consciousness, about the decolonization of culture. Surely you saw these conversations.

- I do not pay attention to them - it is not at all interesting to me.

That is, you are not trying to find an empire in yourself?

- No. ( Laughs. ) Yesterday I read such a good phrase: when you are dealing with the machine of evil, you need to be not oil, but sand.

How much has your life have changed in the last six months? At least technically. You cannot yet give concerts in Russia.

- And we will not be able to for a very long time. And in Ukraine too. However, it suddenly turns out that many of those who listened to us in Russia are now already here, outside of Russia, outside of Ukraine. The number of requests for concerts is huge, you have to select. Otherwise, I will not be at home at all, and we will play two concerts a day, but I do not know how. And at least for the past twenty -five years I prefer to work in London for the past twenty -five years.

Oximiron, Zemfira and BG after the Raper's charity anti -war concert in London, March 24, 2022. On October 7, Oximiron was recognized in Russia as an ino-agent, and the next day Zemfira released a mini-album about love during the war

That is, you don't feel an emigrant?

- God forbid from such a sad title. My place of life is the Earth. I was born in Russia, Russia is my mother; And she is always with me. I speak and write in Russian, I sing in Russian, and the physical whereabouts of my body-it is Tambov, London, Himalay, China or North Pole-has no significance.

But Petersburg, probably, still occupies some kind of special place in your heart. Do not miss him?

- No, I don't miss it. You know, Thomas Mann, who left Germany during fascism, asked: how, German culture, but you are not in Germany. And he said: German culture is where I am.

You say that you cannot perform not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine. Why?

- The heart does not give. After the Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

For ethical reasons?

- I will not analyze. My heart says that this is impossible. Everything I need to do, I do. And very soon another big thing will be known, which we are now doing precisely as assistance to Ukraine. ( On October 7, the Collaborate for Peace website launched, which published a joint song of the BG, American musician Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) and Ukrainian Sergei Babkin “Face To Face.” Musicians urge listeners to donate money to support Ukrainian doctors - approx. “Colds” ).

One of the songs that you recently have often played at concerts is “when the pain will pass”. It ends with the question: "Will we be those who we are when the pain passes." How do you answer this question now?

- This is exactly what we started. The same imaginary dichotomy. It seems to us that there is a physical one who howls of love or death. And there is light inside, which is always the way it is. He never moves, he has nowhere to move, because there is no space and there is no time. This is the very kingdom of heaven, which is mentioned in the Scripture. But the dichotomy, as I say, is imaginary, because through us the light knows itself. The song “When the Pain passes” is about that. This question exists because there is life. As soon as we go beyond the limits of life, we find out that this question was invented, like everyone else. Жизнь — великая иллюзия, не я первый это сказал. Та самая Махамайя.

Вы производите впечатление человека, у которого есть точка опоры. Насколько я могу судить, у многих музыкантов не так. Насколько вы помогаете другим вернуть веру в то, что сейчас вообще можно и нужно писать песни, что это имеет какой-то смысл?

— Ну, если человек может перестать писать песни, пусть перестает. Придуманные песни никому не нужны. А песни настоящие не спрашивают, хочешь ты их писать или нет. Они приходят и овладевают тобой. И ты знаешь, что твоя жизнь существует именно только потому, что ты можешь писать песни.

Или слушать.

— А это одно и то же.