Meet one of Ukraine’s most original composers
The Day: Who are you?
S. Z.: A composer above all. Also perhaps a writer to some extent, but I’m not sure professional ones would agree. I am not interested in literature or music, but in the arts in general. At one time I was very fond of painting and the theater. Synthetic thinking is closer to me. I keep making discoveries and never stop feeling amazed.
The Day: Why do you lend your stage productions such a form, sometimes just hooligan?
S. Z.: It might appear hooligan in our culture, but on the other hand it is a certain trend rooted deep in time. The twentieth century is not the only one to find it, it’s just that such forms exist in this century to the fullest extent. To be honest, I lack the right kind of music for what I want to express, although I have purely musical pieces, but these are also closely linked to certain eccentric unconventional techniques or are explained by a certain program.
The Day: What drives you?
S. Z.: I don’t have any manifesto to explain what I do. Most likely, it’s spontaneous play. My worldview formed outside of what was imposed by the official education. I had long been interested in such forms as surrealism, futurism, and dadaism. But most importantly, there was a turning point in my consciousness. I realized that no theories have any power, so I cannot always rationally explain why one element or another is present in my work. Everything happening around is a game, everything we do and think has a certain comic aspect. The more serious a person is, the funnier that person looks. Charlie Chaplin said that life is just another comic gag.
The Day: Kurekhin once dreamed of leading a herd of elephants on stage. Do you have elephants in any of your projects?
S. Z.: I have plans requiring large scope, meaning major costs along with a lot of actors and directors. I often think of images and compositions that can only exist in the street. I am for music playing not only in the hall. It can play anywhere! This would be more natural. The problem is that academic musicians are not always prepared for this kind of performance. Our culture is still very slavish. There is a small group of performers I work with, but I would like to have a whole theater.
The Day: From what I know, one of your works is dedicated to the Marquis de Sade. What do you find in him?
S. Z.: In many respects it is that same surrealism, except that it is in the physiological realm. The Marquis de Sade built his own world and most likely his writing was a sublimation of that which he could not do in real life. It took on brilliant creative form. Besides, I am attracted by his laughing at so many taboos. His was a kind of anarchism and literary terror. His erotica is interesting as a mind game played by a man outside society.
The Day: Speaking of literature, what is your Okun Club?
S. Z.: At school, my friends and I formed a special circle with a perfectly idiotic atmosphere. We would speak and behave in a special way, and we practiced a special slang — I was responsible for 90% of it. Being in such an atmosphere, in my sixth or seventh year at school, I started writing poetry. Then suddenly other people around me started writing similar things. There was a lot of childishness certainly. A group of six or seven formed. We pretended to be a literary organization and would meet on certain days. By the way, the game continued at the Conservatory and other people joined, people who hadn’t written a line in their life suddenly started writing, and it was all quite interesting. We would have visitors, complete strangers. They would listen and write things down; we read our poetry and other works of the twentieth century, and shared our impressions. In a word, it was a creatively intensive atmosphere. Our own recitals included certain gestures, whistling, even dancing, and music, of course
The Day: Why did you call your club Okun, the Perch?
S. Z.: There was a special ritual. This fish had to be present in every poem, mentioned in conjunction with something else, as a symbol or even character, although no one knew a symbol of what. I still can’t explain it.
The Day: You are quite an expert on strange names and titles. Your latest play is called NESTOR BATIUK.
S. Z.: My original work was titled Zbigniew Batiuk, followed by Sarah Batiuk, and Nestor is the third episode of the series. Once again, I don’t know why Batiuk. Explaining it is as hard as explaining Okun.
The Day: How do you understand the absurd?
S. Z.: I think it is a deep insight, rather than a cursory glance, when one can understand that all the goals in life imposed by society are very artificial; they lose all the meaning put into them. It is when one simply feels free to play, when there is nothing left but to laugh. Free laughter is an expression of the absurdity of life as such. From absurd people plunge into dismay as they search for a way out and a goal, never finding either. True, this makes no sense, but I find tremendous pleasure in this senselessness; I am thrilled to act in this comedy of life without any artificial objectives and tasks.
The Day: Even without expecting applause?
S. Z.: If the audience hurls rotten apple at you, this is also a healthy reaction. Reaction is the main thing, no matter what. Of course, it’s good to hear applause, but my works are not meant to be liked from the outset. After all, art expands one’s clich О mentality; it shows that there are no standards, period. I’m convinced that anything can make you laugh. The more things one can laugh at, the more freedom one has. I read somewhere that there is a sect in Japan that promotes laughter. Its adherents laugh all the time, even without reason. They even laugh at death. When some of their relatives die they make the event a masked ball and everybody laughs. They can paint a mustache or beard on the dead face or apply makeup and they never stop laughing doing all this. I think it’s great. Laughing is this kind of freedom.
The Day: Do you often experience absurd situations in daily life?
S. Z.: I am constantly surrounded by them, so much so that it’s hard to single them out. Everything we do at work, at the Composers’ Union is absurd. Heaps, mountains of paper, paperwork get to be an end in itself, like in Kafka’s Trial when something happens parallel to and despite man. In general, we have no power over many things. Most absurd situations can be observed anywhere. For example, in church where a priest thinks he knows the truth and that he has a line to God, all the while talking utter nonsense, the congregation following every word open-mouthed. Watching all this, you understand that here is another absurd, nonsense. I do not distinguish between the people listening to that preacher and myself, because it all happens in the same current, is interdependent, and has meaning precisely in how it is meaningless.
The Day: You are said to be on a spiritual quest, that you meditate.
S. Z.: This is how I see it. Man gets up, washes, and brushes his teeth. The same applies to meditation. It is just another basic necessity, as normal as doing morning exercises. Nothing esoteric or leaving one’s body. It’s best described as mental hygiene.
The Day: Does it help?
S. Z.: In general, yes. Consciousness is like a room in which we tend to keep a lot of trash — an awful mix of ambitions, memories, thoughts that we sometimes can’t control. Meditation helps you get rid of all this trash and you find yourself in great shape. There are no thoughts and this state has a very strong positive effect on your body. It becomes totally different, light, weightless.
The Day: Did you become a composer all at once?
S. Z.: I finished a ten-year music school majoring in the piano, but even then I knew I wouldn’t be a pianist but a composer. Composition was not in the curriculum at the time, so I took lessons from whomever I could find. I served in the army and was stationed in Tbilisi. Afterward, I worked as a stevedore, carpenter, and forwarding agent. After the conservatory I found a job at the Muzychna Ukrayina [Musical Ukraine] Publishers. It was a lot of fun. Somebody comes in, he can’t even read the music well enough, yet he brings his own song in A Minor and is sure it’s so good it just has to be published at once. When refused, he raises a stink, complains to the ministry, and the latter seriously studies the problem, wishing to know why a song about Ukraine was refused by a Ukrainian publishing house. Is it because this company is anti- Ukrainian? Sheer absurd, and I could cite countless such examples.
The Day: Are you familiar with the phenomenon of family vs. creative work?
S. Z.: My wife, Liudmyla Yurina, is also a composer. Our daughter Maryna is in the first grade. We seem to have a normal family, mainly because we have a lot in common. My wife’s views are not as radical as mine, but we have common interests and try not to impose our opinions on each other. I like something she does and she reciprocates, but of course we have very emotional arguments sometimes.
The Day: Does music and daily life coexist well?
S. Z.: Somehow they do. When faced with a daughter-or-music dilemma, I chose the daughter, of course. Making your child happy also makes you happy. Actually, I think that dividing creative work and everyday life is wrong. You can approach any situation creatively. I know this from my army experience. It got so I learned to enjoy doing things I would have never dreamed of, like unloading cement or loading coal. I learned to regard it as yet another creative process, the way you pick the coal with you shovel and throw it. It’s such a rush!
The Day: In your daily life you act happy, a comedian, but clowns are always crying inside.
S. Z.: The thing is not that I wear this mask consciously, I am just the way I am and that’s how I live. True, the things I do might be regarded by others as not very joyous. Different people may have different opinions, the way different people regard life differently, tragic for some and happy for others. You can do things your own way. I don’t think much about the future; how long I will continue doing things like this and how it will turn out. If there’s a global catastrophe we’ll all die, we’ll share our common lot, so the whole thing won’t be all that terrible. So what? What happens to me tomorrow doesn’t matter as much as what I do today and find interesting now.
