Or turning Chopin music into profit
Of late I have lost my lust for Kyiv street sounds. Actually, a professional writer always keeps his/her ears open in a crowd; a colorful word dropped here, a witty phrase there, or a brief monologue is overheard which would be perfect for a novel or story (I never hang up if I happen to cut in on a conversation; I think that, apart from writers, this inquisitiveness is found in the secret police, although here love for live words is not the driving motive, of course). Anyway, a day came when I found out I no longer enjoyed the sounds in the street; what words and conversations I heard sounded oppressively the same.
Below are several examples. I heard these within 10 minutes while walking along Saksahanska and Esplanadna streets, from the intersection at Gorky St. and all the way to the Palace of Sports Metro Station (in social studies this method is known as direct observation).
(1) “So how much is he making on it?“
(2) “I met a couple of guys from the factory, they said they started getting paid on account of last year's back wages.“
(3) “Can you imagine? They gypped me. Fifteen hryvnias! They took me for a ride like a regular dork.“ [This from a group of teenagers. Every other word followed by a four-letter one, omitted.]
(4) “We planned to have the bathroom tiled last year. Well, we couldn't. Still can't. We can't save enough money. And our boy has to be dressed. He keeps growing like a weed and we have to buy new clothes.“
(5) “Discipline? What discipline can you expect with two months of back wages?“
(6) “Sure, we're buddies, so I says either pay up come the first or I'll turn on the meter.“ [In other words, the debtor will be levied exorbitant interest per day in default and in the end may well have to pay with all he has or get killed.]
(7) “Fifty bucks a month.“ [This from a security guard in front of a restaurant on Esplanadna St. God knows what he meant.]
Honestly, that was all I heard. It is as though people have nothing else to discuss except ways to make a quick buck, crooks, and back wages. And these are normal citizens, the electorate, in the words of our top bureaucrats. These people work, love, raise children, study, go on trips, read books, visit theaters, bars, and cafes (try to find a vacant table on a Sunday evening). In other words, they lead civilized lives (in their own way), and uppermost on everyone's mind is how to cut and plot. It is like a chronic toothache. Like people surviving a famine, constantly thinking of food, even after a hearty meal.
Actually, there is nothing new about my observation. Nothing to write home about. Anyone living here can see and hear just as much after stepping out onto the street, talking to friends, all those swept under the tidal wave of stratification, ending in the “masses“ with the average monthly income of 100 hryvnias. Physically surviving at this level of “remuneration“ is possible (as we have again proved with our heroic historical experience), but not culturally. All interest in things not edible is reduced to nil. In several years millions of intelligent, able-bodied individuals (whose brains are, incidentally, as much a part of the national wealth as mineral resources and bodies of water) have reached a state best described in street gang language as beat up and urinated on. Indeed, engineers, physicians, teachers, and scientists talk only about how much they could save, or how smart they were earning on the side (the latter shows the people's boundless inventiveness and resourcefulness, so much so that before long genuine patents will have to be awarded precisely in this domain). On more than one occasion I have watched their eyes lose their sparkle after an outburst of enthusiasm; it was as though I was watching a meter with digits flashing first up and then down (all in terms of the good old “soft“ national currency) once the subject was changed for something even remotely abstract, intangible. No matter what: world ecological crisis, Serbs, Albanians, who was to blame for the Balkan bloodshed. All this was too remote for people that were, above all, concerned with finding a way to live. All the rest was Old Greek, static, perhaps meaningful under different circumstances but unimportant at the moment, having no immediate value. Could one blame them? Not really, for it takes a hero, a genius to keep from slipping down the abyss of moral decay, staying afloat, all oppressive daily routine and money, and other problems notwithstanding. With operational space inexorably tightening round an individual (operational space my foot, if one cannot afford a TV set, let alone a computer!), that individual's mental horizons are likewise narrowing, so that the “real individual living world“ (the head-shrinker's pet phrase) is one's empty and loudly complaining stomach.
Hard as I tried, I could not find one genuine source from which our domestic social analysts derived the notion of “public thought.“ I am no expert, but simple logic says that this thought takes a certain number of citizens selected not by passport data but by world outlook — people genuinely aware of their involvement in and with what is going on over and above the boundaries of their daily survival (I am also tempted to say responsibility, but this would be too good to be true, all things considered). Now picture a situation, an event (barring, of course, boosting sugar prices. God forbid!) capable of sending the Ukrainian citizenry astir — all those people of Ukraine “from the river Sian to the river Don“ as the lyrics go. The way America was shaken by the President's sexual antics — or the British by Princess Diana's death. A situation in which one and all, every single home, bar, cafe, restaurant, you name it, would discuss and argue — maybe fight — over one and the same topic. The way topics like Bolshevik atrocities were debated and fought over at the start of perestroika (although ten years later the Socialist Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament would feel free to give his spiel under a huge Uncle Joe portrait on the capital's square without fearing a barrage of rotten eggs or tomatoes from the audience — no one would even think of it!). Well, can you picture a situation like that? No? Of course not.
It is a syndrome, known as estrangement in philosophy. Indeed, we were estranged from the rest of the world under the Soviets, except that at the time we experienced commodity rather than monetary hunger, when millions of Soviet citizens spent the better part of their lives getting things in short supply, ranging from salami to Yugoslav furniture. Of course, at the time one could turn one's back on all those “bourgeois frills“ with proletarian pride and live on domestic-produced sausages, wear the same pair of pants for several years running, read Chinese poets in the original language, and feel happy about one's top cultural level. Those were private bastions of spirit. They have all toppled since, for reasons that cannot be regarded as stemming from inside Ukraine, because with the coming of the information age the world had changed beyond recognition (something our hammer-and-sickle-stricken devotees waving their moth-eaten red flags stubbornly refuse to acknowledge, for during all their long decades of selfless toil for the communist morrow, the world they knew ended at the customs station of Chop; now they want that world back.) No more ivory castles. Not even castles built of air. No room left. The result: all our much-advertised cultural standard a soap bubble bursting at the first touch (empty audiences with good symphony orchestras playing — and I mean real good ones! Something I consider the most convincing evidence). Without acquiring citizenship in terms of culture and spirituality, we found ourselves totally exposed and vulnerable to material ills. Vulnerable, we are quickly decaying. En masse.
I am certainly loath to think that material well-being is in itself sufficient in securing a broad world outlook and diversified interests. Somehow I cannot bring myself to visualize our domestic moneybags spending sleepless nights racking their brains trying to help crippled children, preserve historical sites, do something about Chornobyl or the Antarctic ozone hole. Worst of all, the powers that be do not give a damn about all this and many other things. Noblesse oblige. They should, of course, concentrate on things more important and on a scale far broader than ordering shipments of timber for their summer cottages (oh, it's just an example, a figure of speech if you will, no defamatory understatement intended on my part, God forbid! So please relax, no one is pointing an accusing finger at you.). However, there is a simple thing known as a nation's intellectual potential. It would not hurt to try to understand its meaning. Yes, it is much harder to assess in either hard or “soft“ currency, but it also calls for effective economic planning. So when this potential is wasted in a continuous struggle for physical survival, meaning that specialists are inevitably disqualified, losing their professional skills doing odd jobs, like a Ph.D. working as a janitor for a private firm just because he is paid bucks, not hryvnias, and no back wages, a pay envelope handed at the end of the month, it means that our future is being undermined. Believe it or not, I would not like to see my nation turned into a crowd of imbeciles just because a bunch of incapable administrators turned up at the helm.
It was with such sad and disheartening ideas turning in my mind that I approached the underpass on the crossing of Khmelnytsky St. and Khreshchatyk. And there I froze, hearing unmistakable Chopin chords struck up by a string-wind quartet. And it sounded professional, something I would expect to hear at the Philharmonic Society. I walked over and saw four young men playing. They could indeed have come down from the PS to add something to their monthly UAH 130. Suddenly I remembered Pasternak's “And Chopin seeking no benefit again.“ I felt sentimental. Tears filled my eyes. But on that particular occasion Chopin was seeking profit; an open violin case displayed a small pile of coins and several 1- hryvnia banknotes. I reached for my wallet and wiped away the tears. I felt proud, for it was real music performed by my fellow countrymen. Well, the four were definitely in good professional shape.
Of late I have lost my lust for Kyiv street sounds. Actually, a professional writer always keeps his/her ears open in a crowd; a colorful word dropped here, a witty phrase there, or a brief monologue is overheard which would be perfect for a novel or story (I never hang up if I happen to cut in on a conversation; I think that, apart from writers, this inquisitiveness is found in the secret police, although here love for live words is not the driving motive, of course). Anyway, a day came when I found out I no longer enjoyed the sounds in the street; what words and conversations I heard sounded oppressively the same.
Below are several examples. I heard these within 10 minutes while walking along Saksahanska and Esplanadna streets, from the intersection at Gorky St. and all the way to the Palace of Sports Metro Station (in social studies this method is known as direct observation).
(1) “So how much is he making on it?“
(2) “I met a couple of guys from the factory, they said they started getting paid on account of last year's back wages.“
(3) “Can you imagine? They gypped me. Fifteen hryvnias! They took me for a ride like a regular dork.“ [This from a group of teenagers. Every other word followed by a four-letter one, omitted.]
(4) “We planned to have the bathroom tiled last year. Well, we couldn't. Still can't. We can't save enough money. And our boy has to be dressed. He keeps growing like a weed and we have to buy new clothes.“
(5) “Discipline? What discipline can you expect with two months of back wages?“
(6) “Sure, we're buddies, so I says either pay up come the first or I'll turn on the meter.“ [In other words, the debtor will be levied exorbitant interest per day in default and in the end may well have to pay with all he has or get killed.]
(7) “Fifty bucks a month.“ [This from a security guard in front of a restaurant on Esplanadna St. God knows what he meant.]
Honestly, that was all I heard. It is as though people have nothing else to discuss except ways to make a quick buck, crooks, and back wages. And these are normal citizens, the electorate, in the words of our top bureaucrats. These people work, love, raise children, study, go on trips, read books, visit theaters, bars, and cafes (try to find a vacant table on a Sunday evening). In other words, they lead civilized lives (in their own way), and uppermost on everyone's mind is how to cut and plot. It is like a chronic toothache. Like people surviving a famine, constantly thinking of food, even after a hearty meal.
Actually, there is nothing new about my observation. Nothing to write home about. Anyone living here can see and hear just as much after stepping out onto the street, talking to friends, all those swept under the tidal wave of stratification, ending in the “masses“ with the average monthly income of 100 hryvnias. Physically surviving at this level of “remuneration“ is possible (as we have again proved with our heroic historical experience), but not culturally. All interest in things not edible is reduced to nil. In several years millions of intelligent, able-bodied individuals (whose brains are, incidentally, as much a part of the national wealth as mineral resources and bodies of water) have reached a state best described in street gang language as beat up and urinated on. Indeed, engineers, physicians, teachers, and scientists talk only about how much they could save, or how smart they were earning on the side (the latter shows the people's boundless inventiveness and resourcefulness, so much so that before long genuine patents will have to be awarded precisely in this domain). On more than one occasion I have watched their eyes lose their sparkle after an outburst of enthusiasm; it was as though I was watching a meter with digits flashing first up and then down (all in terms of the good old “soft“ national currency) once the subject was changed for something even remotely abstract, intangible. No matter what: world ecological crisis, Serbs, Albanians, who was to blame for the Balkan bloodshed. All this was too remote for people that were, above all, concerned with finding a way to live. All the rest was Old Greek, static, perhaps meaningful under different circumstances but unimportant at the moment, having no immediate value. Could one blame them? Not really, for it takes a hero, a genius to keep from slipping down the abyss of moral decay, staying afloat, all oppressive daily routine and money, and other problems notwithstanding. With operational space inexorably tightening round an individual (operational space my foot, if one cannot afford a TV set, let alone a computer!), that individual's mental horizons are likewise narrowing, so that the “real individual living world“ (the head-shrinker's pet phrase) is one's empty and loudly complaining stomach.
Hard as I tried, I could not find one genuine source from which our domestic social analysts derived the notion of “public thought.“ I am no expert, but simple logic says that this thought takes a certain number of citizens selected not by passport data but by world outlook — people genuinely aware of their involvement in and with what is going on over and above the boundaries of their daily survival (I am also tempted to say responsibility, but this would be too good to be true, all things considered). Now picture a situation, an event (barring, of course, boosting sugar prices. God forbid!) capable of sending the Ukrainian citizenry astir — all those people of Ukraine “from the river Sian to the river Don“ as the lyrics go. The way America was shaken by the President's sexual antics — or the British by Princess Diana's death. A situation in which one and all, every single home, bar, cafe, restaurant, you name it, would discuss and argue — maybe fight — over one and the same topic. The way topics like Bolshevik atrocities were debated and fought over at the start of perestroika (although ten years later the Socialist Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament would feel free to give his spiel under a huge Uncle Joe portrait on the capital's square without fearing a barrage of rotten eggs or tomatoes from the audience — no one would even think of it!). Well, can you picture a situation like that? No? Of course not.
It is a syndrome, known as estrangement in philosophy. Indeed, we were estranged from the rest of the world under the Soviets, except that at the time we experienced commodity rather than monetary hunger, when millions of Soviet citizens spent the better part of their lives getting things in short supply, ranging from salami to Yugoslav furniture. Of course, at the time one could turn one's back on all those “bourgeois frills“ with proletarian pride and live on domestic-produced sausages, wear the same pair of pants for several years running, read Chinese poets in the original language, and feel happy about one's top cultural level. Those were private bastions of spirit. They have all toppled since, for reasons that cannot be regarded as stemming from inside Ukraine, because with the coming of the information age the world had changed beyond recognition (something our hammer-and-sickle-stricken devotees waving their moth-eaten red flags stubbornly refuse to acknowledge, for during all their long decades of selfless toil for the communist morrow, the world they knew ended at the customs station of Chop; now they want that world back.) No more ivory castles. Not even castles built of air. No room left. The result: all our much-advertised cultural standard a soap bubble bursting at the first touch (empty audiences with good symphony orchestras playing — and I mean real good ones! Something I consider the most convincing evidence). Without acquiring citizenship in terms of culture and spirituality, we found ourselves totally exposed and vulnerable to material ills. Vulnerable, we are quickly decaying. En masse.
I am certainly loath to think that material well-being is in itself sufficient in securing a broad world outlook and diversified interests. Somehow I cannot bring myself to visualize our domestic moneybags spending sleepless nights racking their brains trying to help crippled children, preserve historical sites, do something about Chornobyl or the Antarctic ozone hole. Worst of all, the powers that be do not give a damn about all this and many other things. Noblesse oblige. They should, of course, concentrate on things more important and on a scale far broader than ordering shipments of timber for their summer cottages (oh, it's just an example, a figure of speech if you will, no defamatory understatement intended on my part, God forbid! So please relax, no one is pointing an accusing finger at you.). However, there is a simple thing known as a nation's intellectual potential. It would not hurt to try to understand its meaning. Yes, it is much harder to assess in either hard or “soft“ currency, but it also calls for effective economic planning. So when this potential is wasted in a continuous struggle for physical survival, meaning that specialists are inevitably disqualified, losing their professional skills doing odd jobs, like a Ph.D. working as a janitor for a private firm just because he is paid bucks, not hryvnias, and no back wages, a pay envelope handed at the end of the month, it means that our future is being undermined. Believe it or not, I would not like to see my nation turned into a crowd of imbeciles just because a bunch of incapable administrators turned up at the helm.
It was with such sad and disheartening ideas turning in my mind that I approached the underpass on the crossing of Khmelnytsky St. and Khreshchatyk. And there I froze, hearing unmistakable Chopin chords struck up by a string-wind quartet. And it sounded professional, something I would expect to hear at the Philharmonic Society. I walked over and saw four young men playing. They could indeed have come down from the PS to add something to their monthly UAH 130. Suddenly I remembered Pasternak's “And Chopin seeking no benefit again.“ I felt sentimental. Tears filled my eyes. But on that particular occasion Chopin was seeking profit; an open violin case displayed a small pile of coins and several 1- hryvnia banknotes. I reached for my wallet and wiped away the tears. I felt proud, for it was real music performed by my fellow countrymen. Well, the four were definitely in good professional shape.
Newspaper output №:
№29, (1999)Section
Culture
