Our story of reading began long ago. From an early age, and if to be ...
He spent his childhood and adolescence in the village of Lacedaemonovka in a peasant family.
Career. Inception (1987-1995)
Studied at the Faculty of Foreign Languages \u200b\u200b( french) at the Taganrog State Pedagogical Institute. Arrived in Moscow in the summer of 1987 and entered the Moscow state institute International Relations at the full-time department of the Faculty of International Relations (specialization - Thailand and Thai).
As a student and a member of the Komsomol committee of the institute, he organized concerts of semi-legal Soviet groups. Bravo, Brigade C, Igor Talkov, Sergei Penkin performed for the first time on the stage of the MGIMO Assembly Hall. There he met Zhanna Aguzarova, who helped him enter the circle of the then show business.
Since 1988, he began to combine his studies with work as a concert director, Irina Ponarovskaya.
In 1991 he left his studies at MGIMO and work in show business for the sake of journalism.
His ascent in journalism began in September 1991 with the publication of an article in the Krestyanskie Vedomosti newspaper about the actress Tatyana Samoilova, who by that time was in complete oblivion.
The article had a wide response, after which Igor accepted an offer from the weekly Argumenty i Fakty to take the position of editor of the culture department.
As editor, Grigoriev published poignant interviews and covered the emerging new alternative culture in the country.
In 1993 he met the show-businessman Boris Zosimov, with whom he published the first thick glossy magazine Imperial in Russia. The magazine served as a starting point for the era of glossy journalism in the country.
After the release of several issues, he left Imperial and in 1994 became the head of the first in Russia glossy magazine for men "Amadeus".
Career. OM Magazine (1995-1998)
In May 1995 he started working on the OM magazine. The publication of the magazine in November 1995 became an event on the market of Russian periodicals. For five years in a row, the magazine was awarded the title of the best magazine of the year according to the assessment of fellow journalists (Professional award of the musical mass media "Quality mark"). In 1997, the magazine was awarded the National Ovation Award in the Best Magazine of the Year category.
In November 1998, Grigoriev left the post of editor-in-chief of the magazine, explaining the reasons for leaving in his last editorial letter. His planned departure from the magazine in the spring coincided with the grave economic crisis that broke out in the country.
The Russian press commented on Igor Grigoriev's departure from OM magazine as follows:
Career. Miscellaneous (1998-2008)
Politics
In December 1998, he founded the All-Russian public political movement Generation of Freedom. At the Constituent Congress he was elected Chairman of the Council of the movement. The main goal of its activity was considered by the Movement to work with youth and the promotion of democratic and liberal values, as well as a non-political, ideological association of a new generation based on the principles of the perception of freedom as the highest value. The movement brought together both young politicians, who earlier belonged to different political blocs, and young cultural figures showing interest in public and political activities. In December 1999, the Movement became part of the Medved association, and three candidates from the Movement were elected as deputies of the State Duma of the third convocation. Igor Grigoriev himself leaves the movement due to a conflict within the management elite.
In May 1999, Igor Grigoriev settled in the city of Prague. He was a co-owner of a small cafe in the center of the city, which became a place of informal meetings for the staff of Radio Liberty.
TV and cinema
In 1999 he returned to Moscow at the invitation of the general producer of the TV-6 channel Ivan Demidov.
Grigoriev: I have a question for you right off the bat - how is such a seasoned poet like Derbenev (Leonid Derbenev. - Esquire), could have made such a crushing mistake in Panama?
Chernavsky: You mean "put on - put on", or what? Now I remember this whole canoe ... To be honest, there really were grown-up guys ... Derbenev generally wrote competently, he knew the language. We recorded "Panama" under light doping, at my house on Baumanskaya. There it was ... Alla and I (Pugacheva. - Esquire) came to write another song ... And on the eve Lenya ran. Says like "Juran, do you need money?" I told him: "Do you have a lot?" He says: "Yes, heaps, on." And tosses a piece of paper with this Panama. And before that, I already had a sketch of a song with my rusty voice on abracadabra. Alla listened and said: "Let me try." I climbed behind the screen, turned on the microphone, and she carried this! .. We were in the mood for some serious Mouzon, and she: "White Panama-ah-ah." She gave it out in a country way. In general, there we already had such a state, we choked with laughter ... I think it slipped out of the blue.
Grigoriev: Listen, what kind of doping did you use then in 1984? Well, there were definitely no drugs then. Overlaid on the blue?
Chernavsky: There were definitely no hard drugs. Marijuana, yes, it was, it is forever young. Cocaine appeared somewhere in the late 1990s, I have not found it already. But somehow it didn't stick to me and my friends at all. A couple of lessons ended with a headache and a return to our standards: cognac is always cognac.
Grigoriev: I thought so. I just showed my 25-year-old friends "Banana Islands", and they told me: "Why did they smoke there?" I say: "They didn't smoke anything." Today's young people, you see, need to smoke something in order to come up with such a twisted * bata.
Chernavsky: We were all stuck with the music, old man. The same "Bananas" ... There is not even a narrative style: "I left", "you came", "love has passed." I never used such words. I made sure to run the meaning through my chips, you know? Even in "Panama" the meaning is infected with such gags. We wrote like impressionists. Here's your nose, here's your ear. And a great flight for fantasy (laughs).
We were all stuck on the music. We wrote like impressionists. Here's your nose, here's your ear.
Grigoriev: Tell me, how did it happen that almost all of your gold song stock could fit into two films? Bang bang! And in one year "Season of Miracles" and "Above the Rainbow" by one director with a dozen songs by one composer are released, and for centuries.
Chernavsky: There is a team there ... Everything is always done in good company, right? When you start working, you always feel that you are in some kind of imaginary get-together, in the music that you constantly listen to and get a thrill from it. After Bananas, which was closer to rock and roll, it was hard to enter pop music. I didn't write songs to anyone on request. But somehow it all came together in my head. One question remained open - how much, guys, will we put in all this dynamite? (laughs)
Grigoriev: My favorite song is “Reflection in Water”.
Chernavsky: Maybe now all this is being obeyed somehow foolishly, but then we all went to first grade for the first time. We were not looking at the notes, but at the color of the music, at its smell, you know? At that time it was not Soviet music at all. “Reflection in Water”, like “White Door”, are such dashing flowers from the front garden of “Abba”. Frida (Annie-Fried Lingstad, soloist of ABBA. - Esquire) I cut off my phone when Alla sang "White Door". She and Phil Collins wanted me to be on their album. But they wrapped me up with a visa, took my passport away. They took it, as it were, for a test, and with both ends.
Grigoriev: And you sent it all to hell and emigrated in 1991, right?
Chernavsky: I never went anywhere, I am still a citizen of Russia, so you understand. In general, I went to travel. He lived for a couple of months in Italy, then he met some German guys. And it so happened that in Germany I got into a get-together, and somehow we all quickly became very friends.
Grigoriev: You went out to hang out, but the ambition hasn't gone away? You left a successful and wealthy person. It's clear that you didn't just go hang out.
Chernavsky: You see, old man, as if everything had already taken place by that time. Everything that was conceived, everything was done. When the country had no time for music, when various punks came in large numbers from all sides, and when I was invited to Germany, I left without hesitation. We sold everything we had, made a base in Berlin. Built a decent studio for a quarter of a million bucks. We created a company with Bruce Hammond and we had this guy Mark "Oh ...
Grigoriev: And you wrote some songs for him, and the songs hit the charts.
Chernavsky: Wow "to the charts". Billboard! Number one! Dance chart! And at this time, when he was untwisting, I ended up in America. You see, when your team is number one in Billboard, you can meet whoever you want.
Chernavsky: I had a different goal. My boy grew up, Dimka, he was 16 years old. We drove to Hollywood, I immediately made a bunch of acquaintances, many of them worked in cinema, in computer graphics. And I began to spend ninety percent of my time on Dimka. Not without a second thought, of course, knowing that it will be useful to me too. I produced my kid in what is called CGI-FX... He received a year after his arrival MTV Video Music Award per clip Backstreet boys... Then Timberlake immediately came running with his N'Sync, we made a video for them, and again Award. Get down (song Backstreet boys. — Esquire) and I want you back (song N'Sync. — Esquire) are made entirely on Dimka's graphics. Then there was Rod Stewart, Tupac, cinema, advertising ...
Grigoriev: Let's go back to the 1980s. Album "Discs are spinning" recorded "non-stop", as a ready-made DJ set for discos. I'm 14 years old, I come to my village club and freak out from music that I haven't heard before. I listened to him recently. With clear tolerances for the quality of the recording, this could sound like this now. Jamiroquai.
Chernavsky: I'll tell you, until the late 1970s there was no such thing as European disco. There was American funk with trumpets ... And in 1977, Frank Farian in Frankfurt recruited Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans from emigrants and came up with such a mix of South American rhythms and simple Slavic melodies and planted it on the deadly drumming on the first beat. First there were Boney M, then Modern talking... A terrible tsunami passed through Europe. America touched a little, and all of Europe was boldly in figs - what they were doing with the halls! About this wave the "Disks" were made.
Grigoriev: Is it true that it was a state order for the Olympics to surprise foreign guests?
Chernavsky: Yes, it was the idea of \u200b\u200bthe communists: here we have everything making stools, and you guys will make lacquered stools, with all your bourgeois fintiflyushki, so that there is an export product.
Grigoriev: That is, you were invited to the Central Committee and decided to write a cool disco disc?
Chernavsky: Well, yes, there were such greyhound drunken Tsekov faces and gave me advice on what kind of music to write. (laughs) In general, we were given "Melodia" (the only state recording studio in the USSR. - Esquire) for a month and said: do what you want there - drink, walk, but so that in a month there will be a record. For a month there we had girls on the records, and not only from the vocal group, the locals ran for brandy ten times a day. Everyone had their own limit on alcohol, the main thing was that no one fell in the studio and everyone felt good. In those days, it was like this - since 1970 I worked in serious jazz bands, where discipline was in the first place. Everyone was kind of gouging, but no one went out to play drunk, because everyone knew that the next day I would turn the whole Moscow over and find a replacement for him.
Grigoriev: In general, the first dance record in the USSR was released by the "Merry Guys" in the 70th year. At that time I was quite a goldfinch and it somehow passed me by. But then they also recorded Pugacheva's "Arlekino", and I again went nuts when I heard that. And then I went nuts again when I found out that the "Funny Guys" were recording your "Banana Islands".
Chernavsky: You see, at Pasha's (Pavel Slobodkin, head of the Cheerful Guys. - Esquire) had a pedigree, his dad was some famous cellist. He had the best orders, the best venues, the best musicians. When I came to his group as a musical instructor, I immediately brought with me two of my friends, drummer Kitaev and bassist Ryzhov, who fled after me from Dinamik from the crazy Kuzi (Vladimir Kuzmin, frontman of the Dinamik group. Esquire), whose tower was blown off by success. In short, we started all the "funny" with our idea and recorded "Bananas". As a result, Slobodkin at the artistic council called it a madman's delirium, the album was banned, and I was ordered to do "serious Soviet music." Later, five years later, Pasha was beating himself on the chest: “It's me, I thought of everything! We, Cheerful Guys! " (laughs)
Grigoriev: Were you ordered to take up "serious Soviet music"? What does it mean?
Chernavsky: You remember what kind of music dominated the scoop at that time, no? I hated that music fiercely. Although now everything is the same, chanson and "cords".
Grigoriev: Now about the "cords". How do you feel about "cords"?
Chernavsky: Yes, I do not care, I just do not! All I hear there is "fuck you" with a bunch of show-offs. It's not about music, old man. But there is no trick against scrap, you know? If a person comes out and yells at the whole stadium "Fuck fuck", then all this shantrapa, which has spoken this language since childhood, and it is sweeter for him to see cops stomping their boots on the balcony and yelling with him "Fuck you!" All of them, bl ***, at this moment think that they are in a sense of complete invincible freedom.
Grigoriev: I just can't understand one thing - how did it all happen? Chastooshkas in a packed stadium ...
Chernavsky: You must understand that it is beneficial for people to play good music in general, because good music makes the brains move in addition to the body. Do you naively believe that the authorities need this? And then someone there decided that this one would be the main Russian music now: "Fuck you **". This will be our star. What is he singing there, obscene? Yes, let him sing with anything. If, for example, it occurred to him to walk and wave x ** m across the stage, no one would even pay attention, everyone would say: "Oh, bl ***, how original!" What's the fool around here, old man? What are you asking me about? What does this have to do with music in general?
It is beneficial for the authorities that the people generally score on good music, because good music makes them stir their brains. Someone there decided that this one would be the main Russian music now: “Fuck fuck.
Grigoriev: Have you ever thought that your old friend Pugacheva at one time could turn the taste of the country in the other direction? She had such power and influence that she could point with her hand where, and the whole country would go forward and with a song there. Here, look ... Sometimes I turn on the Nostalgia channel, and they show, for example, the author's evening of Tukhmanov in '86. And what do I see? Hall of three thousand "Russia", cue ball. On the merry-go-round they are all the same - Dolina, Leontyev and others, but they sing songs that they would never play now, because they are fucking complicated. That is, it turns out in the 86th year the audience was more advanced than now? I cannot understand in what place, when and why it all broke off?
Chernavsky: I'll tell you ... No matter how sophisticated Tukhman's music was, no matter how good Pugacheva was, there were no artists of the international mainstream level in the scoop. In general, there were few artists. This time. If now tens of thousands of them travel around the country, then there were ten people. And you have already named half of them. Second. What they sang was still music, sucked from the finger of a Communist Party member.
Grigoriev: You do not hear me. I say that Pugacheva alone, who was not afraid of anything, was enough to convince the country of the opposite without any revolt. But she chose “Christmas Meetings” with “Lube” and Natasha Koroleva.
Chernavsky: And I answer you: there was no one to perform cool music. Music makes an impression when it pulls the quality out of you. When you sit, listen, stomp your foot, clap your hand. Even the editors of Channel One cannot be ordered to clap if they don't. Besides being editors, they are people too. Take some Peter Gabriel, who is difficult for the average Western listener, but his music has so much groove inside, such a train rolls on you that it is impossible to listen to it indifferently. And what was in the scoop was "An Unusual Concert" by the Obraztsov Theater.
Grigoriev: Look, in the mid-nineties, when I was doing the magazine, I had the absolute conviction that we were building a garden country. Okay, garden city. The people had an absolute need for something new, and then we all sat down on this wave. What happened next is a mystery to me. This garden was uprooted and taken to a dump.
Chernavsky: I was in Germany in the 90s and I was also sure that something would start now. But then it quickly became clear that this was a temporary interest, and it had no continuation, because the first thing was that it was all the same fakes for someone. And second, it was not the music that everyone lived by. Look, eighty percent of the country is still singing thugs. How do you rate this?
Grigoriev: I do not know. How?
Chernavsky: The country is run by thieves' money. And who pays, he dances. People who do something real do not depend on money, especially from thieves. Trust me, you will not become richer than Kirkorov, because you simply do not have enough saliva to lick it like that. But this one, who "fuck you **", is all in the hands, because his whole idea is criminal. The criminals are not necessarily the ones who are in prison. They wear ties, different shoulder straps ... When was there such a demand for crooks? I will not be surprised that this Cord will receive a committee colonel in a year. They are all colonels there. Majors are not given, colonels are immediately given.
Eighty percent of the country still sings blatnyak.
Grigoriev: Do you know what is happening with music in Russia now?
Chernavsky: Well, something comes to me, yes. I'm not very interested in this, old man.
Grigoriev: Have you watched rap battles? Oksimiron, Purulent, Rapper Syava ... 30 million views on YouTube each. The press writes: "There was a historic battle between rappers Syava and H ** howl." The word "historical" is written without quotation marks.
Chernavsky: The fact that you now connected this with music even surprised me. What the fuck is the music? In 68, I was a kid with concerts, and we had an entertainer who said from the stage: "Give me a theme." To him from the audience: "Come on about Vasya, who fucked Dusya, and then about the tractor driver Kolya, who started drinking." And he fucked like an automaton rhymes. What kind of fucking music are you asking me about?
Grigoriev: Well, this, by the way, also came to us from America. From the American 80s.
Chernavsky: First, in America it was the protest voice of the streets. All these blacks who ended up outside Reaganomics came to the Bronx and began to speak out there in this way. This is the tradition of black neighborhoods. Secondly, in America, rap began with music. It was brought by Jamaican DJs here. I have a bunch of rappers I know, they all do music, they are singing guys. Each of them R'n'B herachit so that no one dreamed of.
Grigoriev: Come on with a master class from Chernavsky. I'm sure young musicians will read this conversation. And each of them longs to write his own "zurbagan" to penetrate everyone, immediately and forever. What will you tell them?
Chernavsky:Are you asking me how to come up with an ingenious song? (Laughs)
Grigoriev: It is about this.
Chernavsky: No way. You can make 4-5 songs of very good quality, and if they are played together, perhaps one of them will become a hit. The quality of the selection is important here. You make a hundred sketches and then put them into a patchwork. You sit with a whiskey, listen. Bach, something's hooked. Stop! What is it? Well, let's listen again. And this is a cool singer, maybe, or it's a chorus ( chorus, from English - chorus. - Esquire) can be freaky. Something like this.
Grigoriev: Do you think one hit is enough to become a star?
Chernavsky: It's not a hit at all. Britney Spears came into Universal, dad gave the dough for the record, she sang Hit me baby one more time and everyone thought - class, one hit and she became a superstar. It doesn't happen, old man. She's on my tail right in front of my eyes N'Sync and Backstreet boys I was hanging out with professional youngsters from the age of 14. She flew after them all over the country, sang behind the scenes, catching their every note, every movement ... And only then they gave her a microphone, when they realized that she was already rushing out of her ... It is unrealistic to achieve great mental success right away. There are no such successes in the world! First, for 10-15 years, you figure yourself out, rummaging in the garbage, looking for a diamond there. And if God wants, he will throw him there for you.
** Igor Grigoriev has been studying music since 2008 and resides in Moscow. Yuri Chernavsky - composer, producer, author of Banana Islands, Zurbagan, Sirena and Robinson. Since 1995, he has been living in Los Angeles. Time difference between Moscow and Los Angeles 10 hours.
In the kitchen, combined with the living room, there is a whole orchestra - percussion, bass, guitar, synthesizer, three vocalists; only nine people. They play something like -boss-sa-nova, then some rhythm and blues from the repertoire of Mario Biondi. In an apartment on Leninsky Prospect, Igor Grigoriev, the founder of the OM magazine, is rehearsing with musicians. Grigoriev, sitting in a sagging armchair, sings softly, occasionally forgetting the words; shakes ashes into a dirty glass; he has black circles under his eyes and an unbending left hand that he presses against him - the result of a recent collarbone fracture.
“Music is about money. Now I need to earn somewhere - I only sang in karaoke before, I have no voice, but suddenly they started calling for money, I had to return to Moscow. For six months, we played nine concerts - at parties like Ksenia Sobchak's birthday or Hello magazine holiday; they played here recently in Astana, Jeremy Irons later sent a note with gratitude. "
In the nineties, Grigoriev studied at MGIMO, was an absolute gay icon, drove one of the two Ferraris in Moscow and did the magazine OM, interviews in which began, for example: “IGOR GRIGORIEV (ordered several shrimp cocktails, $ 9, 50, sturgeon in white wine sauce with shrimps, $ 19, and traditional for intimate conversation "Satrap-orange", $ 6, of which seven glasses were drunk in the end) talked with Lika Star at the Zolotoy restaurant. In the 2000s, Grigoriev tried to revive OM, founded a political party, shot a film and launched his own TV show - the magazine existed ingloriously for several months, the film never came out, the program was closed, the party collapsed, and Grigoriev went to live in Brazil three years ago. “It felt like the wings were being cut off. I didn’t show it - it’s like doing yoga in Tibet, living by the ocean, but at some point I felt that I was turning into a loser. ”
Six months ago, Grigoriev returned to Moscow; rehearses, almost never happens. “I just started to move away - at first everything was getting bad. Vasya-Esmanov, my former editor, called me here to Solyanka - I almost fainted, although it seems that the people are all nice; such a funnel has formed - there is no energy in the city, there is no sex and no flowers grow, beauty does not appear. "
Grigoriev puts sex and beauty above everything in the world. “This is exactly what you cannot find anywhere in Moscow now, - somewhere in the backyards of Rio, a boy on a stool reads poetry, around a pimp, drug lords, beggars, pass kasha to each other, shakes everyone, the boy is unwashed, beaten, but they listen to him he is an addict of this attention, and therefore the energy rushes out of him. "
Grigoriev looks at his watch - the musicians will soon be leaving. They start to play - at first only the rhythm section, then gradually everyone joins in. Grigoriev sings, falling short, but very emotionally - this time it is his song; something about "pussies on the skin, but loved." The vocalists, three massive oriental women, in rings, fingerless gloves and fishnet tights, kneel before him. Grigoriev gets to his feet, smiles and even slightly straightens his sore arm. Already on the street, he says: “He doesn't insert anything from anything now, the wave is not coming - I was here at the Tesla Boy concert - correctly, professionally, but not that. We couldn't do anything, but third-rate grandeur is better than Tesla Boy. "
A couple of weeks after the premiere of Igor Grigoriev's video for the song Dreams of My Spring, the Afisha editors finally recovered from the shock - and found out from the musician himself what it all meant.
- The song "Dreams of my spring" - where did it come from?
I was one of the first to write it. For the last two years I sang other people's songs and earned it, but I realized that I can no longer. I ran out of everything - strength, energy, desires. By March I was dead. And then there was a plane that had to fall. I was sure that I was being removed, but when the plane landed, I realized that this was not the end. And after I was crucified, music began to come to me, a lot of music - I kept the recorder under my pillow, because I could wake up at night and hum something into it.
- What is the meaning of your music making?
I want to finish our stage. Well, that is, I don't care about it, but since I started making pop music, it should be such that it cancels all the shit that is around. They still do not fully understand that the global paradigm has changed, and with it the time of fake and lies has gone. Parfenov, WikiLeaks and my "Dreams" are events of the same order, which came from different fields. Parfenov says what journalism should be, WikiLeaks - what is the structure of the world, my modest "Dreams" contains all the components of correct pop music - a good song, a beautiful and funny video, high-quality sound, a charismatic artist. True, perhaps I overdid it - I pressed all the keys at once and at the same time showed how not to.
- So you are all serious?
Well, what do you think? Do you also think that I am Verka Serduchka? No. I have not lost my mind. That is, it came off, but not that much. Although the people are likely to take everything at face value. The people are a very stupid substance, a herd of sheep.
- And what is the ultimate goal of all this?
Earn money and hide in your Brazilian hacienda by completing a mission. Next year I will release three more videos and an album. Although, in principle, I don't really need money - I have a producer who supports my well-being in the amount I need.
- You are returning in the wake of the current protest moods, will you somehow get involved in this?
My return is not my choice. My choice was different - to sit quietly on the seashore and sip coconut milk, but time has recruited me to the service.
- Well, are any social movements important to you at all? For example, would you go to a rally in support of Kashin?
No, because Kashin is a pawn in big game... I understand the motives behind all events on a deeper level, and Kashin has nothing to do with it. In the world, in the Universe, all Rubicons have been crossed. Everything is changing before our eyes, new heroes are coming. The old hero looked like this: you come up to him on the street and ask for a cigarette, he has a full pack in his pocket, but he tells you that he has no cigarettes. The new hero looks like this: he also has a full pack in his pocket, but he says - I won't give you a cigarette because I don't like you. Kashin does not fit into this arrangement at all, sorry. He is not a hero, but a soldier, so he did not have, does not and will not have cigarettes. We just need events and sacrifices to shake people by the chest, so that sobering occurs, so that you can see where the music is good, where the bad, who is real, who is exaggerated. Do you believe Parfyonov's trembling voice behind the podium? It is funny to me, because all this is a mise-en-scene of a big performance.
Denis Boyarinov
I have known Igor Grigoriev since my school years. Also, of course, in absentia: first, on the magazine "OM", which knocked the ground out from under the feet, the first star in which was, of course, Grigoriev - the editor-in-chief, to whom Pugacheva confessed that she was collecting his magazines in a file. Then on the video with Lika Star, where he has the best supporting role - better than Kutsenko and Bondarchuk. There were some other TV programs, including his own on TV-6, leaving “OM”, some kind of youth political movement ... Or, first, movement, then leaving and a TV show. I never thought that I would get to know Igor personally, much less work with him on the restart of "OM" (not a very successful story, which ended, however, with a spectacular finale - the last issue of the once cult magazine was adorned with the bloody face of Philip Kirkorov with the removal of " We will all die one day ”) and after all this we will remain friends - whoever worked with Grigoriev knows what I mean.
Both in my school years and during joint work, I was amazed by the reckless courage and scope of ambitions of Igor Grigoriev, his trickster ability to cheat and swindle in the cultural field - McLaren's personality type. Therefore, I was not surprised when a few years ago I learned that Igor Grigoriev, who had tried himself in politics and film directing, sang and gathered his orchestra. I was not surprised when, less than six months later, I saw his cabaret in the program of a respected Moscow jazz club festival. I was not surprised when I soon found out that he had disbanded his cover band, which made good money on corporate parties, and was already writing new songs himself. In a conversation with him, he made it clear that he wants to change Russian pop music, which has turned into a swamp over the past twelve years, within the next few years. Plus, he has a new strategy to promote his music in the current dead-end conditions, when music TV, radio and magazines have already died, and what was born in return is still completely unclear. All this looks very bold. That is why I suggested that Igor Grigoriev take one more step, which requires a lot of determination - to bring the behind-the-scenes processes of creating his ambitious project to the public and discussion in OPEN SPACE on OPENSPACE.RU.
I was not surprised that he agreed.
Terms of play
Igor Grigoriev
A few fundamental steps at first.
1. Of course, I would like to like you. Like any artist, I want to be liked. In this sense, artists are not just men - not people at all. These are flowers, delicate and fragile, no matter what thorns they overgrow. Each rose prefers to be smelled reverently, not gruff like a pig. The thorns, of course, are for pig protection. So, the artist is essentially gentle and fragile, and for the sake of ostracism - constantly in a pose. You know that there has never been and there is no such artist who cares about everything, you probably know. In short, I don’t care what you’re going to think and say about me. Although my appearance will still be indifferent to you.
2. Everything that will be proposed here cannot be included in any concept, no matter how familiar it may seem to you. No artist is an island. An artist is born from the blood and ashes of other artists, living and dead, with whom he is in eternal ethereal kinship. The laboratory of a good artist is like a perfume factory, where thousands of familiar smells are combined into one new one, no longer similar to others. That is, he is terribly similar to others, but damn it, this has not happened yet. In this sense, I am a good artist.
3. I do not know where I will be tomorrow. My character, violent and unpredictable, has repeatedly played black comedy with me. But my current, third in a row, life, which is just beginning, has already been devoted to music. Forever. More precisely, for the next eighteen years. My voyage will be long and traditionally hectic. These waters are known, they are good exclusively for white rafting and cannot be otherwise. Every stone and funnel is not an obstacle, but a challenge. But I'm not afraid, because I am free. This is my advantage over you.
4. Items 1, 2, and 3 are in some respects inconsistent with each other. Therefore, you should take them seriously only individually. These are the conditions of the game.
I started my musical career two years ago. In August 2008, I returned from my many years of downshifting and thought about what to do next. I must say that I have been thinking about this on an ongoing basis for the last twelve years. During this time, I tried a lot of things, I don't want to talk about all this - kind people have sorted my life on Wikipedia.
I myself marveled at all these curves when I saw them archived on one page. The only thing I want to add to this is that my seeming inconsistency and frivolity are associated exclusively with the painful search for a new place in the sun.
By the summer of 2008, I think I had discovered such a place.
Astana and Irons
In August I gathered a band of the best Moscow jazz musicians, we rehearsed and two weeks later performed at the opening of the Eurasia Film Festival in Astana. It was September 7, 2008. I now celebrate this day as the Day of my initiation as a musician. The program consisted of covers of Soviet and American song classics - Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Bernes, Utesov, Lagutenko, Pugachev - and was well received. Jeremy Irons, who was sitting in the hall at the banquet table, stretched his long neck all evening, trying to see me on the dark stage, which greatly embarrassed me: I was only thinking about not lying to the English texts. In the morning the concierge brought me a note in two lines to my room: Thank you for the show. Jeremy Irons. I considered her a blessing for the road.
Jeremy Irons and Igor Grigoriev
For two years I made money with varying success by performing other people's songs at corporate parties, birthdays and private parties.
I was paid money, I was praised, but in the meantime I was desperately looking for my own repertoire. I rushed at everyone who, as it seemed to me, could help - from Igor Nikolaev to Yuri Entin - but no one understood in what genre I should write. With each such meeting, hopes of finding their author melted away. In the winter of 2009, I stopped my concert activity, realizing that I had exhausted myself with covers, and closed myself in my apartment, vowing not to leave it until I wrote a song.
First song
The composition of the first song was facilitated, as usual, by the difficult dramatic vicissitudes of my personal life, in which I am a master. In the wake of yet another separation and another broken heart, I wrote "The Ballad of the Lost Hat", which at first I did not dare to show to anyone. One day, while drinking with my musicians, on the fifth drink, I plucked up courage and asked for attention. When I finished "Hat", I found confusion on the faces of the guests. We continued the interrupted conversation, but the conversation did not go well. I was going crazy - my premiere turned out to be a failure. Already when everyone was leaving, Anton Belyaev, a musician and arranger, came up to me, with whom we would then begin to make an album together, and told me: “You know, when you sang this“ Hat ”of yours, it was as if a chair was knocked out from under me the chair was fucked on the head with all the strength. " I slammed the door behind the guests and began jumping around the room like a child. Suspicious, I mistook success for failure. But it was still a success, my first success as an author.
In March 2010, it seemed to burst through me. I composed two or three songs a day. My recorder spent the night with me under the pillow - in the middle of the night I could wake up and poke into it an indistinct melody, which I put in order in the morning. At first I was ashamed of these hums of mine, until Anton Belyaev accidentally heard them. He advised me to release them separately as a soundtrack for a deep psychedelic trip that has visited me. I joked about this idea, but just in case, I saved all these entries in a separate folder.
By April, three dozen demo songs were recorded, and I went to an oligarch friend to ask for money for promotion. On the way, I dropped in to visit my friends Egor and Ira Rzhevsky to show off what had been done. We had a fun party with my songs. As a result, I did not get to the oligarch - on the same evening Yegor and Ira offered me money to record the first songs and a video clip.
Almaty. Start
In June, our team landed in Almaty to record with a symphony orchestra and shoot the first video. We didn't want to record in Moscow, naively believing that in any other city we would do it faster and cheaper. In addition, a strange karmic knot connects me with Kazakhstan - several of my close friends and even loves, including my wife, come from there. Plus there was such a glorious start with Irons in those parts. Kazakhstan seemed to me a happy talisman, platform No. 9¾.
For two weeks we recorded several songs with an orchestra and local exotic instruments and shot a video clip for the title song of the album "Dreams of my Spring", spending a lot of nerves and money on this. But this is a separate conversation.
I am sharing with you a video of how everything happened approximately.
And this is how I entered autumn 2010 - with a modest but expressive musical biography, my own songs and a million grandiose ideas for the future.
I enthusiastically accepted the offer from Denis Boyarinov to share details of my musical career on OPENSPACE.RU. There were two reasons for this.
First: I would like to try a new scheme for promoting music on myself, using all possible audience segments simultaneously, first separating them, and then combining them together. What I am about now, I will tell you later. At the same time, I would like to use all possible platforms, including the Internet, which over the past three years has become a serious alternative to radio and television. And yes, I really like the portal on which you are reading this now.
The second reason, no less important: I would like to acquaint you with young and talented musicians, arrangers, clip makers, designers, stylists, artists - all my associates in the project. I want you to like them. Finding new heroes and launching new stars is what has always inspired me in my work. I have always tried to gather around me people who are stronger and more talented than myself, and I always feel the joy of learning and the inspiration they give me.
In general, there were no more reasons to fit into an adventure called IGOR GRIGORIEV IN THE OPEN SPACE. But these two were enough.
Every week I will share the news of my new life, but for now advice to other artists, as young and as beginners as me.
Advice from I.G.
At the very beginning of your career, do not show your work to people who do not understand you, no matter what status, position and degree of influence they may be. Show it only to kindred spirits - your friend, girlfriend, brother, sister, only to those who feel you, love and are ready to forgive you the flaws and imperfections of the first works. It is these people who will give you self-confidence, add energy to continue your creativity. You will understand your mistakes later yourself, when you fill your hand, train your ear, but first, protect yourself from breaks. If you are a creative, and therefore sensitive person, then even a slight omission on the part of your respected baron can seriously cut your wings. Fuck them all. Self-confidence and prowess are what you need to get started. And nothing more.
IGOR GRIGORIEV: For the last 10 years we have been living without heroes (www.pl.com.ua/?pid\u003d28&artid\u003d9889)
Fans of the founder of the conceptual gloss, the first editor of the OM magazine Igor Grigoriev can triumph: he has returned to active work again. This time he sings. And he does it, like everything he has done so far, well.
We recorded an interview with him on Skype on the eve of his Kiev concert, and looking at the camera, I was once again convinced that the best drops of Makropoulos are life today for today. Traveler and sybarite Grigoriev, at forty-three, retained the appearance and habits of a young man. There is no bile in his jokes, and bitterness in his memories. Oddly enough, he is today's man - in every sense of the word.
THESE ARE THE BARBARIANS AND THE ABSOLUTE BANDITS, WHAT THEY WERE SPONSORING THERE!
- Igor, your biography is so similar to an adventure novel, at times with elements of the plot of Indian cinema, that you just don't know where to start. For example, one of the unsolvable mysteries: how, after childhood in the countryside, adolescence in a foster family and military service, you suddenly enter MGIMO from the first call?
- You know, at 20, people are supposed to be adventurers. As for my admission to MGIMO, I was just lucky: I was young, ambitious and did not allow the thought of failure. I arrived in Moscow with two string bags, went out on Vernadsky Prospekt, and the prospect of southwestern new buildings opened up in front of me. The second time I experienced a similar impression of a grandiose, fantastic city only years later, when I arrived in New York. And then I lit a cigarette and said to myself: I like this city and I will make it.
- Well, yes, something similar was said by young Rastignac, looking at Paris from the top of the hill.
- Is very similar. I also chose MGIMO "by the bar", precisely because it was very difficult to enter there, and not because I wanted to be a diplomat.
- Together with Boris Zosimov you created the Imperial magazine, which opened the era of gloss in Russia. In this regard, what is your opinion of the oligarchs of the first wave, what role did they play in the formation of the modern culture of Russia? And how did they differ from the second wave oligarchs like Mamut, Prokhorov, Deripaska and others, so passionately hated by you?
- I have never directly come across those that were in the early 90s, so for me they are a kind of cliché: a crimson jacket, a chain, a shaved back of the head. But I still meet their followers in St. Petersburg and Moscow. We recently went into a restaurant and saw a company that took us back to the 90s. I believe these people are the foam of history, which left no trace in it, except for the bloody one. The current ones, including those who flirt with art, are no different. But, as one friend of mine says, if there is an opportunity to dissolve them for money, then it must be done. And, thank God, there are artists who give them their pictures and even fly on their private planes. As they say, from a filthy sheep at least a tuft of wool. Because the current oligarchs are a gang of egoists and murderers, for whom this country is nothing more than a field for profit. They do not think in terms of old age, and this explains a lot. Because a person who wants to grow old in some place subconsciously prepares a comfortable platform for himself. And these, which I see in Courchevel or Sardinia, have reserved a ghetto for themselves, and they don't give a damn about the rest. These are barbarians and absolute bandits, whatever they sponsor.
THE JOURNAL BUSINESS IS IN THE SAME CRISIS AS THE WHOLE MASS CULTURE
- You stood at the origins of Russian gloss. Moreover, OM remains the best concept magazine on post-Soviet space... The further history of this business took him into the provincial jungle of pictures from the life of the fashion and model business. The texts are unreadable, there are no problems, the heroes, however, too.
- Glossy magazines in the West in the 60s and 70s were some kind of clubs, which consisted of great photographers, talented writers and journalists. OM took the best from this experience and by its existence actually closed the time of heroes. With the default of 98 in Russia, this time is over. Yes, in fact, this is a global process, and for the last 10 years we have been living without heroes. The Moscow glossy carousel spins the same characters without even thinking to step on their tail. The magazine, glossy business is going through the same crisis as the entire mass culture. I constantly communicate with 20-year-olds and I must say that they have in their iPods - Cobain, Sinatra, Morrison. Why? Because our time has not generated a new wave of heroism.
- Your going into politics in the late 90s is amazing for a person with your vigilance and understanding of the funny and the absurd. The social political movement you founded at that time was called "Generation of Freedom". This is despite the fact that historically Russia has never had a place for freedom.
- (Sadly.) Yes, it never happened ... But in the first half of the 90s we were inspired by the changes in the country, and my entry into politics was akin to the adventurism that drove me when I entered MGIMO. Okay, I said to myself, I have my own audience, I have something to tell her, and I know where to lead her. As a result, I fled the country the day before the decisive press conference. As they say, God took away.
- You see, it's not sad that something didn't work out, it's sad that the entire generation of 40-year-olds has gone through some kind of inexplicable perturbations today. Ivan Demidov, for example, seems to be broadcasting something about morality and ethics from the Slavyansky screen, Boris Grebenshchikov goes to Surkov to get orders in the Kremlin. It was they and others like them who made it clear to the current generation of 20-year-olds that conformity is the best thing to choose for your destiny. What about the responsibility of the former rulers of the minds?
- Well, yes, it is difficult to object to this. You know, in the West I have my alter ego, his name is Tyler Brule. Our paths developed in parallel. In 94 he made Wallpaper magazine. I'm in '95 - OM. I left in 98, he is a year later. But Tyler left with a personal helicopter, a home in Zurich and an island in the Mediterranean. I left with nothing, because the work of a talented independent person in our country has never been paid and is not paid to this day. Therefore, I do not particularly blame those who took a different path. Take my former friend Kirill Serebrennikov, to whom I once said in my hearts: “Why are you doing so much of everything ?! You are not an orchestra that can be called to a wedding, banquet and funeral! " And he answered me very simply: "I now have 60 meters on Ostozhenka, I need another 60 meters to transport my mother from Rostov." Tell me, is he a traitor or not? After all, he is ready to stage this novel by Surkov! Can I blame him? I can not.
- It's not about 60 meters. The point is that some are saving themselves from hunger and humiliation, while others simply turned out to be "the best students." For example, Fyodor Bondarchuk, who never felt the need for 60 meters, but for the sake of money and popularity is ready for any vulgarity. His films of recent years should be canonized as an example of conjuncture and vulgarity.
- All this is so. But now we are not talking about Fed Bondarchuk or Tina Kandelaki, we are talking about talented people who cannot live with dignity in proportion to their talent. And I, tell me, why did I go to this forum "2020" ?! (At the forum "Strategy 2020" between Grigoriev and the Kremlin ideologist Surkov, an impartial dialogue took place on the topic "what is the real elite", which was later written about by Russian publications. - Author).
- And really, why did you flood there? Do you still not know why Surkov is gathering the intelligentsia?
- But I'm still a romantic! They called and said: “Igor, we need people like you now. There is a lot of money in the country, and we would like to do something really significant for the country. " I was elated and thought: what if something really changed?
PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WANT UNTIL YOU OFFER IT
- Well, yes, “there is a lot of money in the country” sounds very exciting. Any idea will inspire inadvertently.
- (Laughs.) Renata Litvinova once told me: "The most erotic gift is money." I understand her: when she married a rich man, she blossomed! There was no need to make money on some kind of corporate events. For me, money is an opportunity to freely broadcast myself into space. Or travel. Or help good people. When I was in the Himalayas, where dust storms constantly occur, I took with me a certain number of vizine bottles to save local children and grandmothers from chronic conjunctivitis. To them, I was a big white doctor.
- Why didn't your romance with Russian TV work out - you didn't launch "Twin Twix", quickly closed the program "Saturday Night Fever"?
- Television fell into a pathological dependence on the rating - people, they say, watch it. But if the same kind of bread is supplied to the shops, they will also buy it, because there is something you need. As a result, TV passed ... a whole generation, which threw the "box" into a landfill. Young people will not watch all these Baskovs wandering from channel to channel. By the way, I told Kostya about this (Ernst. - Auth.), Who now feels as if the whole world is turning in one place, and quoted him the phrase of an American millionaire who got rich in the service sector: “I never followed people ... Often people don't know what they want until you offer it to them. "
- Ernst, I think, himself understands that his TV will end as soon as at least a quarter of Russia's population has the Internet. But he is a temporary worker who is arranged for three to five years to cut the dough. Igor, what kind of people in Russia are you interested in today?
- Of course, there are probably such people. I am looking for them not only in Russia, I am looking for them all over the world. And I am very happy when I find in New York or Rome, where in pubs they sing their endless lyric saga. In Russia, unfortunately, the opposite process is going on. I recently read the memoirs of Andrei Konchalovsky about what Mosfilm was like in the 60s. It was a company of amazing people who gathered, discussed Western and domestic films, could fight over some Kalatozov frame. Where are these blocks, where are these monsters? There are no more generations, communities. Therefore, I am looking for individuals, grains of talent in LiveJournal and other networks. If I feel “substance” and not “shadow of substance”, I begin to persuade: write, write! Perhaps, these loners will in the future begin to form communities, without which any social exhaust is impossible.
- Why did you start filming videos, and then movies?
- It was my childhood dream. I even had the nickname Director at school. The story of Twin Twix is \u200b\u200bthat I'm a big Woody Allen fan ...
-… and you probably like freaks in general?
- Well, these are interesting creatures. But love? I do not know. I'm a freak myself. And every freak, as you know, needs an audience, and not another freak nearby.
If we return to cinema, then, unlike the journalistic profession, it takes place here and now. You cannot rewrite anything. As a result, you become dependent on people - even if they are not talented, but not the ones you need for this job. There is no critical mass in Russian cinema to do decent work.
- Your life today is connected with music. Why did you sing?
- I entered this story because I ran out of money. I traveled and they ended. And my very first performance at the festival attracted attention. Then I received blessings from various famous people and suddenly I realized that everything is serious. Being a perfectionist, I constantly "eat" myself, I always have pockets full of ashes for myself. I am shaking before going on stage. And I know what I bribe the audience with - dysfunction. In my case, it's not about charisma, not about artistry, not about luggage, but this particular dysfunction.
- Do you use stimulants before the concert?
- Before I could drink a little, now I refused it. I don't use drugs, but I love good alcohol, for which my friends contemptuously call me blue (laughs).
- Age fears - what are they after 40? Fear of loneliness, fear of aging?
- Loneliness is most acutely felt after the concert, when you go home alone. But with this everything has been decided long ago. But the fear of aging is serious. When the body cannot reproduce the spontaneous expressions of the soul - what could be worse than this?
THE AFTERWORD
- Your colleague Igor Shulinsky once expressed himself very eloquently about the 90s: "We thought we would see the sky in diamonds, but we saw x ..."
- I'm a fatalist. In general, after the injury, when a killer wave hit me in Brazil and my arm almost ripped off, I, as a rule, refuse to discuss these topics so as not to speak platitudes. The next morning I woke up and realized that I could not get out of bed to go pee ... At such a moment, all claims to life, reflections are worth nothing. It was a very valuable experience.
What's the most important thing in life? Answer yourself three questions: "who are you?", "Where are you from?" and "where now?" If you answered these questions, then internally you are ready for anything.
The editors would like to thank Svetlana Volnova for arranging the interview with Igor Grigoriev.
DOSSIER "PL"
IGOR GRIGORIEV
He spent his childhood and adolescence in the village of Lacedaemonovka in a peasant family. He arrived in Moscow in the summer of 1987 and entered the full-time department of the Faculty of International Relations at MGIMO (specialization - Thailand and Thai).
Since 1988, he began to combine his studies with work as a concert director, Irina Ponarovskaya.
In 1991, he left his studies at MGIMO and began to engage in journalism. In 1993, he met the show businessman Boris Zosimov, with whom he published the first thick glossy magazine Imperial in Russia. In May 1995 he began work on the OM magazine. For five years in a row, the magazine was awarded the title of the best magazine of the year by fellow journalists. In November 1998, Grigoriev left the post of editor-in-chief.
In December 1998, he founded the All-Russian public political movement Generation of Freedom. In December 1999, it became part of the Medved association; three candidates from the movement were elected as deputies of the State Duma of the third convocation. Igor Grigoriev himself left the movement due to a conflict within the management elite.
In May 1999, Igor Grigoriev settled in Prague. He was a co-owner of a small cafe in the center of the city, which became a place of informal meetings for the staff of Radio Liberty.
In 1999 he returned to Moscow at the invitation of the general producer of the TV-6 channel Ivan Demidov. In May 2000, the channel launched a weekly infotainment program Saturday Night Fever with Igor Grigoriev. The program continued on air until November 2000.
After leaving television, Igor shot clips. Among the famous works of Grigoriev - "Beads" (for Dmitry Malikov) and "Come, I will" (for the group "Mumiy Troll").
In 2004 he began filming the television series "Twin Twix" according to his own script. In narrow cinematic circles, a copy of the "pilot" is still circulating.
In 2006 he left Russia and settled in Rio de Janeiro. Since June 2006, he has been keeping a constant network diary, in which he publishes reports about his travels.
In 2008, after a ten-year break, Igor Grigoriev returned to active creative activity with a musical project. In November 2008, he signed a contract with the City Concerts International Artists agency, which specializes in concert activities of foreign artists in Russia, becoming the first and only Russian performer in the agency's roster.
“Pink crucifixion”, “there will be no spring” ... Are you consciously on the same wavelength with Henry Miller, or does it just come out by itself?
I cannot seriously answer this question. What the hell?))) Where am I, where is Miller ... Besides, I do not count Miller among my idols. I support Miller in his belief that a real spiritual upgrade is possible only in a marginal state, when you are up to your throat in mud, shit, blood and semen.))) To enlighten at a seminar on Kabbalah, sitting in an ergonomic chair with a book by Yehuda Berg in a break between training at Worldclass and dinner at Vanilla means something wild: you are Alena Doletskaya. Miller's main book is the only one I beat, but I love the words it starts with: “I live in Villa Borghese. Around - not a speck, all the chairs in place. We are alone here and we are dead. " Therefore, like Miller, I am interested in outsiders, carriers of unforgivable vices. They are closest to God. I myself have received revelations in moments of extreme despair and in the most inappropriate places for this. For example, sitting on the jerk while suffering from diarrhea. With this, our common wave with Miller calmly dies down.)
Why Rio? Did the border guards detain you? Count of Monte Cristo came out of you? Are they loading oranges in barrels?
In Rio, I found a state of contentment in the present that I had long sought in the Himalayas. And this in itself is strange, since all spiritual Himalayan schools are built on practices that teach the acquisition of this state, and Rio is, anthropologically and culturally, the complete opposite of the Himalayas. The answer, however, is simple. Brazil is still a pagan country with hundreds of sects and local cults, besides, the Brazilian worldview is not at all burdened with cultural baggage. A person reading a book on the Rio beach is most likely a foreigner, or at worst an Argentinian. They are, of course, aware that they have Amadou, Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector, but this knowledge is not dominant. A culture that is based on reflections and the eternal search for the existential “I” is not able to dominate in the land of the year-round bright sun, wild ocean, birds of paradise, outstanding asses, easy love and wonderful no thought. In the edge of primitive happiness, in a word. Anthropologically, Brazil has retained the characteristics of a human paradise as seen by the Portuguese who landed on the Brazilian shores 500 years ago. The general public is not aware that More described his “Utopians” from the notes of the associates of Cabral and Vespucci, who were fascinated by the beauty of the Brazilian aborigines and the anarchic but just order that reigned there. Therefore, what I was looking for in esoteric and exoteric teachings turned out to be in pure carnal form on the beaches of Ipanema.
And, of course, oranges do not grow in Brazil, no one walks in white pants, and monkeys live only in the Amazon, and even those are small ones.
They say "scoop", they mean "Kazakhstan". Homeland of Borat and the best potassia in the world. You often visit Kazakhstan, what is really happening there?
Kazakhstan, of course, is a wild country, but no wilder than other lands inhabited by nomads. The way of life and attitude of the nomads is determined by a combination of three factors - the dull monotony of the landscape, the minor tonality of the wind and the main ram that leads the herd, and therefore people, to where there is grass and water, that is, life. The whole movement towards life is predetermined by the ram-leader, at no point on this path is there any reason for emotional clouding of the mind. In such conditions, people become prone to deep self-contemplation. With outward savagery, they become the owners of the third eye. Almost any Kazakh is a mystic, but not a Muslim, but a shamanic one. This makes them attractive to me, and I close my eyes to the lack of secularism. This, in general, is not difficult to do.)))
You wrote in your "Proust Questionnaire" that you do not recognize poetry and you have no favorite poets. Has it changed? Why is there such a distrust of poetry?
Lack of confidence in the subject is a consequence of knowledge of the subject. I am completely unfamiliar with poetry. It so happened that she passed me by. I even remember how it happened. I think I was in the third grade, and the teacher ordered me to write a quatrain about autumn. I was so inspired by the assignment that I dashed off a poem during the evening. When I was reading it in class, on the fifth quatrain, the teacher stopped me by asking who I ripped it off. I remember how I ran away from school to the river, hid in the reeds and sobbed there with resentment. From that moment on, poetry ceased to exist as objects for my admiration. True, something periodically broke through the armor of rejection - at one time I admired young Limonov, for example. Now I have to write the lyrics for my songs myself, and, oddly enough, I succeed. For example, I really love this line of mine: “I had dreams, in the middle of spring I won't wake up - don't start the clock. I will not return, I will stay in them, and you go ... ”. In my opinion, great.))
Zinaida Gippius described Nikolai Gumilyov as "a young man who sniffed the ether and proclaimed himself Mohammed, Buddha and Jesus at the same time." Do you not notice such a "neophyte's delight" behind you? You do not forget that such an important experience of “climbing the cross” and “descending from it” was experienced by countless millions of inhabitants of this planet, and is described in thousands of texts, be it Plato's dialogues and “The Book of the Dead”, “Divine Comedy” , plays by Shakespeare, Tolstoy's prose, “Ulysses”, poems by Pushkin and Mandelstam, songs by The Beatles, studies by Propp and Levi-Strauss, and so on. and so on. I'm not talking about the innumerable "things" made worse, but from that no less metaphysical in origin - for example, many texts published in "OM".
An enthusiastic neophyte is like a jester who believes that everything is permissible for him and loses control over self-dosage. I have always wondered if the jester who goes to the chopping block for his long tongue regrets that he was incontinent.)
But, nevertheless, you definitely noticed my condition on this moment... Sometimes I am physically shaken by this sensation. At such moments, I clearly see how millions of puzzles unfold and add up to an extremely harmonious and beautiful picture. In a sort of Borges Aleph, a collection point for all points. But as soon as I want to fix it, it crumbles and leaves me. Only mirages and smells remain, which in my case turn into songs.
Comparisons of my type with Gumilev seem to me incorrect, since Gumilev was a classic “martyr”. I even know some of these martyred prophets. They constantly attract suffering to themselves, receiving masochistic pleasure from them. For example, Rustam Khamdamov has been savoring his outcast all his life, dressing him up with endless sores and nostalgia for the past. Gumilev was looking for a martyr's death and as a result he did find it. Reflections of this kind deactivate the prophet's ability for intelligible and loud broadcasting, for which, in general, they equip the prophets here. Here is Pushkin - a prophet of the opposite direction to Gumilev, because he is more wealthy. Gumilyov is boring. He is an esthete, nobleman and “twilight” intellectual. The flock does not hear him. In his poems there is no categorical rudeness of the barbarian. A real prophet is always a barbarian. An arrogant, cruel, rude, ignorant destroyer of the dominant cultural field.
I noticed that people who spent their childhood in the countryside almost never lose the ability to “fly”, no matter how many of them roam around the cities. Tell us about the Lacedaemonovka village.
This is a settlement on the shores of Miussky Bay, in which during my childhood monster sturgeons were found, and I devoured black caviar, scooping it with a spoon from a three-liter jar directly from the refrigerator. This is a fertile land in which the dark sides of the Russian character bloom as well as lilacs outside the window or apricot trees in the garden. I remember that all the time I wanted to escape from there. I made my first attempt to escape when I was four years old. I put three oranges in a chamber pot and went with this simple belongings to a neighboring village. My plans were to visit my parents' friends for a short time, and then go further towards Ukraine, because my parents brought chocolates and delicious marshmallows from there, and for me Ukraine was the edge of endless marshmallows. But there was a big kipish, they figured out me and noisily returned me home. Now my connection with the village is limited to trips to my old mother, who lives there alone and because of her nasty character has quarreled with all her neighbors and relatives. I have to fly there once every three months to bathe her and replenish the refrigerator with provisions for the next three months. I think that after she leaves, I will forget the road there.
Cross-dressing is an ancient tradition of both the Slavs and any other peoples who have not lost touch with the land. Before the revolution, it was customary to dress boys up to a certain age by girls. Do you have any standard answers to "boys" that say you are "not a man"? By the way, have you been compared with Mikhail Kuznetsov in the second part of Ivan the Terrible?
I made the decision to play a woman the day before the shooting for a simple reason - there was no one to play her. Not a single actress who claimed the role of Harper seemed funny to me. But surprisingly, a collective portrait of a Soviet woman emerged from my Harfistka, a bat, but did not say goodbye to the Dream.))) Therefore, the female audience reacts so positively to the clip. I was told that in my heroine many role models of Soviet women of the last fifty years are guessed - from Svetlana Svetlichnaya to Lyudmila Chursina.
Dressing up as a woman is, of course, a classic carnival trick, replacing a good yang with an evil yin. Therefore, such a trick is always to the liking of the viewer. Dustin Hoffman is well remembered from the film "Tootsie", the main role of Alexander Kalyagin is considered "aunt", and Jack Lemmon remained the actor of one role at all - Daphne from the comedy "There are only girls in jazz". In Brazil, for example, many men do not have enough imagination to come up with a vivid image for the Carnival, and then they put on their wife's blouse, substitute their boobs and go to the parade with the whole family. And now you see an interesting picture: a couple is walking - a woman, next to him is a man in a woman's dress with one child in his arms, with another in a stroller. Note that dressing up in feminine for them is just the way of least resistance to the challenge of "carnival". And it never occurs to anyone that the next day they will have to make excuses to their fellow colleagues and prove that they are “men” after all.
The standard history of the era of the so-called "postmodernism" - something started as a joke turns out to be more serious than serious. How long have you begun to discern the inner logic of your biography? And are there any “points” in it that you still don't understand? Why was the magazine called Om?
Well, yes ... The last of these "points" concerns composing music, despite the fact that I have no musical education, and for me musical notation and Chinese literacy are visual phenomena of the same order.))) In Brazil, I saw a documentary about the first samba composers. These were completely illiterate old people to whom music came, and they did not understand how it happened. Since at that time there were no voice recorders and recorders, and the old people did not rely on their memory, they used their grandchildren to memorize melodies. All the melodies of Kartola were memorized by his granddaughter, and then sang to the musicians for learning. In much the same way, Chaplin wrote his grandiose soundtrack for City Lights.
And the logic of my life is simple and predictable: from birth I strive for peace, but I am constantly recruited for training camps.
The theme of the "second coming" is as much as Christianity itself. The European man is used to seeing a sign in every local disaster that Dude will return soon.
Bowie sang about “Five Years” until the end of the world, the Beatles about “the coming of the Sun King”, Jim Morrison about the fact that he is The Lizard King, Led Zeppelin about the upcoming final battle. Nothing, however, happens.
Now, it seems, not a single area of \u200b\u200bculture is not affected by the premonition of the apocalypse. Gorillaz, Antony and the Johnsons, Arctic Monkeys, Gutter Twins, and Massive Attack sing about him.
That there, the seventh part of "Harry Potter" (released 2012 years after the birth of the historical I.Kh.) only for commercial reasons, it seems, was not called "G.P. and the gifts of the Magi ”.
Julian Assange just recently “made everything secret”. With all this, the great English poet-prophet T.S. Eliot wrote that the end of the world in visible reality will not manifest itself in any way. Not with a bang but with a whimper. Are you personally expecting some kind of catastrophe, or are you ready to get a “long happy life” instead of a “cross”?
Eliot is absolutely right, and the end of the world has already happened. The final phase of it - the cleaning of the fields - is taking place before our eyes, but few people see it. Many so-called living people think that they are still alive, because all the signs of visible reality indicate this. And reality itself has already excluded them from its circulation. These zombies are easy to spot by their hysterical reaction to my clip. They react to any vital field like demons to the cross. Arm yourself with my clip, like a cross, and walk through your friends. It will become clear to you who is no longer with you. Or with us)))
The 90s in Russia passed, it seems, under the sign of Khlebnikov, a great prophet, but rather ruthless and inhuman. Now Vvedensky is returning to us, whose God is not the cosmic Cthulhu, but rather the home God of trifles. Fedorov, naturally, felt this earlier than others.
And what can you say about Vvedensky except that “it's very cool”?
Here is Vvedensky one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. It is no coincidence that he is returning right now. But, you know ... for Vvedensky to really happen, he needs to come up with a voice, to manifest it. Everyone knows with what intonation it is supposed to recite Mayakovsky or Akhmatova. But in what key should we read the strange, often primitive Vvedensky? It's very important question - setting the tonality. Although, in fact, I do not want Vvedensky to happen at all. Let mothers read his children's poetry to their children at night. And that will be enough. So I wrote music for his poem "In the restaurants of the evil and sleepy", but also music. and the image that I came up with for the clip has nothing to do with Vvedensky. After all, the prophets thought over their doctrines with one goal - to hide real knowledge from the people))) For the same reasons, the people should not demonstrate their Gods.
What is your personal attitude towards Islam? We all know what the “public face” of Islam is now, but at one time it was the most courtly of religions: Mohammed cut off his cloak so as not to disturb the cat, the main Muslim symbol is the moon. Before contact with Muslims, Christian Europe was, by and large, a desert in which "the righteous were sausage like lads on heroin." Or is it all “not your topic”?
I do not want to pretend to be a know-it-all, but it seems to me that the main problem of Islam is that it was immediately raised on their shield by Arab degradants. As a result, a civilizational catastrophe occurred - Islam was replaced by Islamism. This could not happen to any other major religion besides Islam, because Islam is the most vulnerable religion. It was created by the hedonist poets, reclining on soft pillows with the revelations of their predecessors in their hands. And then what to ask about religion, which considers sex to be one of the ways of worshiping the Almighty?))) In fact, the Koran is an openwork and free interpretation of Christian commandments. The interpretations of good, evil and moral laws in Islam turned out to be too liberal and too vague, which allows manipulators to turn Muslims into blind kittens. Unfortunately, Islam cannot be returned. But, even more regretfully, Islamism cannot be stopped.
You say that Kashin is of little interest to you, because he is “just a pawn”. But are you sure that you are a figure? Themselves say that the songs come to you in a dream. On the other hand, doesn't Alice Through the Looking Glass, perhaps the greatest esoteric book in the new European tradition, teach that only a pawn can become the Crimson Wife? Or, take Orwell: If there is hope ... it lies in the proles. By origin, you, it seems, are also "from the peasants", and not "from the nobility."
Of course, I'm not a figure. For the past 12 years I have been killing myself in search of my place in the sun, and nothing has worked out for me. Then, at one point, someone turned on the tap and music flowed into me. I had no choice but to fix it. If you ask me what I want most now, I will answer - I do not want anything else. But I have no right to let down those forces that recruited me for action and handed me such a powerful weapon as music.
The caricatured "General Lebed" from the 90s (naturally, had nothing to do with reality - the vocabulary of the real General Lebed was slightly less vocabulary Pushkin) was a favorite saying “fell - wrung out”. And this caricature Swan also said, “It's hard to swim in hydrochloric acid with severed legs.”
Igor Grigoriev is a man with a talent for falling, perseverance to swim in hydrochloric acid and strength when you can do push-ups.
Another proverb says that rats are the first to flee the ship. Not every adage is worth following, many of them were invented by the elders in the barracks to frighten the younger ones in the barracks, so that unnecessary thoughts would not occur to them.
A little acquaintance with the biography of Grigoriev is enough to make sure that in addition to following the call, there is another equally often repeated motive in his life - escape from a ship going to the bottom. He runs, not knowing why, jumps without spreading straw - and in the end he always turns out to be right. “Thematically,” he can be compared with Ilya Lagutenko, but in the latter’s “flow away” and “go away” there is still a philistine desire to spread straw.
Let's compare two "Ranetki": You can't argue that "Mumiy Troll" has everything for sure: an apple from the tree of knowledge, a prison called a "world supermarket", crocodile tears of "slaves of enlightenment" who, without much pleasure, finally learned that everything that Soviet propaganda talked about the "world bourgeoisie" and "the machinations of imperialism" was true.
Seen from the point of view of a person who voluntarily went to work as an ant on the construction of a pyramid, the name of the owner of which he will never know (aka “hipster” aka “normal”), the song “MT” has courage and even some visionary depth: after all, not everyone, probably, in January 1999 understood what it was about.
But the cat's schadenfreude with which Lagutenko voiced his "truths" led him in the end to a "social comment", which is decidedly not interesting to anyone
It is not interesting not because there is some kind of untruth, but because in 2007, singing songs identical to ten years ago the editorials of the newspaper “Zavtra” with curses against “gaydarochubais” is a rather empty activity.
When Grigoriev sings the same "Ranetka", you hear not journalism, but a story from life. And this story exists apart from some “social contexts” and discourses. And this is deeply true.
Because Russia became a "prison of nations" not under "Puten" and not under Nicholas I, but much earlier, and "a man will be born a slave, a slave will lie in the grave" was said not yesterday, but almost 200 years ago. Take some modern “Russian traveler” complaining about “Russian savagery” - the personal freedoms that he has now could not have dreamed of poet Pushkin or poet Lermontov in his wildest dreams. That did not prevent them from writing compositions of extreme courage and audacity.
Many without the king's whip simply have nothing to occupy themselves with, and if you read into the meaning of their "servant letters", they are not at all about the fact that they "beat a lot", but that "the whip is short."
Prigov once said that Russia, a country in which the metaphysical fear of freedom is stronger than all other fears, is, apparently, doomed to go around in the same circles: a breath of air is necessarily followed by bloodletting.
Indeed, if we compare the current situation with the one that Andrei Bely described in the preface to The Beginning of the Century, little has changed: the same liberal idle talk on the one hand, the gendarme's guard on the other, philistine stupidity on the third.
But freedom is not the thickness of the wallet, the number of KGB connections and “symbolic capital”. Freedom is a state of consciousness; it is achievable under any political system and economic circumstances.
Freedom is freedom to sing and dance, knowing that gangster machines are looking at you, that the spring that you conjure may not be, that your body and your dance are ultimately corrupt.
Grigoriev often does not understand what he is doing, he calculates his strength poorly, he does not know his place in this world; but he is never wrong. He dances and sings because he was told that he can dance and sing. Today he is no longer a rat who escaped from a ship called the Titanic Western Civilization inevitably moving in the direction of the iceberg, but a man who has a pipe, and with this pipe he is ready to take other rats away - as in barracks they call people whose hearts are not completely freedom died.
It is everyone's personal choice - to keep your mind in the city of earth or in the city of heaven, but do not forget - somewhere there is an eternally young man with a pipe; he sings and dances, and this song and dance will never stop.
A man sits in front of me and every minute says that he is tired. This is the chief editor of the magazine "OM" Igor Grigoriev. For the past five years, no one knew anything about him. And suddenly he is back in the ranks. I wanted to make a sad film about great love, but starts a New Year's comedy about women. He considers Eduard Limonov a genius, compares Lars von Trier in cruelty to Chekhov and is afraid to say banal things.
- You have returned to the OM magazine. Why?
- I'm not really back. In general, I did not go anywhere. I just haven't done a magazine for the last five years. It was sad to look at the magazine all this time. He's my child, nobody else's.
- What did you bring the child to such a state?
- God knows! That's the kind of father I am. Absolutely lousy father. In general, I'll tell you: I'm tired of working. I do not want to work. I haven't done anything for the past five years. And I really liked it. I do not want to do anything. Nothing!
- And then what to do?
- Travel. The only occupation that is worthy of me now. I would leave, come back, throw my bag, grab a new one, and so on.
- Fascinating jetset world ...
- What are you speaking about? That is out of my range. Do you have a jet-set magazine? .. I can't stand a jet-set ...
- Back in January 2002, you talked about filming a film based on the book by Denis Bushuev. The film was supposed to be about the love of a young teacher and his 14-year-old student. What's with the project now?
- A very good script has been written and is lying in the table, waiting in the wings. The state did not find it possible to give money ...
- Why the state? You couldn't find sponsors?
- No, we submitted the script to the state commission. And we were refused. But I think the script needs to lie down.
- Did Renata Litvinova somehow participate in the project?
- Renata did not participate in any way. She said that she had not seen so much filth and abomination in one scenario for a long time. She did not accept my offer to become a co-author. But I'm making another movie. Comedy.
- Somehow you can't say that you can shoot comedies.
- The fact is that this is the only thing you want to do. Weird.
- What is the movie about?
- About women.
- Ozone in Russian?
- Then already Woody Allen. For him, women are definitely an unconsidered object for satire. The man himself is a rather boring creature. If a man is not boring, then he is no longer a man.
- And what is the classical understanding?
- This is what 85% of all men are.
- Who?
- Words cannot clearly explain. You see, a man is a very stable being, in contrast to a woman - a being who constantly reflects. A woman, for example, begins to lose weight from birth. And what is it worth female friendship! Men are friends with each other evenly, steadily, tightly. Boring. Do you understand what I'm talking about?
- While I understand.
“Look at those women over there, sitting at the table behind us. This is already cinema. Over the past five minutes, they've tweaked their hair several times, refreshed their lipstick, and changed their position three times.
- So, who is in the film? Famous actresses or your findings?
- Finds. I needed thirty-year-old actresses, and from this generation no one I knew fit. I have amazing girls filming, almost all of them were once rejected by directors. But there are no bad actors, there are bad directors. I needed blank sheets to paint on.
- So all the heroines are about thirty?
- Yes. Thirty is an interesting age. Especially if the woman is not yet married. It's like "The last minute call" at airports. If you are in your thirties and you are not married yet, you are on constant alert. A very funny state. From the side.
- This is a series?
- No. Four-part feature film.
- What's the movie's name?
- "Twin Twix". This is the name of the bar where the heroines gather. Such a society, consisting only of women. And yet they are all celebrities.
- Do you feel the woman?
- Of course. The purpose of a woman is quite simple: a woman is a man's pleasor. This is the classic type of woman. And I highly respect this type. A woman is a secondary creature, incapable of feats, but her mission is to push a man to feats.
- You say this to women?
- Everyday. And first of all, to his clever wife, who feeds me, praises and makes me laugh. And at the same time he will not reread it on a single occasion. If you meet such a woman, consider yourself extremely lucky. This is the woman of your life. Now these are practically not released.
- Do you communicate with men?
- On duty. For entertainment, men are interesting if they are not men.
- Do you need to feel yourself smarter than others?
- Yes, for me. You will not deny that the fingers of two hands are enough to list the people you want to listen to. For example, Andrey Sergeevich Konchalovsky. Rarely about someone you can say - "I have the honor to know." So I have the honor to know him. I have the HONOR to know Inna Mikhailovna Churikova. I dream of the HONOR of being represented by Bekhtereva.
- Are you a metrosexual?
- Well, who else? .. My editor Denis Boyarinov says that in Russia there are only two metrosexuals - Grigoriev and Lagutenko.
- Is it fashionable?
- And what are we, journalists? To throw new concepts into the people, to make them fashionable. You think that I have been interested in stitching 200 pages monthly into one magazine since 951. You're wrong if you think it's interesting. I wonder what's around these pages.
- Do you often pronounce the word "fashionable"?
- It's already overused.
- Trend?
- Trend? Another word that I translated into Russian in 1993. These new words ... Yesterday Kirill Serebrennikov called me and said that with my new magazine I had established anti-glamor glamor. It's funny.
- Are you coming to Petersburg?
- Unfortunately, or fortunately, not often. I came to you six times. The first time I came to St. Petersburg, and he greeted me with a low sky, chilly wind and cold. People walked with their collars turned up and wrapped themselves in scarves. I thought, “What the fuck! In this city, people should drink vodka and cry, drink vodka and cry. Wake up in the morning, throw a glass, cry - and so on until the evening. " And then I came a second time. The clouds parted a little, and it seemed that everything was not so bad. When I came for the third time, I happened to be at the same table in a restaurant with your former governor Yakovlev. And I say to him: “Listen, light up the Nevsky! You have such a magical city. But at night ... Light up the Nevsky. " I must say that by that time I was drunk, and I was completely on the drum how he would react there. I just blurted out. And then, a few months later, my friend called me from St. Petersburg and said that Nevsky was glowing at night. And the fourth time, when I arrived in your city, I was met by a St. Petersburg driver. And we drove through the spring city, and I was behind me arguing out loud about the fact that the more I come here, the more I like it. And suddenly this very driver says, quietly says so, almost to himself: "And difficult love is true love." You know, in the life of every person there are such phrases, phrases, from which your worldview is formed. And this driver says so ... And I think: "Here is a son of a bitch ..." When like this, step by step, you make your way under the low sky, through the raised collars ... This is a different order of concept ... Therefore, I hate giving interviews. I often say strange things. And you must understand them in the same way as I understand them ...
- You speak as if you are tired of explaining your thoughts ...
- Tired, tired ...
- You need to speak in some inhuman language ... Maybe with gestures. Look so that everyone understands everything. This is how you breathed out the smoke upward, and everyone would understand that you should be left ... And already a paragraph of the text to be.
- Well, yes ... Well, of course ... Of course, and so everything has long been clear to everyone. Here you are, I make magazines, we make films. What for? And so everything is clear. Games, games games, games games about games. Damn, to what extent everything is predictable. But I have to work, because I personally have no other sources of monetary allowance. I am 37 years old this year, and I wonder if I really do not deserve peace?
- Don't you feel sorry for yourself?
- What a pity.
- Crying?
- Well, I'm crying ... If I press the cat's tail ... I cry at melodramas. So, you know, let a tear go. As before, doctors were bled for relief.
- Publicly?
- I want to publicly, but it doesn't work. Sometimes I want to cry, so that an image is formed, so that everyone will appreciate it ... We talked about something else ...
- Tell me, did you know the essence?
- I think yes. In 1998, I left the magazine "OM" in a very loose state. I am very tired of everything, of the life I have led. From everything. I hate to remember the details, but I was faced with a pressing need to break the circle. And I went to Europe, stayed in Prague, the same infernal city as your Peter. Sometimes he took a backpack by the shoulder and traveled around Europe. He worked at the bar, mixed cocktails and introduced himself as Anton, Ivan, Stepan - depending on his mood. And I really liked it. I was a man without myth, without a long tail of legend.
- Have you really learned the essence behind the bar?
- No, no, I learned the essence later. But the bar counter was a necessary prelude to the insight.
- Is this a physical moment? Got into the shower and know?
- More or less like this. When I returned from abroad, I woke up in the morning and saw the Hollywood snow falling outside the windows. I have huge - from floor to ceiling - windows, huge. And such a large, unreal snow was falling. And I said to myself: “Look, boy, you have too many reasons to be happy! You are the happiest person in this world! The happiest".
- And you now know everything, after you have learned the essence?
- Almost all. Even how your life will end.
- Can you tell?
“I'm afraid that won't turn you on.
- Tell me. Maybe give money? Is one hundred rubles enough?
- No, no, you're just humiliating me.
“We may never see each other again. I'm just taking the opportunity.
- You are making very serious statements now. Do you know that according to the Buddhist concept, people never meet just like that? And if we met today and are sitting at the same table, it means that in past life we were familiar. And we'll meet again next time. However ... Let's talk about something funny.
- Create a portrait of the ideal man.
- The ideal man has one quality - he must constantly do things in his life worthy of all respect. Then he has the right to be so proudly called.
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