Tangential Flight

The name of Veronica Valley is known to lovers of author’s songs of different generations. Every time she comes to America, she becomes an event that is anticipated and remembered for a long time. This time, Veronica brought the program “Lady without an Ermine”, which included new songs and poems.

And the old-fashioned one remained on encore...

 A tangent flight:

                                                Interview with Veronica Dolina

- Veronica, do you need to adjust in a special way before the performance?

- I am an old sportsman in this sport. Therefore, I treat with confidence and fatality the very fact of arriving somewhere at the designated address. When I arrived, I was definitely trying...

- Does the emotional mood depend on where you are performing: in the Moscow Hall or a small cafe in an American town?

- I guess not. Much depends on the audience, but this component does not tear any vessels penetrating into the heart of the concert. And then there is a rich blood supply, and everything matters, including the relationship between our presidents and the election of the Pope.

- Are you kidding?

- No, I'm totally serious.

- Can you explain how politics or the election of the Pope can affect an artist's emotional mood?

- Come on! I'm part of the climate, part of the environment, I'm extremely sensitive. The poet is always a membrane at the top, and events of world significance such as the election of the Pope or the advent of the Chelyabinsk meteorite should not be missed by him.

- I know for myself that readers (in your case, listeners) readily identify the image invented by the author with the personality of the author of the text. How close is the real Veronica Valley to the poetic image she created?

- You know, time shows something, and you want me to open the cards like this?

- Honestly, I really hope so.

- No, not yet.

- Then I'll try to ask a different question. Here are your poems:

“Let your room be stuffy today,
Remember, you are beautiful, you are airy,
You only obey the streams of air,
Don't worry, everything will happen to you!

- Does this flying, airy female image have anything to do with how you see yourself?

- Yeah, I'm a bit of a jumper, too. You don't jump up like that every day to fly. But I want to.

- You turn so often to the theme of the Middle Ages that you seem to yearn for that era. For example:

“Love is undetected cyanide.
Poured into tea, sprinkled into dishes...
Fate is a dilapidated gypsy.
Peeping at me everywhere.
And the bedside angels, alas,
I will not force you to put it in the head,
Where the lute coziness, the flight of love
And the complete Middle Ages.

- Yes, it happened, I really loved that era.

- A scary time, though. The bonfire's smelling through the ages. Longing for the Middle Ages is, sorry, like masochism.

- Fires, then furnaces... What time is comfortable for Jewish people? Nobody promised us anything. It was Anton Pavlovich Chekhov who said something about the sky in diamonds, and even this was not promised to a modest Jewish person. Just a little bit.

- But you were very drawn to the extreme, in an era when both a modest and quite immodest Jewish man was declared a special hunt.

- Nothing special. But what a cult of individuality and what consistency in the service of cults! The aesthetic principles of the Middle Ages really appeal to me.

- Name one.

- Poetry and music as a complete dominant, the fusion of poetry and music, reverence for the creative person, when the artist is rewarded, the painter is hired, the poet, the scribe of poetry, the musician is a respected person even with a small feudal lord.

- What about Mozart, whom Count Arcot kicked in the ass? However, this happened much later, in the XVIII century.

- Well, what to do, then it was necessary for educational purposes.

- Interesting interpretation. In an interview, you said you despised public opinion. Not afraid of "fighting off the pack"?

- You want to make me look like a lonely freak? No, I'm just a staunch consumer disliker. And fate also failed to unite with the masses. I'm a mild nonconformist. Not that I am a perpendicular, but I go to the general ski on a tangent. You know?

- Unfortunately, yes.

- I confess that I do not like the general opinion on a lot of issues and quite openly can not be in solidarity with him. But this is not white-mouthedism, but the usual code of independent thinking.

- Does sublimation help to abstract from the crowd marching on the pavement?

- Yeah, and that's what I've been doing for years. I can cuddle, I can try not to make big mistakes, so as not to let myself and my offspring down. I am not friends with brute reality, and so my toolkit is a kind of sublimation.

- Ten years ago, I was at your concert and I remember very well the phrase that fantasy is a prerequisite for your existence. How not to cross the line between fantasy and self-deception?

Fantasy is a fundamental thing, and self-deception is a kind of stupidity that I don’t like. Fantasy has always been part of world culture, because it is music, literature, and cinema. The ability to fantasize is an indispensable attribute of every creative person. But it is fantasy, and not arranging yourself some optical instrument that would deceive your own heart or, God forbid, the hearts of loved ones.

“And now I am entering such a river,
That the farthest shore washes,
Where a man forgives a man
Any pain that happens.”

- You once admitted that “you experience daily growing sadness.” Is it age or everyday?

- Yeah, I always said that. It is a longing for heights and latitudes, for the quality of life, if possible to emancipate yourself. This kind of insatiability has been present in me for almost as long as I can remember.

- What are you doing with that?

- I'm taking some steps. For example, when she was very young, she gave birth to children, because this is also liberation.

- Well, that's how to say...

- And travel, travel, and a lodge in Normandy, where I spend many months of the year.

- Speaking of France. At today’s concert, you spoke with love and tenderness about your life there and with bitterness and sarcasm about life in Moscow. Why is that?

- In France, the concentration of what I love is much lower. Of course, there are children, grandchildren and other close people in Moscow, but the situation there is very difficult. I find it much easier to breathe in France because there are so many things that suit my artistic taste. There's a different vision, a different taste, a different hearing, a different speed of life, and there's a lot of freedom.

- You said that in this fishing village become different.

- Yes, thanks to those landscapes, books, music, the background of French history, which I appreciate so much. There is a feeling of fulfillment as a person, and it visits me weekly, and in Moscow – sometimes once a year.

- Let's go back to the song. Many times fans of bard music reproached me for snobbery. They fundamentally disagree with my belief that a bard performing not in a circle of close friends, but on stage, for money, has no right to be an amateur. What do you think about that?

- I know very little about amateurism, because fate has put me for 40 years to earn this modest handicraft. But in the harmony of my verse music and home artistry, I always try to look in accordance with nature, the weather and the Russian language. Of course, there is amateurism in our business, but I have not been to those places for a long time, because, in principle, I am interested only in professional things.

- In those places, it's at rallies?

- Yeah, but not because of some arrogance or snobbery. First of all, I haven't been called there for a long time. And secondly, calling me doesn't necessarily mean getting hurt. I’m almost always busy with something – in detail and in depth. To call me is to provide something interesting, and not every gathering promises it. And if I have time to see the prospect of some event, there is a high probability that I will refuse.

- How diplomatically you put it. I think it’s no secret that today the author’s song is experiencing not the best times, but at the same time, some bards in their fees are not inferior to pop stars. An example of this is Oleg Mityaev, about whom Sergey Nikitin said that “he is moving towards pop with great acceleration, ... because he is forced to write what his audience likes ... and therefore moved to the service sector.”

- Yeah, something like that. Perhaps I would say it in a different way.

- So, the bard does not have to earn well and be in demand?

- Don't know. I'm just doing poetry. I do not write songs on other people’s poems, as, for example, Seryozh Nikitin, gifted with a special and gentle talent, successfully does this. And of course, I do not appear on the stage of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses as a thunderous Russian cowboy from Chelyabinsk as Oleg Mityaev. By the way, I treat Oleg with sympathy, and Sergey with love. It's just a little different than what I do.

- With whom do you maintain close, friendly relations?

- Well, no one clings to the lapels of another person's jacket and kisses the suction.

- I didn't mean the close ones. physical relationships.

- In earlier times there was Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava. It was always worthy: no hugs. But his presence always allowed him to maintain a level and compass arrow. Therefore, below the poetic level of concerts in which he participated, never dropped.

Once upon a time, Yuri Iosifovich Vizbor was a dear man. His poetry belonged to a slightly different workshop. I am in excellent guild relations with Yulia Kim, I will certainly embrace the rarely encountered in nature and time Novella Matveeva. But I haven't seen sweet syrups in a relationship for a long time.

- You once said, “Life problems don’t bother me.” Should we take these words literally?

- Yes, I'm not very friendly with reality, so I created an alternative.

Yes, I do not always take everyday problems seriously, and therefore I have been confronting simple everyday vulgar reality for many years - and not without some success.

- When they say of an elderly person that he is young at heart, I really want to believe in this, but the soul also wears out and is no longer able to expect happiness with the same youthful optimism, to rejoice, to strive to learn something new. Is there something that you never cease to be amazed at?

- Yes, and many. I cried in the theater and in the cinema - all shaking with tears. And it's not old-fashioned - I've been crying like that all my life. So my children react lively and shamelessly, and I watch it with some fright. I'm really used to it. We're not office-constrained people. And you can surprise me with anything: a canvas in a museum, a fresh poem. I am very close to some small literary impressions, and a book does not surprise me. I won't say anything about human joy. Glory to G-d, there are still plenty of wonderful things in nature and in life.

- What kind of music do you listen to in the car?

- I can put Arvo Pärt – of course, in my dosages, I can – Valentin Silvestrov. I love old German and French music.

- How do you feel in America?

- I don't speak English, so I feel like a cripple or disabled person. Of course, due to the peculiarities of hearing, I am a little accustomed to react to English and understand it, but still, I am a francophone who did not learn English. (Veronica Valley graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute with a specialty French teacher – Z.M.) Therefore, perceiving myself as a disabled person, I treat myself with pity, but I try to be condescending.

And if not about language, then I am an absolute admirer of America, though without some of its “details”. A lot has happened since I first came here in '91, but I'm the one who says, what America won't do it, it will.

- Unexpectedly, at the beginning of our conversation, you almost managed to move the conversation away from music and towards politics. So let's modulate in the same tone: from the perspective of a poet and an artist, why is the relationship between America and Russia so complicated? Why is there such a negative attitude towards our country even among intelligent and thinking Russians?

- These are the fruits of our isolationism and our poverty. When there is little information, it is easy to throw doubt and hatred into this narrow gap. 15-20 years ago, the relationship was not perfect, but it warmed before our eyes, and it was connected with Yeltsin.

- In my opinion, most Russians hate it today, especially at retirement age.

Yeltsin is a natural liberal, a man from the hinterland, with his cunning and breadth. He missed a lot of pragmatic things, condoned some dangerous things. But he was a good man, and in this sense, such a ruler in Russia has long been absent. It wasn't in my lifetime, and it probably won't. Under Yeltsin, relations with America were pretty good. Now, you can see what a crocodile we have on our throne. What kind of relationship would it be? People are furious, as is the case in a complete reign of injustice. And from unfreedom and injustice man is wild.

- How does your family exist in such injustice?

- All my friends are doing something cultural. Husband makes a movieDirector Alexander Muratov – Z.M., senior My son is a journalist, a film critic. It has a direct impact on which American and European films penetrate Russia. His wife works for IMAX. My middle son is a filmmaker and actor. His wife is also an actress. My daughter works on television and makes documentaries. The youngest son is also thinking about going to the cinema, although he has not previously submitted such applications. This is how we exist. Our house is very engaged: dozens of scripts flow through it every week discussing possible actors, composers and all sorts of surrounding circumstances. In good weather, six grandchildren run around the house, two of them are already schoolchildren. This is the kind of employment that everyone has created for themselves.

- This is your alternative reality.

- Yeah. And in the direction of the rulers you look ... I can not say that with a completely independent expression, but for people like me who deal only with poetry, we still have a more independent mine.

- Your tour of America ends. In addition to fatigue, how do you feel?

- Humanly and artistically, I was very happy. As always, my concerts are attended by caring people, and it is so great to see how wonderfully they react to some of my modest rhyme, how they capture the mood. It's a pleasure to perform with such heat exchange. So I'm going home quite satisfied.

Good luck to you and new songs.

Interviewed by Zoe Master
www.zoyamaster.com