6395 Port: When fate strikes - Moments that change everything

I do it every day, in the morning and sometimes in the evening. So I can concentrate… and focus. I learned this at drama school. You get into a flow. If you’re in the flow state, if you have a direction, then everything is fine. Back when I was at the film and acting school in Sofia, I acted in a movie for the first time. It was a Hollywood production with Jean Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and other stars. These days I am not known as an actor, but as a mayor. The youngest mayor in Bulgaria. It’s certainly not what I had in mind for my life. I know Dolna Malina from my childhood, we often spent our vacations here. My father was born here, so was my grandfather. Elections should be held much more often. Someone else was mayor here for four years and nothing happened. The people were forgotten. A road was quickly paved just before the election, but we are actually being robbed. Ah… I’d better stop, that’s too much information. Maybe they’ll vote for me again. Then I’ll rebuild what no longer exists. Infrastructure, culture and hope. Politics is confusing. What is democracy? Ultimately, it’s the people with money that determine the lives of others. That’s how many people think here in Bulgaria. We have a problem with our river. Twice a year it turns gray and the entire ecosystem dies out. It changes color in a matter of seconds. The frogs disappear, the ducks, geese, fish, even the algae. A year ago, some residents complained. Someone even wrote something about it in the local newspaper. He got a call from the administration of the entire district. He was told he didn’t know who he was dealing with. Very dubious… The problem is that the state and the entire system is set up like that – corruption and nepotism. That’s why so many young people are leaving. They are fleeing from this injustice in Bulgaria. People have the feeling that everything is dying out here and that there is no hope. The house I live in belonged to my great-grandparents, and even the generations before them. When I came to live in Dolna Malina, I was fed up with big cities. The noise and all that. I wanted to get away from it all. I was on the theater stage in China, New York and London. In between, I wanted to relax and recharge. I’m the exception in my family. My father likes to say I’m a “circus person”. If you don’t go into business and earn good money, you can forget it. Whereas my mother has always supported me. So it’s thanks to her that I’ve continued in this direction – acting and film. Back then, a friend kept asking me the same question: Wouldn’t you like to be mayor of Dolna Malina? I thought he was joking. He said, “Next year there are elections and you’re a good fit for this village. You can achieve something.” He asked me over and over again. And then I stood for election. It was a game for both sides, like playing on the stage, but in real life – and suddenly it became reality. Surprisingly, people chose me. Here in this room, they put me on their shoulders. Then they sat me down at a table. There was music and everyone danced around me. I sat there and stared at the wall. I thought damn, what have you done with your life now? Of course I regretted it. Just take a look out there. There are lots of people living here. What do I do with them all now? What does a mayor actually do? I had absolutely no idea! Of course that scared me, people had expectations of me and I had no idea where to start. At first I played the role. It was like the circus for me and then after three months I wanted to quit and leave. But the residents wouldn’t let me. People came to me every day to change my mind. They said that they had put their trust in me and that they would help me. They told me about a Bulgarian proverb. It says that once you’ve started dancing, you have to finish. Once you’ve started, it’s a commitment, whether you like it or not. So I stayed. Before Yonko came to the village it was desolate, silent… How can I put it? Yonko brings people here from outside that we can sing and dance with. And when he dances himself, everyone dances with him. Life was suddenly beautiful, and fun. I felt a little nostalgic. Many of my generation fled to Western Europe. And so I began to share experiences with those who stayed. To help them, and together we changed something. Created a new reality. There are people who say this is what fate has decreed. But we alone are our destinies. Because we make the decisions for ourselves. When I stood for election as mayor, my father said to me: “This is the smartest decision you have ever made, the most sensible thing you’ve ever done.” My mother was also convinced that I would achieve something. Now my parents are asking me about something else. They’re poking me. I’d like to have a family one day… but it’s not the right moment yet. I was just talking to my girlfriend about this the other day. I asked her when the moment would come when we would live like normal people? And she said: What does “normal people” actually mean? Normal people are even crazier than we are. There is another saying in Bulgaria: “If you want to make God laugh, make plans.” That’s why I’m not making any more plans. I’m here now and if I continue on my own path, I’ll get there eventually. Life beats the movies. What seems clear today may look completely different tomorrow. The only thing that counts is the here and now. I think I was born with music. That’s how I feel. I started singing before I could speak. At least that’s what my mother told me, that I was lying in bed as a little baby and was already humming music… What I heard on TV or the radio. That’s how I remember myself – singing. I was born in Siberia. More than 40 years ago. My parents come from the Republic of Moldova, both from North Bessarabia. My home is mainly in Moldova. If we talk about this home in the physical sense, this is the place where I live and where the band is, the musicians I work with. It’s my family in a way. So if that’s how you define home, then it’s here. But home for me is also in Romania. I also felt at home in Ukraine because I am of Ukrainian descent as well. I also felt at home in Russia when I traveled there. Because when I was born, it was all one country. We all grew up with the same literature, the same humor, the same jokes – they circulated everywhere. We all had the same furniture. I mean, there were things that were very similar in this whole region. There came a point when I had to choose between university and music. My family was pressuring me to study journalism, so I chose that path. I started working as a journalist in the first few years of my studies. But after years in journalism and politics, I realized that they were all just bubbles. I met Andrei in 2010 and we got married soon after. And that was a phase in which I had some stability in my life. We loved hiking, we loved being in the mountains, both of us. In 2015, I was in the mountains with Andrei. And we were in Piatra Craiului, in Romania, in an area that felt kind of strange. We realized it was dangerous because I saw signs that an avalanche had gone down in front of us. And we decided to turn back. We were already on the way back. And it was a… hmm… that’s how these things happen… I don’t know. Andrei, …at one point he made a tiny movement, one wrong movement, and he slipped. And slipped, and slipped, all the way to the bottom of the slope. It was a very deep ravine – 400 meters deep… yeah. This was taken an hour before the accident happened. The night before, he kept insisting that I sing. He kept saying: sing, sing! It was… I don’t know… as if he felt something, as if it was a last message he left me back then. He kept saying: please sing, please sing! We were in a hut near Brasov and I had a little guitar with me, and I sang and said: But I am singing! And he said: Well then keep singing! I don’t know if music would have become my profession if Andrei were still alive. I think I would have taken a different path in life. We would have started a family, had children. What happened back then left a huge mark on me and I think part of me died with him. I was completely distraught for a while and I couldn’t even sing anymore. Whenever I sang, I started to cry. But I couldn’t go back to my old life. I understood at the time that not a single compromise I had made up to that point made any sense. And when I realized how fleeting life is, how a person can be gone from one second to the next, I asked myself: What are we in this world for? To make life compromises, to buy things, what for? After a year of complete darkness, I came across these guys and we founded the band Via Dacă. Our paths crossed just like that. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a higher power guiding our paths. Suddenly these guys come along and we try to make music together. For me, music was healing. And I know exactly what kind of music. I was healed by a certain type of music, a certain sound. And now I understand that I have to pay tribute to what music has given me. We are bringing back folklore, but not in its archaic form, not in the original, but in combination with modern music. And, because I’ve been moving within different styles all my life anyway, I find that interesting, especially as music is a universal heritage. We are aware of our roots, but we are looking to connect with other cultures. And that’s what I really love about our time today, this freedom that people didn’t have a few generations ago. They couldn’t travel, just change their location, go to festivals, for example. None of that existed. It’s this mixture, which contains elements of folk music, and especially ancient music, that gives you this feeling, calms your mind and tunes you into certain healing frequencies. It’s still very difficult, but it is possible to make a living from music. Compromises, that word again… I believe that this is a constant process. That’s what you always have to measure yourself against. It’s not a final decision, you’re constantly testing your limits. Besides, I couldn’t go back to journalism or political work. I don’t think I would find my way, and I don’t think I belong there anymore either. I like going to the countryside to meet the people there, to befriend them, to talk to them. Lilia Brechowa is the mayor of the village of Gura Bîcului. The village lies on the banks of the River Nister on the border with Transnistria. The last time I visited Lilia, we went to the bridge that connects Moldova and Transnistria. How long has it been? One and a half years. A year and a half, and I still can’t believe that this isn’t just a nightmare, that Odessa is 100 kilometers away, right here… …and is still being shot at. …and it’s so paradoxical that there is a war while life goes on at the same time. And it’s interesting how people think. Human nature, our ability to adapt. How can we simply adapt to some of these things we’ve gotten used to? We make music. It’s also a kind of self-discovery, what you play. Because when you start composing a piece, you don’t know where it will lead you. You can roughly imagine it, you can have an idea, but the initial spark is sometimes… A clap, a flash of inspiration, a ray of sunshine… and where that leads you, you don’t know. It’s a journey, sometimes with surprises along the way. Yes, you can think about things, have wishes and hopes. But if you cling to them too tightly, to your fears and bad feelings, you are not living your life. That’s what I want – to wake up and enjoy this gift. And to enjoy and see everything that is, and not always only what is not. How would I describe myself? Modest… and with a life that hasn’t really been a success. I never wanted to be a miner. I always resisted it. But a lot of my uncles worked in mining. To avoid having to join the army, I decided to work in the mine for a year. Later, I started to enjoy working underground and somehow it is still my life. Although mining no longer exists here, it is my life. It has died out. But we miners live for what used to be. I wear this uniform as a reminder that mining in Wałbrzych existed, still exists and will continue to exist. It still exists because there is a uniform or a memento of mining in almost every wardrobe in this town. Almost half of the people here were a miners. I feel sad when I talk about it, because those times are not coming back. The brotherhood of miners provided cohesion and solidarity. We used to meet up and talk about all sorts of things. About work, about women, about this and that. I worked in the Wałbrzych coal mines from the end of 1980 to 1991. At the time of the People’s Republic, during the communist era, things were going well for me. I had money, I had a life, I had joy, I had everything. When the fall of communism came, the mining industry fell apart. They kicked us out. They put the first thousand people out on the street. They threw one thousand people out, just like that. Gone. We received a severance payment of three months’ salary. The next people they let go received two years’ salary. My ex-wife broke down because we had a child and money was getting tight. We argued a lot. She said we needed money for this, we needed money for that. And I got angry too. Sometimes there wasn’t enough to buy bread. I tried to earn more somehow, but just couldn’t. I thought that if I worked in Western Europe, I would somehow manage to feed the family. But that was a mistake. Three friends and I took an old car and drove to Germany to work illegally. We later worked in Switzerland, Greece and other countries. I earned a bit of money there. Then I brought it home and lived a little. Then the money was gone again. The divorce came later. Then I lost custody of my child. There were alimony proceedings. Since then, I’ve been trying to make ends meet somehow. I was able to scratch a bit together. It’s not much, but at least I get four złoty for my work. Maybe not much, but four złoty buys you a loaf of bread. Almost every morning between 7 and 8, I go out to collect bottles and cans. You don’t come across many people on the street in the morning. It’s quiet. You get some exercise and some oxygen into your body. When I get home afterwards, I feel more alive. I have a smile on my face. When the sun is shining as beautifully as it is now, the joy emerges. And then sometimes you can close your eyes and dream a little. I like Polish music as well as western music. But only the classics: Deep Purple, Nazareth, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. When the borders were opened, I went to concerts abroad with a group of friends, to places like Germany or Hungary. At some point, two things came to Poland from the West: Firstly, the plague of tatoos. And secondly, drugs that were smuggled into Poland from the Netherlands and other countries. Huge quantities, which dealers later sold locally. They were in the schools, there were even lollipops with drugs. My daughter was the ideal child at first. She sang, rode her bike and studied a lot for school. I thought she was going to become something. I thought she was my happiness. But I was wrong. She chose the wrong path. She chose the path that leads to hell. She started smoking, drinking and taking drugs. My daughter took almost every kind of drug. I still remember her telling me: When you take drugs, you’re in a wonderful world. And later she was shaking and had epileptic seizures. She got schizophrenia and now has to take medication. I have a terrible relationship with my daughter. As a father, that hurts my heart. Maybe I was a bad father. Maybe I was too strict with her as a father. I fought for several years to help her. I fought to pull her out of this swamp. I didn’t succeed. I sacrificed myself to get her out of there. I was attacked and beaten up twice by dealers because of it. I was in the hospital for seven days. Life is like a boxing match. If you make a mistake in the ring, you hit the ground. If you make a mistake in life, you also fall down. If you fall down and you are clever, then you slowly get back up again when someone reaches out to you. You come to and start again. Our father left us while we were still at elementary school. When I came back from school, the apartment was empty. We didn’t know what was going on. Our father had moved out and taken everything with him. And he only left us a table, chairs and a bed. And so my mother, my brother and I had to join forces to manage somehow. A few years later, my brother and I visited my father. He lived in a villa with his new wife. He had started a glassblowing business. He welcomed us in, but he told us: “You can’t spend the night at my place. There’s a meadow outside where you can pitch a tent.” Later, he also had strawberry fields. He had ten hectares and people who worked for him. But I didn’t get anything from my father. I don’t hold a grudge against him for that. He obviously wanted it that way. I do feel sad about it though. My mother has been alone all her life. And she’s still alone today. It’s sad but true. I’ve always dreamed of having a real family. A family with warmth. That’s what I’m lacking, this familial love. I would like to experience this warmth before I die. The best thing to do is to close my eyes for a moment and dream that there’s a woman here. We would make ourselves a cup of tea, sit down. She would cut off a piece of the cake she baked earlier. We would taste it, laugh together, and kiss. That would be nice. Did you have those beautiful black lines over your eyes when you came out of the mine? Sure. All the miners had that when they came out. I really liked that. We had eyes like that. And on the bus, people would shout: “Look, there’s a gay one!” But it was just coal dust that had collected in our eyebrows. I really liked the miners’ eyes back then. I also started wearing make-up. I had received a package from the US with a pair of Wrangler jeans and a black sweater. I wore this outfit to school every day. If they were to reopen the mine this year, would you work there again as a miner? Yes. At your age… crawling through the tunnels underground? Yes, if they w noould still take me with my health, I would be happy to. It would make me happy to be able to work there again, no matter how long I live. Life is beautiful. You have to know what to do with it. Life means sorrow, grief, regret, bitter tears. Life means joy and a smile on your face. Life is that one moment you wait for your whole life.

วันศุกร์ที่ 11 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2567

When fate strikes - Moments that change everything

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