This is the time to look into your eyes.

Every day something happens in my environment.

People open up, and you never know how it was like this all the years, but now it's completely different.

The old world is over, the new world is just coming into its own, and I catch myself on the fact that every unfamiliar passer-by is now a truly universal mystery: what does he live deep inside, under a pile of vain worries and anxieties - after all, there have always been enough of them in our life .

Now, especially.

Maybe that's why the words of the songs, recorded in the subcortex of memory from childhood, became prophetic.

Indelible, indestructible by nothing - a code, an indicator of recognition "friend or foe".

I don’t want to make a mistake, I want to believe in “one impulse”, but ...

Lots of cultural questions.

to its leaders.

Actually, I have one: how does it happen - to be called a cultural worker?

In a mild form, the madness in the name itself lies, nothing else. 

For a year and a half, I've been writing a rock and jazz column on RT.

For a year and a half (slightly less), almost every week I write about those who personified the “era of energy and excess” - Presley, Cash, Miller, Goodman, Berry, Orbison, Domino, Atkins - there is no end to them.

Different destinies, different stories of ups and downs.

One thing in common is authenticity.

In everything.

Take vinyl, put it on a turntable, listen and - believe.

Everything is true, everything is lived through by one’s own pain, one’s own happiness, and somehow you can’t call anyone from the cohort of the greats of that time a “cultural figure”. 

In recent months, rock and jazz have not been written about.

There will be more time - I will write a book, but not now.

This is what happens in days of great change - you are cut off from everything that is not the most important thing in today's day.

They ask me compassionately: “Censorship, brother? ..” And I don’t know what to answer - because what the hell is censorship?

And it would be superfluous, if we are completely honest ...

The texts of recent weeks are about the Melodiya company and the great red project of an anthology of classics (by the way, on May 11, Melodiya will have a birthday - the company will turn 58), about Soviet jazzmen and Soviet jazz in times of peace and in the Great Patriotic War, about Vysotsky and his Alice in Wonderland.

And here it is the same: there are no “cultural figures”, but there are, have been and will be passionate people who laid down their lives “for the guitar string”.

Do you understand, brothers and sisters?

There are no actors. 

Today's text is about a song that hasn't let go since the very end of February - "How young we were."

The feeling of a fulfilled, tough and honest prophecy - every line - everything is on target ...

Take a look, unfamiliar passerby,

Your gaze is incorruptible to me.

Maybe I am, only younger, -

We don't always recognize ourselves.

Gradsky is not with us, who sang “How young we were”, but does that change anything?

After all, there is only one with us who cannot make us look back in the crowd, even at ourselves, those who are much younger ... 

The rulers of thoughts are not subject (and this is the mystical power of eternal life) to the linear flow of time.

They are here.

They ask about today and our choice on each day, and there is no way they can not be answered.

“Music by Alexandra Pakhmutova, poetry by Nikolai Dobronravov...” - remember, every house had a radio ... From it we learned about the heroic sowing and shock construction projects, yes, and also about life, the price of which is both pain and death, and joy with unrealizable happiness in half.

And then we grew up.

Everyone grows up sometime.

We left home for the world.

Everyone leaves sometime.

And it turned out... And it turned out that everything we heard in childhood was true.

We've already played the first half.

And they only understood one thing:

So that you are not lost on Earth,

Try not to lose yourself. 

Every time I listen to Gradsky, I am amazed at how furiously and with inner power he takes “we have already played the first half! ..”.

Everything is in that rage: the bitterness of the first defeats and separations, and the awareness of the finiteness and inescapability of eternal life, and glory and copper pipes to the point of stupor - to whom?

To ourselves, through thorns, leaving shreds of tormented souls, tearing their way to the ghostly stars.

To space, in which "restaurants do not fly ...".

One very real song.

At one very difficult time.

It gives support, helps to stay on a thin thread above the abyss - a choice every day, even if those in whom you were confident as in yourself suddenly turned completely the wrong way, even if stupidity and vulgarity are cheap from seemingly smart people.

It seems to be even worthy.

Of people...

Few read books.

Correct.

In childhood. 

Remaining yourself, with your dreams and - even worse - ideals has become a privilege of the strong in spirit.

But there are many of us.

If there were few of us, who would remember Gradsky, Pakhmutova and Dobronravov ...

The point is different.

Here in this.

We were then greeted without a smile

All the flowers on the roads of the earth,

We forgive friends for mistakes,

Only betrayal could not be forgiven.

Both then and now.

Everything changes - like scenery, and everything is unchanged - like the foundation stones of eternity.

Who are you?

With whom you are?

What do you breathe and why do you live? ..

Quite an old record.

78th year.

Moscow Experimental Recording Plant.

On the reverse side is a funny and kind (who would put such a giant on a disk now) black-and-white photograph of Pakhmutova: she is sitting on the shore of a lake, or maybe a river, a forest, her beloved dog is nearby.

It can be seen - the kindest dog, so she stepped into history ...

There's also a list of songs, as expected.

The first side: "Belarus", "Belovezhskaya Pushcha", "How young we were"...

Does anyone know how the Heavenly Father makes his plans?

How does it all turn out so that it is as if predicted?

Destined.

And it will come true.

Everything will come true one day, and we will find and remember ourselves - in an unfamiliar passer-by who caught our eye and almost imperceptibly, with only a fleeting movement, let us know that he thinks like us and exactly the same.

Go to gallery page

Nothing on earth goes unnoticed

And the youth that is gone is still immortal.

How young we were,

How young we were,

How sincerely loved

How you believed in yourself. 

Perhaps the sincerity of feelings will save us.

And faith.

We are a civilization of faith and victory.

No, we have not been given another.

And all our past, which in fact is our own lasting present - it's about this - sincerity, friendship, faith, love. 

Music is elusive, you can’t hold a note in your hands, you can’t put sound in your pocket.

Only in the heart.

And there, in the heart, which can never be deceived by anything, it sounds - the music of great deeds, the music of the most ordinary days, rainy, sunny - life consists of them. 

We have to rebuild the world in a new way.

Throw away the useless wrappers.

There is no good from them.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.