Igor Grigoriev

Being a strong personality I love changes. Changes are always about some challenge. Taking the challenge, a very good English word by the way, you check yourself for strength. Weak people are afraid of changing something. The once doubting their strength tend to go round in a circle which in itself leaves out any sorts of changes.

I’ve got an animal hunger for being lonely. I often feel bored with other people but I never do when I am on my own.

One must remain an amateur in one’s profession. I have always been an amateur in everything I’ve done. I’ve made up three magazines, one of them turned to be a part of the new history. And yet I can’t treat myself as a professional editor. That’s true, I’ve happened to work with really professional people mastering their specific field, preferring to remain an amateur. I knew that I was going to lose this chemistry with the audience once I become a professional. It’s like I’ll become narrow.

No doubt I’ve got a missionary function in this world. I transmit the ideas which I myself invoke to make people around feel better. I feel like I am plugged to some Grand knowledge. Now I am involved into a musical-singing activity and you know, it seems to me that being on the staged I turn to some kind of a transistor, conducting the currents of the highest order. The audience’s function is to penetrate these currents and to turn into a personalities different from that they were before the concert.

While being on the stage I can remember only 10 % of my deeds. I cease to be me myself while singing the very first song. It’s not that I turn into somebody else, but I can feel that some unknown power rules my activity and I am totally conformed. Then I usually look through the video record just to see what I did on the stage in reality.

20 year olds are still coming up to me in the clubs telling me something about “OM”. I tend to answer: “Guys you were like 11 years that time, how can you know me?” And that’s the time they confess they thumb the magazine under the desk when being in the 3rd form. So that is the third generation of the magazine’s fans, which never stops me to feel excited about the strength of that OM’s launch those days.

I like musicians and artists with a dysfunction. I’ve been always interested in the latter which lies in the face asymmetry, uneven vocal, random pauses, unplanned setbacks. All this prevents me from liking pure vocalists. The vocal in itself matters not that much, being just one of the orchestra’s instruments, not the core one by the way.

Russians do not have a taste genetically. They hardly ever had. Within the whole of the history the Russian people have not introduced anything that somehow revealed their profound taste. All the Russians who could do something were toughly kicking against the reality they belonged, which made them create the best of their pieces abroad.

The time between 22 and 26 is the most brilliant one to rule the world! Twenty seven is usually the top of stardom. If you haven’t done anything remarkable before you are 27 you have definitely left something out.
I was 21 when I went to Moscow. All I had was a string bag with two pairs of trousers and a piece of wurst… I left my country family in a village called Lakedemonovka which is not far from Taganrog to enter the most unget-at-able University in the country, I decided for Moscow State University of Foreign Affairs. And I entered. So I happened to become the only representative of kolkhoz peasantry that year.

The passport to my success lies in the fact that there are no things I am afraid of, moreover I always do the things nobody does. That is the first and last key to success as it is!

Moscow was not that dull before 1998. Before that wide-known default burst out, Moscow had comprised the place to create. People living there were able to produce the material. All people who are still enjoying Moscow marry-go-round, including me, are the characters from the 90th. And I use the preposition “from” not to make it just “characters of the 90th” on purpose. I mean we are still characters, heroes. There is nobody behind twisting our tail.

Moscow is unlivable. It’s all about mean climate, good-for-nothing ecology, cross people, around-the-clock traffic jams, mud, rats living under the tube stalls, and you have to pay much for all of this. You can live in Moscow only being contrary to the city. For instance you can earn money here. But as soon as you earn the sum you’d better make off wherever you can to attain the opportunity to enjoy your life.

I for one revealed my own paradise in Rio de Janeiro! I spend one half of the year at the place, mostly when we have winter in Russia. I guess I’ve already become half Brazilian. I listen to Brazilian music while at home, I have my friends in Brazil and I miss them greatly. I call that my first motherland and I find the country just marvelous. Even finding myself at the barrels of two guns in Rio seemed marvelous to me!

The only thing I do expect from life is fairness. Every man is to be paid home. I, for one, expect the life to fairly evaluate my hunt and wanderings, my boons and hardships which formed new “me”, as I am nowadays.