TELL ME SOMETHING CRAZY
28 September 2006

Stuck in a Moscow traffic jam. Ludmila (Luda) Dmitriev is at the wheel of her battered and ancient Volga. John Hirst is in the back, I’m in the front passenger seat. Our equipment is crammed in with us. We flew into Moscow in the early hours, got a taxi to Luda’s apartment, had three hours’ sleep and Luda then offered us a huge breakfast in her cramped kitchen where everything that Russia has to offer was on the table for us to eat.

And now Luda is driving us to The Dom in the centre of Moscow where we will be doing another Introduction To The17 performance this evening as part of the Long Arms Festival. Long Arms is an annual event that has been going some years, bringing new and experimental music to Moscow.

Luda is the widow of Nickolay Dmitriev, who instigated the setting up of The Dom in 1999. The prime function of The Dom is as a venue to promote new and experimental music. They also have exhibitions in the space. I first visited the Dom when I was over in Moscow with Tracey Moberly. Nickolay Dmitriev spent his adult life writing about and promoting the cause of new music. He died two years ago (2004). He was about my age. From what I understand he was a charismatic Moses-type figure. His wife Luda worked with him on all his projects and since his early death is carrying on with the work.

So that is the background to us sitting in a Moscow traffic jam. The conversation drifts from the state of traffic and Moscow drivers to how there seem to be no parking restrictions anywhere. Luda tells us that if the Moscow city government tried to impose parking fees or, even worse, fines, the Moscovites would refuse to pay en masse. The good people would rather have the current anarchy than have to pay for parking tickets or fines.

She tells us that in the Soviet era there was no problem with traffic because no ordinary people had cars then. Now everybody has a car and everybody thinks it is their right to drive everywhere and anywhere at whatever speed they want and nobody is going to tell them where they can or can’t park.

Conversation drifts to what is better and what is worse between now and the Soviet era.
‘When Nickolay and I were younger we used to listen to any imported jazz records we could get. They were few and far between but we loved the free jazz, it seemed so dangerous and exciting, but there was this saying that had existed since Stalin times, “Today you play jazz, tomorrow you sell your Motherland,” one was always made to feel guilty for listening to jazz.’
‘Did you feel guilty?’ I asked.
‘ Yes. Sometimes very guilty, but still we felt it was important. Just to listen to it was striking a blow for freedom’.
‘You know, sometimes I think we in the West are imprisoned, but we just don’t know how totally imprisoned we are by the values of the liberal Western free-market economy, where we can listen to what we want, when we want, read what we want, say what we want, go where we want, and, if you put in the hours, buy what you want. But somehow it is the perceived freedom that creates the prison we are in. We have all this freedom in exchange for lives without meaning. This lack of meaning in our lives is what imprisons us. We are left in a situation where all ideals and religious or spiritual values look stupid and are ridiculed.’

Of course I didn’t say all that while I was in the car in the traffic jam. I just sort of thought it, but thought it too pretentious to say and am only writing it down a few hours later.

‘Lots of people miss the Soviet times. Especially the older ones. They miss knowing that tomorrow they knew where they would be, what they will be doing, that they will have something to eat, that there will be work for them to do. But all of that is like being in prison. They would rather be in prison than be free.’

I didn’t know what to say so I just looked out of the window at the gridlocked traffic. Then Luda asked me if I knew the work of a certain Russian artist. Whatever the name of this artist was I can’t remember it now and I did not recognise it when she said it. She went on to describe one of his works.

‘He had this chair in an exhibition. Just a very ordinary chair. And on the chair was a notice. The notice read:
“You cannot sit on this chair, it is for the people.
But I am one of the people, can I not sit on it?
No it is for all the people to sit on, not just one.”’

I didn’t say any more, choosing to fall silent and think thoughts.

We got to The Dom in time. Met up with my friend Alexey there. Got things sorted about what we were doing and when. Then I was asked if I would do an interview for a Moscow magazine. I said yes.

There was the journalist and the translator. Both looked like they were in their early 20s. Both were women. The journalist was serious, the translator giggly and flirtatious. They wanted to know all about The17 so I told them all I know about The17.
‘But it sounds nothing like the KLF. This sounds so serious.’
‘I am a serious person.’
‘We were told you were a funny man who does crazy things. That you are a – what is the word? – prankster.’
‘Then you were told by the wrong people. I have never done a prank in my life. I only do real things.’
‘But all over the Internet it says you are a crazy guy, but you look so serious. Everything you tell us sounds like philosophy. The readers of our magazine are young. They want to hear about wild things. Why not tell me something crazy for our readers?’

So I read out to her something I had written on the plane on the way over. Something I thought would replace whatever is the first of The17 scores. This is what I read out to her:

Imagine waking up tomorrow
and all music has disappeared.
All musical instruments and all forms
of recorded music, gone.
A world without music.
What is more, you cannot even remember
what music sounded like or how it was made.
You can only remember that it had existed and that it
had been important to you and your civilisation.
And you long to hear it once more.
Then imagine people coming together to make music
with nothing but their voices, and with no knowledge of
what music should sound like.

The music they would make is that of The17.

‘Is that crazy?’ she asked.
‘That is very crazy,’ I replied.