I've been busy these last few months working on the soundtrack for Miki. At the beginning of the year I still managed to release the album Behind the Frozen Window together with my daughter and I prepared the concept for the next album called Calls. It's a big project and I plan to invite Erik Truffaz, Marco Minnemann, Rick Cox, Arve Henriksen, Gergo Borlai and maybe other artists. The concept of the album is my phone calls with these musicians during the creation process. My frustrations, uncertainties and actually the whole process of creation as it will be. I will disclose the whole dialogic process that I practice for each of my albums. I send ideas to my friends and ask for their opinion and insights...
I was inspired by the series Calls. I will use Slovak and English. It's actually my big dilemma. A kind of schizophrenia... To speak Slovak or English? I keep asking myself if I shouldn't switch to complete English after all. I do a podcast in Slovak, write this blog and occasionally record some video. However, if I check the listings from streaming platforms, Slovakia is at the bottom in terms of listenership. For example, right now on Spotify, the first country is the USA, the second is the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. Apple music looks like this: France, USA, Australia, Russia and Germany. These numbers from one point of view say that it is meaningless in Slovak, but from another point of view I feel that I should share the information and experience I gain from my international collaborations, observations and travels with the Slovak community. I have always had the feeling that there is another David Kollar growing somewhere in Slovakia. A musician whose heart burns with curiosity and love for the arts. But he didn't have the information that I didn't have either, and for years of my life I surrounded myself with the wrong people. I've listened to them make up stories about famous music masters, bitching about fellow musicians and crying about how if they lived in the West they'd be famous like, say, Miles Davis...
However, the situation is much worse than it used to be. I realized that all the bullshit and made-up stories about the masters actually belong to our "folklore". Gossiping about others to make a particular person look better in the eyes of the presiding officer is actually a very old thing. Juval Noah Harari writes about it in his book Sapiens. Our forefathers used slander to maintain their position in a clique or group. By slandering someone along with our "friend" we actually strengthened our bond with each other, our status, and maybe sometime very long ago we could have gone straight to mating... I have often fallen into this "maintaining" of relationships... Today I find it pathetic, a symbol of immaturity and inner frustration.
My, I'll call them "Western", musical colleagues Arve Henriksen, Pat Mastelotto, Rick Cox, Erik Truffaz, Paolo Raineri, Gergo Borlai, Steven Wilson, Fennesz don't do it this way (I only listed those with whom I am in constant contact). They focus on the positive things and take what didn't work out in their lives as a failure of themselves and not a failure of someone else who didn't allow them to follow their dreams. Or they just failed, or they weren't good enough at something... Of course, sometimes a person just isn't lucky... But it's good to do everything for it... It's a kind of responsibility. These people are very aware that they have life in their hands. They turn the rudder. Not somebody up there or down there or in the north or in the east. It is themselves. Nobody else. No one forced us to drink six beers, eat a big burger and fries, and stare at our phones all day. Meeting and then interacting with these people was and still is very rewarding for me. Be it on the artistic side or on the human side. Both the good and the bad are very contagious. It is therefore necessary to surround yourself with good people.
I like the daily countdown that Arnold Schwarzeneggeris talking about in his book
Be useful. A day has 24 hours. If you need to sleep for 8 hours and go to work for 8 hours, travel to work for 1 hour and travel home from work for 1 hour, you still have 6 hours left. Spend 2 hours with your family. 1 hour of shopping and you'll find you still have 3 hours for yourself. You can use them to work on yourself. You only need 1 hour out of those 3. Play a sport, learn a foreign language, start writing a book or a blog... Whatever you want... Then you'll find it pointless to sit in a pub, drink 5 beers and cry over a wasted life. A. Schwarzenegger is no great philosopher, but he is very right with this simple math. It works. I had a similar schedule for my day in maternity 15 years ago. in his book Be Helpful. A day has 24 hours. If you need to sleep for 8 hours and go to work for 8 hours, travel to work for 1 hour and travel home from work for 1 hour, you still have 6 hours left. Spend 2 hours with your family. 1 hour of shopping and you'll find you still have 3 hours for yourself. You can use them to work on yourself. You only need 1 hour out of those 3. Play a sport, learn a foreign language, start writing a book or a blog... Whatever you want... Then you'll find it pointless to sit in a pub, drink 5 beers and cry over a wasted life. A. Schwarzenegger is no great philosopher, but he is very right with this simple math. It works. I had a similar schedule for my day in maternity 15 years ago.
I am very happy to be able to travel freely and cross the whole of Europe without stopping and checking at borders. I'm really happy, and I can't tell you how happy, that I've been to two meetings at Thomas Newman's house in Los Angeles, and I've been able to stay at Rick Cox's house, where Jon Hassel used to record and Ry Cooder or other important artists used to visit. Last year I was at Hans Zimmer's studios...It's very easy to get a tourist visa to the US nowadays. Thank God! When I think of the endless long stands at the border with Poland where we used to go to markets with my parents in the 90s, or standing at the border for summer holidays in Croatia, my mind boggles. It was terribly frustrating and at times humiliating. Baggage checks and sometimes personal checks.
Today I feel really free and try to make the most of my freedom. I motivate my children to educate themselves and think critically. To always ask questions and listen when someone is talking, because that is the only way they can learn something. Occasionally a person will come into their lives who wasn't the right person, but thanks for that person too, because they will understand and see their own path more clearly.
We talk a lot about freedom and the rudder of life. We share and analyze the conversations that have surrounded us during the day away from home. I'm very glad that's the case. They know much more than I did at their age and maybe even now... At times like this, I am really happy that they were born into a Slovakia that is much better than the one I was born into. They don't have to go through that broken provincial environment full of demagoguery and hatred of otherness anymore.
They know that their success or failure is not due to Kaufland in Slovakia or Hollywood movies. They know they can buy from local farmers, local bakers and local dairy farmers. They can choose. They hold the rudder in their hands. They don't have to go to an apprenticeship to work in a factory when their heart burns for art or world travel.
However, something happened today that even I was not prepared for. It is a poison that is spread among us. Slanders and primitive views on art and the world found themselves in the background. Everywhere you can hear ME, ME and only ME! It's terrible. It is about the direction of our company and its prosperity. Huge hatred between people and misinformation can send us all back to our dark past. We differ on fundamental topics... One side uses logic and the other emotions...
We are Post peasants. Slovakia was under the oppression of the great Hungarians for 1000 years, was an ally of German fascism and decades of communism... I was very interested in this word combination post - peasant. It is the title of the book by Juraj Buzalka, which I am currently reading. However, the question still comes to mind: "What do you miss today...?"
Maybe the problem is the excessive drinking of Slovaks? I don't know, but the arguments of my former friends that we will grow our own potatoes and take care of ourselves sound sick to me. I don't want to grow potatoes. I don't want to survive, I want to live! I want to live to the fullest! I don't want a fence here! I want to travel, be free, learn and enjoy a life that flows like water.
I want my children to live like that too. But inside, I feel that it would be best for them to leave Slovakia. I'm still hesitating and waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, but I don't see it... I see potatoes, beer, half-breeds, wallah, gnocchi, hatred, frustration and ruined lives, of course because of others... Never in our history have we been better off than now. Then comes the argument "But people were happier in the past...?" Really? And you know how? Everyone? In what sense? "Let's close the borders, build a fence, let's plant and raise cattle."
Will I be happier? Probably not, but I can still plant and buy chickens... We don't have to leave the EU and NATO.
I hate the word "nation" that our rulers are using now. I find that word terribly populist and humiliating. As if we were some kind of mass or herd and all the same and not self-righteous. We are a space where several communities live and we should behave in such a way that we all live well and prosper here. How many times in life have we needed someone to forgive us, understand us, praise us and respect us as we are... How many times have we been able to do that...?
There are several famous and successful Slovaks in the world that we learned about in school. However, let us not forget that they were successful precisely because they left, fled or were born to Slovak parents abroad. What would Andy Warhol, for example, have done if he had been born in Slovakia? He would have fought windmills and maybe drunk himself to death...
I get questions about why I am working on the music for the film Miki. Why do we need to make a movie about the mafia that was in Slovakia in the 90s? Of course we do. We need to deal with our past. The Germans made The Fall of the Third Reich and a bunch of other war movies. What for? How long will they keep opening up their dark past? Martin Scorsese has been making movies about the Mafia all his life. It is a genre after all... I enjoy the performance of actor Milan Ondrik and the other actors. We're all giving it 110%. We want to do a good job. Maybe the film will get on Netflix and more people from all over the world will talk about our little Slovakia.
We're surrounded by art on all sides and I think it's good when it's free and natural.
D.