Translator: Raimonds Jaks Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hello! My name is Kirils Kobrins.
I am 49 years old, and I am obsessed with three things:
words, sounds, and the idea
of how to manage my own life to concentrate on words and sounds.
So, words -
I used to write and read words.
But in spite of the fact
that I wrote and published 14 books,
I prefer reading to writing.
For me it's personally a much more interesting occupation.
As for sounds,
thanks God I am not a composer, and a musician, and so on,
so I can enjoy sounds,
I can enjoy music without any professional objections.
Life without listening to music, to sounds is just aimless.
The third occupation:
it concerns the universal denominator
of the modern world:
money.
It doesn't mean that I like or love money;
just the opposite: I hate money, I dislike money.
I try to avoid money at any price,
but the very word 'price' is expressed in money.
So, I could admit
that I am obsessed with the very idea of money
as the best tool to avoid thinking about money
instead of being 100% concentrated on words and sounds.
Those are my personal obsessions,
and I'm trying to speak about
how to personally survive in the modern world
having these three obsessions,
and maybe some - I hope - fresh ideas about this.
The first example is about words.
Several weeks ago, I came to my favorite bookstore in London
- of course, I am not going to reveal the name -
and while entering my favorite department of this bookstore,
which is history books,
I just suffered a sudden bout,
an attack of loathing, or even hopelessness,
disgust, and a feeling of disaster.
I was looking at hundreds and thousands of books,
which I'd like to read or open, but I knew - and still know -
that I will never do it.
Hundreds and thousands.
If you aren't a believer,
if you are not a Buddhist or a Hindu and don't believe in reincarnation,
you have to understand
you'll never read all the books, or open them;
the books you are interested in.
That is absolutely disastrous.
Just one quick example.
During the last five months of this year
more than 1 million books have been published all over the world.
And nearly half of them
are in a language I can read.
Just the last five months of this year -
more than 1 million books;
half of them in a language I can read,
and I'll never do it.
Sounds -
the situation is even much more disastrous than with the words.
The first step of the process
was when the Internet and online radio stations were introduced.
From then on, almost everything you wanted to find,
could been found in there.
The second step was iTunes
with its ridiculously low price for every track:
just a few pence, and everything is yours.
But the last blow was Spotify. Of course, Spotify.
That is a real disaster.
If 10, 15 years ago,
we were living in streams of sounds,
now it's like we are in a tiny boat
surrounded by an endless ocean of sounds.
Everything is at hand,
and everything at the same time important and absolutely unimportant -
because it's very easy to have it.
Just a few numbers:
four years ago, the website Drownedinsound informed us
that in 2010, only in the United States
75, 000 albums were released.
Just add to these numbers
the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand.
I am speaking just about the English-speaking countries.
Then France, Germany, China with its huge music market
India with its Bollywood music, and so on;
Africa, absolutely obscure; and Russia, and a lot of other countries.
Disastrous, just disastrous.
And an example about money.
During the golden age of capitalism,
there were a lot of options, opportunities
for us to make big money.
You could start some successful business.
You could invent
something very important and popular.
You could invest into something very suddenly successful.
Last but not least,
you could rob a bank,
which was quite popular just several decades ago.
But now, especially since the 2008 crisis,
almost all of these opportunities are closed.
The only field of human activity
where you can still make big money
is the financial sector.
But imagine to spend 12-14 hours a day
looking at the screen of your computer,
looking at the spread sheets and diagrams,
being loaded with energy drinks and cocaine just to wake up.
Of course, that's the way, that is the way,
but if you spend ten years
of modern slavery in financial sector,
you are not interested in such beautiful things like words and sounds anymore.
So, that is no way.
Robbery.
It's an interesting example.
Just imagine that your robbery was successful,
that you escaped with, say, 1 million dollars in your bag.
But, by the way,
1 million dollars is 10 thousand banknotes.
It's quite a heavy and big thing.
But anyway, you escaped.
What could you buy on this sum?
Just a humble house somewhere
in a middle class boring, dull suburbia
of London.
And that's all, you'll spend everything.
And then you have to survive till the end of your life
on half-priced bananas from the local Tesco.
The moral of that:
finally, eventually you are doomed to find a job.
But what was the point of robbing the bank?
So, as you see, the situation is very severe, very serious.
As a Russian by origin,
we, Russians, usually ask two questions:
Who is to blame?
And what is to be done?
I am not interested in blaming some one in this situation,
but I'd like to discuss the question, what is to be done.
What I'm going to suggest,
on one hand contradicts the very core
of the Western civilization, which is based on endless expansions.
Expansion in various fields of life.
From geography --
I am speaking about colonization and so on --
to the science and culture and so on.
But on the other hand, what I'm going to suggest,
fits absolutely to the modern Western trend,
all this rubbish about the austerity measures.
And I'll try to find some sort of Buddhist middle way
between these two extreme points.
So, my answer is:
stop producing and consuming new cultural products.
Stop expanding, begin revisiting.
Declare a sort of brand new age of cultural recycling.
And the most important:
lead low key life consciously.
And one very important thing,
just a sort of footnote:
This is your personal choice,
not a collective but a personal choice.
What are the implications of this fresh idea
to my obsessions?
Words.
Reread, revisit, what you have read before.
The most important thing for me personally --
just to stop reading all the stuff,
which is published after, say, June 2014.
I have enough to read,
I have enough to think about.
What's the point of reading new titles,
when I hadn't read a lot of things,
which have been written and published
in several thousand years by now.
The same I can say about sounds.
Stop listening to new music.
Revisit the old one.
I'm not speaking about all the stuff, you know:
"The old things are much better than the new ones."
No, they are not.
Worse and better...
Just, they are new.
That's just a formal idea.
It's not about the quality
of new books and old books,
new sounds and old sounds.
Speaking about sounds,
I already have acquired
a long playlist to listen to till the end of my life.
It's longer, trust me, it's longer
even the the price list in the IKEA.
That means something, right?
And the most important,
about low key life:
money.
Don't pretend that money just doesn't exist.
It exists like bad weather,
like bad wine in supermarkets,
like supermarkets themselves,
like social injustice,
like millions of idiots all over the world,
who are trying to kill each other all the time.
It's like weather, it's like raining.
So, I know that I'll never make big money.
Who cares.
I know that I have to work till the end of my life
to support myself physically.
So, who cares.
Just try to avoid to work for big money,
which is usually boring.
Spend your free time and concentrate your free time
on rereading, revisiting, re-listening and so on.
It's a way of really humble, modest and low-key life.
And it is very important that that is your personal choice.
We are born to be low-key and to be limited
by the existence of the infinite things in the world and by the death itself.
If the circumstances force you to leave the modest life,
you fail.
If it is your conscious choice,
and if you find that your personal freedom
is much bigger than these circumstances,
then you you win.
And the last thing.
Speaking about cultural recycling,
speaking about low-key life,
I am speaking and everyone understands
about responsibility, self-control and self-discipline,
because those are the most important things for a low-key life.
But at the same time,
those were the main European values for 2000 years, maybe more.
Self-discipline,
self-control.
And in some sense,
when I speak about recycling,
I am speaking about a sort of re-entering
the cycles of cultural universe called Europe,
because they are real, true European values.
Thank you.
(Applause)