I spoke to a friend at a restaurant yesterday. At one point, the local draft beer ran out there and we were offered a local beer – a well-known brand, famous for being consumed mainly at doorways.
We were sitting in an institution on Tverskaya, a friend of ours, a successful girl, editor-in-chief of a major publication.
– Ah, – I say, – we drank in our youth, near the battery at the entrance, as I recall now.
“Yes, you’re bourgeois,” said a friend, and adjusted the collar of a designer jacket. – We drank “Royal” alcohol on tap with a guitar.
“To the songs of Nautilus,” I said, and my friend nodded with lively understanding.
We come from different cities and even different regions. Just the age is almost the same. And then it became clear that our childhood and youth passed in the same environment. Moreover, the whole country was living in this situation.
“Royal” alcohol on tap, cigarettes on trays, grandmothers selling seeds on every corner. It is scary to sing about Boris Moiseev and Tatu on television and radio. So, obviously, production projects designed to introduce the population to trends that are currently under a federal ban.
In his spare time, the young man sang the aforementioned hymns and the aforementioned drinks at the entrance. There were also discos (hipsters, google) where they went in trendy leggings and worse. At that time a car was quite a luxury (even a Zhiguli brand) and in some years the salary was a luxury, and also nationwide.
In the markets of Polish things, researchers traded, scientific research institutes were quickly closed, and defense and industrial enterprises were transferred to private hands, salaries were not paid there for six months.
The whole country breathlessly watched MMM commercials on TV and moved their money there. There were various talk shows of all genres and genres. They were shooting in the streets. Not a single newsletter is complete without the words “killing a businessman.” Freedom rushed into the country with such force that it was almost washed away.
This isn’t a sci-fi thriller, dear innovators, it’s a real-life setting in which this country lived less than 30 years ago. The term can be neglected if you think about it. And it is precisely in this situation that my generation managed not only to survive, but also to grow. Some even achieved something.
In a conversation with a friend yesterday, I realized something important: it was then (someone finds it scary, someone, on the contrary, beautiful, but absolutely restless) and so – that restless time froze in our minds forever. It seems to exist in parallel in the head as a kind of marker, a comparative institution. After all, today’s world has changed beyond recognition and continues to change so fast that we can’t always keep up with it.
But they’ll stay forever – a guitar by the battery in a frozen porch, obscene barrels of booze, Nautilus songs, romance shrouded in a haze of despair. And fear, most importantly, the fear of returning there with the whole country. The whole of today’s country, with young people holding nothing heavier than an iPhone in their hands, is something that doesn’t suit them.
As adults of today, we unfortunately have something to compare. And personally I love this world much, much more today, no matter what.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.