How do you create a legacy?

The speaker shares their journey as a Chinese diatologist, focusing on music and art alongside their friend Sascha Geffen. They discuss the impact of music's reproducibility on its aura, personal experiences with music creation, struggles with self-doubt, and the challenges of promoting and sharing their art in today's digital age. The speaker reflects on their music career, including the release of their first album in English, dealing with expectations and challenges, and the ongoing struggle between creating meaningful art and promoting it effectively. They emphasize the importance of staying true to their unique artistic vision despite external pressures and societal norms. When I was 21, I decided to be a Chinese diatologist, and I went to a one-year course. We were talking about food, recipes, food, recipes, food, recipes. Every time I release, I say to myself, it's okay, I'm just sharing. But of course, you know, if you make a cake and you go outside and you offer it to people and nobody takes, you feel sad. It's the same. Right. Here we start. Walter Benjamin, in his essay, The Work of Art and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, back in 1935, argued that when art becomes endlessly reproducible, something shifts. The aura of the original work, its unique presence in time and space, is no longer the same, and music, perhaps more than any other medium, lives in this tension. This is where I want to start my conversation with London-based artists, and my dear friend and colleague, Sascha Geffen, will talk about music as artifacts, about what remains when the performance is gone, and how today's musicians navigate the fragile balance between ephemerality and permanence. I call myself a sound artist. I do a lot of work connected with music, like I, sometimes I write music for electrical plays. Recently, I started to work in the field of improvisation. I like to combine movement and sound, a little bit of artistic work, like a little bit of theater performance also. This is connected to my recent project, which is called PASCAL. There are five of us. I'm not alone. I think. Thanks God. And I also work with teenagers as a, let's say, facilitator. I used to work as a music therapist, but I have to go through a local education process to get a certificate to call myself a music therapist again. Now I'm a mom, and that's a big part of my identity, I think. Yeah. So, Sascha, I want to ask you, when did you start making music? Do you remember the period of your life or your childhood, maybe? I think all of the children, at one point, start to sing songs and write songs in their heads. I don't mean like a full song with arrangements and everything, but just make up melodies and words. And of course, I did the same thing when I was, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight. But then, I guess, when I was 12, I never went to music school, but I had a private teacher because my mom had a kind of a trauma because I come from, I think I come from Soviet culture. It's important to call it like that because it's a huge part of my background. And my mom used to go to a Soviet music school, and she got a lot of anxiety connected to music playing and performing and everything. And I lived with my grandparents, and my grandmother also wanted to take me to a music school, but my mom said, no, for my dead body, she will go there. And I didn't. So, I had a private teacher, I played piano, and when I learned like chords, I started to create songs. I started only when I was 16. I wrote my first song to a boy that I fell in love with. And actually, this song was the most popular song I had so far, actually. I recorded it when I was 19 or 20, and I have a video with that song. And yeah, I hate that song, actually, because it's very stupid, but people like stupid things. When I had my first concert, all of my friends used to sing it with me, like the chorus. Yes, and I remember once I was singing this song in a little bar, and one guy came to me. It was a very long time ago, like 2012. And one guy came to me and he said, you know, I just came back from London, and this song would be really popular there. I was like, okay. Why have you never stopped? Why? Oh, I tried so many times to stop. I remember in 2018, I decided that I would stop because I can't do it anymore. I became very insecure. I thought bad of myself because I couldn't separate this thing, like my music and me. It was one thing, which is not, but I was younger at that time, and I didn't realize that I can be different things. And I decided to make a big concert in a very beautiful place. Actually, I think it was the best performance I had in my life, and I decided this would be a dot in my career. But next month, I found out that I was selected by Red Bull Music Academy, and that was not a good time to stop. Then I just understood that I do it not because I want to do it or I don't want to do it. I just do it because that's what I have inside myself, and I will never stop singing. For me, it's like a very normal thing, like breathing, eating, walking. That's why I didn't stop. But over the years, it's not very important to me how many people are listening to me because finally, I just feel good when I do it. But to live life like that, you have to have a source of money, because if you are not a full-time artist, it's a little bit different. It's another game. Yeah, of course. This is a struggle, isn't it? Yeah, and it's also a privilege to enjoy making music. Can you maybe walk me through your publishing history? What was your first recorded track, and how did it develop throughout the years? We started to collect money, and wow, we did it. We started to record our first album, and two weeks after we started it, the studio that we were doing it in had a flood, and everything we recorded was gone, with all equipment and gear and everything. I felt very sorry for the guys that ran that studio, also very sorry for us, but at the same time, a new studio was opening, and they told me, like, would you like to be our first band to record an album for free? We just need some bands to attract attention to us. And I said, oh yeah, of course, because we just got an accident. Same people actually were working at that studio also, but we recorded with another sound engineer who lives now in Whitney, in Oxfordshire, near, and I saw him on Saturday. It was very nice to work together again. This is a short story of how we did the first album. So, you mean that you recorded an album, and that was your first recording? You didn't record, like, an EP before the album, you know, the way artists do it now, like EP, then maybe the second EP, then the album. Yeah, we recorded the whole album, because it was 2013, and it was time of LPs still. But, you know, this is the thing that was haunting me all my life. I was always a little bit slow, you know. Like, I was doing the right thing, but then, boom, something changes, and it's not relevant anymore. Like, we recorded our first album in English, because I was writing in English. It was very natural for me, because I went to English school, and I studied in Oxford, not university, but the town, for one year after I finished school. So, when I came back, you know, I didn't think which language to use. It was just English in my head. The year we released it, everyone, everyone, when they were taking interviews, the question was, why is it in English? Why is it not in Russian? And actually, I hated it. It was such a stupid question, like, asking, why is your hair black? Or, why is your hair, why are you blonde? Because I am. So, for you, using English was not a matter of, you know, style. It was not a decision made by the trend. It was just natural for you, because you learned English your entire life, and it was easier to write songs in English. And then people would ask you, like, why it's not in Russian? And you're like, because I didn't, like, unquestion that. It was always a little bit hard for me to write songs in Russian, because, I don't know, this language is, I do something else with that language in my head. I think, I think, but in Russian, but I can't, I can't draw in Russian, you know. Family. How did you feel overall? About what? After the release of your first album. Oh, every time after release, I feel the same thing. I feel empty. And, oh, I'm saying that I don't care anymore about the numbers and listeners, blah, blah, blah. But, of course, it's not really true. So, every time I release, I say to myself, it's okay, I just, I'm just sharing. But, of course, you know, if you make a cake, and you go outside, and you offer it to people, and nobody takes, you feel sad. Yeah, it's the same. It's absolutely the same. And I think it's also natural. It's very human to feel that. Like, if you know your truth, you know, kind of, yes, yes, I have something that is not popular. For example, yeah, I release and, I don't know, I have 115 listeners. A month. Somebody would say, that's a very bad result. But it always depends on, like, did you have this intention in the first place? Did you dream about having 600,000 listeners a month when you were doing this album? I don't know. I don't think so. When you're doing music like I do, you can't aim for this amount. Because I don't do pop. I don't do pop, or rap, or metal. Yeah, I do slow experimental music. And it's a very, it's a very rare niche. Yeah, it's a very rare situation when you get a lot of listeners with that kind of music. You have to have very good connections to do that. Which I have, but I don't, sometimes I don't use them. Or, you know, it's a chemical reaction. It has to, it has to happen somehow. And you can't control it. It's one job to make art happen, and it's another job to promote it. And I feel like we artists, sometimes, are put in this very difficult position of, we just make something significant, or at least we think it is significant, and then we have to explain to the whole world why it is significant. And then the problem comes to the perception of our work. Because when we did something significant, and the only form to share it is Instagram stories, how exactly do you communicate with something significant through Instagram stories? It's just not the way of communication with something you find valuable. It's a way of communication with something which, you know, comes and goes and doesn't stay for a long time. Do you also see a conflict in it, and how do you navigate this conflict? I'm not very good with social media, but once I decided to try this thing to make a lot of videos, and then I felt so much pressure. I just didn't like it. It's like a full-time job. And I started to, every, I was like, you know, a film director of my own life. And I was never inside my life. I was always on the outside. And this is so, this is so sad. It's mental, isn't it? Yeah. You know, when I was 21, I decided to be a Chinese diatologist. Oh, wow. And I went to a one-year course. We were talking about food, recipes, food, recipes, food, recipes. One day, I realized that I think only about the food. There is nothing left in my life. Only the order of the products that I put inside my dish. And I thought, oh, my God, I don't want to live like that. The moment you have nothing but thinking about the content that you can make for these little piece of metal and electronics to get evaluation from the people that you don't even know, I think this is the sign you have to look for something else. So, let's talk about vinyl. In 2021, collaborating with Berlin-based artist Alina Nofimka, you released a record called Oko. It came out on vinyl through the Estonian label Hidden Harmony Recordings. Now, for many musicians, especially for musicians who do niche music, going vinyl is a dream for the beauty of it and I guess for the status of it. Can you tell me the story of this album and Hidden Harmony's involvement in this album? Go vinyl. Let's go vinyl, baby. Let's go vinyl, baby. Well, I was looking for a label before we made that album and I signed a contract with another label and they said, okay, by March, we have to have a new album from you. And I said, okay, by March, we will record some material and we did. And we did. They decided to release it. However, pandemic was outside. Of course, it was very, the reaction was very seldom because of the pandemic. I was living outside of the city and I thought we should do something and I was like, okay, let's make a video in the woods because we have time. We don't have to do anything now. And my friend wrote me on Instagram like, oh, I heard your album. It's so great. Let's do a video. And I said, oh, I have the same idea. Let's do it together. And that label actually, well, actually just one person from that I'm really grateful to helped us a lot with the location because it was filmed in a closed, extremely beautiful old mansion. You can't get actually inside that building. But we were walking around and a builder came up for a smoke and we said, do you know how we can get inside? He said, oh, you can't get inside unless you're very important people or you have to pay a huge amount of money. But he showed us pictures of inside and we wrote a letter to the local authorities like, please let us in. We're a small group of people. We're making art. We don't have money. And they gave us for free the whole building. And we made this music video. It's extremely beautiful. I'm using the word extremely two times. So I really love it. And I love it, too. It's like a movie, actually. And this label didn't do anything to promote that video. I was saving for a master degree and I spent all of that money on that music video. And I don't know, everybody I know was helping us to work on that music video. It was very hard. I still can't imagine how we did this because it was so, so difficult, really. It's a very beautiful work. I'm still very upset that it has only 4,000 views. It's like nothing. And I was so, so angry with that label. I immediately told them that I want to leave. I don't want to work with people who don't do their job. And I was in a depression, I think, because when you dedicate a lot of attention, money, and energy to something and there is no outcome, it's really tiring. That's why I wanted to quit so many times. Because in music, it's always like that. Unless you're willing to wait for the moment. And it was my birthday, 2020. And I get a message on Instagram. Hi, Sasha, I'm from Hidden Harmony Recordings. I saw your video. It's really beautiful. And I want to make a rare release. With our label. And we want to make vinyl. Wow. It was the best birthday present so far. And they didn't know it was my birthday, of course. But does the fact that this album exists, and what it has, its physical presence. And not only does it have a physical presence, it's not a CD, it's a vinyl. Does it add something to your perception of the work? Or does it not? What can I, how can I call it? It's like being imprinted or engraved. I think physical things are more real. Yeah, but I don't know, you know, like when I work with teenagers, they don't care about these things. What do they care about? They can't. They care about virality. Yeah, sometimes I feel like I'm a dinosaur when I talk to them. I'm so happy that I work with them because, you know, I'm not so far in the space. And I'm really happy that I know something. Yeah, that you have this connection to the reality of someone. Yeah, because we all live in bubbles. Whether it's an age bubble, or it's a political bubble, or it's a geographical bubble, or any other bubble. If you think that you live outside the bubble, you're wrong. Not you, I mean anybody. Yeah, of course. No, I like my bubble. I love my bubble also. But, you know, sometimes it's good to see other worlds. A few years ago, you started this project, a vocal improvisation and performance project, where, as I understand, the artwork exists only in the moment of performance. So it's quite radical in terms of artifacts and keeping. So tell me more about your inspirations for this project. And tell me if it ever concerns you that a wider audience doesn't have access to the work you do. Yeah, so this project is about singing people's stories. We do it in mostly theatre spaces. People come, people tell us their stories about everything. Love, war, peace, privacy, happiness, everything. And we sing back their stories, but also we move. We move and sing at the same time. And it's an improvisation, but we have instructions between us. So we never know which story is going to be told. Actually, I've never thought about this until you asked. That the wider audience doesn't have access to this kind of experience. But I think it's a good thing. That is something special that you have to come and see and watch and participate yourself. Yeah, it does make it unique, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. And also, I think it's my protest against this release culture. Yeah. Like, if you want to get something unique that I'm sharing, you have to come. I don't record it and you can't download it. You have to pay me. That's very fun. Two weeks ago, one friend wrote me and he offered me to do a little bit of singing job. Like, I have to record vocals for a song that was written by AI. And I got an example and I said, like, why do you need to record me? There is already a girl singing very nicely. And he said, yeah, but it's an AI singing. And I was like, oh my God, I even can't. I can't identify. Yes. And I said, OK, but still, why do you need this? You have this for free and I will ask for money to do that. And he said, yeah, but it doesn't have a character. We're looking for a character. I think that this will always stay with us, this longing for soul inside what we hear. This is about Pascal. This is about Pascal. You come to share the soul, you come to listen and see and look in a mirror. I call it sound mirror because basically it's a mirror, but in a very interesting form. And every time I listen to this and then I listen to this on video, it's absolutely a different thing. It's like watching a movie with, I don't know, with a kiss and the kiss itself. When you do the kiss, the difference is kind of the same, I think. I feel this phrase itself is very fun and it's very, you know, demanding in a good way. Yeah, but also, you know, I think that this is also good that people who don't need this kind of interaction, they can listen to the music at home and they don't have to download it. They pay five pounds or whatever to have all the music they like on their phone. And I think it's also good because it's better to have this music this way than not to have the music because a long time ago, only people who had money could listen to the music, which is also absolutely wrong. And not wrong, but it's, you know, it's not fair. So I think it's just when you need this, there is this thing. If you don't need this, there is another thing that you can get. And this is the beauty of diversity. The last record you enjoyed with every fiber of your being? I would go for Jacob Mann and Sam Wilkis, playing the compositions of Jacob Mann and Sam Wilkis. The music industry aspect that frustrates you the most? I think that it's hard to get paid when the payment depends on the quantity of streams. That quantity equals value. It's a principle of business, not art. Next question is completing the sentence. Talent is? Talent is another way of understanding what you like to do. And freedom is? And freedom is a condition of mind when you don't have to prove anything. One piece of advice you'd give to a no-name artist just starting out? You know, there is a very famous writer, Sergei Dovlatov. And I remember that in the end of one of his books, he wrote, the best thing the mother could do to her child is, the moment the child is born, she had to tell, don't write. What I would say, don't get your hopes up. Don't get your hopes up. I would say, try to find a way and create a situation where you can make music because you love it, not because you have to. Boring. And advice from Mama Sasha.