PALIMPSEST. REWRITTEN - Yury Smekalove

Music by Bela Bartok

Director-choreographer — Yury Smekalov

Production designer — Andrey Sevbo

Costume designer — Nina Shterenberg

Lighting designer — Konstantin Binkin

Video content designer — Mikhail Mesyats

Make-up artist — Olga Kostenetskaya

Conductor — Valery Ovsyannikov

Yury Smekalov expresses special gratitude to Doctor of Philosophy, professor of the Academy of Russian Ballet named after A.Y. Vaganova Elena Drobysheva for the suggested idea and direction of creative search.

I recently flew from Munich to St. Petersburg. Something went wrong with my personal TV, or rather, it didn't work, and I forgot my book at the hotel. I was looking for something to read, looked in the pocket of my chair where the magazines were, and, imagine, I found a notebook, all shabby, obviously, it has been around for a long time, and there was something like a diary in it. I couldn't resist. I read it and realized that I hadn't found it by accident.

The man's name is Victor. As far as I understand, he is 35 now. But I'll start with the entry when he was 26, although it was copied from the previous notebook. He most likely worked with a psychologist. He gave him the "Palimpsest Effect". Don't google it. I didn't know about it either. I'll explain now. In ancient times, there was no real paper, they wrote on parchment, and they saved money. Sometimes the same parchment was used several times. That is, they would write something important, then this important thing would cease to be important, it would be erased and something new would be written on the same parchment, and sometimes this would happen several times. So, recently scientists have suggested that in fact, even if information is erased from parchment, it doesn’t disappear completely, it’s as if the molecular composition of something there still changes. Well, and the effect when your past life influences you, when it manifests itself in your every action, if I understood correctly, the psychologist of this Victor called a “palimpsest”. You will understand everything from the text now. There are many entries there. I will read four.

So, Victor is 26 years old.

“You will ask: “When am I happy?” Rarely. Very rarely. And I don’t remember it later. As soon as I drink a glass, I immediately forget. I forget and become happy. My friends really like it when I am like this. I remind them of myself, myself before... Before, when I didn't remember what I remember now. One day, a train conductor found me like this. I was sitting in the toilet and sleeping. She found me, and I don't remember anything: who I am, what I'm doing on this train, I only remember my name - Victor, and my mother's last name - Antonova. And that's it. It's winter outside. I'm in socks. It's unclear how I got into her carriage. All the passengers are in place, I'm some kind of extra and don't remember anything. She said that I was smiling, happy, friendly, and it wasn't noticeable that I was drunk, just cheerful. But according to the rules, such a passenger "from nowhere" must be removed from the train. You never know who the terrorist is. And it's -20 outside, and it's as if I got out of bed to go to the toilet. But the law is the law. And so they were almost getting me off, when suddenly Valera, my buddy, who I was traveling with, runs into the carriage and almost shouts: "Vitya! There you are! We combed the entire train!" I don't remember all of that either. Valera later said that he looked at me happy and cried. Because he is like a brother to me, and he hasn't seen me like this in recent years. It's simple. If I drink fifty grams, I forget everything except my mother's first and last name. Everything.

And most importantly, I forget what we did then. The Caucasus. The war. We found a prisoner of ours in one village. His eyes were gouged out, his stomach was ripped open, he was lying in a ravine. And we did it. To everyone. To everyone who was in the village. I don't know what happened to us then. We came to: almost everyone was killed, that's if that's true, without details. And there were, practically, only civilians there. Since then, everything has changed. How can you live with something like that? Of course, you can live, but you can't smile. And when I drink, I forget everything. And I smile. I used to be very cheerful. The doctor told me that I should forgive myself. Forgive. I'm trying. I've already forgiven several people from that village. But for... I don't want to remember. I wish I could erase everything completely." Our souls are like sheets of parchment on which people close to us write something. And the closer a person is, the deeper the traces of his words, and no matter how you erase these inscriptions later, what happened still comes through and does not allow us to live peacefully or unrestfully, it's up to you. If your mother wrote on your soul when you were a child that she didn't want you to be born, you will suffer with this all your life. Although it also works the other way around: if something good was scribbled on your soul, you then have to try very hard to cross it out with something dark. Therefore, you can't allow just anyone to write on our souls. But who thinks about this?

Victor, 27 years old.

“It may seem that I’ve gone crazy, or that my psychologist is crazy. No. I can prove all of this. When Ira left me, I erased everything from my soul. With sandpaper. Everything she wrote on it. And then I went over it with solvent, well, to be sure, to eliminate any chances. Two years have passed. And I look at my soul - a clean slate. I somehow started to learn to talk to people again. And with one woman I talked my way to marriage. We’ve already chosen a date. And then I suddenly began to notice that I was irritated by the way she breathes. Loudly. And I can’t do anything. That is, nothing at all. And then I remembered that it was her, well, Ira, who was irritated if a person breathes loudly. I also told her that you can’t do that. It’s not a person’s fault that his bronchi make such a noise. And then I also began to pay attention to my fingers, how wide they are, and again I remembered that they irritated her in people too. That is, I didn’t erase Ira. More precisely, I erased her, but everything remained on my soul, and it’s unclear how to erase it. Her music remained, books, movies, smells. Everything remained on my soul like a palimpsest effect. That’s what a psychologist told me. But I don’t know what to do. Only if I burn my soul completely, like parchment. And even then, I’m not sure. And how can you burn it, although I tried. I almost succeeded. I filled myself with such a potion that few would have been able to withstand it. But the psychiatrists coped. True, it took two months, but they returned the balls and rollers to their place. That’s what I’m getting at. Every time you allow someone to write on their soul, remember that they may not be able to erase it. And Ira came to see me in the hospital. Only I didn’t recognize her then. I asked the doctor what she told him about me. He said that there was nothing special. It’s even a pity. Nothing special. Of course, you can’t allow people like her to write on their souls. It’s not humane.”

Victor, 29.

“In the end, I fell in love again, but for real, and somehow it all went away. Ira and I are even friends, I think. More precisely, we call each other. Although less often after that incident. She casually asked me if I wanted to try again, and to be honest, I didn’t even understand. It was stupid to answer: “Try what? What are you talking about?” She said, like, start a relationship from scratch, she said, we were in love. And she said to me straight out: “Ira, love is different. When you fall in love, you’ll understand right away!” Since then, she hasn’t really called. I think she’s doing well, and if anything, I’ll always help her. Within reason, of course. That’s how I remember it, she’s still a good woman, with a little quirk, of course, but who wouldn’t?”

Here he is at 35.

“I started smiling and I can drink now. Just drink. I don’t forget. Have I forgive myself? Of course not. I just realized that I can't go on like this. I won't bring them all back. I went there. To that village. I stood there. I thought: either I'll shoot myself, or I'll live differently. There was a local with me, he had a machine gun. I went into the woods. First, I put it to my chin, then to my forehead, then I lay down... It's awkward, of course, to shoot with a machine gun. And suddenly I started laughing. I'm sitting there. Thinking. After all, this happened to me for a reason. I became different, I started believing in something. How many of my company went into bandits... Some were killed, some are still sitting. But I didn't, I went into rescue work. I probably saved an entire village already. And I didn't waste a bullet.

And recently there was a miracle. They were looking for people under the rubble. And I heard a child breathing. You see, I heard him breathing. There, a person will scream - you can't hear him, but suddenly - bam, all sounds disappeared, and only inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale. We found him. Four years old. He was asleep. No need to erase anything from your soul. You won't erase it anyway, and besides, it's your soul. So, it had to be this way. For some reason." It's interesting, sometimes someone else's life grows into you in a few hours. It's no coincidence that I found the notebook. Now I'm looking back at my life, I want to erase a lot of things. I can't change it, I understand. But I would like to erase it, so that it doesn't come out in the me of today. Sometimes I dance and understand that now I'm eighteen years old on stage, and then suddenly memories of feelings that died long ago burst forth, and my body moves differently, but I can't do anything. You can't command the body. That is, I am here now - not quite me. There are thousands of me from the past in me. And I would, to be honest, send some of these thousand to the trash heap. They are like weights, and I would cherish some of them, on the contrary - they pull me towards the light, upward. So, I was going to do this sorting. But I read the notebook - I realized that it is not necessary. They are all mine, if you kill one - you yourself will die immediately. Do not erase anything. Everything that is written on the soul, everything is needed. Whatever it is.