Slava Polunin - about happiness in depression, the wisdom of fools and the kinship of laughter and horror
What is real happiness, what is the fullness of life, how to master a profession if there is no teacher, and how to laugh at everything without offending anyone - one of the most famous clowns of our time, the main dreamer of the Universe, Slava, spoke to the RTVi channel about all this and much more. Polunin.
My parents know you, me and the guys who are 20 years younger than me. But suppose there are people who do not know you: maybe very young. Suppose you were asked to write an article about yourself on Wikipedia or the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. First paragraph: who is Slava Polunin?
The first word, my most important profession, is a dreamer. I'm professional. Probably one of the most professional professionals in the fantasy world, this is my main occupation. Then, probably, a clown who entertains people in a special way. And also a happy person.
Are you really a happy person?
In fact. It is necessary to explain what a happy person is. He has everything the same as everyone, only somehow he manages to be happy. The same problems, difficulties, tragedies, perseverance - all that accompanies us in life. But he is happy.
What does it mean to be happy? For me, this means being in a good mood more often than in a bad one.
A lyrical mood, and even a tragic one, can be happy. What is good? Crowded with life - that's good.
Do you have depression?
Of course, this is part of our lives. How without her? To let some depression, then get out of it - well, how else? I am happy even in depression from the fact that there are my friends around me, my relatives, my audience, my business. And somehow we’ll jump over the depression.
For a large number of people, the concepts of depression and happiness are incompatible. If you are depressed, you cannot be happy, and if you are happy, then what depression?
So they look flat. The world is multi-level, and at the same time you live at all levels: here is depression, and here is joy. Each of my performances is 10 levels, and life is probably all 100.
Andrei Makarevich said that, communicating with you, he was charged with mad energy, because you do not have a bad mood. Doesn’t happen at all?
If I’m in a bad mood, I’d better go around the corner or sit in the bush so as not to spoil the rest. I'll wait and come back. Why throw it at all?
Have you always been like this or did it come?
Once they asked me if I was a happy person. I began to think and realized that I was always happy. But before I did this intuitively, but now I am doing it professionally. When I feel that I am unhappy, I think: this is some kind of illness, I need to be treated. I do this as people do business. My business is to be happy.
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A truly happy person is one who is called enlightened. Even among advanced Buddhist lamas, I have not seen such. Even the Dalai Lama gave the impression of a man who is periodically angry and angry. Are you angry, angry?
Of course, I’m angry and angry, trying to lose my temper, but then I go from corner to corner and reproach myself for such actions. If you lose your temper, it means you did something unpleasant to someone and the next time you need to get around this place.
Your biography everywhere begins with the words: “Graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Culture.” And what happened before him, that very childhood in which everything begins, where everyone dreams of returning, there is almost no word about this anywhere. What are your most vivid childhood memories?
As a child, I was probably 10 times more powerful dreamer. He could not take a step without arranging something.
The first memory is nature. A small town, on the one hand a forest, on the other a river. I spent 80% of the time in the forest and on the river. I had a list of responsibilities, I quickly made them and ran there. Nature is everything. And for me it's creativity. I loved animals and trees, I had fantastic notions - what is now called land art. I built 10-story huts in pine trees, made tunnels in the snow. A huge number of installations and performances were my childhood hobbies. Later - the house of pioneers, it was my whole world. I arranged holidays, painted walls. There were several of us, and we held everything around in cheerful hands.
How did others feel about your eccentricities?
Once my parents were nearly put in jail for the fact that I knocked the fence - I did not like fences, I loved freedom. We had a wonderful slide with which you could look at the river, but there they put up a fence. I took it, rocked it and knocked it down. We sat and watched the sunset. We are small, and parents immediately dragged to the police to understand.
I could not buy the game, although mom and dad worked as sellers in a toy store, and I spent part of my childhood on the counter playing all of these things. I loved to do it myself: I’ll come home, read a book about some Pinocchio and start making a game about his adventures. I also experienced a bathyscaphe with a cat: I lowered the cat in an iron can into the barrel, which symbolized the sea (the cat remained alive and well). Once I climbed a tree of great height and took an eaglet there, put it in a chicken coop. Father comes home, and all the hens are lying: the eaglet has taken all of their lives.
And what was the craziest thing?
I think it was just a crazy life. It was necessary to experience everything.
Was there something that parents and teachers were tough against?
Well, how can it not be harsh? I used to go to the Kursk Bulge, where you can dig up a kilogram of shells on every meter, make some kind of charge with a match and gunpowder - and throw it, have fun, set off explosions (even though, really, it’s cotton and that’s it). I throw it out the window, everyone is happy. Then the head teacher comes running and says: “I’m going home and a bomb explodes above me.” And I just threw it out the window, not knowing that there was a person walking there. It was important for me to learn how the world works and what interesting things you can do in it.
When they talk about childhood, especially in the psychology of the twentieth century, they consider it necessary to recall the tragedies and dramas that influenced the future adult life.
I hid the diary under the closet when I received the deuce, then my father found it, ripped me off - drama, tragedy. But this went quickly.
I mean something more serious. The girl fell in love with another ...
I had a very beautiful story. I fell in love with the set time (I was 10-15 years old), I chose for myself whom I should fall in love with. And since I was very quiet and shy, I could not come up and confess to her for three years. And all these three years I brought every night and laid flowers on her windowsill. All the surrounding gardens were torn by me: all the gladioli and dahlias were lying in the morning on her windowsill.
How did your romance end? Where is she now?
Nothing, I never told her. She is alive and well, lives in Moscow.
With teachers there were disputes, conflicts? Fantazers do not like ...
I tried not to go into conflict. I was always transferred to the first desk, otherwise the shurum-burum began at the end of the class. I sat on the first desk with my head turned back, everyone laughed, I entertained them. I was kicked out of the lesson every third time, so I spent part of the school on the sports field: it was my favorite pastime.
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There was a moment when you clearly defined what you will do in life?
On New Year's Eve I watched the film “The Kid” by Charlie Chaplin, his greatest film, impossibly tragic and fantastically funny. Mom turned off the TV, it was time to sleep. I cried until the morning and realized: I want the same. The same world of movement, passions, joys, sorrows. I realized that I was a clown. I want to be a clown. A couple of weeks later I wrote an essay about it. That's how it all started.
A month later, I already went to school with a hat and shoes. Now, at all the holidays, I performed on stage in comic miniatures. I began to sing in a choir in a solo, piercing voice. It sang so funny that the whole village began to tease me with the refrain from this song.
I had the opportunity to communicate with Yuri Nikulin and other lesser-known clowns and was convinced that this was not a myth: for the most part, clowns in life are rather complex and sad people. Nikulin was probably the only exception. You either pretend to be brilliant, or in fact - what I believe in - have learned to be happy. Who were the people you studied from? Who can you call your teachers?
Immediately after school, I went to St. Petersburg because I realized that in order to learn where I wanted to go, I needed to find a teacher. I didn’t find him and started studying in a studio where there was no teacher. But we had idols: Marcel Marceau, Charlie Chaplin, Leonid Yengibarov. Then I started meeting the greats, following them around - Rolan Bykov, Yuri Nikulin. I was always carrying suitcases behind Marcel Marceau. With me, he came to Russia 5 times, and I was always his assistant: meeting him at the station, carrying suitcases, shining a spotlight at his performances. After the performance, he asked me what I liked today. The same thing happened with Raikin, I simply fell in love with this brilliant artist and did not miss a single performance. And Rolan Bykov is my “dad,” as are Nikulin, Marceau and Raikin. I have a dozen “dads” who helped me understand this world.
From the point of view of modern morality, all this is somehow politically incorrect and gender inequal. And at least one woman was among the teachers?
Among the clowns there were few women. Now I am friends with Olya Volkova, this is a fantastic volcano of energy, joy, life, laughter. There are such unrealistic people among women too. But at that time these were the leaders, and I went after them.
For the most part, were your teachers easy to communicate in life or difficult?
No, not difficult. They were so passionately engaged in business, and everything that helped them, they immediately accepted and became open. If you tried to interfere with them in this matter, there would probably be difficulties. But I helped, and it was very easy.
I read the phrase from Hemingway that there are people who are difficult to communicate with and it is difficult to deal with them. But then they disappear, and without them is also difficult. And there are people who are extremely light, it’s easy with them, and then they disappear from your life - and you don’t notice. Was there a person in your life with whom it was difficult, but whom do you miss very much?
Artists - they are all difficult, there are no easy ones among them. But you need to look for the right system so that some wheels converge with others. I’m probably lucky, or I am avoiding, when I feel that this is not harmonious. I flow through and leave like water, I never go to resistance, I don’t collide with anyone. I am always looking for a harmonious environment that exists with me in one tone. And then we explode and take off. Someone needs the energy of collisions, blowing out sparks, and I am different - I am looking for where I am ideally and in harmony. I had a terrific partner, Sasha Skvortsov, we spent about 15 years together, and when we connected, there was simply an explosion. This is an ideal partner. And so it seems that we are nearby - and each one is nothing special.
Charlie Chaplin worked in different countries of the world, primarily in America. There were artists who worked in authoritarian regimes, then ended up in the same United States. You and the people you are talking about worked in the Soviet Union. On the one hand, the USSR was a fruitful environment, because a lot of strong and vibrant artists grew up there, on the other, it was a system that had to destroy and crush the initiative. You made an informed choice for yourself: in principle, I will never engage in politics, will I be alien to political satire and shy away from these topics?
I still did the same thing, just in a different way. If Durov, for example, rode in Odessa on a green pig, because the governor’s last name was Zeleny, he was immediately kicked out of the city, and he never performed there again, I never had such things happen. But all the same, the same meanings that I have in relation to the world, I express them - in a special way. So fabulous and fantastic. The word “nizya”, which I gave to Russia. The word “zya” did not exist - I gave it and it appeared. It has everything: philosophy, psychology, and a children's game.
I have always looked for a way in which if you become the favorite child of the nation, then you are allowed much more than if you point the finger. Raikin said: if you want to criticize someone, you must be more concerned about this problem than he is. Raikin never criticized, he always worried - that’s why he was gray-haired. Every single thing he owned was taken from his heart. You cannot be a satirist who says from the outside: “This is bad for you.” You can only together with him, experiencing this, look for a solution and a way out. Everything I do in the social sphere is special parables in which I give hints about the main diseases of the time.
Can you laugh at everything or are there things you can’t laugh at?
It is all close by. You cannot be from a position from above or from the side. Need to laugh together. You must be with that person, the object that you are laughing at. You have to laugh at it together.
You work and live, including in France. You know Charlie Hebdo and the stories associated with it. It seems to me that this is one of the challenges of the time when ideas about what is bad, what can be done by one and not the other, collide. And after the tragedy of Charlie Hebdo, a lot of black humor arose on the Internet. There were phrases such as: if you laugh at homosexuals, you are homophobic, if you are a male chauvinist over a woman, anti-Semite over a Jew, and if you are over hundreds of millions of Muslims, then you are an advanced fellow. That’s why I ask, are there things you don’t allow yourself to laugh at?
There is nothing in my things at all that makes me laugh at anyone or anything. I have never tried to understand what I am doing - but still, these are different worlds. I am in love with this life, we are working on something, and now my partner says: “It’s not working here, it needs to be redone.” I answer: “Listen, we found such an amazing thing, it will grow, expand and displace everything you are talking about. Why should we think about what is bad - let's do something good. Catch it and start expanding.”
The meaning of everything I do is the creation of harmonious worlds, the creation of small oases. And then expanding them to the maximum. I don’t go that way; nobody says bad things at home. We have a whole rainbow world. Not because it is rainbow in itself, it is quite complex. But we are creating ideal opportunities for human communication, human relations and are trying as much as possible to expand them in this universe. We are the second half of these scales, which gives people hope.
Makarevich said that you have almost a list to which you refer every day. This list has daily deals, and if you don’t have to do something, you simply delete it. How does this fit with the frenzied activities you do? How do you determine whether to do or not to do?
If I want to - I do it, but I don’t want to - I delete it. But if I promised someone something, for me it means: I want to. And if you didn’t promise, maybe you want to, or maybe not. If the complexities of other people's lives do not depend on this, you are free. I want to do a lot, I have 20 points a day, at least half reach at least - and that’s already great. I always start 20 projects, if one or two work out, I'm already happy. The rest failed - well, to hell with them. And I'm in a good mood.
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Do you have projects in your life that you would like to implement, but they have not been implemented?
Of course, they are waiting in line. So, not the time. It happens that projects have to lie for years, for 10-15 years, so that then they can be realized in one movement.
It happens when you do - and it doesn’t work out?
Most fail. But since I undertake to do a lot right away, something is definitely obtained.
I reformulate: when you take - and fail. It turned out badly, screwed up ...
It does not happen badly. The process of doing business is already good. No need to wait for the result, it is necessary to deify the process. The main thing in life is not what you finally did, but that you did it. The process brings so much joy, growth, development, which means that at that moment I was happy and did an important job. Why is the finale necessary?
Are there any fantasies of yours which, in your opinion, the world has not yet reached, not matured?
I know that I'm about 15 years ahead of what is happening in my profession. I already see some things that in 15 years will become the property of all. I do them. Not because the world is not ready - while this is not needed. All the things that you start at first may not be realized by everyone.
Can you give an example from the past?
Clowns are like children. Like membranes. Poets are like that too. They just hear the sound of the world, but it is not a conscious sound yet. As it was in my book: a dream is a hunch. Not something elusive and incomprehensible, it is just a premonition of those things that will soon become the reality of our world.
When Sasha Skvortsov and I started making miniatures, only our friends laughed, and the big bosses said that this was nonsense and student initiative. Raikin said: “Wait, don’t rush, maybe this is a new word that we don’t know about today. Let's give at least second place to these guys. Look, the whole hall is lying down!”
Kartsev and Ilchenko also started doing this at the same time. I called it expressive idiocy. We put out such an amount of energy that the professionals said: “You are doing something stupid, you have 5 tricks on one centimeter, one is enough to keep the audience in suspense.” And we answered: “We can’t, we are choking on fantasy and the joy of life.”
Mystics and enlightened people of all religions say that one of the most important tasks of a person is to become as spontaneous and free as a child. Psychologists advise how to awaken the child in yourself as an adult. But I look at the children, remember myself, and I cannot say that the child always feels happy. His conditions simply change very quickly. Do you agree with this “bring out the child in you” thesis?
It is necessary! All my creativity is there - to contrive this state of childhood to extend for a lifetime is the main task of man, because through this he can become happier than in another version. Childhood is the key. In childhood, we still live not with our brains, but with the whole elemental being. We are part of the world. And then we break away from him and begin to straighten our brains, where to catch him and how to harmonize with him. And the child lives in harmony with the world.
I am still a child: my reactions today and the reactions in childhood are the same. I all live in a complete world, I do not let my brains saddle me and make me logically approach things. I balance all the time and try to be in this balance. Childhood is an ideal teacher for us on our way of life. Fulfill childhood dreams - and you will be happy all your life.
That is, you need to be either a child, or a madman, or a drunkard?
Not to be a child, but to take from children what they can give you. They teach you. I wanted to start teaching at GITIS and wrote: let's learn from crazy people, dogs, drunkards and children.
What about the dogs?
A dog runs its tail with such pleasure! In animals there is a nature of natural nature. We must learn that nature speaks through you, and you do not resist it. Of course, everyone was afraid that I would start learning from drunkards, and they did not let me teach. And in vain, I have wonderful students who now do all this with me.
Dali, they didn’t, but in TED (this is the world's largest platform) you have a lecture “The Happiness of a Fool.”
This is one of my favorite lessons. I don’t teach, I’m talking about how I realized how I walk along this path and achieve the result.
What are the basic recipes? It is clear that people are different, and if you are asked what is the meaning of life, you need to clarify - whose ...
There are a million kinds of happiness. Mine doesn’t look like yours, it’s ours; ours: one likes to sit under the sun and purr, the other needs to climb a mountain. It’s impossible to stop me. If I run into something, no concrete slabs can stop my actions. I can not sleep for weeks, not eat, until I achieve my plan. At the same time, I myself stop abruptly.
My great teacher was a homeless man who told me just one phrase. I made an appointment, and he came two weeks later. I asked, how can this be, we agreed? And he answered me: “Spring...”
I realized that I had been treating the world wrong. Along with this, there is also “Spring...” And if only this is combined together, the harmonization of the meanings of the universe begins. If you persist and break through concrete walls, achieving great achievements, something is wrong in the world. Because there are still your children, your friends, nature nearby... Why are you grabbing one rope and holding on? Look how much beauty is around! You have to manage to embrace everything.
There are 72 rules in my lecture and the most important of them is: do only what makes you “jingle” inside. Half of the happiness is in this question. It’s not so easy to achieve, but if you achieve it, half the happiness is already with you. Second, do it only with those you want to hug. This is still half happiness. Your pants are full of happiness. And another 70 of the same points - and everything is in order.
Buddha said that if you can enjoy the aroma of 1000 flowers, why worry about the absence of one? This is about life loss. Really, have you never experienced feelings of hatred, extreme, utmost, poisoning from the inside irritation, hopelessness, despair? Are all these emotions alien to you?
No, just like everyone else. It is unlikely that there is such a person on earth or he has something wrong with his brains to prevent such things from happening. The main thing, having all the same life that all of us have, is to manage to be happy at the same time. These are not different lives. This is a story about a glass: half full or half empty.
I was in hatred, irritated, I was everywhere, like any other person. But I always say: the glass is half full. I’ll give you an example: a flood came to the mill, and we were supposed to have a holiday there, a fantastic project. Everything is flooded, everyone is running, how can this be? I say: “What beauty, Lord! It happens once every 150 years, and at that time I found myself in this place. I saw a miracle of nature! To hell with them, well, the barrels floated away, after all, everyone is alive - the children are floating on mattresses, the granddaughter floats out of the kitchen on the refrigerator and takes out ice cream from there. We are sitting waist-deep in water and drinking coffee, a neighbor swims up and asks if we can buy coffee.” There are so many fantastically unrealistic situations that people consider grief. Grief - I lost this good book. And if there’s a sofa, what grief is that? Well, there was a sofa, no sofa.
What if real grief occurs - what most people think of grief? Losing a loved one?
This is understandable, more grief than the loss of a loved one does not exist.
Did you have to lose loved ones?
Of course. For example, I am ready for death. I have lived so much in this life. You can lose me, my friends. I left, but I was happy. If only this is not a tragedy - someone killed a person, then he just left when the time came. Maybe it’s normal that the loved one is gone? Maybe the universe needed it? It’s a pity that I can’t communicate with him, but this is part of the universe, of our life, we must accept this.
There is such a parable: the Grand Canyon, the abyss, tourists and a guide. One of the tourists asks: “There is a sheer wall here, what if I fall?” The guide replies: “If you fall, be sure to look to the right - they say there is such an amazing view there!”
Great situation! I am glad that this man was close by and was able to say this to someone who was obsessed with fear. He gave him support. It is important that such people come across nearby who can say funny things. It must have been a clown.
How to deal with fear?
I had a performance, on which every 5 years I begin to work with new friends. This is a question about the other side of life, which is unknown to us, incomprehensible, dangerous. Each time I come to this meeting and the line from a new perspective. Laughter and horror are the two most powerful emotions of a human being, all the rest are much weaker. I push them from time to time. I always approach with respectful bow to this wall of darkness, I never go any further, but I am interested in this question: how horror and laughter exist together.
I do not watch horror films. For me, this world does not exist, because I know that I can be beyond that line - maybe I'm a demon inside? So I stay on this side, here we also need funny demons. Horror is what I would like to know, but I'm afraid to touch it.
Do you think something continues after the death of the physical body?
It would be great. I hope so. My Hindu friends promised us a lot, I try to hold on: you never know, maybe it will fall over me.
“The Hindus came up with a good religion, that when we give up, we don’t die for good...”
Yes Yes.
What are some of the coolest projects in your professional life that you think people should definitely watch—even on tape, if they're not already on? Or like The Snow Show, which you can now go and see on Broadway?
This is exactly my moment of life. I am 70 years old. I decided that it was necessary to somehow preserve the interesting things that happened, and to give an opportunity not only to those who were lucky at that moment to be at this time and in this place, but also to those who were not lucky. Therefore, I thought: it’s necessary to create a reserve where you can take part in all this even after years.
Now I have agreed with the Moscow government to hold an exhibition of all my favorite projects at the Moscow Museum for the whole summer. I've done about 120-130 huge projects in my entire life, and every one of them is wonderful. For example, “Caravan of Peace”, when I gathered 60 of the best theaters from all over Europe, and we rode as a city on wheels through all the capitals of Europe, from Moscow to Paris: 7 months, 6 tents, 120 cars, 40 nationalities of children we only had. Or the “Academy of Fools”, it is 30 years old and there are 60 great academicians. Previously, it was a closed club, but this year we decided to open it and hold the Congress of Fools - this is a great event, and we are holding it for the sixth time. All the great fools of the world gather on one stage, this is a gala concert and after it a debate. I again gathered all the “Litsedeev” and this year we went to Israel and restored our best performances. With Gedeon Kremer we made a wonderful performance where 15 clowns and 25 musicians simultaneously exist on stage. Amazing and beautiful. And the film “How to Become a Star”, where we, like the Marx brothers, stole a tram and drove it around St. Petersburg, and then drove along the Volga on a crazy steamship and did everything we wanted. I can't list everything. At this exhibition you will be able to see all this and participate.
To have fun and be surprised by Polunin’s antics, you don’t have to wait until the summer - right now his “Snow Show” is running on Broadway in New York, which has received more than 20 international awards. Tickets - here.
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