My friend, yes you. My friend, yes you are a transformer (collection)

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Chapter 1
How to become famous

How to become famous, happy, find yourself and your love, predict the future and cure all diseases

According to sociologists, about 30% of people dream of becoming famous, and 40% of the population are happy when they get some random fame. Actually, big ambitions and striving for fame are just a consequence of our children's complexes, but more on that later. The main thing is that this chapter has everything you need to become great and famous in the era of Post-Apocalypse. After all, the world after the End of the World is a place where everything is possible. Pole of Miracles, a giant Russian roulette, where one person accidentally becomes a famous member of a criminal gang, and another turns into a super star, playing an imaginary guitar. You can become a great killer maniac, or you can put everything you have on the line, but you never get anywhere. You will learn how to fight in a cage in front of the crowd, what needs to be done to be shown on TV, and women asked to sign on their bare breasts, and whether it is possible to turn into the late and great David Bowie and how it will affect your health. All the stories in this chapter are pure truth, we have not invented a single character (unless the existence of the hunchback from Glasgow may raise some doubts). And they all appeared as a result of a long journalistic work, which proves that real world- more fantastic than even the wildest invention.

Strange story Dr. Brooker and Major Tom

Dedicated to the memory of David Bowie - "the man who fell to Earth."

Julia Dudkina

For a second, he himself suddenly believed that he was David Bowie. In recent days, everything has been going towards this. First, I had to be stuck at the Los Angeles airport for a day without luggage, then - a thirteen-hour flight. He finally ended up in Melbourne on July 15: by that time, he had hardly slept or eaten for several days. It was cool in Australia, and he arrived in one T-shirt. “This is how the Scots feel in London,” he thought as he left the airport. Strong coffee and champagne made him dizzy, and the walls swung towards him as he entered his hotel room. But there was no time left for rest - after changing his clothes, he went downstairs and hailed a taxi. They were already waiting for him. The guards in front of the entrance did not ask for a ticket. “You seem to be here,” they said when they saw him, and they escorted him inside.

Everything has gone too far, and now even at night he sometimes sees confused Bowie dreams - he wakes up, writes down scraps of thoughts, and then, having thoroughly rummaged in book biographies, realizes that the same ideas came to Bowie himself. Dr. Brooker caught his reflection in the mirror, smiled to himself and thought, "I think I did it."

One of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics is quantum teleportation. The state of one quantum particle is destroyed and recreated where there is another particle - entangled. Once upon a time, David Bowie was the No. 1 nutcase, the guy from outer space, the rock and roll star. But in last years he was already a sixty-eight-year-old conformist, the shadow of the former Bowie - he no longer dyed his hair or reincarnated, lived quietly in Manhattan with his wife and daughter and prepared himself a present for his last birthday - the first album in three years called Blackstar. David Bowie is a quantum particle whose state has collapsed; Bowie disbanded to reappear elsewhere. It seems that the role of the entangled particle in this teleportation went to the British professor, feminist, researcher of cinema and contemporary culture, Will Brooker.

Once in 1967, a very young guy David Jones, who painfully wanted to become famous, came to the theater troupe of Lindsay Kemp, a dancer, mime, famous actor and teacher. By the time he was twenty, David had already released one unsuccessful disc, recorded in fifteen minutes, and sang a frivolous song for an advertisement for Luv ice cream. After that, nothing worked out for him, and he decided to take up pantomime - he liked kabuki theater, where men played female roles. Kemp's students traveled all over the country and performed in this genre. David knew exactly what he wanted: so that the whole world knew about him and his work. But he did not understand how to do it: he was very shy and withdrawn, he felt uncomfortable on stage.

Lindsay Kemp wanted to help the student, especially since he clearly had talent. And then Kemp advised the guy to paint his face and paint his hair. After all, if you put on a mask, then you are no longer you. You are your role, and everyone is looking at you. Play and people will believe. You no longer have a way out - you put on a suit and went on stage, which means that the performance has begun. Longest show of your life, David Jones, and you play David Bowie in it.

In 1969, when the Americans landed (or pretended to have landed) on the moon, Major Tom from Bowie's song was lost in outer space. The BBC showed reports of American astronauts, while Space Oddity played in the background. Shy David Jones finally figured out what to do.

A successful invention, a set of images, an exact hit on the sore nerve of the era - the invented Bowie was so believed that it became almost real. So much so that he himself invented a role for himself. It was already a double performance, a needle in an egg, and an egg in a duck. Ziggy Stardust appeared on the scene - a space musician made of plastic, an alcoholic and a drug addict, who flew to Earth five years before the Apocalypse. David got carried away with the production and already had difficulty distinguishing between his own roles. “I can never decide if I make the characters or the characters make me up,” he said. And sometimes he suddenly declared: “Right now, the real me is in front of you,” but even then no one knew how much he could be trusted. By 1973, Ziggy Stardust began to behave very badly: he forgot why he came to Earth, and betrayed his friends. Bowie killed him on stage, and Ziggy was quickly replaced by new characters. Bowie seemed to wander through a maze of crooked mirrors and in each of them he saw either Ziggy Stardust, or the Emaciated White Duke, or Thomas Newton, and in the end he no longer understood whether his own reflection was there at all.

At the same time, in the mid-70s, a little Englishman named Will was putting on his own play. At noon, during lunchtime, he came home from school and diligently changed his clothes: now in a clown, now in a cowboy, now in an astronaut, and sometimes in something completely incomprehensible. Having changed his clothes, he, joyful, again ran to lessons. He was five years old, and he made costumes from all sorts of things, so they turned out to be not very believable. But he really wanted to believe that his classmates would not recognize him. They really didn't recognize. More precisely, in the depths of their hearts they knew that in front of them was their friend Will, but they liked to imagine with him that he had turned into an astronaut or a cowboy. When children grow up, it turns out that imagining oneself as a cowboy, a soldier or whatever and dressing up in costumes is "stupid" and "not serious." Then they become respectable men and women, useful citizens of their state. Will Brooker became a scientist.

Brooker studied film and culture, wrote a famous scientific work called "Batman without a mask. Analysis of the Cultural Icon ”, became a professor at Kingston University in the field of film and television. Then he studied the behavior of Star Wars fans and the influence of Lewis Carroll on modern culture. Released a series of feminist comics about a superhero woman "My So-Called Secret Identity", which was highly praised by The Guardian and Times Higher Education. Will has never been a public person. He was often invited to various programs, and he accepted these invitations, but nevertheless he liked to spend time alone more - reading, writing articles for magazines, traveling. He also loved David Bowie, a man who grew up but never stopped playing. As a teenager, Will began to listen to him. He walked around with a cassette player and put on Let’s dance again and again - he was amazed how Bowie managed to become incredibly successful in his lifetime and at the same time remain very strange, how he managed to be pragmatic, but not lose his individuality.

Will Brooker has always wanted to do something special that has something to do with Bowie. For example, to write a book - after all, this is what he knows best. But so many books have been written about Bowie that they can memorize a whole concert hall, and Will is not the kind of person to just write another one and stay in the shadows, to do like everyone else. And then he decided to write a special book, put his whole soul into it, and at the same time understand Bowie in a way that no one else understood him. And for this, he decided to become a Bowie for a whole year: to travel to the same countries where he traveled, and read the same books, adhere to the same diet and dress in the same way. Maybe then it will be possible to get into his head and tell what happened in it all these years. After all, if you succeed in becoming a cowboy or a clown, then the show has already begun.

The strangest play of your life, Will Brooker, and you play David Bowie in it.

“It was simpler in the beginning,” says Dr. Brooker. - I watched the films that Bowie watched, listened to music, studied biographies, did creative work. But then I realized that if I want to really understand what was in his head, I need to go further. Maybe if I knew what this would all turn out to be, I would think twice before starting. " Will now, like Bowie in his day, paints and makes music. Arriving in cities where Bowie once visited, he tries to repeat his route. True, Will does not give big concerts - only sometimes he performs in small clubs. But when journalists ask him for an interview, he never refuses, because he needs to feel on himself what it is like when you are constantly photographed and asked the same questions. It turns out that it is not very comfortable - you often want to hide and be alone. Will began his experiment in 1960, when Bowie was just starting his career. But what year it is worth stopping, he himself does not yet understand - after all, when the superbook goes on sale, he will need to dress up in Bowie at the presentation, that is, return to the old images again.

Some episodes from the musician's life can be passed quite quickly - for example, those when he had a creative lull. Others take a lot of time - so, the Emaciated White Duke he was for several weeks. Sometimes you have to spend a lot of money on a project. For example, the Emaciated White Duke's turtleneck shirt cost a hundred pounds from a tailor, while Thomas Newton's hair - "The Man Who Fell to the Ground" - had to be dyed for two hours once a month. And there are still flights. In Melbourne, Will went straight to the opening of the grandiose David Bowie exhibit, so he was greeted like a star. Moreover, the real Bowie did not come to her.

Will decided to save on only one thing - unlike the real Bowie, he did not take drugs. It's expensive, illegal, and how will he come to his students high? After all, you can't lose your favorite job over a book. Instead of using cocaine, Will began to drink a lot of energy drinks and forced himself to stay awake for several days. The sensations, of course, are not quite the same, but also rather strange. And it's not about costumes and drugs. Sometimes the scientist even gets bored that his project is perceived as a simple masquerade. Will is trying to understand Bowie's work - to figure out where the images and ideas came from. And the musician's drug trips and homosexual relationships, the scientist says, are already his personal life, and Bowie had a right to it.

Will has an artistic mess on his head, his face is completely white, and his lips are painted with red lipstick. In a few hours he will be giving interviews to Australian journalists. The professor is already pretty tired. He started his project in June 2015 and managed to reach the 80s. At first he was Ziggy Stardust - nervous and impatient. He hardly ate or slept, constantly communicated with the press - after all, this is how a person who wants to become famous behaves. And Bowie really, really wanted it. Ziggy Stardust is a bright piece of plastic with glitters that you can hide a very shy guy behind.

Then Will had to become the Emaciated White Duke - the fascist bastard from 1976. An elegant nakocaine Pierrot, almost not expressing emotions. He placed black candles around the room, turned on German music and wrote strange canvases under it.

“If you choose to be the White Duke, then you become like a bullet, like a knife,” explains Will. - Bowie came up with all these images not just from the void, they were inside him. He just pulled them to the surface at one point or another. In the 70s, it was very difficult for him, and he had to become just that in order to survive all this. Not everyone can be a White Duke, because not everyone has one. Found in me. " Will says that 70s Bowie reminds him of a sick bird - somehow he constantly shrinks all over, pulls his legs under him when he sits down. “The seventies were a real disaster,” says the doctor. "We're lucky we didn't lose Bowie during this time." This is the same time that Bowie, he said, was eating red pepper and milk. Will tried to eat the same way and realized where this strange pose of a sick bird came from. He felt that way. Will spent several weeks surfing London in a feverish state: if you are the White Duke, then you are a superman and have the right to do whatever you want. You are strong, cruel, and there will never be punishment for your crime.

- So you really did something? - I ask Will, but he gets away from answering:

“You see, I'd better not tell anyone about this. Sometimes I think that Bowie did not comment on my project, because he managed to forget what it was like in the seventies, and did not really want to remember. It's really hard. It's even strange that he survived then. Sometimes I think: what if he actually died much earlier, and instead of him there was his clone - this cheerful fit man?

By the time Will got to Berlin, where Bowie went to calm down in the late 70s, he had already lost a lot of understanding what was going on. On excursions to Bowie's favorite places, he listened to the stories of the guide and sometimes suddenly thought that he was talking about him - Will.

Now the professor has already reached the 80s. Major Tom, who had been lost in space many years ago, has finally been found. It turned out that he was just a worthless drug addict who had done nothing good in his life, only breathed the cosmic ether. "Mom said: you better not mess with Major Tom." In 1980, the song Ashes to Ashes was released. In the video, Bowie cringes alone in the corner of a padded room. Cruel Pierrot along the seashore goes to sunset to disappear forever. This is the bottom from which the rebirth of David Bowie gradually begins. And this is a real relief for Will: at least he no longer needs to eat red pepper and wash it down with milk.

It is not clear how David Bowie himself felt about Will Brooker's experiment - he refused to comment on the scientist's project. Will wants his best-of-the-best-Bowie book to be, as it were, a gift, an expression of love. But it could have turned out just like Bowie himself once did with Andy Warhol.

In 1971, the couple David and Angela Bowie approached 33 Union Square, New York. They looked impressive: the husband had shoulder-length hair, women's shoes with a gold strap, and a wide-brimmed hat. Angela had a short haircut and was dressed almost like a man. Together they went inside and took the elevator to the sixth floor, where the famous Andy Warhol Factory, New York's nest of debauchery, the birthplace of pop art was located. David really wanted to get there - he adored Warhol and dreamed of meeting him.

David and Angela went out on the sixth floor and saw in front of them brick wall... They knocked, some people came out to them and refused to let them into the "Factory" - they did not believe that they were facing a famous musician with his wife. The couple went downstairs and went back up again, this time other people came out to knock, and David and Angela were finally allowed in. Regular guests of the "Factory" could not come to their senses after the incident when a crazy feminist broke into the loft several years ago and shot Warhol three times in the stomach, so they looked at the newcomers with disbelief. When David found Warhol, he immediately decided to sing him a song that he wrote in his honor. It was called Andy Warhol.

“Andy Warhol looks a scream, hang him on the wall…” - it seems that the artist didn't like these words very much. He somehow vaguely grunted and stepped aside - he did not want to talk to Bowie. David stood alone in the middle of the room and looked terribly confused - he did not want to offend anyone. Someone, passing by, said to him: "Wow, Andy just got pissed off about this song."

“Sorry,” David replied. - I thought he would be pleased.

- Yes, but you hinted at his unusual appearance, - an unfamiliar guest of the "Factory" answered him. - Andy has skin problems, and he constantly thinks that it catches everyone's eye.

David was terribly depressed - he felt redundant here. But then Warhol, passing by, suddenly drew attention to his women's shoes - yellow and gold with a strap. He seems to have immediately forgotten how much the song touched him.

- I love these shoes! Where did you buy them? - he turned to David. After that, they began to discuss shoes, and the misunderstanding was forgotten. A few years later, Warhol even became a fan of the musician.

However, if Professor Brooker did have the opportunity to show Bowie his book, and he didn't like it, then Brooker would definitely have a suitable pair of shoes to fix everything. He spent a lot of time and effort to choose a wardrobe for his role.

The professor looks tired. He wanted this project to belong only to him, to be a part of himself. But it turns out that all his time and energy is devoted to another person. Will has accumulated many ideas for new works that have nothing to do with Bowie, but so far he simply cannot take on them. Because if you decide to play the role of David Bowie, you play it to the end, like the once shy guy David Jones did.

No, Will does not regret at all that he undertook all this: it will be a long journey, from which he will return a little different. But sometimes he still goes to Twitter and turns to his readers: "Remind me why I even started doing all this?"

In the 70s, Bowie-Ziggy was confident that the end of the world was about to come. Will from 2015 is increasingly surprised that he never came. After all, a scientist, in order to immerse himself in the past, began to use less social networks, he mostly sits at home, does music, painting and other old-fashioned things. And when he goes outside, he clearly understands that now something is wrong with the world. From every magazine cover, from every billboard, someone shouts out another utter nonsense. Try to turn on the TV - on one channel people talk about nothing, sell air and buy it. On the other, they shoot at each other point-blank, cut heads, rape five of them. Go online - everyone wants to tell you what color his panties are and what he ate for breakfast. There is so much information that it does not linger in the head - we are already almost like fish, which can retain something in memory from thirty seconds to several days, but no longer. "Maybe the end of the world has come after all?" - the doctor thinks. Came, we just did not notice. Bowie knew everything from the start. If, of course, he existed at all. All this is yet to be learned by the professor, when he goes his way to the end.

In parting, Dr. Brooker says to me, “Do you know how Bowie did when he left the stage? This meant that the show was over, no one looked at him anymore and he could take off his mask. ” And Will slowly wipes the lipstick off his lips.

Bowie has long worn off his lipstick, and in his last years you would hardly have recognized him in the crowd, walking around New York, you would hardly have found even an echo of Major Tom in that middle-aged gentleman. Maybe David Bowie - this ingenious simulacrum - just lost its meaning? Crazy # 1 stops being crazy if everyone goes crazy. The plastic guy from outer space is losing his uniqueness in the plastic world. After all, Bowie has always tried to be the mirror of his era. But it seems that one day he simply had nothing to reflect.

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The second piece of the joint cycle of samizdat and the telegram channel "Sierramadre" is devoted to the UK's desire to regain the title of a global power and to take the lead in the nuclear arms race.

Stay tuned! The next material will be published on the website "My friend, yes you are a transformer" on July 12

Hello reader! How are you, what were you doing all that time? While I was preparing this letter, I reread the replies to the previous one and was happy: how interesting everyone is. For example, I am terribly happy for my regular correspondent Daria, who seems to finally find her dream; I was terribly moved by the letter of the reader Vyacheslav, who, when he did not receive the Saturday letter, immediately asked where I had gone. It's time to get used to it, but it's not worth it at all, let it always be perceived as magic, when letters from all over Russia and the world around it fall into the mailbox.

What does it take to prevent a habit from becoming a routine? I myself catch myself on how by the end of the week the sensations dull if you do not think: there seems to be nothing more interesting than doing samizdat and watching the world on fire, and even this can fade if you do not try to realize every day what you are doing, and ask yourself questions.

It seems that this has always been the case in life: here is a lamp hanging from the ceiling, here is a sofa against the wall, and these shoes have been here for ages, and our hands already know the texture of the nape of a loved one by heart. So why is it, how did it happen?

Asking yourself questions, constantly trying to remember what led you to where you are, and to yourself, is very important. This is how the most interesting discoveries... You look into the past, round your eyes - and you realize why you are like that.

Don't let routine win - think and ask. Have a nice weekend.

Always your editor-in-chief of samizdat "My friend, yes you are a transformer" Grigory Tumanov

How to become famous, happy, find yourself and your love, predict the future and cure all diseases

According to sociologists, about 30% of people dream of becoming famous, and 40% of the population are happy when they get some random fame. Actually, big ambitions and striving for fame are just a consequence of our children's complexes, but more on that later. The main thing is that this chapter has everything you need to become great and famous in the era of Post-Apocalypse. After all, the world after the End of the World is a place where everything is possible. Pole of Miracles, a giant Russian roulette, where one person accidentally becomes a famous member of a criminal gang, and another turns into a super star, playing an imaginary guitar. You can become a great killer maniac, or you can put everything you have on the line, but you never get anywhere. You will learn how to fight in a cage in front of the crowd, what needs to be done to be shown on TV, and women asked to sign on their bare breasts, and whether it is possible to turn into the late and great David Bowie and how it will affect your health. All the stories in this chapter are pure truth, we have not invented a single character (unless the existence of the hunchback from Glasgow may raise some doubts). And they all appeared as a result of long journalistic work, which proves that the real world is more fantastic than even the wildest invention.

The Strange Story of Dr. Brooker and Major Tom

Dedicated to the memory of David Bowie - "the man who fell to Earth."

Julia Dudkina

When he appeared at the door, they whispered around: “Look, it's him! He has arrived! " It was impossible to confuse: bright red hair, white face, blue shadows around the eyes. Journalists clicked flashes, strangers tried to touch him or even hug him. He hunted all over London for vintage 70s suits, wigs, jackets and ties, ate red pepper milk and drank huge amounts of energy drinks. Everything has gone too far, and now even at night he sometimes sees confused Bowie dreams - he wakes up, writes down scraps of thoughts, and then, having thoroughly rummaged in book biographies, realizes that the same ideas came to Bowie himself. Dr. Brooker caught his reflection in the mirror, smiled to himself and thought, "I think I did it."

One of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics is quantum teleportation. The state of one quantum particle is destroyed and recreated where there is another particle - entangled. Once upon a time, David Bowie was the No. 1 nutcase, the guy from outer space, the rock and roll star. But in recent years, he was already a sixty-eight-year-old conformist, the shadow of the former Bowie - he no longer dyed his hair or reincarnated, lived quietly in Manhattan with his wife and daughter and prepared himself a present for his last birthday - the first album in three years called Blackstar ... David Bowie is a quantum particle whose state has collapsed; Bowie disbanded to reappear elsewhere. It seems that the role of the entangled particle in this teleportation went to the British professor, feminist, researcher of cinema and contemporary culture, Will Brooker.