Exiting the Enigma

My stay here in Moscow comes to a close with a pre-dawn trip to the airport with Rosalie while it's still dark out. 3:30 am check-outs are always a beast. It's too late to pull an all-nighter, knowing customs & immigration awaits you at dawn, and it's way too early to get anything resembling decent sleep. Grrrr. Penned some closing thoughts on the plane before take-off. Gotta find a way back here with more time to kill, and hopefully with enough cash to get by, cause things aren't cheap out here... This is the kind of place a history buff could really sink their teeth into...

long rides on roads framed by tenements aging with the weight of decaying paint
turquoise-topped eastern orthodox churches filled with portraits of bearded saints
random police checkpoints for troopers to peep our papers
a city of billionaires and dubious white collar bank capers
suffused into every street corner, relics of a revolution gone wrong
a reminder of a century ruled by an unaccountable throng
theoretical foundations of a nation that cratered in on itself
collapsed in exhaustion
the cost in human capital was too high
i watch cumulus clouds piling up against a blue spring sky
smokestacks ringing the river
industrial facades
a century of cultivated indifference to God
a state whose mandate was far too broad
i bring American baggage to this place
staring at the silhouettes of Slavic faces
stoic staid unsmiling men wearing inscrutable scowls
some lean & squinting & others flushed with ruddy jowls
gesturing with gloved hands & brows furrowed against the wind
foreheads wrinkling as they eye women impossibly thin
leggy nordic beauties tottering by in precarious high heels
wrapped in waist coats & fashion statements that both conceal & reveal
so surreal, this post-Soviet spectacle
everyone suddenly a market receptacle
both raw & convoluted
both evolving & deeply rooted
i sip on vodka & sample the potatoes
stare at rye fields in endless rows
eye the birch forests & read of Chaubin's cosmic chaotic constructions
everywhere an eruption of repressed urges
what was purged in the past exists now in the present
so much twisting of the dogma till it no longer means what it once meant
so much is complicated but this much is evident:
new systems await old systems' descent...

Moscow Timelapse

Москва'2011(Moscow/Russia) from zweizwei |motion timelapse| on Vimeo.

Quotes for the Day - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lucky for me, my older sister turned me on to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when I was still a teenager. A literary giant, Solzhenitsyn spent a chunk of his life in the Soviet gulag as the state tried to suppress his writings and thinking. I came to him through One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I read in English class in high school, but his other writings are well worth poring over as well. Below are a few quotes from the Nobel Prize winner worth pondering... I especially like his take on the press.

"It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones."

"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. "

"Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."

"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."

"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."

"Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul."

Long Day

Spent the entire day in the meeting room, typing, watching some terrible work, and listening to folks defend it. The highs of last night quickly disappeared. Luckily, there was some good progress made on getting folks to acknowledge the problems inherent in some of this work. A lot of my friends who aren't in advertising will tell me about how terrible commercials are, and how so much marketing seems like visual pollution and unsolicited sensory garbage. I have to agree with them. What they don't know, though, is that agencies try every day to produce work that is entertaining, beautiful, and insightful. There are countless problems in the way, and very often, you'll hear ad folks blaming clients for the crap that ultimately finds its way out into the world. If only we could all pass the buck, and blame clients. But it's not that simple. Very often, to meet deadlines, agencies turn out work that addresses the briefs that come their way, while acknowledging that it's not at the standard they wish it was. It's hugely encouraging to see a client that wants beautiful work, that demands it, that insists that agencies pour blood sweat and tears into making advertising beautiful. This client is insisting that, and as a consequence, it forced a lot of people in the room to take a good hard look at the work they're doing. While we did see a lot of unremarkable work, there were a few gems, and some good ideas, and I left encouraged by the progress that was made. We're all trying to produce good, compelling work that entertains people. Some of us are just farther along the path than others, but it's in everyone's best interests to get on the same page. I can gladly say that I'm a part of the process, and I feel pretty good about my role in making better communication.

Master & Margarita - The Devil in the Park

Here's one of the opening scenes from "The Master & Margarita". The devil approaches two characters on a park bench in Moscow and engages them in a deep, philosophical conversation. Have a look.

Capitalism vs. Communism

This place is triggering reflections on deeply-held beliefs I've been carrying for a long time. As someone who has spent their entire career working in marketing, perhaps I'm not in the best position to offer a critique on global capitalism, but I can't help thinking about it while beholding the legacy of communism here in Russia... I was told for so many years that these ideologies were diametrically opposed, but upon examining them up close, I see the same human frailties undermining them. Walking around in a newly liberalized Russian economy is making me question the many claims I heard decades ago about the inherent flaws of state-controlled markets... It's not that those claims were inaccurate, but I'm only now really understanding how steeped in cultural bigotry my perspective was. I grew up in Reagan's America, after all... The consequences of that I'm only now fully recognizing.

I find jingoistic patriotism truly appalling. It’s essentially thinly veiled-tribalism, and while it’s often couched in language that gives lip service to specific cultural values, there’s usually an inherent claim to superiority whenever someone talks about how great their country is. I especially find it distressing when Americans do it, because I am one, and I am acutely aware of the idiocies of American foreign policy over the course of the last 30 years. I believe that any close scrutiny of the US's involvement in Vietnam, El Salvador, NAFTA, Grenada, or Iraq reveals some absolutely heinous double-standards between my country's high-minded ideals and what it actually does outside of its borders. My country gives a lot of lip service to democracy and freedom and some very evolved idea, but too often its people ignore the actual reality of our country's actions in the world.... Mark Twain captured this sentiment perfectly in this quote from "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court":

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”

I bring this up because I find myself thinking about America’s perspective on the cold war, two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union. There’s a tendency in the United States to believe that “America won” the Cold War, that the swift dissolution of the Soviet Union from 1989 onwards somehow meant that America was triumphant, and that our country prevailed and our system is somehow superior. Unfortunately, it’s really not that simple. Yes, in the century-long struggle between communism and capitalism, capitalism has clearly proven to be a much more viable form of economic theory, and a far better basis for running the world's economy. It's much more rooted in essential truths about human nature. But any deep examination of the last twenty years, comparing and contrasting Soviet Communism and American capitalism, has to arrive at the conclusion that both of these systems have failed humanity in many ways. The free market may have won the battle between the Soviet Union and the West, but unfettered American corporate capitalism has an unsustainable trajectory, and is continually creating externalities that threaten the collective health of our societies and our shared environment. It remains to be seen how this kind of capitalism will play out. The global financial crisis of 2008 is a perfect example of how unregulated commerce is essentially redistributing wealth upwards to a handful of greedy, unchecked power brokers who have no interests to tend to but their own pocketbooks. The post-Soviet World-Bank initiated "structural adjustment programs" had similar results, where publicly owned enterprises were dismantled, privatizing profits in a way that ultimately undermined the collective economic health of Russia, affecting countless Russian citizens....

Hmmmm... I don't know where I'm going with this.... Winston Churchill's famous quote about democracy comes to mind: "...democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." While that comment is about political systems, I feel the same way about our economic systems. There has to be a better way. The dogmatic voices from nations like the USA and Soviet Union ruled the 20th century, as they used us all in a proxy war between the ideologies of capitalism and communism... I'm hoping for more pragmatic, reasoned voices to emerge over the course of the 21st, and hopefully, we'll stumble on a system that is more equitable for the billions of people we share this planet with...

Meeting the Gang @ The All-Time Bar

After getting back to the hotel, Rosalie and I cleaned up and hopped in a taxi to the Holiday Inn to setup our meeting room. We accidentally had the address for the wrong hotel, and after a rather surreal search of all the hotel's ballrooms, realized our meeting was in the Holiday Inn across town. Sigh. Things like that only happen to dumb-ass visitors or tourists in a place who have no clue about where they're at. Like us. Anyhow, grabbed another taxi, made it to the room, met up with our clients a little late, and spent the next 3 hours setting up the room. Unpacking our gear, laying out documents, testing the DVDs we were given, and just making sure the meeting tomorrow would go seamlessly. We've orchestrated dozens of these meetings for the folks from Leo Burnett, but this is only the second time I've been in a conference run by the client with competing agencies present. McDonald's employs DDB, TBWA, and Leo Burnett in Eastern Europe to promote their business, and all three agencies, from a half-dozen different countries are going to be in the room tomorrow. There's a lot more to be stressed out about this time around... Anyhow, we got it done, and then headed out to a big dinner hosted by McDonald's Russia at the All-Time Bar, a local establishment run by one Dmitri Sokolov, a famed Muscovite who apparently is one the city's better-known barkeeps. It turned out to be quite an evening.
Our very hospitable client spent the night wandering around the bar with bottles of vodka ensuring that everyone within arm's reach had a glass full of vodka. I'm all for ice breakers but I learned pretty early in the evening that if I was going to be coherent, it was probably a good idea to avoid being seen by the client. It was all in good nature, though, and the alcohol definitely eased the tension up and helped facilitate some really interesting conversations amongst our table mates.
I don't spend a lot of time with people from competing agencies. I don't know if it's something a lot of ad folks do, unless you've reached a certain level of notoriety in this industry. I suppose the big bosses are used to hobnobbing with the competition, and fighting over clients at pitches, and rubbing elbows at award shows. For me it was a novel experience. Given that creatives are such mercenaries, though, perhaps they're used to it, as a lot of talented folks bounce from agency to agency seeking out the plushest of assignments. I found it insightful and illuminating to talk to folks from TBWA and DDB in the region, as I haven't spent a lot of time with people from the Baltic states. They've had quite a life, enduring governments falling and rising in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. It's always a learning experience to converse with folks from places you've only ever read about, and hear about their perspective on experiences you share in common. I enjoyed my dinner and the constant stream of vodka kept the conversation lively. I particularly enjoyed meeting Richard Russell, of DDB in the UK. He's a contemporary of my boss Mark Tutssel, and had a lot of interesting stories to share and insight into the business. He also wrote Honda "Grrr", one of the best ads of the past decade, and it's always nice to meet the people behind work you admire. Especially when those people turn out be personable, approachable, and entertaining - it reaffirms your belief that maybe the business isn't as cutthroat as it often seems. Suffused with vodka, my evening unfolded beautifully, and I stumbled back to the hotel with Rosalie a few hours later with a renewed appreciation for Moscow, McDonald's, Leo Burnett, and TBWA and DDB. Perhaps I'm just where I ought to be, surrounded by good creative people and learning new things. Life is good.

Behemoth

As I mentioned yesterday, I read Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master & Margarita" last summer, an absolutely magnificent novel, and an iconic piece of Russian literature that emerged after the author's death to provide lacerating social commentary on the times in which he lived. The book is full of compelling characters, ranging from truly unique portraits of Pontius Pilate & Jesus Christ and the Devil to memorable minor figures in the Soviet theatrical world. I personally loved best the surreal interpretation of Behemoth, one of Satan's feline attendants, a huge black cat that walks on its hind legs, talks a mean game, and occasionally murders something with swift, sudden precision. Here are some artistic explorations of what Behemoth might look like... Russian literature has some profound depths everyone should try peering into...

Thoughts on Gatekeepers & Dogma

Saw a lot of interesting religious architecture today... The variety of it all and the history it's framed against got me to thinking about how power interacts with faith, and what a dangerous combination it is... I got back to the hotel and typed the following:

When priests and pastors and rabbis and mullahs claim there is only one path to God, they are betraying their own vested interests… Those who are the most adamant about a singular, exclusive path to God are those who hold stock in the institutions that seek to control humankind’s spiritual inclinations. These are the gatekeepers. They are miserable toll booth operators on the highways to higher states of being, and they exist only to tax souls and collect revenue from travelers who don’t wish to venture from the roads and maps laid out by their ancestors. But God is not some isolated destination you can only access by select roads. God is everywhere. You can stray off-road and still find divinity infused in everything you encounter, and there is no need to pay tribute to the fear merchants who hold court over the unimaginative hordes of humanity who only trust the religious institutions they’ve inherited. Taking the path less traveled is as valid as the footpaths trodden by billions. It doesn’t matter what road you’re on or what vehicle you’re riding, time makes corpses of us all and what ultimately matters is not which road you're on but the quality of your journey to the beyond…

The Saga of the Toothpaste Tube

Small things illuminate differences. I ran out of my travel toothpaste on the way to Moscow, and figured I'd just pick some up in the city. A simple, uncomplicated task, yes? 30 minutes and five stores later, I realize the language barrier is quite absolute. The scripts are illegible to me, I have no words to offer, and all my interactions with people are comprised of awkward sign language and dumb gestures. For some reason, the toothpaste is behind lock and key in the pharmacy, visible but under guard. The lines are long and meandering, the pharmacist sees the 5 women ahead of me in line before finally running through our strained exchange. You know you're an idiotic tourist when you find yourself in front of someone making gargling noises and miming brushing your teeth because you're incapable of forming a sentence. Hell, I can't even say thank you properly. Sigh.

Vasisthasana in Red Square

I take stupid yoga pics wherever I go. Here's one of side plank in Red Square, courtesy of Rosalie Geier. Bad form, but hey, I was in jacket and dress shirt, it was REALLY cold, and we were in a hurry...

St.Basil's Cathedral - from the Inside

Photographs, especially my own feeble pictures, cannot do justice to the insides of St.Basil's Cathedral. Wow. After walking back to Red Square, Rosalie and I ventured into Moscow's most famous tourist attraction and spent a half-hour wandering through its labyrinthian hallways & chapels. The space is dense with detail and history, and you do get the sense that the building was cobbled together over time, as opposed to being constructed with one singular plan in mind. There's not a sense of fluid movement between each space so much as it feels like each additional Church has been laid atop the last one, and spending any time in the cavern-like halls and winding stairs between chapels gives you a certain claustrophobic feeling. Apparently the inside of the building was damaged during wars, but it's been restored several times. The chapels themselves are amazing, with high, vaulted domes, and rich tapestries and paintings on the walls. Heavy candelabras and lanterns adorned with blessings were used to light the space in centuries past. I'm so glad we ventured inside - I've never been in anything like it. Below is footage of the "Russian Men's Choir" singing inside the cathedral, and then some pics I took.

Lego Ads from LB/Moscow

Here are some Lego print ads from LB/Moscow from this year. Our friends in Russia do good work.

Leo Burnett / Moscow

After a long winding walk of several hours, we found our way to Leo Burnett Moscow. The office is beautiful. It is a wonderful thing to see a business ethos you believe in articulated in different ways around the world, while still retaining a certain recognizable core essence. Having spent the bulk of my career in the unimaginative grid-like cubicles of Leo Burnett Chicago's 1970's-era skyscraper, it's always hugely refreshing to see what our agencies look like abroad, with their smaller staffs and more memorable buildings. The layouts and designs of the work space are usually fluid and collaborative, a far cry from the rigidity of the cubicles in Chicago, and I always come away inspired, wondering about how much more work gets done in better environments. We are all shaped by the space we occupy, and there's always more ergonomic, more inspired spaces well worth exploring. Leo Burnett Moscow is beautiful. I wish I worked there.

The Statue of Peter the Great...Eyesore or Embellishment?

After passing Red Square we follow the river... En route to the office, we pass this huge sculpture sitting on the south bank, looming over buildings and beholding the city with a regal, imperial air. The 94 meter high statue was built to honor of Peter the Great and the Russian Navy, and was first unveiled in 1997 by Georgian designer Zurab Tsereteli. Online it's been listed as one of the ugliest statues in the world, as noted below by Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy:
"Just because communism ended doesn’t mean that Russia has stopped building grotesque, propagandistic statues. The master of the form is Georgian-born artist Zurab Tsereteli, best known for the garish 315-foot maritime statue of Peter the Great looming over the Moskva River. The statue was commissioned by Tsereteli’s frequent booster, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and has fast become a popular tourist attraction, if not exactly for the reasons its planners hoped."
Apparently Russian authorities are considering moving this to St.Petersburg, for reasons I can't quite wrap my head around. Art this big isn't meant to be deconstructed and transported anywhere...

Cathedral of Christ the Savior

This beautiful neoclassical Church along the river offers a stark contrast of styles to St. Basil's Cathedral. Commissioned by Alexander 1st in 1812 following Napoleon's retreat from Russia, the church was created as an offering to Christ the Savior for sparing Russia from the imminent threat of Bonapartism... No one in Europe wanted to be ruled over by the French Empire, and the Russians weren't really prepared for a full scale invasion by France's ground forces. The Russians scorched the earth to prevent Napoleon's army from finding sustenance on their march towards Moscow, and ultimately Russia prevailed largely through attrition. I remember reading about this in history class and marveling at a nation that would destroy its own harvests and communities rather than have them succumb to outside rule. Anyhow, once the French departed, Alexander 1st ordered this church be built, and it's a stunning building.


The video below is appalling, and a testament to the trials and tribulations this country endured in the last century. Joseph Stalin ordered this beautiful Church destroyed, as part of the state's campaign against religion. There are not a lot of places in the world where the destruction of sacred architecture is mandated by the state, and when it does happen, it is always a tragedy and travesty and an object lesson in intolerance. Watch the video below. This is what dogma does to beauty.

Winds of Change

In 1991 I moved to Bangladesh, as a jaded 13 year old harboring murky identity issues. I went from a Pennsylvania middle school of almost 1000 kids to an international school with about 400 kids in total from K-12. It was quite the shift. My 7th grade had about 40 kids in it, representing probably 15-20 different countries. In retrospect, those years in Dhaka made me who I am today, in the sense that I learned to make friends across ethnic lines, with people who didn't even speak my language. Instead of spending my pubescent years desperately trying to fit into the vicious cliques of teenage American suburbia I was suddenly a welcome addition to a motley crew of bratty international kids eying the world through transplanted eyes. It was beautiful and surreal and a huge awakening.
I made friends with a group of beautiful girls, as teenage boys are wont to do. I think they let me into their circle because I was a non-threatening, somewhat clownish little runt who was entertaining to have around. Of course, I was also voted "Most Teddy-Bear Like" for my yearbook 2 years running, but that's a story for another day. I bring up this lovely coterie of companions because they used to invite along with them to eat dinner and sing Karaoke at a Thai restaurant called Sawasdee. I'd never been to a karaoke restaurant before, but I learned really quickly that it was a whole lot of fun, even if I never got up the guts to grab the mic. My friends would sing the kind of cheesy ballads teenage girls adore, like Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting" or the "Theme from Ice Castles," or maybe "Lean On Me" if the spirit moved them. On a couple of occasion I remember my friend Andrea singing "Winds of Change," a rock ballad by The Scorpions that had particular meaning to those of us coming into an adult awareness in 1991... This song, by a German rock band, is one of the top 50 best selling singles of all time, and represents the huge surge of hope and optimism that accompanied the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Soviet Union... I remembered it as I walked past Red Square this afternoon, as "I followed the Moscva, down to Gorky Park, listening to the winds..."
...it's funny how some music marinates in your mind and takes on new meanings over time...

The Kremlin Walls

The Kremlin is quite the fortress. This huge structure overlooks the north bank of the Moskva River and has been a strategic point of control for hundreds of years, dating back as far as the 2nd century. The Tsars turned it into a palace, and it's currently the residence of Russia's president. The flying buttresses are imposing and the span and size of the walls leaves no doubt that a formidable force lurks behind it. This architecture is not derivative of the democratic facades the ancient Greeks and Romans built, it seems more rooted in a purpose more medieval, when power was concentrated amongst the nobility and the Church... This building is suffused with mystery, not only because I'm a stupid tourist enchanted by it, but because the people who lived here for centuries were largely secluded from the struggles of the great unwashed by these high red walls. What intrigues unfolded behind them? What stories? What lineages constructed such an eternal monument to consolidated power? These walls are not walls that can be scaled with questions or ladder or logic. Only blood and treasure will get you in...

St. Basil's Cathedral

So the full title of this 16th century cathedral is: Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat. That's quite the mouthful. Known commonly as St.Basil's Cathedral, this building stands at the foot of Red Square on the banks of the Moscva River and is one of the most enduring images of the city, and it's most visited tourist destination. It's beautiful to behold from any direction, and each of the domes has a distinct character and color that catch the light quite magnificently. It's an anomaly in terms of Russian architecture, not common for the period, and is the subject of countless urban legends and myths. The building was ordered by the Tzar Ivan the Terrible in 1552 and took 8 years to complete. Here's a link to a nice post on the architecture of it from moscow.info:

"Architectural specialists are to this day unable to agree about the governing idea behind the structure. Either the creators were paying homage to the churches of Jerusalem, or, by building eight churches around a central ninth, they were representing the medieval symbol of the eight-pointed star. The original concept of the Cathedral of the Intercession has been hidden from us beneath layers of stylistic additions and new churches added to the main building. In fact, when built, the Cathedral was all white to match the white-stone Kremlin, and the onion domes were gold rather than multi-colored and patterned as they are today.

In the 17^th century a hip-roofed bell tower was added, the gallery and staircases were covered with vaulted roofing, and the helmeted domes were replaced with decorated ones. In 1860 during rebuilding, the Cathedral was painted with a more complex and integrated design, and has remained unchanged since."

This is not my picture, but it's a nice one with the facade and outer form clearly visible:

Lenin's Mausoleum

Lenin's Mausoleum is underwhelming from the outside, considering it's the final resting place of one of the world's most influential men. I walked past it before I realized what it was. Sitting at the foot of the Kremlin's eastern wall it feels small, which is perhaps fitting, but it's quite the contrast from the gargantuan tributes other countries erect to their founding fathers. Perhaps the tumultuous years of the early Soviet Union precluded a grand monument to Lenin, I can't say that I really know... But I do know that in this tomb lies the body of a man of immense consequence, a socialist icon and a committed revolutionary, with a ghost that cast a long shadow over the 20th century... What to say about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? Perhaps it's best to let him say it himself... Below are a handful of quotes illuminating the mindset of someone on the vanguard of socialist revolution, when it was new, full of promise and hope, and offering up an alternative to the millennium-long struggles of proles against imperial power....

"Sometimes - history needs a push."
"Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes."
"Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing."
"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
"When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state."
"Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot."

This is a miniscule sampling of his thought. His life and writing are well worth a deep dive, if you've got the time and have a penchant for history. Just because an ideology is discredited as a basis for government doesn't mean the men who breathed life into it aren't worth examining... Contradictions make for rich characters...