"Channeling Vysotsky" excerpts

Channeling Vysotsky: Excerpts in English From the Book: Channeled Poems in Russian original and English Translation Click here to see excerpts in English and Russian side-by-side
The Prayer of a Sinner
Inferno
On Coyote Path
Spirit Messages in Prose
A Monologue About The Impact of the Songs of War Invalids
Table of Contents
Excerpts from book Death the Beginning

The Prayer of a Sinner

I am a blasphemer; I angered Father,

I’d better cry or howl,

Or repent, or try to be better,

Or kneel in front of my Maker.

I’d better say, “Show mercy, Almighty.

I repent my insatiable greed.”

But no! My fingers run over the strings of my guitar

And I am singing again.

I am here and I am there, I am the universe

And the universe ― that’s me.

I died, I am alive

I am here, I will be back

I was, I am, and I will be in the future.

Thank you, Father, for my temper and stubbornness.

Thank you for letting me sing my songs

Thank you for Marina, Alla, Tatyana,

Judge me, if you have to, but don’t take it amiss!

Pay attention to me in a crowd of other sinners. There are billions of us, countless numbers of sinners; I try to grab a ray of your radiant attire. I pull this ray, as a toddler pulls his mother's skirt, when she forgets herself while talking with a neighbor. I used to say, “Mama, let’s go, I have to pee...” Now I stick to your rays as a child, yearning for love! Please, accept me, Our Heavenly Father!

I shout, “My Maker, I am ready to make up for my sins with hard work, to go back to earth as a Chukcha, who dwells in an unreachable corner of Siberia, or as an English Don Quixote, the hidalgo, born into an impoverished family of English lords.” And whatever it will be, I will repent as Cain did ― for our sins. We destroyed both what we had and what we didn’t have in the name of a bright future that did not arrive, because we deserted our country! Some escaped abroad, some dropped by your office, Almighty, to pay you a visit before their time, leaving behind our unfinished battles! Don’t take it amiss! The next time around on earth, I will pray, I will not let you down.

Inferno

Outside of time things look different.

You see a nobody doomed by the hunger for fame.

He is already tagging the fatal ring,

Dashing toward heroism,

Feeling no mercy toward children, women, the elderly,

Or an innocent passerby who hoped to live long and prosper.

Explosion, bang, the hero is torn into pieces,

Blood, mutilation, death.

The mission has been accomplished:

Fear has been imprinted into the enemy’s every cell.

But where is the reward

The gate to Paradise?

The hug from Allah or Mohammed?

Maids, festive food, and joy?

All that mullah had promised so lavishly?

I descended into hell,

Melting into a crowd of those

Who hailed the cult of heroism.

We had a mission to look for

The deceived that perished innocently;

Look for the victims of World War III.

And we sank into Bardo darkness,

Into nobody’s zone between heaven and earth.

Where yelling, curses, and moaning were heard.

.... This was how the astronauts yelled, locked into their space suits,

Still fearing to die, not yet knowing

That their bodies had been dropped already and

Flames had swallowed their earthly paths.

The astronauts were helped.

However, former heroes are still yelling

Cursing liars and deceivers.

They shout, “Damn you!

Come here, mullahs, walk in our shoes!

Let’s trade roles!

You stay here for a while,

And we’ll go home

To our fathers, mothers, loved ones.

We have not lived yet, not loved yet… yet… “

There is emptiness all around. No one is there to answer.

Death shows them their karmic movie –

The suffering of those, whom their explosions killed.

Their victims also want to go home!

They also have not lived yet, have not loved yet…

I am confused. How can I help?

“Stay away,” I was told by my guide.

“Can you not see that we are busy?

Watch what war does to people...

Look for the truth,

What it is chewed with and how they do swallow this!

I watched how those who saw themselves as heroes,

Became cosmic lunatics and

Were tied up,

In order not to disturb the space

With their turned-inside-out vibrations.

I am reached by these vibrations as well

They are unpleasant and prickly.

My hands cover my face... Where does this rusty shield

That I am holding as an umbrella over my head,

Come from?

The “movie” starts over and over again –

Explosion, bang, the hero is torn into pieces,

Blood, mutilation, death.

The moaning of widows and mothers…

The slivers bounce back scratching the

Dusty surface of my shield.

These explosions will disturb space for centuries

Until the cosmic eons will straighten out these vibrations.

“Okay, let’s go,” said my Guiding Angel and Protector,

A nice fellow, a poet who walked on Earth a shorter time than I.

We took to the cosmic paths back toward the light,

Scooping up a couple of victims who still couldn’t grasp

That they had left earth without saying their good-byes.

We walked in silence, making fun of the newcomers’ fear they felt having us around. They held tightly to their wallets, guarding their pockets. It was OK with us. They will learn soon that in the afterlife money does not buy a thing and the only currency that works here is kindness, truthfulness, and compassion. We all righteous and guilty ― arrive in the spacious cosmic land as beggars ― because we come from our mad worlds ― socialist, communist, capitalist ― if you only dare to believe me.

On Coyote Path
Elvis Presley and Vladimir Vysotsky traveled to the southwest border of the United States of America and then, for a different kind of impression, rested at Hearst Castle.

One night we wandered along the border of

The land of milk and honey ― the United States of America,

On our way, counting the remains of braceros,

The unfortunate, who died in the rays of the scorching sun

On wild coyote trails

Across the burnt pampas,

Where sand became their deathbed,

Where souls left behind bodies, departing in silence

On their journey to meet the Maker.

There were no porters, no water, nor shadow

No spiritual guides, no Seraphs, no leniency

No mercy, no repentance.

And instead of a funeral service:

“Receive the soul of your humbled servant”

One can hear howling, “Water, a sip of water!

A gulp of water for half a kingdom,

For an entire kingdom, paradise, and atonement of my soul!”

God, save us from this level of frenzy!

We were there, and Elvis said,

It doesn’t take much for the unfortunate to break loose,

And sink to the very bottom.

Brothers, let us, pray for them.

“Lord, have mercy on the souls of your

Servants, don’t punish them,

Pardon their sins.”

Elvis knelt and performed some

Rituals over the remains of the unfortunate.

He whispered something and cried.

The Lord heard him.

And heaven opened wide!

A stormy deluge flooded the desert,

The gate swung open

And the souls of people who suffered this painful death,

Entered paradise ―

Without fees to coyotes, an entrance permit, visa, or

INS camp for

Deportation of the disobedient.

And the sands burst into blossom

With paradise flowering.

A crystal spring gushed out of nowhere,

Washing away the blasphemy and curses

That sprang from the mouths of damned souls.

We bowed to heaven and went our way.

We wandered into the Hidden Hills ―

Country living for the rich and famous―

To rest our eyes on the man-made beauty.

I almost let myself be deeply moved

By the capitalist transformation

Of the wilderness into civilization,

When I heard Elvis speaking,

You haven’t seen America yet.

Forget your Brighton Beach, follow me, follow!

And I found myself in Hearst’s Castle

The creation of his wild imagination.

We sank into the blue marble pool with white statues, ⁹⁰

And there spent some time enjoying the freshness of crystal clear water ―

Talking about money, and injustice.

Someone has to die in the sand from dehydration,

Someone will roll in money and luxury.

We discussed the failure to invent a just distribution,

And attempts to create paradise on earth,

How to bring up children and love them and still do our work?

And will the world that we leave behind from our prosperity, survive or collapse?

Regrettably, we didn’t come up with any sensible answer.

And it is OK, sirs

The discussion still continues…

A Monologue About The Impact of the Songs of War Invalids

Channeling Vysotsky

Let’s rather talk about your songs that helped bring down the omnipotent Soviet regime. What made your songs so special? What was the source of their enormous popularity? Ironically, the Communist Party talked constantly about the need for the national character of Soviet art. They hated “high-brow” art because of a lack of narodnosti — popularity. Theoretically, the Party and the KGB had to love your songs, as they reached the heart of the Russian nation. Of course, it is only a theory. I understand they hated you because your songs turned the “Regime of the Terrible” ⁴⁸ into “A Ship of Fools.” You never spoke about them openly, you never touched them, but somehow, your songs made the daily face of that regime a laughing stock in the eyes of the people... Your irony and truthfulness in the description of how we felt about that regime woke people up, refreshed their will.

So far critics who have written about your songs, call them äâîðîâûå ïåñíè — “backyard songs.” A strange name, to say the least! Were they prison songs? Or were they not? Were they a peculiar freestyle improvisation about the criminal underground as a sporadic image of freedom? (It has been said that only royalty and tramps — the highest social strata and the lowest — can be free.) How did you find these free-spirited songs?

I warn you, it will be a long conversation. When I entered the so-called bohemian world, I found it completely burned out ― up to the last sincere feeling. The stupidest person could see that our socialism was a failure, that there would be no communism and that everything we had been taught was a fat lie, a chimera, invented by those who ruled by the policy of threats, briberies and lies. The fear whipped us mercilessly, you know it. Russia became a bloody wound on the body of humanity. In order to heal the body, it was essential to stop the flagellation ― letting the whip land on the same wound ― our consciousness ― over and over again…

... I rushed from afar to continue... Where are we? Of course, such genre as äâîðîâûå ïåñíè ― “backyard songs” did not exist. In Moscow backyards, people did not sing, but drank íà òðîèõ ― “in threes.” A bottle was shared between three comrades ―- quietly ― in order not to be caught by the local Moscow police.

As I already mentioned, the official art life was a desert, but something was breathing on the fringe of that dead art, ironically called “the great and eternal.” There was Mark Bernes ⁴⁹; Vertinsky ⁵⁰ drove us crazy with his romances that instilled dreams about unreachable Paris. There were ÷àñòóøêè ⁵¹ ― folk verses, nd there were Russian-Gypsy sensual romances. After all, there were incredibly talented comedians. I liked Andrei Mironov ⁵². There was poet Alexander Blok ⁵³ with his magic verses about íåçíàêîìêà ― a mystery woman. There was Faina Ranevskaya ⁵⁴, a great actress with a crocodile snout, evil humor, sharp tongue, and a trademark cigarette glued to her huge lower lip. She was admired because of the discrepancy between her crocodile-like appearance and her passionate songs about love that would never come to that lovable monster! I loved her, and who didn’t?

Finally, in the center of Moscow, incredible stories circulated about Stalin, Yezhovchina ⁵⁵, Beria ⁵⁶ and our government. Strange old women and muzhiki, mostly alcoholics, mulled these stories while drinking. The sources were believed to be servants and bodyguards. Serving the powers that be they have seen a lot, and often, for knowing too much, received a bullet or time in labor camps. But in spite of all the signatures about nondisclosure, rumors circulated, and fueled our imagination.

Suddenly, city lore changed, delivering different stories told by survivors of Siberian labor camps. They started to return after Khrushchev unmasked the cult of Stalin. ⁵⁷ They changed the tone of storytelling. There was no whispering. They displayed unusually clean feelings... It was a paradox ― we were supposed to feel sorry for those survivors, for doing time for nothing in terrible labor camps, but in reality the tables were turned. They looked at us, and I could sense that they felt sorry for us. They emanated spiritual strength and clarity. They were done with the lies. We, the weaklings, were still struggling in our cobwebs, and could not find our way out. They looked like free men, and we looked like prisoners...

However, the songs of the disabled war veterans affected me the most. They begged in electric trains that ran across the Moscow area. The songs of those neglected remains of human beings cut through my flesh and bounced straight to my bones... Emotionally, I couldn’t stand them.

The artistic fringe activities that I happened to name escaped the Communist Party’s control. I am saying that genuine feelings survived only in the areas that were left out from the “guidance” by our Communist Party. Therefore, for its resurrection, the professional art had to derive its energy from these fringe areas that the Communist Party left behind, undefiled.

The songs of war invalids, or crooks who imitated them begging on the same electric trains, gave me the direct impulse to retell their stories, this time without excess sentiment or intent to extort money. These songs were well known. At one time or another, everybody found himself on these electric trains when going out of town ― to party, write, rest, heal, hike, gather mushrooms and wild berries in picturesque woods. And war invalids ― some without legs, some without hands ― crawled through the train cars singing whatever crossed their mind. Neither Glavlit ⁵⁸ nor any other censoring institution had any power over them, because the Motherland had settled its accounts with these invalids once and for all. How were they to be controlled? Threaten them with hunger? They were not paid anyway. Detention? Prisons and labor camps would never accept the burden of taking care of people without legs or hands. They were society’s dropouts, nobody’s business.

Nevertheless, it was a special time after Stalin was unmasked. People hoped for changes. Any kind of Adjubeis ⁵⁹ stirred up trouble, but invalids continued crawling along the railways and sang and begged money for vodka. Nothing would ever change their life. Dante’s Inferno ⁶⁰looked like child’s play in comparison to this picture. Even Goya⁶¹did not come up with this. At that time, my memory was excellent, almost automatic. Their songs were etched in my mind, but I could not let them echo in my head because they literally broke my heart into pieces! Trying to get rid of them, I embodied the types ― imitated, aped, parodied them, and, as the saying goes, I got more than I bargained for! A lifetime job! I was into this for the rest of my life.

Of course, “Inferno,” the journey into hell, and the ballad about Marusya come from the same source. It is like a diamond. You can drag it through mud, soil, any dirt, but a diamond remains a diamond. If you do the same with an imitation, it would get scratched, breaking into turbid slivers...

Let’s move on, we are behind with everything

Channeling Vysotsky: TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

The Cultural Giants 3

About Russian Names 4

A Pariah for the Communist Government, à King for the People 5

Channeling Vysotsky 7

Three "Ws" of Channeling 9

A Russian Soul 10

To Believe or Not To Believe 12

Part One: A Search for the Spirit

Communicator's Identity 15

Chapter One: Vysotsky and Other Mediums 17

Lena's Prediction 19

Joe Gonzales: Pitying a Soul in Limbo 22

Vysotsky Speaks Through Brian Hurst 23

Vysotsky's Spirit Portrait by Corrine Jenkins 26

A Spontaneous Reading from Rita Berkowitz 28

"Every Decent Russian Psychic Knows It" 29

Chapter Two: Robert Brown 33

The Medium 35

The First Side of the Tape 37

The Other Side of the Tape 45

Chapter Three: A Search for the Spirit Communicator's

Identity 51

Confirmations, Confirmations and More Confirmations 53

Channeling Vysotsky's Poems 55

Vysotsky Speaks About His Theatrical Roles 56

Spirit Points to the Source of Confirmation 57

The Difficult Relationship with the Director 61

Financial Concerns 62

The Growing Wish to Quit Acting 63

The Disabled War Veterans' Songs 64

Part Two: Poems 69

Chapter One: Written on Earth 71

Êîíè ïðèâåðåäëèâûå 72

My Wild Horses 73

Èç ìîíîëîãà íà êîíöåðòå 74

A Concert Interlude 75

È Ñíèçó ëåä è ñâåðõó... 76

Ice Above and Below 77

Chapter Two: The First Channeled Poems 79

Ñåðàô 84

Channeling: The Seraph 85

Ðîæäåñòâåíñêàÿ èäèëëèÿ 86

Christmas Carol 87

Chapter Three: We 91

Ëåêöèÿ î ìåæäóíàðîäíîì ïîëîæåíèè. (Îòðûâîê) 92

Written on Earth: A Petty Criminal's Lecture on

International Affairs (An Excerpt) 93

Ìèìîëåòíûé âçãëÿä íà íûíåøíþþ Ðîññèþ 94

Channeling: A Glance at Modern Russia 95

À â áóäóùåå íå ïóñêàþò â íåîñâîåííûõ êðàÿõ 98

God Has Forgotten and Angels Don't Care 99

Ðóññêîå îáðàçîâàíèå 100

Russian Education 101

Ïåñíÿ î âàìïèðàõ 106

The Song about Vampires 107

Îáúÿñíåíèå 110

The Explanation 111

Chapter Four: Reading the Book 113

Ìîëèòâà ãðåøíèêà 120

The Prayer of a Sinner 121

Âàðèàöèè íà òåìó Êàèíà è Àâåëÿ 122

Cain and Abel 123

Íîåâ Êîâ÷åã 126

Noah's Ark 127

“To Be îr Not To Be?” ñïðîñèë îäíàæäû ïðèíö 130

“To Be or Not To Be?” A Prince Once Asked 131

Èñêóøåíèå 132

Temptation 133

Chapter Five: Inferno 137

Îõîòà íà âîëêîâ 138

Written on Earth: The Wolves Hunt 139

Èíôåðíî 148

Channeling: Inferno 149

Áàëëàäà î Ìàðóñå íà Áðîäâåå 154

Ballad of Marusya on Broadway 155

Ïåðåïîëîõ â ðîññèéñêîì àäó 160

Mishaps of Russian Hell 161

Ïåñíÿ àïîëèòè÷íûõ 164

The Song of the Apoliticals 165

Åùå ðàç îá "Îõîòå íà âîëêîâ" 166

More about "The Wolves Hunt" Roots 167

Chapter Six: Cosmos 171

Íåâèäèìûå ðîññèéñêèå ñáîðèùà 174

Invisible Russian Gatherings 175

Êîñìè÷åñêèå âàðèàöèè 182

A Cosmic Game 183

Îòñòîéíèê âðåìåíè 188

Sediment Bowl of Time 189

Chapter Seven: Dedicated 191

Îäèííàäöàòîå ñåíòåáðÿ 192

9/11 193

Ìíå ãðóñòíî ñåãîäíÿ, çîâó ÿ Òåçåÿ 198

Today I’m Sad, I Call for Theseus 199

Ïàìÿòêà ñïÿùåìó Òåçåþ 202

Sleeping Theseus 203

Ïîñâÿùàåòñÿ Ýëâèñó Ïðåñëè 206

Dedicated to Elvis Presley 207

Ïî òðîïàì êàéîòà 210

On Coyote Path 211

Chapter Eight: The Departure 215

ß ê âàì ïèøó 216

Written on Earth: I Wrote To You 217

Ðàññòàâàíèå 220

Channeling: The Departure 221

Part Three: Messages 225

Chapter One: Hope 227

Ãëàâà ïåðâàÿ: Íàäåæäà 228

Chapter Two: The Guests 241

Ãëàâà âòîðàÿ: Ãîñòè 242

Chapter Three: The Crisis 261

Ãëàâà òðåòüÿ: Êðèçèñ 262

Chapter Four: The Path 283

Ãëàâà ÷åòâåðòàÿ: Äîðîãà 284

Chapter Five: Limelight 331

Ãëàâà Ïÿòàÿ: Â ñâåòå ðàìïû 332

Chapter Six: A Butterfly 353

Ãëàâà øåñòàÿ: Áàáî÷êà 354

Âûñîöêèé î ïîñëåäíèõ ìèíóòàõ ñâîåé æèçíè 354

Vysotsky on the Murder Mystery 355

Ñîí 366

A Dream 367

Áàáî÷êà 380

A Butterfly 381

Epilogue: The Genie is out of the Bottle 385

Ýïèëîã: Äæèíà âûïóñòèëè èç áóòûëêè 386

Appendix One: Touched by Evil ―

Touched by Angels 403

The Russian Experience 403

Touched by Evil 404

Touched by Angels: Alexander Galich,

Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky 409

Appendix Two: A Divided Nation 417

The Viking Slave Trade 417

Raznochincy and Aristocracy 419

Intelligentsia and the People 423

Notes 435

Vladimir Vysotsky 489

Selected List of Vladimir Vysotsky’s Works

and Books About Vysotsky 491

Selected List of Books on Spirit Communication 493

Photo Credits 495

About the Author 499