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[Alexandr Korol]

It’s as if they are otherworldly, parallel – they exist and don’t exist at the same time. And my books are the same way. Because it’s not a social-material world – it’s something else. It’s death. Well, not death in the usual sense – that’s the most interesting paradox. Just as people mistakenly think that the underworld is hell, death is not death either. It’s just one of the four seasons, one of the four moods.
What is in this world of “mindlessness,” as I also called it, in the otherworldly realm, in the world of spirits? I always liked it. One of my first websites was designed in a gothic style, featuring a stained glass image of Saint Mark. My tattoo is an angel, a stone one. And I always collected images of stone angels – looking for photographs, taking my own pictures whenever I found a depiction of a stone angel. But you know what the paradox is? Those are gravestones. All stone angels are gravestones. And gothic architecture, all these gothic churches, the church choir music – I’ve collected an entire collection of this kind of music. I’ve always liked it. And then I remember how, back when I was a child, my relatives said to me, “Who died?” They asked me accusingly when I was little. I said:

– What happened?
– Who died?
– What?
– Why are you listening to this kind of music again?

And what kind of music was I listening to then? Classical, but just melancholic. And clothing? What is associated with death – black. So whenever I tuned into this frequency, everything became, you know, church-like, gothic, black. Everything black would stand out right away: I’d want to wear black pants, a black sweater, a black hoodie, a black camera – everything black. And gothic. Exactly gothic. And it could be something... It’s not just anything – it’s even more vagabond-like, which is also interesting. Like, you want to wear a torn sweater, gloves with cut-off fingers, like in the movie “Clochard”, like a wanderer, a messenger – that’s the world of death, the spirit of death. I always surrounded myself with such films, such music, sitting alone with my journal every night – because that is the night. And you feel like a ghost when you’re in this world,