Alexandr Korol

or how much you’ll sell them for, or to whom, or what you’ll call yourself, or what style it is — those thoughts just don’t exist if you’re truly in the Spirit, in the flow, in nature. Those thoughts can’t exist. Things just happen on their own, as they are. Like, if I see that lately my attention is being drawn to Japanese masks, well then I’ll write about them, I’ll draw them, maybe I’ll even watch a documentary about them. But I didn’t have that planned, so it could arise right now and end in a week — or maybe in two days. And when you’re in the Spirit, it’s like God chooses a person who can, let’s say, not distort God’s information, but transmit it well. Meaning, God is fine with it, because you have the right associations, the right worldview, and if you feel Him, you’ll express it properly through music, through paintings or films, and He chooses you so He can create through you. But what’s also interesting is that He chooses you because you’ll never stray from that path. That with your first sold paintings, you won’t just quit and go buy a yacht. He knows that what matters most to you is feeling this God inside yourself, creating-creating-creating — and then, whatever happens, happens. God Himself will decide who will notice your art, because He will make it so that someone pays attention to your work. And He decides when it’s time to notice it — maybe now, or maybe in 10 years. Or maybe, if it would distract you too much, God will make it so people only notice your paintings after your death. Because if they noticed them before, it might distract you, and you wouldn’t keep painting. And that is the work done in the Spirit.

Question: Before you went to the meeting, so to speak, for employment, a gypsy woman told you to get to know the church. Have you ever thought about how your career as a writer might have turned out if you had ignored her advice and taken a different path?

I don’t see a connection. You see, I was writing books while also working in many different places. I worked at the Center for Contemporary Art, at a production center — you can see, always something connected with creativity. I worked in the church itself, and I did many different things, had various projects connected to advertising, more like design, a digital agency. So I did a lot of things. I often helped many friends start different projects, but still, I understood that all of it was sort of unserious, not my life’s meaning or mission or destiny, just something I could do, this or that, like it didn’t matter much —