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[Alexandr Korol]

it doesn’t make me feel hot or cold — I never had such a goal. The book isn’t positioned as some magical object that transfers people to other worlds. No. That was never the intention. But the fact that later some people start saying this is what’s happening — well yes, people often say that. Why and how? I don’t even know myself. I guess I just immerse so deeply into imagination and transmit it so strongly through the text that the person also enters that imagination. It’s like some kind of creative state I’m in — it gets embedded into the book. But there’s nothing criminal, forbidden, or dangerous about that. It’s wonderful, really, when you can write a book that fully captures a person’s attention to the point they forget where they are and what’s outside their window. In fact, that’s how all real films, music, and advertising should be designed. And that’s what everyone’s doing — only they do it in a sly, manipulative way for profit. And I don’t do it deliberately at all. It’s just that I’m so deep and so sincere — I approach it with all my heart and soul. And maybe that’s why this paradox happens as a result: I simply wrote a book from the heart, and because it was written from the heart and not superficially, people can feel it. Because they start to feel my mood, my inspiration from the moment I was writing it. And that’s a beautiful thing. So yes, transformation — like DNA — can absolutely happen when I watch certain films. I can start to perceive the world differently after a movie. I watch a film about zombies, and suddenly I start seeing zombies. I watch a film about pets, and I begin to love all animals. But there’s no point in blaming the film or the director for that. That’s something you do yourself, actually. People just like to blame someone or something. To shift responsibility, right? But if after watching “Batman” you decide to live in a castle or start wearing a mask, then neither the director nor the screenwriter nor the creator of the Batman story is to blame for that. That’s your own psyche — it’s you. And thanks to everything that exists in the world — movies, music, food, people — you discovered something within yourself that was awakened, that bloomed because of that film. But what bloomed is you; the film didn’t plant it in you. If after watching “Joker” you wanted to become the Joker, then you need to understand that you already were the Joker — you were born that way. The film just awakened that in you, reminded you. So if someone is dark, something dark may be revealed in them. But if someone is born bright, then nothing dark will ever awaken in them, no matter how many dark films they watch. So the fault doesn’t lie with films or works of art.