Cognitive dissonance
Letter from Away — March 31, 2022
This one twists and turns a bit. Stay with it for the links and the punch line.
Last Wednesday I worked an earlier shift than usual and came home with a couple sunny hours left to the day. I slid Flor de Caña into my ancient tape deck and started dancing with the cat, but had to pull the cassette out when the mechanism began to arbitrarily change speed.
Resorting to the magic of digital devices, I switched to jazz courtesy of public radio station KNKX, streaming from Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Melaphafon and I grooved to Ike Quebec and Martin Taylor (playing Nature Boy in 1961 and Stompin’ at the Savoy in 2010, respectively), with Tori Amos in between.
I haven’t seen much sunlight streaming through my windows in the last few months.
With this building’s western exposure, and a work schedule that has me away until after six o’clock, I end up coming home after dark for much of the year. It was good to be smiling in the sunshine coming in the windows and dancing on my softest rug.
I start supper but don’t turn on the lights. The dishes will wait until the natural light has been left behind by the oh-so-slow-and-smooth rotation of the planet. I look a little too long at the setting sun and there are lights behind my eyelids as I turn to the kitchen, where decent illumination comes through wires in the walls.
But even with Daylight Savings Time and the extra hour I got by starting work early, I am hungry. I turn the lights on let food prep choreograph my moves.
I cut and season and blend, and slide the baking dish into the oven as Johnaya Kandrick starts to sing Never You Mind. I turn the stove down low and dance back into the living room. The sun slips from the sky and streaks of cloud in the pattern of homecoming geese change from rose to gold and robins-egg blue to dusk.
Supper’s almost ready and I’m going to watch something on the wall.
The laptop shifts from writing workstation to streaming tool. I set up my projector, plug in all the cables, pull up a chair and a stool to put my supper on, and watch Servant of the People.
Servant of the People is a half-hour sitcom currently streaming on Netflix, produced in three seasons spread between 2015 and 2019 by publicly held Ukrainian production studio Kvartal 95, which began as a competitive touring comedy team in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of that country’s current president. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy was, in fact, a founder of Kvartal 95.
So, I’m watching this show about a high school history teacher named Vasily. A little hapless, a lot idealistic. He knows his students, he connects with them and they respect him. One of them catches a heated conversation between Vasily and a colleague, turns it into a little phone video, and you can guess the rest. Mr. Kotter meets the digital age and Vasily is elected president of Ukraine, courtesy of a viral tirade about corruption.
The actor playing Vasily is Volodymyr Zelenskyy — veteran comic, star of a half-dozen films, and the Ukrainian voice of Paddington Bear. Somewhere between season 1 and season 2, members of Kvartal 95 registered a new political party, calling it Servant of the People.
A few months later, just before the three-episode last season began to air, Zelenskyy announced his candidacy for the office his character held in a fictional world.
The first time a professional actor won the top job, here in the United States, he used his charismatic abilities to convince us that he could make money rain from above, just by cutting corporate taxes and abandoning the social safety net. The second time a television celebrity moved into the Oval Office …
Americans and many in the political West are in love with Zelenskyy and I admit I’m slightly smitten, myself. But, the last time I was taken in by a president he cheated on us all in our own house, complicating affairs of state for more than a year and allowing prurient cynicism to fill our political conversation. I’ve become a bit skeptical.
We see so much of the world through digital devices and the World Wide Web, how can a person discern the true nature of Volodymyr Zelenskyy
In the face of war, the Ukrainian president seems to be holding honorable positions. Certainly, it appears he is standing up to one of the world’s top bullies with grace and determination, just as he resisted political bribery from the Trump reelection effort in 2019. But earlier this month, Zelenskyy suspended 11 political parties for their positions relative to Russia, changing representation in 10 percent of the Ukrainian parliament.
A bit more trivia before I go. In 2016 Kvartal 95 released a movie version of Servant of the People and streaming service Hulu began a project to remake the sitcom for an American audience, a plan they abandoned at the start of Mr. Trump’s first term.
When Ukrainian journalists showed up to interview cast members during location shooting for the movie, they were invited to get in front of the cameras, portraying the fictional reporters surrounding Zelenskyy’s character.
I am unable to draw a conclusion.
Oscar Wilde said the “… aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realise that energy.” I wonder, as someone with a deep understanding of the absurd what he would make of the world today, where tails wag dogs, fame is created with 15-second videos, and separating fantasy from reality is almost impossible.
I do know that dancing in the sun, to songs made by artists whose political ambitions are unknown to me, is a joyous respite from human folly. The birds sing outside my window.
Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who has lived in Midcoast Maine since 1988. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print, on and off since 1992, and is published here on a weekly basis.
