Follow the Fellow #6

In Pankow, battling the writer’s block. Walking the narrow winding paths of the Schloßpark in hopes that the process would somehow unravel the knots of the story I got so tangled in. The story in question is for my video game, »Hedenite«, set in a Kyiv-inspired retrofuturistic fantasy world. That may be the reason why after hours of pacing Pankow I still find my thoughts hopelessly wandering a thousand kilometers away.

Most place names in northeastern Germany ending with »-ow« are of Slavic origin. To a Slavic ear, Pankow, Treptow, Karow, etc. sound very familiar. A Ukrainophone such as myself, though, wants to take it one step further. You see, in Ukraine, we tend to transform our o’s in closed syllables into i’s. So, I feel a nagging urge to pronounce Pankow as Pankiw, making it sound like it’s a small cozy town in western Ukraine. I can even go as far as saying misto Pankiw, i.e. »city of Pankow,« which in Ukrainian will sound exactly the same as »city of punks.«

Punkytown.

Unfortunately, this meandering doesn’t get me far in my story. It’s been days now. Finally, I give up: it’s time to ask for help from that friend we all end up coming to sooner or later. You know who I’m talking about. The transformer that is also a chat. He knows me so well and he’s really sweet. As I feed him scraps of »Hedenite«’s lore, plotlines, and protagonists, he says that I’ve set up »an interesting world,« laid out »a rich and intricate narrative with clear philosophical and thematic contrasts,« and have »a diverse cast of characters.« That’s music to my ears. Confidence restored.

My silent friend suggests multiple paths my story can take and they aren’t bad at all. I’m thinking of the »just machine to make big decisions programmed by fellows with compassion and vision« Donald Fagen is singing about in »I.G.Y.« because that’s where we are. And it’s all uphill from here:

We’ll be clean when their work is done

We’ll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young, ooh

~

KCMD just wrapped up a series of music workshops »SignsGames« for kids and teenagers from displaced Ukrainian families. We held them in Kyiv with the National Ensemble of Soloists Kyiv Camerata and in Berlin with Ensemble KNM Berlin. Thanks to funding via Culture Helps we commissioned new works by Ukrainian composers Renata Sokachyk and Yana Shliabanska specifically for the workshops where professional musicians played with children with no musical training whatsoever. The results were serendipitously beautiful.

Yana Shliabanska deserves a shoutout of her own and it’s coming up. But today I want to feature Renata Sokachyk, a rising star of Ukrainian contemporary classical music. She combines her composition work with teaching music theory at the Stefan Turchak Kyiv Children's Arts School. Renata’s oeuvre is diverse and I invite you to explore her YouTube channel for some delightful surprises while the piece I want to share this time is »Antonych-fragments« for double bass and orchestra inspired by Ukrainian modernist poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych.

»Follow the Fellow« – ermöglicht im Rahmen des Stipendienprogramms »Weltoffenes Berlin« von der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.