Russia

I am obsessed with Russia. I love Russia, for reasons that I don’t know. For reasons that I am not aware of. For reasons that are buried in my subconciousness. I remember driving into Moscow and my heart was racing. Fast. Like on amphetamine. The glitz, the churches, the casinos, the women and their legs and their heels, the men and their faces, the giga Gucci stores. I did not understand a thing. I loved it. I could not read anything, which is every writer’s dream, since that is the best way of experiencing a place. When you don’t know. When you have to rely on you instincts, not on your brain. That was years ago, but of course you could feel already a weirdly charged situation. We were driving on Rubliowska to meet a writer called Oksana Robski for a story. She was the Candace Bushnell of Moscow at that time, writing about rich women that had to survive and keep their clothing standard, after their rich husband got shot. The photographer came back the next day to shoot more houses and got arrested. He sent me an email to my private address, I answered, although I did not know, what to do. Years later I went to the launch of the russian TATLER in Moscow. I stayed in a hotel that had a security section like an airport. The party night was strange too. I took a taxi, the driver could not find the party and stopped on a dark bridge and I thought, that was it. I survived and when the party started, they played the “Dallas” theme to celebrate TATLER and a new russian society. That was 2008 and Eva Green was dancing at that party and it seemed all good. I am shocked about the Russia today. It seems beyond belief, that a 23 year old singer is “lost” in the prison system, meaning maybe dead. Neither her dad nor her husband have heard from Nadja Tolokonnikova from Pussy Riot and nobody knows what happened to her. She went on a hunger strike, just 23, to demonstrate against the “slavery style” in russian prisons. How can it be that a country with a TATLER and a VOGUE magazine on a newsstand, keeps a 23 year old girl in prison, that just sang, when the times was right. Nothing more. 2013 is not a good year in terms of Russia. I am sad about this.