A director, rapper and podcaster meets a journalist, programmer and writer. A conversation with the roles of host and guest swapped… and although there are only two of us (plus, of course, one more wonderful podcaster), it turned out that these combinations of three callings apiece hold some interesting nuances.
The podcast 2&200 is a classic of the genre and shows why this form of conversation is turning eyes and ears back toward shared words today.
We continue the conversation for admirers of Kusturica and/or Dostoevsky and/or Marx. With Orlin Milchev, once known as MC ATILA, a man able to pierce with words and questions. He is also a director, and last year saw the release of his debut feature film, The Art of Falling. A guest with an unexpected view of the big issues of today, interwoven with technology.
The “Scourge of God,” the epithet of Attila the Hun, has long ceased to be a single hero; it is what we have created online. But what is looming ahead?
– Have we forgotten how to use language as a medium of art?
– It's as if the internet first compressed language into short phrases of 100 or so characters, then even fewer, and then into entire chat conversations with almost no words at all, just abbreviations.
Now we communicate with emoticons and GIFs. I'm not saying it's bad. It's something like an Egyptian renaissance from the future.
– But wasn't the Word supposed to be in the beginning?
– Images are actually older and more natural as a form of communication,
language is a relatively recent invention. A virus, maybe. We really think in images and symbols, not in text.
Cormac McCarthy has a fine essay on this, “The Kekulé Problem.” Still, I find it sad that we are drifting away from the skill of defining our thoughts in the best possible way—not merely effective, but graceful. Literature. A living, blazing language that pins you down like headlights on a dark street.
One of my favorite authors once said that it isn't the plots but the language that lies at the heart of the great works of literature. All the stories have already been told, but how the words will tremble—that changes everything. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that this understanding of language and text is disappearing from our everyday lives, and without it we are simply lost, blind.
Writing and speaking masterfully will become a rare, astonishing act from another time,
one that few will devote themselves to. Something like violin virtuosos, or sculptors carving life out of marble. Some rare and beautiful glass bead game. We'll see.
– I don't know, I actually think style is nowhere near enough. Though it's interesting that today the style of a description determines how well artificial intelligence will handle a given task. I'd like us to talk about art; you touch on many of its different forms. Is it harder today for art to move us, to stir our feelings?
– There's no shortage of clips with little monkeys, sweet dogs and ducklings in our feeds. They're moving, at least to normal people. But that isn't art. Chaplin's The Kid still moves us today, still stirs our feelings, but there's so much more there. Layers, a palette of relationships, sarcasm, warmth, self-irony, social commentary… in short,
moving us and stirring our feelings is only a small part of art's potential.
I don't think it's harder. But we definitely want it faster. Right away. And clear. No confusion, no questions, no ambiguity. If you're going to move me, move me decisively and with pathos—I'll sob. If you're going to make me laugh, make it punchy and extreme; I want to fall off my chair.
We're losing the habit of giving time to a film, a book, an album, a painting. Of deciphering. Of looking not for what is expected of us, but for what we're being asked. Of getting lost in order to find ourselves.
– Literature was once a form of protest, of social criticism; later rap took on that role. Is there art that criticizes today, art that can bring change?
– Literature, visual art, cinema, rock, rap—they can say whatever they like; that's the whole point. When they're good, the criticism comes through some personal, emotional experience. Through means that immerse you in another world and leave you to think and compare on your own. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanisław Lem come to mind immediately. Vonnegut. Eduard Zahariev, the Bulgarian film director. Pink Floyd. Warhol. Rakim.
Aesthetics matter, the language, the drawing… and the viewer's participation. Otherwise it's propaganda, some soulless social commentary that shouldn't be called “art.” But there is a need for it, as long as you truly know why and against what you're protesting. Oh, and as long as you do it beautifully, play with the audience a little.
In my view, art can't bring change. At best it can uplift the spirit, on a personal level.
But on a social level—probably not.
Nor should it, thank God. It's an expression of processes, not their creator. People are more complex, and they change very, very slowly and with great difficulty. But art can be a fine momentary mirror of a person or a society. It can also be whatever else it wants…
– Is it really true that it can't bring change? I don't want to stop believing in that; otherwise few other things make sense. At least I'm sure it can give our lives meaning. It hardly makes us happier, at least not on its own, and a study came out recently in which Bulgarians once again turned out to be the unhappiest people in the EU. What stands in the way of our happiness most of all today?
– The idea of happiness as a state that, once reached, is permanent and all-encompassing. In general,
“happiness” is such a strange word, a trap of language.
What exactly does it mean—pleasure, or security, or calm, or pleasant excitement, or maybe an endless stream of endorphins and serotonin, or some supreme contentment, eternal idleness? Or forever doing your own thing, nonstop novelty? Or that one perfect moment stretched into eternity… None of these seems to be quite “happiness.” What if it's all of them at once? Impossible, because they exclude one another.
It's a messy business. We have desires, we have dreams, then new ones, and even if we spent all day doing nothing but propagating our kind and eating pastries, we'd still find a way to break something, just to see what happens. Dostoevsky writes something like that in Notes from Underground.
The other huge problem is the whole “happiness industry” that floods us with images of eternal bliss. Most often an island, a beach, a woman or a man, a cocktail… and then: “Buy this deodorant and you're practically there!” At least that's how you'll feel, they promise. And our brain watches and can't tell the difference.
It buys the deodorant, smells nice, but it's not an island with a babe. And so it suffers.
Then it buys something else. That's how we go on.
Coca-Cola doesn't sell sugary water; it sells the idea that you and your family are together and not fighting, while the white-bearded man with the reindeer travels toward you, smiling. And he drinks Coke. And instead of “Ho-ho-ho!” he says “Co-co-co,” almost like “Co-ca-Co-la.”
– Does a world in which algorithms can create a personalized film just for you, by your favorite director, with your favorite actors, sound like a dream come true or a nightmare?
– A nightmare. A claustrophobic one, at that. In the sense of being locked inside a fixed notion of a given artist, of his possibilities or development, and of a given art form.
My favorite artists are alive, dynamic, changing.
Art is a snapshot of someone's reality or fantasy. An algorithm will copy well what already exists as an original, I'm convinced of that. But to create the next work, and one as complex as cinema… it might, but it's unlikely to be any good.
Cinema is a universe; it contains all the arts, mythology, the social issues of its time. Good directors understand exactly what they've made only at the very end, that's how complicated it is. A film passes through many people in the process of its making, each with their own depth, experience, sensibility…
No, no, there's no way, at least not yet. But I'd watch, just to see. The future is intriguing.
– And what do you think the future of the way we “get supplied” with information looks like?
– Frightening. Once we calmly searched online in order to know. Now we have to check a source ten times—fact-checking, double-checking and so on. Not to mention the powerful forces that tirelessly and purposefully produce disinformation with a specific goal, from political propaganda to the scientific kind.
All of this has a very real effect on society.
Fake news spreads across profiles like a nasty rash after a hookup in a lousy bar.
People repeat it to each other, then they vote. The mass arrival of deepfake videos is just ahead. Not to mention the use of artificial intelligence in this field. The internet will get totally messed up. But we have no choice other than to make the effort to get properly informed.
The simplest principle: cross-check sources, ones with a reputation, however few of them are left.
– This is definitely one of my big themes, and the rash metaphor… I don't want to say it “touched me,” but I find it very apt. In my view the ball is in the media's court; it's time they found inspiration and ideas in the formats that manage to create meaningful content today. I find the examples of Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan interesting. Do you think podcasts are journalism?
– Ours isn't. It's just a conversation, with every risk of saying something very stupid or relatively smart from time to time. A journalist asks questions; we'd rather just chat with the guest or among ourselves.
There are all kinds of podcasts; it's a vessel that anyone can fill with their own thing. And if it's interesting or important to someone else, it'll get watched. Our formula at 2&200 from the very start has been to be honest, to think out loud and not to take ourselves too seriously. It's just a podcast.
– And one made with emotion, a personal touch and courage, all things that I think help the genre. I can vouch for that too, having been lucky enough to be a guest and to talk, including well outside my comfort zone. We talked a lot there about the notorious bubbles and echo chambers, about the problems they create, which I believe lie at the root of today's great divisions. Will we ever get out of our bubbles?
– Well, they're nothing new or scary. Grouping together is an evolutionary principle; it has always existed. There's nothing wrong with being among people who share your understanding of the world, art, politics, morality. It's great that the internet lets us find such like-minded people easily.
I was a teen when the internet arrived, and I remember the time before it. It's damn awful to feel alone and misunderstood, not to know where your people are. In that sense I like bubbles, and I think it's generally good for a person to be among people of their own kind.
But I recommend taking walks through other people's bubbles. Expeditions. Just to see whether there's something there for you that you don't know or haven't come across. Again, as with information, it's a matter of conscious effort. Saying to yourself: “Hey, what are those people over there talking about? Let me go and hear or see! It's probably dumber than ours, but you never know.”
– What could help us start talking about the important things again, instead of just getting riled up against each other?
– First of all, accepting that there is such a thing as Facts and Objective truth. Rejecting relativism—“everyone decides for themselves”? Well… no. Stopping the claim that when our opinion is personal, it can't be challenged with arguments and evidence from the other side. Not hiding behind little words like “patriotic,” “of the people” and so on, which long ago lost their historical unifying meaning and acquired only a political one.
Then we can talk calmly, normally, without emotion—standing on the concrete slab of verifiable facts, not on “that's just how I feel it.” And decide what's best for the country, the future, life and so on. What our real problems are—how high to plant the flag, or how high the corruption reaches… for example.
– What are the best things technology has brought us? And what do you think are the biggest problems it has created for us?
– For me, 90 percent good things. Access to music, film, books, events and people. The chance to express myself in a whole bunch of ways, and for what I do to easily reach anyone who's interested. Whatever I do—music, film, a podcast—it can't help being tied to the internet and technology. And that's great, because otherwise it would be so much harder.
The bad ones… Hmm, for me at least, it's assorted silly squabbles, downright ridiculous. And a bit more stress over things you have zero power over and that don't matter all that much anyway. I think that's about it.
