They Have Poisoned The Drinking Water

In the last days of October, 1992, I went to Russia with my Russian friend Leo, a pianist I met living in Portland, Maine. I had long wanted to travel in Russia, pissed off at the political theater which determined that American and Russian citizens should fear and despise one another. Leo had visited several radio shows I hosted and we mixed his improvised piano playing with my tape loops and samples. He said we would do some concerts in Russia. I hoped to make some sort of film there, maybe collaborate with a Russian filmmaker. The first weeks there seemed like interminable partying; Leo was having a homecoming and "October Days" is a long series of celebrations of the 1917 Revolution. Leo's friend Radik, a filmmaker who did a marvelous adaptation of a story by Daniel Kharms (the great satirist), announced his wedding for New Year's Eve and I agreed then to stay for 2 months. Perhaps a mistake. I definitely poisoned myself with alcohol during that time, and food cleanliness was always questionable, although Russians do their best in periods of great limitation brought about by the unwieldy State Market distribution maze. But i did meet some wonderful people, traveled to the town of Saratov which had been off the map for "westerners" for years, we did several strange concerts, one of which was amazing, at an art opening in the Union Hall gallery in Moscow, a huge exhibit hall. I saw theater and a great concert by the group Vezhlivi Otkaz (Polite Refusal), who were like a Russian Pere Ubu, great musicians. All sorts of difficulties occurred on this trip and almost every day was dramatic. It was a series of headaches experienced inside the cave of Russian winter. It was lonely and painful. I began editing a video piece on a super-VHS system as soon as i returned to the US (and moved to Berkeley, California) from the super8 film and video shot in Russia. I semi-finished a 1-hour version of the piece, titled "They Have Poisoned The Drinking Water", but was never quite satisfied with it as complete. It has remained mostly shelved until now. I am just beginning an edit down of that piece into something more compact. Hopefully it will have something to say; we see too few images from the Russian world. Is it still sunk in the 19th century, as it was in 1992? I wonder.