Music for a Soldier
by Artem Chekh
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan
Music has a unique way of transforming soldiers into individuals and instilling within them a powerful desire to live not just for the future, but also to appreciate the present and to remember the past. It enables them to hold onto their memories and dreams and grasp the power of each fleeting moment, even when all those difficult months have left them with the most rudimentary cognitive and sensory functions.
When the full-scale invasion began, my brain ceased to prioritize cognition and sensuality. Instead, my instincts took over, and I was plagued by numbness, fear, and depression in those first few weeks. Listening to music felt like an act of sacrilege. Was it appropriate to listen to music during such wild and uncertain times? And what was the point, anyway? What if we were all to die tomorrow on the battlefield or in torture camps? However, as time passed, the mechanisms responsible for maintaining a balanced life began to recover, and music once again assumed its importance – if not one of the top places – in my life. I turn to music when I'm burning with pain and aches from within or when I want to scream or retreat into a wall of solitude.
Khudya serves with me. In his civilian life, he's a former hippie from Kyiv's Podil district, known for being an exemplary family man who rides his bicycle and carries his French bulldog named Luna in his backpack. He also listens to music. One can hear whatever suits the occasion from his JBL pocket speaker — sometimes it’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier” performed by Glenn Gould, other times it’s Portishead or some afrobeat. We arrange tea ceremonies and listen to his music on the bank of the river, in the forest, at the checkpoint, or on location. We have similar tastes, and it is pretty gratifying.
I keep something for myself, though. I listen to it exclusively on AirPods – something private and intimate. I listen to Lana Del Rey, Lola Marsh, Florence And The Machine, and Madeleine Peyroux. I adore women and their voices even more. I crave the sound of their hoarse, loud, and ringing voices. After spending a long day in the sun or amidst smoke, stepping out of the shower, completing a day shift, or attending a sergeants' meeting, the sound of women's voices is a necessity.
A week and a half after the start of the full-scale invasion, we were stationed in Kyiv, digging trenches and setting up positions near the territory of the city TV tower. I was granted a four-hour release to go home, do laundry, and sit in silence. However, my solitude was abruptly shattered by air alarm sirens. It was then that I realized that I could finally attempt to listen to music again. That day, I chose to listen to the Belgian band, Zap Mama, and as Marie Daulne's voice echoed in my ears, it felt like a sudden flashback to a peaceful life – irrelevant, distant, and clumsy. That voice hurt and depressed me; the singer even seemed to deliberately grimace to annoy me, to prick and scratch at an open wound. I was lying in bed, waiting for the washing machine cycle to finish. Meanwhile, while looking at the taped-up windows, I imagined myself as a nineteen-year-old who, after an unsuccessful date, was taking the horribly slow trolleybus No. 3 from Palats Sportu station to his native Solomyanka. Or, to be more precise, to the street now bearing the name of the fallen hero Roman Ratushny...
After that strange experience, though, I did start listening to music all the time, especially when we went to the recently-liberated Kyiv region. Music became my closest companion in that forest, a mandatory addition to a soldier’s arsenal, akin to a personal weapon or a tourniquet. Female singers, in particular, formed the soundtrack of my depression, the haunting aura of an eternal conflict between good and evil, the deafening sound of my loneliness, and the shadow of a soldier's frustration.
Leaving one location, I see a drunk fifty-year-old soldier listening to Vivaldi’s “Seasons.” There’s also my friend, a Syretska Street punk from the ’90s who goes by the callsign Geograf, listening to “Vova, fuck them up!” on repeat. Kapral, a soldier from my unit, is signing “Swallows, swallows” again. Some are listening to music on Radio Bayraktar, and the mortarman “Kum” listens to some wedding songs. Their music is foreign to me, and as a result, I find myself fleeing from it, retreating into the deepest crevices of my hiding places. I climb into my sleeping bag, cover my head, and immerse myself in the world where women’s singing, pure sex, love and beauty, and meditation reign amid the chaos of Russian rockets, mass burials, and executions.
I was forced to become one of those in whom the black roots of war had taken hold, forcing us to seek refuge in various places: trenches, abandoned factories, blood-stained mattresses, the forest, lines at border crossings, torture chambers, prison corridors, bomb shelters, sofas in front of televisions, and offices with computer monitors. Despite our diverse backgrounds, we soldiers are closely bound together by our shared experience of war. However, I possess my own music, a guide that leads me, like a blind man, through this bewildering journey. It takes me to a place where I might be reborn, with a worldview as distorted as a mirror in an amusement park – remote, chilly, emotionally drained, and bewildered – but new. I will bring this old music back from the war, and it will stay with me until the end of my days.
Meridian Czernowitz's State of War is an online anthology of essays by Ukrainian intellectuals about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One hundred Ukrainian authors will recount their own experiences, impressions, observations and feelings in one hundred texts. The creation of the anthology takes place within the framework of the USAID-backed Deepening the internal cultural dialogue in Ukraine project. Several of these texts will be available on Apofenie in English translation.