Once I settled back inside my own dorm, I started to binge watch a handful of Vitas's interviews (with English subtitles, of course). At first, I half-expected that pride deriving from fame and glory had already touched #Vitas after over eighteen years of him being active in the music scene and establishing fifteen albums, five of which beheld massive amounts of praise – Philosophy of Miracle, Smile!, Mama, The Songs of My Mother, and A Kiss As Long As Eternity. To my delight, Vitas's dashing yet graceful and humble smile on my tablet's screen proved me wrong. I watched as an eloquent, self-composed and insightful man, dressed in a glitzy vest, spoke endearingly about his passion for the arts, such as music, dance and drama. As he spoke, I noticed his dark-green eyes twinkle with a kind of Piscean warmth that signified honest love and ethereal beauty.
Vitas's vocal cords were especially precious, thin and vulnerable, needing Vitas to grease and smooth them by drinking quail eggs regularly. Doing so enabled him to unearth his silvery and highly acclaimed 'Diamond Voice' that quite literally shattered glass and managed to cut deep enough to release me from the prison I kept myself in since my father's passing.
Speaking of which, Vitas unfortunately lost his mother in 2001 when he was about twenty-two years old. Similarly, I lost my father when I was young too, at the age of eighteen. To dedicate a song to his mother, Vitas created the song "Dedication" ("Посвящение") (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5gUbHoYtqw) composed entirely of vocalization, thus eliminated the issue of any language barriers. His piece opened with a wintry feel where Vitas sounded as if he was shivering and panicking as he crooned, "fa-fi-fa-fafa-fi-fa." This set of syllables sent me back to memory lane when I encountered my dad entangled with tubes in the ICU and found myself frozen in fear of what was to happen to the person I loved most dearly.
When my dad passed away in January of 2016, my new year clearly did not jump to a good start. For about two months, I cried myself to sleep every night and woke up each morning bursting to tears when I remembered the fact that my dad was gone. The only time I felt complete solace was when I fell fast asleep, too numb to feel any inkling of emotional and psychological pain.
It was not until April of 2016 that I listened to Vitas's "Dedication" for the first time. As my world crumbled and disintegrated, "Dedication" slipped further into the pit of despair with Vitas's words slowly compressing into slurs. But by some blessed miracle, Vitas emerged from the ocean deep of the song and started to speak in harmonic tongues with his siren call. Both he and I may be awashed with devastation but we were fighters, nevertheless. And like a warrior, Vitas screamed skyward with the highest elasticity of his vocal chords in the hopes that his mother, Lilia Grachova, heard his cries from wherever she was present. Vitas believed in an esoteric connection between soul mates, sensing that the bond between a parent and child cannot be severed even by the grubby hands of death. His voice transcended into a higher realm and brought into my life the cathartic release I longingly desired. Although Vitas did not completely dispel my grief, I was at least shown a silver lining when I saw nothing but countless shades of grey.
Vitas's song "Bird of Happiness" ("Птица Счастья") beautifully traced how I pictured him. During this song, Vitas swung me on a merry-go-round journey across the jump-a-thon verses, the soul-uplifting refrain, and the Pushkin-esque lyrics:
Выбери меня, выбери меня
Птица счастья завтрашнего дня!
Сколько в звездном небе серебра!
Завтра будет лучше, чем вчера.
Will you choose me? Will you choose me?
Tomorrow's bird of happiness!
How much silver in the starry sky!
Tomorrow will be better than yesterday.
Vitas's simple words and starry vocals elicited hope at every line of the song. Such positivity and vibrancy urged me to want to learn #Russian, a rich language I never knew I needed in my life. The Russian language consisted an abundance of passion in its melodious intonation plus an incredible flexibility within its sentence structure that suited poetry and music. Stevo Žigon, a Serbian man, perfectly described Russian as not a tool to express feelings but a space where one can live and get lost in. Vitas transported me into this space whenever I pressed play on any one of his songs, providing me with a form of escape that was calming for my poor nerves and ultimately life-saving.
To my discomfort, some made the grievous error of judging Vitas too prematurely, dismissing him and his music as nothing more than a joke, a #meme not worth a second thought. But for me personally, Vitas was no laughing matter. Through him, I was able to find myself again when all seemed lost.
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