This difficult year is coming to an end. No one knows what 2021 will bring. But this year will definitely be remembered by many for a long time. And unexpectedly, this year, the band DDT released a new song that really struck me.
I can’t say I’ve always been a die-hard fan of this band. My best friend and my wife—now they are. I just liked certain songs. But for many years, I hardly listened to DDT. And now they’ve released a new song, simply called “2020.” And it got to me.
Alright, let’s continue sharing some interesting musical finds. Many years ago, I realized unexpectedly that I really enjoy Irish and Scottish folk melodies. But even more, I love when modern bands creatively reimagine these melodies in their own style.
I first heard a song by The Dropkick Murphys in a movie, and I instantly became a fan (I plan to write about that song separately, but today is about a different one). I’ve been happily listening to their music for many years now—it’s perfect for long flights, by the way.
Today, I want to talk about the song The Lonesome Boatman, which was the opening track on their 2017 album 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory. It’s permanently earned a spot on my playlist of top songs, though it’s more of a melody than a song.
As with a previous song I shared, it turns out the band didn’t originally write this tune. It’s actually a cover and a tribute to a song created way back in 1969!
It was written and performed by two brothers, Finbar and Eddie Furey. Their group, The Furys, is a well-known Irish folk band, and The Lonesome Boatman is one of their most famous pieces, which they themselves re-recorded several times with updated arrangements. According to Wikipedia, fans of the Glasgow Celtic football club even sing it at matches.
The song is simple yet deeply moving. The original version is more lyrical, but I still prefer The Dropkick Murphys version—it’s more modern, vibrant, and dynamic, yet it preserves the original melody’s beauty.
In September, I wrote in this blog about the game Metro: Exodus—the latest part in the trilogy about Artyom. I also briefly covered the original source material, Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro series. The first game followed the plot of the first book quite closely, but after that, the games and books began to diverge, though they clearly influenced each other, especially since Dmitry Glukhovsky was heavily involved in the development of the games.
I really liked the first book in the series back in the day, despite some critiques of its writing style. However, it was easy to forgive the author because the concept was so intriguing. The plot itself wasn’t new: yet another “messiah” traveling from point A to point B to bring happiness to everyone. But the setting of a post-apocalyptic world, where only a few survivors now have to live underground—this was captivating. Glukhovsky added mysticism and science fiction elements, and, unexpectedly, the book became a hit, turning Dmitry Glukhovsky into a mega-star. His books have been translated into numerous languages, Metro inspired a highly successful video game, and his relatively new novel Text was adapted into a film in Russia featuring top Russian actors. But I covered all of this in my last post, so I won’t repeat myself.
After the first book, I quickly read the second, but it featured different characters and lacked both the originality and emotional impact of the first. However, when Glukhovsky released the third book in the series in 2015, I bought it immediately and started reading right away. I managed to get through at most 100 pages before putting it down in frustration and even wrote a brief, emotional post on Facebook. I simply couldn’t keep reading—I disliked the book that much.
Boris Akunin’s fictional supplement to his series on the history of the Russian Empire runs in parallel, telling the story of one family. Like the History series itself, the narrative is quite uneven. As a standalone series, I find it relatively weak, if it weren’t meant as a supplement. However, I love both history and Akunin as a storyteller.
The series began with short novellas about specific historical periods, but with the latest volumes, each period is accompanied by a full novel. The previous book, The Fortunate Adventures and Reflections of Lucius Catin, portrayed not so much Russia itself but rather the European trends that influenced Russia in various ways. Though I didn’t rate it highly, it still had some interesting moments.
The new novel, Mir i Voyna (Peace and War), shows us Lucius’s family many years later. Even with its title, the author seems to be saying, “Now I’ll show you Tolstoy, but from a different angle.” I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of Count Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but at least Tolstoy’s novel has grandeur, epic scope. In contrast, Akunin’s story is limited to a few months and a single village with serfs near Moscow.
But here, Akunin at least tried to play with the detective genre, one of his favorites. However, it falls far short of his best Fandorin novels. It even seems that the detective storyline doesn’t really interest the author and was added to the book simply as a framework.
Today, I’ll introduce you to another song, one I enjoy listening to in various versions.
I first came across the song Was wollen wir trinken performed by the band Oktoberklub from the GDR. They recorded it in the year I was born, 1977. When I heard it for the first time, I was struck by its memorable melody and vocal style. At that time, I didn’t understand the German lyrics at all (I often perceive vocals in songs as a separate musical instrument, so the lyrics aren’t as important to me).
Later on, I started hearing the same melody here and there, suddenly realizing that even well-known artists were performing the same song.
I decided to dig deeper. Interestingly, it seems that just about everyone has performed it. Wikipedia alone mentions over thirty “most famous” artists who covered it, not to mention the many lesser-known versions.
While researching, I uncovered many interesting facts, some of which later turned out to be popular myths. The most intriguing one was that this song was supposedly the anthem of the fascist Luftwaffe. A compelling story, but a myth nonetheless.
Three years ago, also in November, I wrote a review of Maxim Dorofeev’s book Jedi Techniques. In it, Maxim aimed to consolidate the essence of his time-management training. The book was very good, although it didn’t reinvent the wheel. Now, Maxim has released its follow-up, The Jedi Way.
However, calling it a sequel isn’t quite accurate. The new book is more a reflection on his earlier advice and a re-evaluation of his own methods. In this way, I actually liked it even more than the first.
As I mentioned, in the first book, Maxim compiled what he considered the best elements from numerous methods. He amusingly illustrated these concepts through the characters of a rational little person and a monkey, supposedly living in our heads and competing for our attention and time. These characters were borrowed from Tim Urban, and they fit seamlessly into the narrative.
However, these were largely well-known techniques and tips from other methods. Maxim simply brought them together and presented them in an appealing way.
Lately, things have been quite difficult for various reasons, so I haven’t been able to write much in my blog, though there’s plenty to say. For now, I’ll share another song by the Belarusian bard Alexander Bal. Staying silent is truly impossible, so at least I can share facts and tell the world what’s happening in my homeland. And Alexander has done this very well with his new song.
I continue reading books about the experience (though calling it “life” is impossible) in Nazi death camps. This time, I’ve taken up a short but well-known book by world-renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl. When he was sent to a concentration camp, he tried to hide the manuscript of his book, but he couldn’t save it. So, he began gathering insights and “writing” the book in his mind and secretly on scraps of paper, as a way to hold onto sanity amidst the horrors of the camp and to find something to cling to—something to survive for.
When he was finally liberated, he quickly recorded all he had reflected on during those horrific years in the form of a book, which he initially didn’t even want to publish under his real name, though he was eventually persuaded otherwise. In 1946, the book was published as Man’s Search for Meaning.
Although Viktor Frankl lived many more years, passing away in 1997 at the age of 92, this book is considered one of his greatest works.
I once heard an incredible song from my daughters, and it quickly found a place in my playlist. The song is called 7 Years, performed by the Danish band Lukas Graham. Interestingly, Lukas Graham is also the name of the lead singer (using his father’s surname), though he’s better known in everyday life as Lukas Forchhammer.
Lukas has a rather unusual background. He was born in 1988 in Freetown Christiania. This is technically part of Copenhagen but is an anarchist community with its own set of laws—a kind of state within a state. On one hand, residents prohibit theft and hard drugs; on the other hand, they legally sell soft drugs. It’s a fascinating place, and I recommend reading about it: Freetown Christiania. I saw it from the water when I visited friends in Copenhagen with my family, though we didn’t go inside.
So, Lukas was born and raised in this charismatic place. However, since his father was Irish, he also spent a significant part of his childhood in Ireland.
The song 7 Years was released by the band in 2015, when Lukas was 27. It’s impressive how such young people could write such a powerful song about growing up. What really struck me was the lyrics. Of course, the song itself is also beautifully performed.
Give it a listen, and below, I’ll share the lyrics separately.
The Winter Queen, the first novel by Boris Akunin about Erast Fandorin, was released in 1998 and almost immediately caused a sensation in literary circles. I usually approached widely popular books with caution, so I didn’t start reading the series about the remarkable detective until Boris Akunin had already written seven or eight books. But once I devoured the first one, I eagerly moved on to the next. And so it went until I had read them all in succession.
After that, I consistently bought each new book in the series as soon as it was released, read it right away, and waited for the next one. However, after the tenth book, The Diamond Chariot, I felt that the best days were behind. The books were still good, but they no longer sparked the same excitement as the earlier ones. The final novel, Not Saying Goodbye, where Erast Petrovich finally leaves, brought more sadness and melancholy than anything else. After fifteen novels, his story came to an end, but I still longed to revisit it, hopefully at the level of the best books.
Then, in 2020, Boris Akunin unexpectedly released the novel Just Masa. No, it’s not about Erast Petrovich, but rather about his loyal servant and companion—the Japanese Masahiro Shibata. Masa first appears in the fourth novel in the series, The Death of Achilles. As I recall, Akunin describes the first meeting between Erast Fandorin and the young yakuza from Yokohama in the tenth novel, The Diamond Chariot, where much of the story focuses on the young detective’s life in Japan.
