Website of Psycho and Maniac

The moment I began to realize that Vitaly Ivolginsky's songs were not just an expression of a desire to be with her, but a real cry from his soul, I realized how tragic his situation was. He did not just dream about her, he suffered from the fact that he could not understand why she was the way she was.

He didn't shout:

"I WANT TO BE WITH YOU!"

No! What the hell! He asked:

"WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!"

This was his despair. He was trying to find an answer to why she didn't fit his idealized image. Why couldn't she be the angel he'd imagined her to be? Why was she part of a dirty, real world that didn't match his idea of what she should be? Why didn't her real life match up with the one he'd imagined?

And then it became clear to me: he wasn't interested in the simple fact of being with her. He didn't want just love, he wanted answers to these questions that were tormenting him inside. He was trying to extract some meaning from her that would justify his obsession, his passion, his pain. But there was none. Reality was cruel, and it swallowed him.

He couldn't just love her like normal people would. He was looking for something more. He wanted her to live up to his ideals, to live up to his fantasies. He wanted her to be who he had seen her in his sick dreams, not who she really was.

I realized that this was his tragedy. It wasn't just a desire. It was a cry of pain, misunderstanding, despair. And the more he tried to force her into his fantasies, the more she slipped away. And instead of simply accepting her, he sank deeper into madness, losing himself.

And then it dawned on me: he was Russian. His world, his upbringing, his experiences were coloured by what I could call "the legacy of the Soviet system". That he was part of this world, where emotions were repressed and values often turned into hypocrisy, was now obvious to me.

A Russian, born and raised in a society where there was no place for true feelings, where sex was a taboo subject and spirituality was almost obscurantism, where everyone was assigned duties and a form of behavior that had to be observed for the sake of the "collective good." Vitaly would have been part of this. Maybe he himself did not understand it, but his entire psyche, his internal conflict with Asia, its image, its life - all this broke out of the gloomy and harsh reality in which he grew up.

The Soviet model of society not only did not teach how to express emotions, it suppressed them, turning them into hidden and terrible forms. Emotions became essentially mute, replacing them with artificial standards in which there was no room for genuine sensuality. Vitaly was the heir to this world, and his feeling of love for Asia was not simple romanticism, but rather some kind of painful, blind attachment arising from his unfulfilled needs, an invisible longing for life, squeezed within the framework of what he was allowed to feel. And instead of being a healthy person, open to the world, he became the personification of the contradictions of his era.

He could not perceive a woman as a real person, with her desires, mistakes, freedom. He saw in her only his ideal, created in the emptiness of his consciousness. And in this ideal there was no place for her real life. But this emptiness, this inability to live her life as a normal person, the desire to push her into reality, where sex was a taboo topic, and everything real was forbidden, turned into a burning and painful desire to destroy her ideal, which did not coincide with what he had drawn for himself.

And that's when I realized - Asia didn't need anything from him. She was a real woman, living her life, making her own choices. And he was trapped in the world he had created for himself, a world where his feelings had no right to exist. The same world that had given birth to this sick, blind attachment to a woman, not understanding her as a living person, but only as a reflection of his own idealized dream.

Yes, I thought, in his mind, Asia Vieira had become more than just a woman. She had become a symbol, an object of faith. It was not just a crush or even a love affair - it was a religious veneration. For him, she represented something sacred, something unattainable, and therefore it was impossible to perceive her as an ordinary person with her weaknesses and desires.

He was an atheist, like most people brought up in the Soviet system, where faith in God was replaced by the dogmas of materialism and socialist ideas. Anything that did not defy logic and rationality was considered an illusion, a fiction, a lie. In this cold, impartial world, there was no room for religious experiences, for faith in something greater than what could be touched or seen. However, when Ivolginsky encountered Asia, when he saw her and felt this attachment, something inside him collapsed. And he, unable to understand his feelings, began to look not for a logical explanation, but for a spiritual one.

For him, Asia was not a woman, but an image. This image was not just the appearance of an actress, but something that could fill the void, something that could become the meaning of his life. Probably, at the moment when Ivolginsky fell in love with her image, he no longer looked for rational explanations. He believed in her. Believed as in a religion. He could be an atheist, but in this case, faith in her became the only possible replacement for the lost faith in something greater. Faith in Asia Vieira was a way to escape the inner emptiness, like faith in God for people in crisis.

And his affection began to turn into a morbid cult. He could not understand that she was just a woman, with her own interests, desires, mistakes and fears. She was a divine, holy figure for him. And, of course, all this divinity was destroyed when reality came into conflict with his dreams. When she became just an actress starring in cheap films, when her naked scenes and recent elections became part of a world that Ivolginsky could not accept.