I met Svitlana more than a year ago, in the spring of 2022. She had contacted the project I volunteered for at the time (“Sisters for Sisters”), offering to host a series of workshops on creative and therapeutical writing. I took the initiative and helped her organise a few of these events. However, our friendship had something more than a mere working relation. We both loved heavy music and something simply clicked when we met. We went to some concerts together and became something that one could call ‘gym bros’ (or I should better say, ‘gym sis’).
This is why I was more than delighted when I heard that Svitlana agreed to talk with me and help me with starting my blog. She is a writer, scenarist who has a lot of experience working in the Ukrainian TV, so I felt like this was quite a symbolical move to start off these “Stories” series with her thoughts and feelings in particular.
Svitlana Kostrykina is a war refugee from Kyiv who had to flee from Ukraine in 2022, but she is also a person from the metal/punk scene. I feel excited and giggly that we can talk about the one thing I love the most in the world which is heavy music.
We meet in a cafe on a sunny September day. She’s wearing a baggy “Cult Of Luna” T-Shirt, smokey eyeshadows and earrings that represent the Sun. One might argue that this seems a little symbolical because “Svitlo” stands for “light” in the Slavic languages. Svitlana is smiling, ordering a cup of latte and like a true writer taking out her notebook and pen. We sit down to have our drinks, take pictures and talk.
Since it’s September, I will start our dialogue in a very awkward way – by talking about the weather. What do you like and dislike the most in the autumn?
The colour of the trees, the near Halloween times when everything is slow, mystical and full of mist. You feel like you are entering a different dimension. You can slow down and enjoy the life itself. I guess that the last days of October and the first days of November are my favourite times of the year. Perhaps even more than the golden autumn. Golden autumn, of course, is beautiful, but the later part of autumn is simply amazing.
Even with the zeppelin colour sky?
Yes. Even with that! I really like autumn. It feels more real. In summer everybody around me goes nuts. Everybody must have fun, chill out. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong there.
In autumn, however, people get more melancholic, and I guess I am just naturally melancholic as a person. I believe this is one of the reasons why I like Lithuania so much. Lithuanians are melancholic and this is why I feel kinda home. Therefore, I think that if I lived in Portugal, Spain or any other “optimistic” country, it would be much harder for me. Party life is not for me.
What do you prefer then, if the party life isn’t for you?
I like thinking, having deep conversations, deep connections. Exploring different cities, the nature. In Ukraine, I had a tradition to go to Odesa in November to watch the sea, because I view the sea as a place of enjoyment, not a place of swimming.
What would you do in Odesa? Wasn’t it cold out there in November?
Yes. It was! It is generally colder in the seaside. So I would walk there on the seashore, drink coffee and just enjoy the atmosphere.
I started writing my book in Odesa. It’s the book I recently wrote about, the book that would be published soon in Ukraine. I don’t know how to translate the title. ““Dead living water” maybe (“Мертва жива вода” in Ukrainian). It was actually the publisher’s idea. The first title was “The wood, the storm and the female’s name.” However, the publisher decided that “Мертва жива вода” would be a better name.
They are waiting for next year for the book to be published. I am really looking forward to it, because it was a crazy project which took a lot of time and effort. It took nearly five years to finish it.
Now that I think about what I don’t like in autumn is that the weather sometimes gets way too cold.
Do you get depressed in autumn?
Last year was very depressive and lonely to me. It was the first year of full-scale war. I found myself living alone in a foreign country. It was very hard. I didn’t have a support group as a foreigner. Under regular circumstances, if you are an expat and you get upset, you can get support from your friends. Then it’s your turn to support them. However, in my case all of my friends were either war refugees also or they stayed in Ukraine and they were already suffering from their own problems. None of us have enough energy to support each other like we used to. We are going through the worst period of our lives.
Having said that, I still love the autumn.
Glad to hear that. Now, tell me some interesting facts that I don’t know about you.
(Laughs). Well, I can tell you about a TV series recorded via Zoom, with Kazakh productions. It was all volunteer based and the editor quit, so we weren’t able to finish the production, premiere it. I still feel sad about it. It somehow relates to the war. I remember that one of the actors from the series has recently died in the front line. That’s so unfortunate, because he and his wife made a great appearance via Zoom in their apartment.
How the hell would you make a series via Zoom?
The worst part of the entire work was to put it all together. The editor quit in a very bad manner. We didn’t find anyone to replace him, because it was a really difficult job. Quarantine was coming to an end, therefore nobody wanted to volunteer or work for a very small wage anymore. Everybody went back to their “real” jobs, while this project has been lying somewhere on my computer in Kyiv ever since.
When I think about it, I remember how many people volunteered to take part and it makes me sad. My friend’s parents were living in Kazakhstan and she met a local producer there who didn’t have a lot of money, but wanted to experiment. He’s actually very pro-Ukranian, not some kind of a vatnik. So this project proved once more that if you have an idea, all the things will start coming together and bringing form to it. I guess the main takeaway is that it’s better to finish a project, even if it’s not perfect.
Then everybody started filming Zoom series, even “Parks and Recreation” did their version via Zoom. It wasn’t original anymore.
Now when I think about the quarantine, I think the restrictions were a lot worse here in Lithuania than in Ukraine. For a few weeks at the beginning we were not allowed to go to the park and I was really angry.
We were forbidden to leave town for an extended period of time. Apparently, we would infect other people, especially the elderly who were immunocompromised. Doctors still have haunting memories from that period. How was it in Kyiv?
The same. Kyiv has more people than entire Lithuania. There weren’t enough places in the hospitals. It was tough, but when the war started, everybody forgot about Covid. As if didn’t exist anymore. Perhaps some people got covid, but that was way better than getting killed by a missile.
On a more positive note, is there a relation between the fact that you love autumn, gloom and the fact that you enjoy metal music? Even today you are wearing a “Cult of Luna” T-shirt, a smokey eyeshadow.
It’s a part of my identify. Of course it’s important to me. I have started listening to heavier music in the late 2000s, maybe 2005. I was 17 or 18 years old back then. In my school, it was very non-progressional to listen to metal. I attended a school in the outskirts of Kyiv, so there were mainly hopniks, guys with tri paloski. Today many of my classmates have their own businesses or are fighting in the front lines, have started their own families. So in general they are kind people.
But back then there wasn’t any internet available and you couldn’t get out of your shell, your bubble so easily. So you lived and you listened to the radio, Russian Hits, Backstreet Boys, Scooter and other popular songs.
However, I remember being invited to an event with a guy I had a crush on at that time. He invited me to go to a metal festival which was called the “Global Battle of the Bands”, but he didn’t go, so I ended up attending the event with his other friend, which I became a bestie with. We were both so inspired by the nu-metal music that I had started listening to it ever since.
Later on I found out about the portal https://www.neformat.com.ua/. It still exists today and even became a popular music media. I found new friends there – we started hanging out together and going to concerts. I started listening to all kinds of different music styles, such as emo, screamo, death metal, black metal, etc.
I have always wanted to maintain my femininity and I didn’t want other people to perceive me as a poser, so I tried to look quite usual. To this day I still think that it was a bad decision. I remember going to a hairdresser and wanting to get bangs, but I didn’t because I wasn’t a poser. It was a bad decision. You need to do what you want to do when you are in your twenties.
When I remember these times, they were fun. We went to many concerts, travelled to other cities. Perhaps I was too stressed and scared. Travelling has always been stressful to me. I feel like I’m almost panicking when I am going somewhere, even if in the same city. Maybe it’s because I spent my entire childhood travelling between Ukraine and Belarus.
Have you been to any big metal festivals?
No. Never. I have never been to a festival where you need to sleep in a tent before. Only to gigs. Oh, I actually attended a festival which took place in Crimea. Me and my friend rented a house, and the house was made out of some kind of a crazy material. My friend had a severe allergic reaction to this material, so we had to stay outside in the yard without any sleep.
So this festival was called the “Metal Head’s Mission”. I attended them on several occasions – maybe in 2006 and in 2010 – I don’t remember the exact dates. However, I have never been to a festival where you sleep in a tent and it seems a bit scary to me.
I guess that in Lithuania it’s quite different because this country is small and everyone is more mobile: it’s easy to go from one destination to another. In Ukraine, if you want to go to the Carpathian Mountains, you have to spend 13-18 hours on a train. It’s hard. All the distances are long. If you’re travelling, you need two days only to get somewhere. Still, a lot of people did that and had a chance to meet people from the scene all around.
Haven’t you considered going to the Wacken Metal Battle in Germany?
It was difficult to get a visa to Europe when I was a teenager or in my early 20s. You had to have a good job, a stable amount of money to be eligible for the visa. So the first time I went abroad was probably in 2014. I already had a job back then in the television and I went to an electronic music festival “Unsound” in Krakow, because “Swans” were also playing there. It was an exciting experience as I got to see Krakow, Poland and “Swans” at the same time.
I don’t really like electronic music, but I’m interested in experiments. I don’t remember if I have told you about my friend Vlad Suppish from Bucha with whom I did the story “The Sand” with modular drone music in the background. I truly loved the making of it as it was so much fun – you have all these things that look like from the future that you make the music with.
We both knew we were going to be talking about metal. It feels so natural to me, so inevitable. To me, it’s more interesting to talk about the metal music than, for instance, talk about the television.
True! Now I remembered that we made a TV show about tattoos. It was so much fun! It was my first experience working with reality TV shows. It was filmed in real tattoo parlours. Real people told their stories, how they got their tattoos and this experience just was mind-blowing. We had a little budget, but a lot of creative freedom and we could do what we wanted.
The sad thing was that after the 3rd episode, the whole channel “City” was bought by an oligarch or something. They shut down everything, including this series, and started showing commercial things instead.
You can watch full episodes here:
You can speak Lithuanian pretty well. How come?
Well, I went to this writers’ residency in Molėtai this summer, and there was this poet, Rita Milerytė, who spoke neither English, nor Russian, so I had to take up this challenge and speak Lithuanian. Actually, the first time I tasted šaltibarščiai was with her, made by her. I could have gone to any restaurant before, but I didn’t because I wanted to try a home made version.
This entire writers’ residency was an amazing experience to me which I truly enjoyed. We went to the museum of Ethnocosmology and it was my favourite thing. You have these pagan shrines in the premises of the museum and they seem so exotic to me. People having these pagan rituals here in Lithuania still amaze me. It’s not so popular in Ukraine.
To be honest, I was surprised when I realised that people from the rock, metal, punk scenes in Lithuania are quite interested in Baltic ethnology, costumes, etc. I like how you guys are keen on preserving your culture. Back in the day, before 2013-2014, these things weren’t popular in Ukraine, unless you were exceptionally patriotic. If you were a punk, you didn’t even think about these traditions – they were not really comprehensible to us. Here, the situations is completely different.
It’s actually more popular amongst metalhead than punks in Lithuania.
Well, in Ukraine this was popular amongst the folk metal scene perhaps. So I like this pagan symbolism, especially when I visited the museum of Ethnocosmology and saw all these symbols of the sun – the sun holidays – šventės Summer solstice and Autumn equinox. These astronomical holidays. I saw this pagan shrine near Molėtai. It was very interesting to observe.
You have lived in Vilnius for more than a year now. Have you seen any local metal bands? What were your impressions?
Actually, going to see the local bands was one of the first things that I did when I just arrived to Lithuania. 2 or 3 days after my arrival, I started googling for ‘post metal Lithuania’, ‘post metal Vilnius’. I wanted something comfortable, something from my previous life in Ukraine that could connect me to my new life here in Lithuania.
You may not have a place to live yet, but you want to experience something familiar. Something that feels the same everywhere. It’s like going to McDonald’s for some people. You come from USA to Ukraine and you go to McDonald’s to feel like you’re at home again.
So can I conclude that metal to you is like McDonald’s to other people?
Yes. A little piece of home. Wherever you are, when you go to a metal or punk concert, people look the same everywhere. That’s just like finding your tribe.
So, when I just arrived, I googled “Au-Dessus“. They were having a show with “Sisyphean” and some other bands in “Kablys” club. Then, I went to some shows in “XI20”. Now I can even provide the list of my favourite Lithuanian bands!
First of all, it’s “Extravaganza” from Kaunas. My first impression of them was that these guys looked like they worked in “Sodra” (Social Security Institution in Lithuania), but they played the best music ever. Then, it would be “Aortes”, a band which plays post metal. Other ones are “Deprivacija” and “Degra”.
When I think about it, I went to these concerts really because I wanted to feel like I’m at home. I knew what would come next in the show. I wanted to feel something traditional. When people immigrate to other countries, they try to preserve their native traditions. Well, going to metal concerts is kinda my personal ritual.
The best show to me here so far was this event with “Aortes”, “Extravaganza” and “Degra”. It was simply amazing and heavy. Do you remember 2006, when we went to these secret gigs in schools and canteens? When you lived in your bubble, in the outskirts of Kyiv, and by going to such gigs you were experience something real, something substantial? This concert had such a vibe.
We end our talk here and continue our meeting outside, heading to a local cemetery which is situated right next to the shopping mall. We end up going across it to take a few photos next to a mural near a church. Sun is still shining, sunrays glistering on Svitlana’s earrings of the sun.
Deviant Generation 