DV: First, the question of questions: What is happening?
Teddy Moskov: Here's what: some giant landslide has started - sticky, at an irritatingly slow speed. And I'm looking for my place in relation to it. I hesitate whether to stand behind or in front of the landslide. Being in front makes you flexible and surviving. And being in the back turns you into some self-confident, analytical, arrogant and scientifically observing being.
I am sure of one thing - I am not and will not be inside the landslide, even though I indirectly participated in its creation with my "low-culture" activity. I took myself a little too seriously, but the one who answers questions is not crazy, but the one who asks them. One to zero for me!
DV: Okay, 0:1. What does the "digital Bulgarian revolution" look like through the eyes of a self-confessed "analog" creator?
T. Moskov: For me, this revolution is not digital, but "digital". I do not have, nor do I want to have a common language with digital people. Let them measure the level of the Danube River in centimeters and not hang out in front of my eyes. Two to zero for me!
OK, 0:2. Are you dying of laughter?
T. Moskov: I come to life from laughter. One dies not from laughter, but from sadness or stupidity. The latter can be interpreted as meaning that for me sadness and stupidity are the same. But no! Stupidity is not sadness. However, it is sad. Sad both to observe and to live with.
DV: Today there are protests on the streets again. Should I ask a question here?
T. Moskov: That is the question - to ask or not to ask? Also to answer or not? Here is my answer or not: I remember when there were no protests in our country for nearly half a century. For such a "specific" period, your questions, and my answers, will be more curious. Three to zero for me!
DV: 0:3, I don't know how I will get back into the match. How would you explain the current political situation and today's Bulgaria in general to someone like Jean-Pierre Martinez?
T. Moskov: Neither he cares, nor I care what he cares about regarding our life-being. Besides, he is an author of situational comedies, not life-like ones. And I am not into explanations. Especially those of jokes. As Ivan Kulekov likes to say: "We live in a joke. In a stupid joke."
DV: Doesn't one get tired of satirizing life itself, and also of breaking down forms in a cultural sense? Personally, I am honestly already a little disenchanted, looking at the results.
T. Moskov: I am moderately tired and I am already in a mostly autobiographical mood, a little "Darik Nostalgie". I am looking for clever reasons for the stupid things I have done. It is easier to find stupid reasons for wisdom...
DV: How do you cultivate an ironic view of the world? You also have students, i.e. the great, still ancient academic responsibility of the "learner" or "sharer of experience".
Teddy Moskov: I am educating with a mocking look, because irony does not contain sympathy for a person. And regarding the students - only the one who wants to be educated can acquire some education. Most of those with whom I communicated did not feel such a desire. That is why we parted "so krotce, so blago".
DV: Has the postmodern cynicism that, it seems to me, we professed set in? It requires a certain intellectual strain in the audience, so I am still not optimistic.
Teddy Moskov: You caught me off guard with this cynicism. With just one question, you evened the score - three to three! There will be penalties. If cynicism is cynicism with a "c", then our "civilization" is in a magnificent sunset. For now, I perceive this sunset only as a harbinger of some pleasant evening and I don't feel anxious. Well, I've put on a life jacket of knowledge for survival among people who confuse Gogol with Google, between which there are as many as 9 differences... Honestly, I'm sick of this civilization of ours - boredom, so boredom!
DV: What will replace our kind of laughter and our deliberate self-deprecation in a world where everyone is offended by nothing and nothing?
Teddy Moskov: Donny, although a musician, has written a wonderful play. In it, the characters are forbidden to have names. They are given numbers. I think that in a world dominated by numbers, letters will soon become redundant.
DV: How would you comment on the decline of media political satire (to the extent that it still existed), strangled by being squeezed by large bodies?
Teddy Moskov: Sunset for some is sunrise for others. And in our country there has never been political satire at a high level. Because whatever the level of mockery is, such is the level of the mocker.
DV: Okay, finally I have to admit something - it was difficult for me to say in the "official text" things that were discussed in a friendly manner. Thank you very much for taking on the role of our great contemporary director Teddy Moskov especially for this interview. You didn't do very well, you were a bit like Tsetso Elvisa to Elvis, but let's not be maximalists.
Teddy Moskov: You're wrong! He was like Elvis Presley to Tsetso Elvis... Actually, if I look at the two Elvises in a super philosophical way - I can't borrow 100 leva from Elvis Presley, but I can from Tsetso Elvis. So today he's the one who's useful. We need to look for him! We should strive for him. The result was 4 to 3 for...?
DV: For me. Even though I "bribed" the judge, no matter how much I believe in the rare nature of honest cultural thinking (laughter).
* Ivaylo Noizi Tsvetkov asked the questions to Teddy Moskov.