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Freddie My Story
ABOUT
ME
Hello everybody; my name is Daria; I live in
My story
I was born in
My father was a teenager in the 70s
and it seemed that the interest for the Western world among the Soviet youth
started to increase; but as music from the West was prohibited until the fall
of Soviet Union in 1991 – except for some ultra famous bands and/or musicians
as The Beatles who were extra pressed on a Soviet label, often on blue flexi
discs, and a little bit later Boney M. and ABBA –
there was circulating an illegal market with a selection of Queen, Yes, Led
Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Co. tapes (! – not even LP’s). My father
regularly listened at his friend’s home to the music from the above mentioned
artists; his band even played “Love Of My Life” at their school concerts.
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991
everything had changed; my parents – meanwhile opera singers – were earning
enough money to ‘keep us alive’ but life was getting harder and perspectives
for a life time work in Ukraine as an artist were deteriorating. In the winter
of 1993, my mother received a contract from the Viennese “Staatsoper”
and consequently we settled down in Austria.
At the beginning it was very
difficult to integrate and especially to learn the language, but now I’m quite
familiar with this new life. If you should ask me whether I feel as an Austrian
or Ukrainian I’d honestly say it is hard to tell – though in my heart I’m
certainly a Ukrainian, I feel like a citizen of the worldJ.
You may ask now how I got introduced
to Queen… that was indeed very exciting… My father bought the “A Night At The
Opera” album just when it was released on CD in winter/spring 1994; when I have
heard it for the first time, I thought it was opera, because it said ‘opera’ on
the cover. I was so amused by the funny pieces, especially “Seaside
Rendezvous”, “Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon” and “Good Company” and I
immediately liked “Love Of My Life”. When I’ve heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” for
the first time I really had a strange feeling, especially when my father told
me then that the man who wrote this song sadly died in 1991. Although I could
not understand English then I turned really sad as ‘the man’ started to sing
‘Mama…’.
My parents and I often listened to
this album but as school and life was getting complicated with the time, I soon
forgot it and rediscovered it just some time after I turned into a teenager, in
2001 or 2002. My interest for Queen and especially for Freddie Mercury started
at this point.
I tried to learn something about the
people behind this wonderful music – but doing this, I discovered a lot of
controversial and indiscreet information about Freddie Mercury; I learned that
there were and still are many rumours about him and so I began to scrutinize
the information I received.
But even if there are still things
to be discovered, it is sure that Freddie Mercury was an outstanding artist and
a warm-hearted human being, unlike sadly many of tabloid papers and books are
trying to make you believe.
***
Something about me…
I am a very curious human being; I’m
interested in many aspects of life and I always like exploring new ideas and
views.
I’m fascinated by philosophy, music,
classic literature, art, visual expression and foreign cultures and traditions.
In my spare time I like singing and
making music, reading, watching movies, being with my family, going out into
the nature and travelling.
Favourite writers/ philosophers:
Hermann Hesse, Fyodor
Dostoevsky, Plato, Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler,
Aristotle, Alexander Men, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke
and Hans Christian Andersen
Favourite film directors:
Andrei Tarkovski, Federico Fellini and Milos Forman
Some of my favourite movies:
“Solaris” by Andrei Tarkovski, “The Elephant Man”
by David Lynch, “The Idiot” by Ivan Pyryev, “One
Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” by Milos Forman, “East
Of Eden” by Elia Kazan,
“Rebel Without A Cause” by Nicholas Ray, “Forrest Gump” by Robert
Zemeckis, “La Strada” and “Dolce Vita” by Federico Fellini, “The Women” by Ken Russell, “Corrina Corrina” by Jessie
Nelson (with Whoopi Goldberg), “The Last Unicorn”
by Arthur Rankin Jr., classic soviet movies…
Some of my favourite albums in
popular music:
from top right to bottom left: “Queen
II”, “Barcelona”, “Dark Side Of The Moon” by
Pink Floyd, “Queen”,
“H To He Who Am The Only One” by Van der Graaf Generator, “Fragile” by Yes, “A Night At
The Opera”, “Selling England By The Pound” by Genesis, “Innuendo”,
“The Yes Album” by Yes, “Abbey Road” by The Beatles, “Tommy”
by The Who, “Led Zeppelin I”, “Where Have I Known You Before” by
Chick Corea, “The Wall” by Pink Floyd, “The
Best Of Bread” by Bread, “Days Of Future Past” by The Moody Blues, “Pyramid”
by The Alan Parsons Project, “Focus III” by Focus, “Classic Yes”
by Yes, “Led
Zeppelin II”):




I also do listen a little bit to ELP,
PFM, Jeff Beck, Vangelis,
Mike Oldfield, King Crimson,
Gentle Giant, Spooky Tooth, Cream, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Michael
Jackson, ABBA, Prince,
Elton John, David Bowie… I always try to discover new bands and
artists; at the time, I am very interested in Prog
Rock, Jazz/Fusion and Soul.
I love classical music as well (Bach,
Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Mahler, Chopin, Verdi, but also
Great Russian composers like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev) and the
modern composer Schnittke.
Art corner:
Here is one of my drawings of
Freddie Mercury (made in the summer 2005):
This is an oil-painting of Freddie –
finished on the 17th October 2006:

Here is one of the earliest I made
of him from approximately winter 2002 or spring 2003:
© Copyright
2006 - 2008; Daria Kokozej
(Contact Me)