Natalia Przybysz: I started dreaming in English [WYWIAD]

Mieszko Marek Czarnecki: How is your life in Poland?

Natalia Przybysz: I love being here. I love my house. Our nature fascinates me. Every year I need her favor and volatility more and more. I need mountains, forests, lakes, the sea – their fertility, their gentleness.

Gentleness? In Poland?

That’s why I’m talking about nature. This is the strongest side of this country.

You bite your tongue.

Alright. The other strength of Poland is the increasingly developing civil disobedience, which I support with all my heart. The third is the richness of culture – festivals, exhibitions, concerts, events. We have a wonderful world of classical and popular music. Art in general. It is made up of a lot of very sensitive and creative people. This is also our great wealth.

And then there are many weaknesses. And maybe it is because life is difficult for us that we are so sensitive and so creative.

However, from a global perspective, Polish popular culture, especially popular music, is practically non-existent. The forty-million nation, despite the sensitivity, creativity and ingenuity of artists, practically does not exist in the space of popular music.

There are artists, such as my friend Hania Rani, who are making a world career. However, there is a lot of truth in the fact that we feel an invisible barrier around us, and we, artists, have no idea how to overcome it. We have some impressions, emotions that hold us back, limit us. I often experience similar thoughts myself.

“Cold War” by Paweł Pawlikowski is about this for me, about some kind of brake, internal ballast that prevents us Poles from spreading our wings with a clear conscience and being citizens of the world.

Easier to place hussar wings.

There’s something about it. In a way, I myself suffer from the conviction that I was born here, so I will create here, in this language, for these people. I was convinced that this was my karma, my path and my destiny. Sometimes even a fight. Now, right now, as I say these words, I feel that I believe less and less in this approach. Until recently, I was very proud of this attitude, and today I look at it more closely. I suffer from this bondage. A bit at will.

Has it ever occurred to you to record a song or an album right away with the idea that it would go out into the world?

Well just no! Not so far. Fortunately, I experienced a lot abroad while working on my last album. We recorded it on the Greek island of Hydra. Another clip was made in Croatia. At the same time, I traveled a lot, spoke a lot in English and started to think in English again – after a year in the United States, I passed my final exams in English. I started dreaming in English, and from here it’s half a step to expressing my feelings in English.

Does it come easier to you?

It started to come easier to me. I’ve been working on this a lot. In therapy, I discovered that even in English I can talk about what I feel. I realized that it is almost as easy or as difficult for me as in Polish. I started creating English-language versions of Hydra songs in my head, at first just for pranks and fun, but it started to make more and more sense with each passing moment. Maybe because this album was recorded abroad, I see for the first time that it’s Polish, but it’s not about that at all.

So “There” is not about what is here.

That’s it. It’s possible that this bondage of mine has become a bit of a nuisance by now. And yet it is the movement of the elements – water, air, emotions – that is the only indicator that we are, alive and healthy. On Hydra, I understood that you can’t sit in one place, that it’s bad to have no plans for any trip. At night, or on the couch in front of the TV or staring at the screen of the mobile phone, we put down roots, and then we have no idea why it is getting harder and harder for us. It seems to be full of content, but in place. Like unchecked baggage. Too heavy to fly.

It’s very nice.

Just one of the songs on the album. “Impossibility” is about how many of our dreams seem impossible that they overwhelm us with this unreality.

Once I had a dream about Japan. I was sitting somewhere. I felt I was in Japan. Amazing. Trees, mountains, roofs, air movement. When I woke up, I had to check the meaning of my dream right away. I talked about it with Sylvia Pogoda, a Slovak, and I tell her that according to the dream book, a dream about Japan means that I have too big dreams, that there are sufferings and disappointments ahead of me. That I should lower my expectations. And my friend said: “You must have read some Polish dream book?!”. Then I realized that some things are not even worth dreaming about, or even impossible.

Have you thought about living and dreaming somewhere else?

Not in Poland? When I was much younger. Since I became a mother, I began to become a tree with roots.

And when you were younger, with no ingrown roots, you listened to that Lauryn Hill, that Arrested Development, and they were great to you. Have you ever thought that you are starting to be great for others?

What??? Probably not “big”. During the pandemic, I gave a few singing lessons and it was a completely new experience for me. At the same time, I felt that it resulted from my need to share knowledge and experience. But to be an icon or role model for someone? More the need to share experience flows from the babysitter’s instinct. That “great” moment, if it comes at all, is far ahead of me. It sounds very hard, even overwhelming. I’d rather be a tiny bird in a huge happy tree. As in Miłosz’s poem.

At last year’s Oya festival in Oslo, while Nick Cave played to an audience of 20,000, on another stage, twenty-year-old rapper Musti played to over 5,000. Five thousand people chose Musti over Nick Cave.

Well, yes… Indeed, I sometimes feel that I am somehow important to those younger than me, but I do not accept it easily. Certainly, Natalia Przybysz public and Natalia Przybysz private have not yet stuck together. I don’t even know if that would be kind to me.

What do you think about twenties?

About the artists?

Let’s start with the artists, although they are an emanation of their generation.

Recently, I had the pleasure of performing “Wodecki Twist” alongside two exceptional people: Piotr Odoszewski and Wiktor Waligóra. They are great young artists – Wiktor recently had a test. Excellent vocalists and instrumentalists, slowly also arrangers. They are clearly on their way. I find myself wanting to give them recipes on how not to be crushed by show business, how to keep their freshness, credibility, keep the passion with which they entered this world. How to take care of a unique personality and peculiarity, which is inevitably lost somewhere along the way when you start being produced by the same producers who produce everyone else around you.

And when I was sitting with Wiktor and Piotrek, being impressed by their talents, I realized that life is all about the fact that there are no shortcuts. You have to live yours. I left them with the message that whenever they needed me, I would always be there to help them. And they seemed, in their sincerity, not to feel my concern for them at all.

This sounds like a parenting story.

A bit, yes, but here about parenthood in show business. About the support of an older friend who has already done a few things, but also had some bad experiences.

And what can we learn from them?

Totally enthusiastic jumping around the stage. Piotrek reminded me how much I love to go crazy on stage. They sing with a genuine smile on their face. It’s so wonderful to recall the sincere happiness that life brings when you approach it lightly.

Do you miss yourself singing with a smile and jumping on stage?

NO. Because that’s who I am now. This is not me from the past. I used to be sadder. Over the years, I have more and more lightness and joy, just more happiness. I am getting more and more in touch with myself. I used to be more of a machine, now I’m more and more – I would say – human every day.

We Do is a festival of contemporary Polish art and culture organized for the fifth time. From August 30 to September 3 in Oslo, Norway, several concerts, theater performances, film screenings and art workshops will take place. Participation in each of the events is free of charge. www.wedo.no.