Private Story
Guggi Vs Google
Summary
The story is about building a person - an artist, a musician; about upbringing from a distance, about the unshared everyday life and holidays, about the inability to hug your loved ones, but with the clear awareness that this is ok and this is the price of dreams come true.
During the pandemic and the new habit of Zoom time, many people had a similar experience that we have had for fourteen years now.
During the pandemic and the new habit of Zoom time, many people had a similar experience that we have had for fourteen years now.
Both World Wide Web and Guggi* were born in 1989. His mother's** childhood dream is that the whole world's information can fit into one big box. How big? – she doesn't know. Years later, a substantial part of her life and that of her son will fit into the boxes of different devices, no matter what they are, as long as they are plugged into the network so they can't break the mother-son connection. Letters, shared photos, and files track long-distance family relationships for years and turn a boy into a man.
Musicians and actors always have their person in the audience, their "anchor" during the performance. Thanks to Livestreams, his mother can watch and listen to concerts. It will take years for Guggi to find his new anchors.
The love of Mozart connects four generations of musicians in the family. Guggi doesn't know his grandparents because they died a long time ago. Mozart is the home screen of all computers from which the connection is made. It's like a portrait of a relative that hangs on the wall, and you can communicate with him when you need it.
Like so many others in the past years, this story is full of joy, sadness, fears, or otherwise life, but the frozen screenshots compensate for the missed moments and the moments not lived together with a loved one.
*Bulgarian-born percussionist Georgi Videnov (Guggi) graduated with a Master's in Percussion Performance degree from the Yale School of Music, studying with world-renowned marimba virtuoso Prof. Robert van Sice. He was appointed as a Timpanist of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra in Japan for their 2012–13 season, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (2015-16 season), and the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra since 2017. Full bio here
** His mother is the photographer Bissera Videnova
Our Story
I often joked when I was raising my son as a child that I wanted to save him money in the future from a psychoanalyst.
And when I asked him if he would buy me a house on some distant and steep shore because I invested all my resources in his dreams, he answered with another joke - do not expect anything from me; if you are capable of everything, then you are capable to by yourself a house of some wild beach.
I am grateful that our communication is complete, although, from a distance, I did not allow myself to cling to my relationship with him for a moment.
My parents died when I was sixteen, and after a series of failures to realize some dreams, after many battles and deeds with relatives, at age twenty-two, I decided it was high time to have a child.
My orphanhood was mainly on a mental level because I had incredible parents, and I learned a lot in the short time we were together.
I was hoping for a similar full-fledged relationship with my child or children. The difficult times of the transition after the fall of the communist regime and the entry from one crisis into another made us insecure.
When my son went to study on the other side of the world fourteen years ago, the vast gap yawned again in me—the same as when I lost my parents.
I didn't have the opportunity to take pictures of him. We rarely saw each other. So I started taking screenshots and collecting photos he sent to show his new way of life, asking for advice, or sharing another culture shock he was exposed to with me.
So, I learned to live without the pain of missing my loved ones - my son was on another continent, and my parents were probably on another planet.
The paradox is that when many people worldwide were separated because of the pandemic and used their computers and phones for any social activities, we were fortunate to spend nine and a half months together - so many doctors said that I once carried him with me.
My victory is that I managed to teach him to keep his heart open to love and his mind not to obey restrictions and that so far, he has not sought help from a psychoanalyst.
Everything is fine if we have access to electricity and Wi-Fi and different sized "boxes".
Bissera Videnova
Guggi vs GoogleBoth the World Wide Web and Guggi were born in 1989. His motherâs childhood dream is if the whole world can fit into one big box. How big? â she doesnât know...
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