BARS & BORDERS - Musical Prose with Sofia Soul 🎤📖 🎸

shemzee (71)freewriterin Freewriters • 4 days ago

artwork & poetry specially provided by NS

Dear friends,

Inner Bulgaria: Between System and Symbol

Stan’s rap piece “/K/RAY?” is more than a contest entry. It’s a question carved into rhyme: where does our love for homeland end, and where does resistance to the state begin?

The critics saw sarcasm, metaphor, anger — but also a strange tenderness. Between “wannabe alpha males” and “naked knights of the soup spoon,” Stan built not just a satire of politics, but a fragile vision of an “Inner Bulgaria”: a garden of black angels, rain that purifies, and songs that heal.

Reading the review, Stella and Nina sit with cigarettes and silences, torn between exile and return. Their dialogue hits hard: under dictatorships you know the enemy; under vulgar democracies, the enemy looks like you. What do you resist then — and what do you protect?

Perhaps that’s why the song resonates. It doesn’t sell answers. It asks if there’s still a third way: not Moscow, not Ganyo, but ourselves. A mirror and a garden. A symbol and a system. A fragile road forward — if we don’t stop watering it.

BARS & BORDERS

Stan's participation in the contest didn’t go unnoticed.
There was media coverage ranging from blatantly ridiculous headlines like “Stanislav Stratiev Wins Rap Contest” — his last name was actually Stratev, but who bothers to listen — to equally silly claims that his song, by criticizing the Transition, was somehow glorifying socialism.
There were also smartly written reviews, like Nina’s article in ContraCult.
That very article was what Stella was reading, sitting on the veranda of the Kingston cottage.

“(K)RAY” – The Poetics of an Emigrant Truth
by Dr. Antonina Koleva
“/K/RAY?” is not just a rap song that won a contest. It’s a poetic and political manifesto that rearranges our ideas of homeland, identity, and protest.
In the context of the post-socialist transition, the song speaks with the voice of a generation that grew up between borders — geographical, emotional, and cultural.
Here, rap is not a genre. It’s a platform — for critical reflection, for pain, and for hope.

Homeland vs. State — The Fracture of Affection
The core axis of the lyrics draws a sharp line between the words “country” and “state”.
This distinction taps into the deepest tension in modern Bulgarian identity:
How do you love your homeland when the system keeps pushing you away?
In this conflict between the personal and the institutional, the song takes an unwavering stance:
Loving your country doesn’t mean staying silent in the face of injustice. On the contrary — it demands a voice.

Rap as Confession and Tribunal
“/K/RAY?” is not just a contest-winning track. It’s an act of cultural disobedience.
Its lyrics dismantle the fake foundations of state-sponsored patriotism, replacing them with vivid images from 21st-century social realism:
• “a crowd of Todor-Zhivkov clones,”
• “wannabe alpha males,”
• “naked knights of the soup spoon.”
These metaphors are not only sarcastic — they’re deeply symbolic. They strip bare the moral vacuum of contemporary public life.
This is hip-hop not as decoration, but as deconstruction.
The song becomes a public mirror — the reflection is unflattering, but honest.

Searching for an Inner Bulgaria
Amid the anger and sarcasm, a second thread emerges — quiet, poetic, almost mystical.
Stan speaks of an “Inner Bulgaria” — a metaphorical garden where dwell:
• black angels,
• rain that purifies,
• songs that heal.
This isn’t just poetic language. It’s an act of myth-making.
The artist doesn’t want to destroy old myths — he wants to craft new ones.
Not through slogans, but through symbols.
The garden becomes the new birthplace — not geographic, but spiritual.

Dialogue, Not Dogma
This is a rare rap text that doesn’t insist on one truth but treats reality as a polyphony.
Just like in good music — where the beat and lyrics sometimes clash — it’s in the tension that depth is born.

The Title as Philosophical Code
The title “/K/RAY?” is a miniature philosophical treatise.
Three meanings, one hesitation:
• KRAI – the end of illusions, naïveté, submission.
• RAI – the lost utopia, the Bulgaria that could’ve been.
• (K) – the bracketed letter that calls everything into question.
This formal play is more than a stylistic trick — it’s a conceptual act.
A sculpted phrase that holds within it themes of loss, hope, and self-reflection.

“/K/RAY?” isn’t just a prize-winning track. It’s a symptom of our time —
A time when young people voice their deepest fears and dreams through art.
It’s a song that doesn’t just speak — it thinks.
And it makes us think, too.

That was the article Stella was reading, sitting on the veranda in Kingston.
Physically, at least. Mentally, she was 7,000 kilometers away — with him.
On the table in front of her: a glass of lemon balm tea.
In her hand: an unlit cigarette.
She always tried to keep cigarettes around when her soul trembled.
Nina sat down beside her. She didn’t ask. Just sat and lit one.
Usually, their silences lasted only a blink — enough to understand each other.
— Did you read it? — Nina asked.
— I did… — Stella whispered.
— And?
— It’s really well written. The homeland and the State.
How do you love both?
— Or how do you not end up hating both? — Nina smiled.
— I like your article… — said Stella.
— It feels like Stan said out loud everything we never dared to even whisper. Back then.
— Because we still believed there was a choice — Nina replied.
— And he already knows there isn’t.
Or that the choice is always between two kinds of loss.
— Foreign dictatorship or domestic vulgarity? — Stella asked, surprising even herself.
— Are those really the only two poles? Or just the ones we’re sold as “truth”?
— They’re sold to us, yes — because once you accept that those are the only options, you stop looking for a third way.
Say “either the USSR or Ganyo,” and any thinking person will reject both.
But then you’re told: “These are your options.”
And that’s it. You’re caught.
You resign yourself to Todor Zhivkov — a sort of Bay Ganyo socialist.
He kisses the feet of Soviet comrades, and keeps his own people in line.
— So what is Stan saying with this song? — Stella looked at her, eyes full of both affection and fear.
— With his “Inner Bulgaria”? Is that the third way?
Nina looked up. The cigarette smoke curled like a thin border between thought and feeling.
— Maybe.
But it’s a dangerous path.
Because Inner Bulgaria doesn’t give pensions, visas, or peace of mind.
It’s quiet, fragile, invisible.
But if we lose it, there’ll be nothing left worth coming back for.
— Or worth leaving for — Stella smiled sadly.
— Isn’t that part of the problem too?
That under a dictatorship, you know who the enemy is.
But when it’s Ganyo in charge — he jokes, swears, pats you on the back… and calls himself “one of us.”
— And you don’t know who to hate anymore — because he looks just like you — Nina added.
— And the scariest part? Maybe that’s the truth.
Stella bit her lip.
Silence fell for a moment — dense, trembling, almost merciful.
— I can’t go back — she said softly.
— But I can’t stay, either.
— You’re not the first. Or the last.
But at least you feel it.
Most people just adapt and start saying, “Eh, it’s the same everywhere.”
And that’s the real end.
No brackets around the K.
Just plain END.
— Or PARADISE — if you stop fighting, stop resisting, stop wanting more — Stella added.
— Exactly.
And Stan’s song is asking the question:
“Have we reached the end? Or is there still a road ahead?”
— And could that road lead not through Moscow or Slavyanovo… but through ourselves? — Stella whispered.
Nina stubbed out her cigarette.
— It could.
If we’re ready to look in the mirror.
And not twist the image just to make it more bearable.
— Enough with mirrors — Stella smiled. — I prefer gardens. Even the inner kind.
— As long as you water them. And don’t turn them into museums — Nina said.
— Because if Bulgaria remains only a symbol, it will be defenseless.
— And if it remains only a system — it will be unbearable.
— So we need both symbol and system. And Stan. — Nina laughed.
— He’ll wrap it all in rhyme.
— And us?
— We’ll be the audience that still hasn’t given up on thinking.
And hoping.