Interview with Tania Borsky conducted by Bill Zebub
When I first heard your voice I lost the world. I felt a pain in my chest and my breath was caught in the cage of my lungs. My hand stopped the song, and I prepared to hear you again in a more fitting way. Plugging in the most expensive headphones on the market, turning off the lights, and laying on my bed, I closed my eyes and heard you again. Your voice touched me deeply. Yes, you are schooled in the art of singing. But beyond the techniques that you have sharpened, there is in your voice a sorrow that has drawn me. Please tell me that this sorrow you bear is real, and not an act. You affected me more than you can ever know. I would like to hear that my emotions were drawn by an honest lure. Tell me that your voice is more than melody. Tell me it is a soul that I hear.
I absolutely agree with you that that for certain kinds of music it is very important to create the right atmosphere to be able to understand the feelings inside of it. Of course it is even more important to create such an atmosphere when I sing and interpret a tune with as much passion as possible. Music is for me a kind of valve where I can let of all the pain I feel inside of me sometimes. While I sing a tune I really forget the world around me and only the tune becomes reality. Some people act out their feelings and sorrows by aggressions or sports, but music is my way to deal with this. For me sad and depressive music is the best way for this; in opposite to the common opinion that depressive music makes a person depressed. I think that it is the best form of music to get ride of those negative thoughts. In contrary happy, commercial music makes me depressive, because it is just a fake mask in front of a crying face.
I only have “In Darkness Let Me Dwell” – but I crave everything that has your voice. Your voice is beauty. If only I could remain in your spell forever. You take me away from time. So now I ask if there is anything else that I can buy. Everything that you have done I want to own. I would pay with my life if that is the price, so long as I could hear you as I die. I have written in a secret place that if there is a funeral service for me, it is your music that must be played while I lay in the casket. Even those who hate me would be made to weep. So tell me, what can I buy from you that I do not already have?
Sorry but for now there is only one DVKE CD existing where I sing.
After repeated listening, I was able to open up the CD booklet to discover what the lyrics were. I had not done this earlier because your voice was all that mattered to me – and of course your music was too intense for me to sit and read along. So I read the lyrics when the music was not playing, and I fell into deeper admiration for you when I learned your words. Let me cite some for the readers of this interview: “The color from the flower is gone, which, like thy sweet eyes, smiled on me. The odor from the flower is flown, which breathes of thee and only thee. A withered, lifeless, vacant form – it lies on my abandoned breast and mocks the heart which yet is warm, with cold and silent rest. I weep, my tears revive it not. I sigh, it breathes no more on me. Its mute and uncomplaining lot is such as mine should be.” How fitting for me to read this, for you did not intend for me to fall in love with you, but that is what I feel, and although your voice is my heaven, love for you is also painful for me to bear, and I envy stones and anything barren of thought, for they can never carry the woes now laid upon me.
I agree with you that the words from the song “On A Fade Violet” are really amazing and touched my heart very much. These words are from Percy Bysshe Shelley. By the way. Shelley died in the same place in Italy where I am going to spend my next holidays in a few weeks. I wouldn’t describe me as a poet, but as a musician so I need the help of talented poets to create the right symbiosis between music and lyrics.
In the CD booklet there are no lyrics for “From Silent Night” – is it possible to obtain them?
This time the lyrics are from “Downland” who was a lute-song composer of the Renaissance and also wrote the lyrics for his songs.
There is yet another trait of yours that binds my heart to you. You were also born in Czechoslovakia, and like me, you also moved to a new country while very young. Do you permit me to dream that you and I will both return to our homeland and be wed? Yes, I know it is a dream, and I will hear your lyrics in a special way because of this dream of mine. “Oh sweet love, help her hands.” Or am I the dying Tristan? “Grief, alas, though all in vain, her restless anguish must reveal. She alone my wound shall know… though she will not heal.”
I have never heard such compliments before. I am confused and abashed.