Therapy and art as a cure for modern chaos. Episode 83

Monika Rachtan
Hi Monika Rachtan, I would like to welcome you very warmly to the next episode of Po Pierwsze Pacjent. Today's episode is very special because we have a very special guest, and we're going to talk about a very special topic too. About the fact that each of us has the right to have a worse time in life. One that can be just improved in various ways. And about how Natalia Przybysz improved it. Hi Natalia, we're going to talk today.

Natalia Przybysz
Hello. It was only now that I sort of understood the context of our conversation.

Monika Rachtan
Okay, it's the tenth anniversary of the album Current and it turns out that the album didn't come about just because you sat down and felt like writing these songs. It's just that the songs were caused by your emotional state, that's what I can call it, but also I don't think you were quite aware of that when you wrote it, were you?

Monika Rachtan
You know what, always all the songs I've ever sat down and written, music has usually been my medicine. If I can relate so immediately to the name of your podcast and my singing teacher when we were little. My sister Pauline and I were first in his classes and then for many years after that.

Natalia Przybysz
He always told such a story about how his dad died and he, while crying, discovered that he was slowly starting to sing a song and that somewhere in his sadness he found some in music. He simply found such a magical transition from sadness to peace, reconciliation and some final joy too, that music is simply such a vehicle that helps us name, express, give colour, shape, Sound to what we feel. And soothe us somewhere. Just like we sing lullabies to our children and they calm down and fall peacefully asleep. So I've always had it that I wrote songs for something, because they were about something difficult and somehow the song gave solace to a particular issue, a particular experience. And in fact, in the case of the album Current, which was made 10 years ago, it also had to do with the fact that I started to write much more courageously about things that were more difficult, that were deeper in me, thanks to the very first therapy process I went through at the time. And like you said I wasn't aware of it, well I think it was more about the fact that I just really for the first time in my life then started to look for names for it all at all.

Natalia Przybysz
For the different varieties of rain that I have inside, let's call it that. Because one rain falls across, the other kind of like in Iceland there are so many names for snow. And just looking for these names for different feelings, emotions was very inspiring for me and made me find that place inside of me from which I started to write songs, lyrics, melodies. And indeed, at that stage, the title song of Current is precisely about the fact that I don't know what's happening to me. Something is doing this to me, I don't know what yet. I don't know what to call it. I don't know what it is. It's some kind of just current, or something that goes through me and I feel it, but I just don't know how to name it yet. And that's what this album is, it's the courage to start working on naming it, on feeling it, and I think it's changed me, I've found a point in myself where I've started to communicate musically with music, with words, with myself, but at the same time I've also started to communicate with the audience and on an emotional level I've started to get a lot of feedback, as they say. People were just writing me different messages about what the songs meant to them and what they did to them.

Monika Rachtan
They continue to write, because I checked the comments. And it's not like that music at all, those 10 years ago I remember that album, when it came out and those songs, that current it accompanied me practically every day. It's like somewhere in there I identified with it, with the words that were in those songs. And what's also interesting is that they were good for different moments in my life, because it wasn't just that I listened to them when I was sad, I also found such good moments and listened to these songs and said yes, this is me today. So they're kind of so universal. But tell me, how do you look back at that Natalia from 10 or even 11 years ago, when you still didn't have the ability? Because it's not even about the courage of that ability to name those feelings, it's what would you say to yourself?

Natalia Przybysz
What would I say to that one? Hmm. Well, like now going back to that time we did these pictures with different people I was working with at the time. We rebuilt this wall in general, which is the cover of the album Current, which is actually a part of the house in Sweden where we recorded the music video for Honey and the Sky. And we made such a set and a bench. And somehow my memories were very much revived. And I also just remembered myself. That was my inner state. It was such complex, very difficult moments, well, because I also had my children were very young at the time. My daughter was five. My son was three. So that's the kind of moment where it's really a lot of children needing attention and finding themselves in all of that and whatever. Any kind of trying to work and be creative. Well it was a big challenge. I would probably say to myself that you can cope and that you are enough.

Monika Rachtan
Well that's right, because it's also that moment in life that you're talking about. A lot of girls go through that, that on the one hand you've got kids, you want to be home with those kids, you'd like to spend as much time with them as possible, give them that time, and on the other hand someone rings a big bell for you and says Hey, wake up, come back, you've got to run, you've got to run.

Monika Rachtan
Your job, your profession and yes. At least that's what I had, that I was terribly confused at that point, that I didn't know what to choose. Because on the one hand you've got a baby with a fever at home, and on the other hand you've got a concert and you know there's a full house waiting for you, who've bought tickets and who, for example, have a wedding anniversary on that day. And so on and so forth. And you know you want to stay at home with your child. But there are commitments here too. And so I think about your job, because I know what mine is like, that when I'm ill, I don't really have a choice, because the conference is going to happen anyway, whether I'm there or not. And someone has to run it.

Natalia Przybysz
But when I'm ill, I can't manage to sing, because the voice is probably such a cherry on the cake, if you call a person a cake, and it gets off in the first place if anything is wrong. That's why I very much sort of. Well I have to feel very good to really want to sing. You know, because it's already such a form of such well-being that until you start singing, it has to feel good.

Monika Rachtan
But you allow yourself to say today I'm letting go and I'm not doing it at all because I feel bad, I feel bad and the commitments are unimportant. I let myself go because not everyone can do that.

Natalia Przybysz
Well, it's very difficult, especially because I've never done anything else in my life either, so when I lose my voice, for example, because of some infection, some illness, fatigue, sickness, something happens there, well it's also very difficult on an emotional level for me not to lose that sense. Why am I there at all and so on. But I can do it. I can cancel a concert sometimes because I'm just not physically able to sing. But I also have an early warning system, which means I just start feeling quite early that I need to rest I can. I can take care of myself and hear my body earlier kind of and a lot. I do a lot of things like that to make sure I'm in good condition as an instrument.

Monika Rachtan
Let's go back to that time 10 years ago. That's right. You said you started the therapeutic process at that point. To a known person? A girl who. Well she's a public figure, She's a person associated with entertainment, with something fun. It's hard to just put things together in your head like that and say damn, I need to go to therapy.

Natalia Przybysz
Was it then? It was difficult at the time. I remember it was so difficult at the time, because I think I was also partly in such a belief of a bit of a taboo in inverted commas. Now it's actually a very popular phenomenon, That. That a lot of people go to therapy. In fact, almost all my friends are in some kind of therapy. At least one. If not couples, if not the whole family. It's just. It's just that this process is so very massive, that we're getting treatment and taking care of ourselves, and it used to be. It was a lot bigger, it required a lot more of this kind of self-reflection, some kind of humility that okay, but I need some help, something.

Natalia Przybysz
And just how does the environment react then? I mean how did it react ten years ago?

Monika Rachtan
Because like you said today it's fashionable now to say on Instagram oh, I'm in therapy, I'm depressed, I'm getting a hairdresser straight away, therapy, something there, something there, something there. It's really normal now. Totally.

Monika Rachtan
And 10 years ago how was yours? Yours? Your producer, your producer found out that you were going to therapy? It was about Jesus, just so no one would know how it would affect her image.

Natalia Przybysz
No, But I somehow, at the time I didn't talk about it too much. But I felt that it gave me a lot. It was just very important to me. I was even coming out with, for example, a piece called I won't be your doll. It was written on a receipt in general. I wrote the lyrics on a receipt. You sing like you're mad from the shop. I was just instantly at the bottom of the centre I was in. So it was just kind of immediately an afterthought, the theme of the session and then just the song was really like that.

Monika Rachtan
And those songs, that's how they fell out after each of your meetings with the therapist?

Natalia Przybysz
There have been several encounters where this has indeed happened.

Monika Rachtan
And what did you feel afterwards? Did you feel so cleansed that you shouted it out to the world?

Natalia Przybysz
The songs in general, they somehow live and work in me all the time. It's not that maybe the issue with I won't be your doll is really already seriously overworked and that wasn't resisted at all either. It wasn't actually a relationship problem. It was my problem, it was more that I was just brought up largely by my grandmother, who was very much servicing all of us, so I had this language of love, I unloaded myself into it, that it just had to be cleaned up, it had to be embraced. And I actually wanted to tell myself that I'm not going to be the doll who tidies up and stitches the cot and so on. Like I'm only doing it now because I like to.

Monika Rachtan
And how do you listen to these songs today? Well, because you say that they're still working, that they're still with you somewhere, I actually know the answer to this question, because two songs from your album were written again, they were recorded in new arrangements. But do you actually have that you still feel those emotions and that you would change any of the songs?

Monika Rachtan
For example, something you wouldn't sing. Do you have any thoughts that somewhere there's too much of that truth about you in these songs?

Natalia Przybysz
I have no such thing. Even the word cockroaches is in a dollop just now and it somehow works too. Now, at concerts, people just sing it. It's such a wonderful thing about chickadees and the different details there. These songs are alive and starting to have a new, new meaning. The Snow Queen, for example, was written in such a quite personal situation of my certain profession, a certain relationship and so on. On the other hand, there is a book by Natalia de Barbaro, A Tender Guide, which presents a certain archetype of the female femininity of the Snow Queen, which is kind of in each of us. Such a fragment of the critical, cold, conservative personality. And so I really understood that these songs are like dreams, where as I interpret the dreams, I know that it's all kind of about me and what I'm dreaming. Even the characters that I'm dreaming about, they're kind of parts of me. And the Snow Queen is also a part of me, who I also had quite recently in another therapeutic process some kind of conversation with.

Natalia Przybysz
And so, for example, this song has changed its meaning for me, or even deepened its potential to work in such a way that I sing it more deeply about myself, about not being the Snow Queen for myself.

Monika Rachtan
That's right, because often what we do is not to someone, but to ourselves. It's just that you have to realise it, you have to realise it for a moment, because it's so important, that moment when you do that kind of examination of conscience. We're about to have a new year, everyone there is doing some kind of examination of conscience. This year it was good and this year it didn't work out for me and from next year I'd like to do this, this and this, and this usually relates to food, addictions and that sort of thing. Whereas those kind of things, how we treat ourselves, that's also something that requires that kind of reflection and that kind of examination of conscience, because a lot of our shortcomings, for example, the fact that I don't know, we have this weight problem, that we overeat, is because of our mental state and what we do to ourselves. Because it's not that we eat because we want to, it just stems from something.

Monika Rachtan
If we're talking about compulsive overeating like that, for example, and it's mega important to stop and understand all of that and do that kind of a stopwatch. And I guess the New Year is a good time, but I think any time is a good time to do that for yourself in general.

Natalia Przybysz
Yes. Hahaha.

Monika Rachtan
Okay, let's go back to the therapeutic process, because you said there was a second therapeutic process afterwards. So what, that first therapy didn't help, it didn't work.

Natalia Przybysz
Well I think you know it doesn't work that way, that it's fair to say that one session wasn't enough. No. Well, no, no. Just some process there. That one closed. I lived my life and then the next one started and. I don't know what to compare it to. To some maybe updates of the system a little bit, that from time to time it's good to look and see where we are. And sometimes a lot of things happen in life too, things change. The family is also such a very dynamic phenomenon. Children grow so suddenly, they're teenagers It's just shocking. It's just a super hyper plastic creation.

Natalia Przybysz
And my work, and my body, and my hormones, and the world, and the pandemic. It's really all changing all the time, and I think our need to stop and spend a moment with each other is still there somehow too.

Monika Rachtan
And this second time going to therapy, knocking on the door of this centre and saying hey, here I am again! It was already easier.

Natalia Przybysz
No, I went to a completely different place, but I don't know if it was easier about something else is just.

Monika Rachtan
And now how is it with you? Do you still happen to use a therapist?

Natalia Przybysz
Yes, yes yes. Well yes, I'm in therapy now too.

Monika Rachtan
And tell me, how do you approach it today versus how did you approach it 10 years ago? Has that approach of yours changed in any way, or maybe back then you kind of treated it as this kind of thing that you had to do, and now you feel more like it's fun and that you're doing it for yourself because you're getting to know yourself better? Do you see any difference at all? Are you sort of totally tasking yourself that you see something's not right and you need to start fixing those strings again?

Natalia Przybysz
You know what, on the one hand it's completely also I'm in a different stream of therapy, so it works a bit differently now what I'm in. At that time I also had a lot of shame in me and stuff like that, you know, it's the first time I've ever told a stranger about myself. So it was very much about that breaking through in general and the first time I'd ever told a story about anything, and now. Now I'm in a different vein, well I am too. I have a lot of people very much around me who are in therapy or are in therapy, so it's more accessible knowledge. So no no, now it's a very natural situation for me in general.

Monika Rachtan
And tell me, do therapists treat your songs, your songs as a tool for their work? That they come in and say oh, and there, that's how you sang here, maybe it meant this and that?

Natalia Przybysz
You know, I once read such a book just by Irvine Yalom, a therapist who narrates. You know, the stories are about therapy sessions. And there was a client there. The patient, who was a writer, came to him and said I'd like us to work like this, you read this first.

Natalia Przybysz
And he gave some kind of a big one, some manuscript to him. And he for a couple of sessions basically sat and read his work in general, it was already a problem with Finally I know someone read it, just read it and only then did they start working. I happen to have a therapist who knows my songs. Okay, that's great in general, I think, because my songs are very personal and very connected to me, so we actually talk about them sometimes. And that's extra. It's great because I don't have to come and talk and sing, because that's where it's just so, it's great.

Monika Rachtan
I wonder how you deal with the fact that you don't have to deal with it at all, because it's cool for you, that it's your life and what you feel inside so much influences what kind of artist you are. I'm sorry, what kind of product you are, but it's also the case that in the market an artist is somehow a product and some people, some artists for example, are made out to be someone.

Monika Rachtan
They adopt an image, for example, of a blonde with long hair in high heels and singing. Singing about sex. And generally she walks around the house in flat turtleneck shoes and ties up that blonde hair or detaches it. Well, but marketing-wise she's such a product that someone out there has created and invented. Whereas you, from what you're saying, it absolutely wasn't that some producer sat down and said Oh, and Natalia is going to be such and such an artist and she's going to be melancholic and she's going to sing sad songs and she's going to be like that. Only it's really you. And it's very much about you. Well, because it's not that there's Natalia and the image, there's Natalia.

Natalia Przybysz
I don't know at all you're talking about some kind of advanced mechanisms of show business, which I don't think I'm caught up in at all anymore and never have been. And I don't think I'll ever catch on again. And it's abstract at all.

Monika Rachtan
I will ask my producer if he would take you, but I think you are unfortunately poor material for a person who can be created in such a way. But there are such creations in Polish showbiz.

Natalia Przybysz
I don't know. Do you think so?

Monika Rachtan
They are on Instagram, for example. Or on TikTok. Wait a minute, someone here tell me in my ear what my favourite tiktoker is called. And you guys don't know? Because I haven't browsed. I haven't even looked it up. I don't know. Somehow I've managed to sit quietly without owning a TikTok and as if I pretend it doesn't exist. Oh, Karolina Derpinski already reminded me. Don't you know who that is? Well, you see, and in my opinion this is just such a product created by someone. Someone has written a script and she's simply herself.

Natalia Przybysz
I sometimes even wish someone would help me a little bit to tell me if I should do something with my hair or something. I don't know, maybe, I don't know.

Monika Rachtan
Well, on the other hand, this truth is what people love you for, because you come to your concert. I went a year ago, and it's not because I only started listening to your songs a year ago, it's because I've been dreaming for many, many years to go to a concert like this.

Monika Rachtan
But somehow it was always the case that when you were in Wrocław, I was somewhere else and, you know, and you were so authentic at that concert. You came out in this audience of yours in general, you talk, and I was just telling you today that you talked about the fact that you were sick and that in general today is your greatest day, but that I think you're going to make it in general at this concert. And, you know, and that's the kind of truth that's not always, that's not always in artists today. But this is a world that is primarily about making money.

Natalia Przybysz
Mhm. Well, that's cool, but also. Oh dear, I don't know what to say now. Well I also just put a lot of emphasis on feeling good about myself in general and trying to make sure that I have a lot of space for myself, for what I am more or less. Well, because any form of pretending costs a lot. The organism, starting with singing, for example, when you watch these programmes, these talent shows, you can hear little girls, for example, singing like these grown-up women who've just had five children, had four divorces and it's as if they can already make that sound.

Natalia Przybysz
And this is often the reason for vocal cord problems later on. In the sense that these are such strong ways of bending to generate something completely unnatural out of oneself, and it costs people a lot later on. I'm always looking for something in myself that I feel good in, that I'm comfortable in and that I can, above all, enjoy. And I put pleasure in music and such shivers. It seems to me that simply, later on, the audience also has this pleasure, that you can't just, in inverted commas, I don't know, pornographically pretend that you're enjoying something, because it just feels later that you're not. Just now, before coming here, I was talking to Wojtek Baranowski, who was at a concert of a band like that, which a lot of people from our environment like a lot. Krangbin is this kind of Texas band that came about through a fascination with Thais who play American funk. Wow! In any case, it is a very minimalist band in its line-up, which does not seem to have a lot of resources to impress at a concert.

Natalia Przybysz
And Wojtek just said that he was shocked that it was all based on such. Less is more and that they just built up the tension from four ingredients and it was enjoyable all the time and there were shivers. And it was just very authentic and it was like nothing and nothing hurt him at this concert, that oh God, it's been too long or the cross is hurting me. I'm standing here. Very long He wasn't overstimulated, he was just focused, present. Authentic it was. I put things like that.

Monika Rachtan
You know, it's this attentiveness at the very moment you're talking about. But on the other hand, think of a New Year's Eve with Polsat or New Year's Eve with Jedynka. Spotlights on all sides, golden balls, 57 monitors. And you know, there are people who just like to go to that place where they are comfortable and do their thing on their terms. And there are people who need that golden bullet to do it at all. Well I wonder who the people are who are watching this. I don't know if you're involved in big productions like this, big events like this, but for me it's too much, because if I were to go in there as I imagine a singer I'll never be and let's establish that, because I can't sing at all.

Monika Rachtan
Whereas if I were to go in there and perform at all, the amount of stimuli that would fall on me as an artist would make me such an unpleasant environment that I couldn't work there. It's horrible.

Natalia Przybysz
As you're talking about it I'm reminded of when I went to an aqua park with my kids, one that's fancy and I'm sort of doing a mindfulness course in parallel and then the day after being in that aqua park I just had a mindfulness class again where I was talking about why? I just want to feel with every sense what's happening to me and hear how I just scored hell yesterday. I was just overstimulated by the noise and this entertainment, which is so really entertaining that the word entertainment just means to me that it's going to smash me to pieces. And I was overstimulated and really dreaming of floating in the silence of the lake, preferably still after sunset. There might just be a bat, or there might be mist, but it's like it's already a departure for me and it's already the maximum stimulus. And in such aqua parks, my body doesn't understand at all that I'm not going to die in this slide, because it was just traumatising.

Natalia Przybysz
I had to sort of say to the kids hey, play without me because I'm going to spoil your sort of fun, fun.

Monika Rachtan
But see how you have to go a long way to even embrace the fact that you don't want to do it and you don't like it. Well, because generally that was the conclusion of the mindfulness class the next day, that at least now you know what you don't want to do. To be that I don't want to. And tell me, in the mind of an artist who is an artist all by herself, is it that you plan. Because, you know, everybody doing some work, well they have some plans, I don't know, they've got 10 songs to write in the next year, and suddenly you go to therapy and you're probably able to get 10 out of your head in one day, as if you think about it.

Natalia Przybysz
Well, not so much.

Monika Rachtan
But you know what I mean. Do you have any such action plan for, say, 25 by 2025? Do you know what you're going to do professionally?

Natalia Przybysz
What am I going to do professionally? Well, of course I know.

Monika Rachtan
Well, and there is a plan there to write new songs.

Natalia Przybysz
Yes.

Monika Rachtan
And you kind of have to stimulate yourself somehow to. To make it come out so real and so cool. Yeah. And what do you do?

Natalia Przybysz
I figured out how I would stimulate myself.

Monika Rachtan
Well, what are your plans?

Natalia Przybysz
I came up with a concept, one for the whole album and how I would work. This process I somehow prepared myself and the place and everything. But you can reveal something, because our audience would also like to know a bit of that backstage. I can't, but I can talk about the previous album we recorded, for example. I also just made sure we had great stimuli with my band. What kind of incentives were they? I took my band to the Greek Island of Hydra. Where, for example, he discovered that he was going to sing Leonard Cohen. He went there once to write books, but it turned out that he fell in love and it fired him up that he was going to sing songs at all. Thanks to an Australian writer who favoured him home with her husband. But it's like. I could go on for longer about this and the island of Hydra in general, which is fascinating. You can read, for example, just in a book that recently came out Peel Me a Lotus. By an amazing Australian writer. Anyway, it was such a situation. It was such a wonderful process that took 10 days. There were 11 songs created, where my band and I just escaped from the Polish winter to Hydra. It turned out that winter lasts exactly 10 days on Hydra and that was our 10 days. But we swam in the Cold Sea anyway. Not all of us, just Mateusz Waśkiewicz, Jurek Zagórski and me, that is, the first row of guitarists standing on stage and me, and the bass player Piotr Stawicki and Kuba Staruszkiewicz, the drummer. They weren't swimming, they were just sitting and watching us. I think something important was forming in their heads at the time, which we then recorded. So it was a process that I came up with, that we went far away until the last minute too, my band members didn't know where they were going at all, that they had, we just had a group there on WhatsApp and that's where we communicated. I was just saying No, we are not going to Africa, No, we are not going somewhere. They kept asking Okay, I already know, we're probably going to the States.

Natalia Przybysz
No, we're going to the States And all the time they didn't know where they were going to work, but they were great and open and trusted me in general. They just wanted to go into it. So we took our sound engineer Krzysztof Kilar with us, who also recorded us there. Sylwia Pogoda, my beloved photo person and visuals in general. We also recorded a music video. Well, it was a very magical experience and I also want to have a magical experience with the next album.

Monika Rachtan
And now again, only you know where.

Natalia Przybysz
Only I know, me. They know too, but I don't want to for now. I can't talk about it for the time being, because it also somehow connects with this whole idea in general.

Monika Rachtan
And when you listened to the material that was created, did you have the impression that it was better after all, and that you wouldn't have created something so good in Poland, in a recording studio in the centre of Warsaw?

Natalia Przybysz
It definitely was. It's a record that is entirely a record about the sea. You could say that. I think the landscapes we had there, the time I just never had the luxury in my life to be solely immersed in the creative process for 10 days.

Natalia Przybysz
I didn't read anything, I wasn't able to watch anything. I just fell asleep with songs. In my head I had my desk, my attic. They were sitting in the studio, I was going to them all the time, we were exchanging. We managed to record three songs in their entirety with vocals, with lyrics, and seven more instrumentals. We managed to record all of them. I would finish the work on that later at home, with the vocals and the lyrics. Definitely. It was an absolutely magical thing. Magical.

Monika Rachtan
I think it's also becoming quite popular now just to make albums, that there's a certain amount of artists who make their albums just like that, that they take the whole band, the whole crew and go touring and do something cool together. And that it's in situations like that that the coolest ideas are created.

Natalia Przybysz
Possibly? I don't know, I don't know.

Monika Rachtan
Don't have female colleagues in the industry?

Natalia Przybysz
No I don't, but most of them do it on a very safe basis. More so here, because here everything is in Poland and in general the means to create even just by yourself at home. Nowadays making music has gone so far technologically that most artists can do a lot, they can do a lot themselves, and in Poland we have so many great producers and conditions and places that most of the ones I know don't really leave.

Monika Rachtan
In the song Current you sing that something is tingling, but that you don't know how to name it. You can already name the feeling today. Do you know what it was?

Natalia Przybysz
This is how I know it. It was anger. Acutely.

Monika Rachtan
And you give yourself the right to be so angry now?

Natalia Przybysz
Yes, and already. I don't know how to quantify it somehow, but I've had it for a while that actually anger is very much for me. It's such a recharging and inspiring feeling for me and pushes me into such creative movements in general. How does Natalia Przybysz get angry? I try to. I try to make sure that my anger, which I am aware of, is not aggression, in the sense that it is not harmful to others, but I try to name it. First there is a titled situation and then I like to sometimes something.

Natalia Przybysz
I like to occasionally use a cup like this, or one that I've always disliked so much it doesn't fit at all. Most of the time it's just some kind of cup that's cool and very, I know, it's like, I'm going to hurl it at myself now. It really helps, it helps That's the first time. The first time I hurled something great at myself, it was pots, old ones, in the spring, that had dried out. There were all sorts of plants that froze over the winter like that and clay, old-school pots. They crack in a great way. And so the earth gets like such a thunderbolt, which just grounds itself in the ground. And then maybe create some sort of, say, amber. Something cool to come up with.

Monika Rachtan
How do you think of yourself now as a happy person? Due to the fact that you already know how to name these emotions, that you are so somewhat settled with yourself? How can I say that? Does it give you happiness?

Natalia Przybysz
Yes, it definitely deepens all these feelings and sensations I have. That is, I just feel more different things. When I'm sad, it really makes me cry faster.

Natalia Przybysz
As if I remember, my singing teacher was just very in touch with his emotions. I remember that today, because I met him as a child and later we saw each other for a very long time. Unfortunately, he is no longer alive today and I miss him very much, But I remember that he had the way that he could get emotional very quickly. He could laugh very quickly. Suddenly like Father Christmas. His laughter was just no wonderful, shattering. And it's something amazing. In the sense that he was also explaining to me that, as if when singing, you also use the charge of various emotions which can be fuel for your sound to be simply well saturated and charged, that you can use this for example with anger when you want to express mad love, that this is all such a current which you use and which you charge with. Sometimes perversely even. It is simply all one in the same. It is one. It goes through us. And sound is also such a current. Simply such energy. And so, and I'm actually happier, because when I allow myself to feel deeper sadness, to feel deeper anger, joy, I don't know, to understand that it's jealousy, it's cool and it's ok.

Monika Rachtan
Well, it's also when I'm happy that I'm much happier.

Monika Rachtan
And what has happened to us and to the world that we all suddenly need this therapy? Well, because, you know, 30 years ago people were living their lives, they had a lot less stuff, they were happier, they didn't go to therapy, and now, as you say, every single one of your friends is practically in some kind of therapeutic process, it's the world that has provoked us to do it.

Natalia Przybysz
I don't know, maybe it's a bit like Gabor Mate says in his book The Myth of Normalcy, that we live in such toxic times that simply and refreshingly separate us from such, from this life together. And on the other hand, such global human consciousness is also very much on the rise, even though we are hearing more and more about armed conflicts around the world and various tragedies. We know a lot more. Statistically, however, there are fewer wars in the world. Like, like, as Rosiak says. In his report on the state of the world, he says that statistically, however, it is safer, it is safer.

Natalia Przybysz
So on the one hand is that it's very strange these days that this information is flooding us, that, we're overstimulated and we have worse and worse food on the planet. On the other hand, we have more and more knowledge, so we want to use tools like therapy to cope.

Monika Rachtan
And somehow it just doesn't add up at the end, that on the one hand we know more, we should be more aware, and yet we are doing such a terrible harm to ourselves and the planet, and the planet too, and you know what? And we're doing it mega irresponsibly, because it's not that we're doing ourselves wrong now, we're just doing wrong to these people who are going to be living here in 20 years time in a very unpleasant environment. And I think sort of stopping again, realising that, is what can help us. Well, as much as possible. Well, I know that you support the planet very strongly and that you also try to be close, close to nature, So I think with this appeal to our audience with Natalia Przybysz today, we're going to stop for a moment.

Monika Rachtan
Maybe just at the end of the year. This is a good time. They looked carefully at each other, at each other's emotions, and asked themselves How are you doing?

Natalia Przybysz
Less is more.

Monika Rachtan
Thank you so much for our conversation today. Natalia. It was a great pleasure for me.

Natalia Przybysz
And I invite you to the anniversary concerts I'm still playing. Even at the beginning of next year I will still be playing.

Monika Rachtan
Come on in! And where else will you be playing?

Natalia Przybysz
Well, maybe we'll post it somehow under our conversation. We will post it, of course. I do not remember. I don't know when the talk will be published either.

Natalia Przybysz
So let's be well aware of these concert dates and venues where Natalia will be.

Monika Rachtan
I invite you to visit my social media. Simply Social media. Social media.

Monika Rachtan
Yes, on Natalia's social media you're welcome. Thank you very much Natalia for our conversation today. My guest, but above all your guest, was Natalia Przybysz. My name is Monika Rachtan. This was the programme First Patient and I also invite you to my social media. See you there. Thank you.