FAR Employee Levon Lachikyan's Response to Tyler Guthrie’s WaPo article about Armenia. The most striking impression from the world philosophical history that I have been haunted by is the Pythagorean cosmic vaults theory, according to which the moving by different trajectories planets produce exquisite melodies during their movement, filling the cosmos by heavenly music. Mankind, however, do not hear those sweet sounds as they are all born with “having them in the ears”. I found myself in the similar situation. Being born in Gyumri, I “had its beauties in my eyes”. As I discovered those only decades later, when I was already residing in Yerevan and having visited numerous cities all over the globe: New York, Paris, Venice, Vienna and elsewhere.
Lately I have visited my home city. Much to capital Yerevan astonishment, where old structures almost have not remained, here they are preserved in whole blocks. It is a real delight to wander around. After Yerevan spread all over pink here the view changes drastically, where in front of you, competing in beauty, there are old black structures framed with red tuff windows. The unutterable beauty can make one breathless. And that made me draw it. I took a pencil that gave a birth to the series “ Gyumri, My love”.
The earthquake of December of 1988 seems to go beyond the old Gyumri. “What was before it that stayed, what was after it that went”, like to repeat the residents. And really, the subterranean shocks were unable to destroy and ruin the firm buildings constructed by the Gyumri masters. Those, fortunately, endure as a testimonial of the city’s relic of the past as well as a credential of its people soul honesty. I intend to continue to hand over to paper my city’s yards and streets, images of plentiful corners and squares to show that Gyumri is a city to be proud of, a city that has not only the past but also a future.