The Coat That May Have
Belonged to Vysotsky
*last update September 7, 2025
For a non-Russian reader, the name Vladimir Vysotsky may not mean much. But for anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union, his name carries a lot of meaning. Vysotsky (1938—1980) was an icon—a singer and songwriter whose performances were raw, emotional, political, and deeply personal. His lyrics spoke about injustice, addiction, love, and the struggles of everyday life. He was not just a performer. He was a voice that expressed what many people felt but didn’t say out loud, in a time when direct speech could be dangerous.
And once, my family owned his coat. Maybe.
For a non-Russian reader, the name Vladimir Vysotsky may not mean much. But for anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union, his name carries a lot of meaning. Vysotsky (1938—1980) was an icon—a singer and songwriter whose performances were raw, emotional, political, and deeply personal. His lyrics spoke about injustice, addiction, love, and the struggles of everyday life. He was not just a performer. He was a voice that expressed what many people felt but didn’t say out loud, in a time when direct speech could be dangerous.
And once, my family owned his coat. Maybe.
Image credit: Britannica
It was called a dublonka—a sheepskin jacket turned inside out, with the soft fur on the inside and the leather facing out. They were popular in Russia in the winters, and this one was supposedly Vysotsky’s. According to my mother, her cousin had once moved in Moscow cultural circles and knew people. Among them, allegedly, was Vysotsky himself, who came over to his apartment from time to time. One night, the story goes, Vysotsky arrived in a somewhat shabby dublonka. When he left, he mistakenly—or mischievously—took my relative’s nicer one, leaving his behind.
Years later, my mother was given this coat. By the time I knew it, it was just a coat. I vaguely remember wearing it, especially when my mom and I would walk our dog in the cold snowy winter. It had a hole in one of the pockets—my mom once lost a key through it. It hung in our apartment like any other winter thing we kept around. And at some point, my mother gave it away. It was old. We didn’t need it. There was no proof of its origin anyway.
And yet, every now and then, I find myself thinking about it. Was that really Vysotsky’s coat? If it was, should we have kept it? And if it wasn’t—why do I care?
Meanings and Power
This story isn’t about Vysotsky. It’s about meaning.
That coat was either a worthless old jacket or a piece of cultural history. What changed its value wasn’t the object itself, but the story we attached to it. The meaning made it special—or didn’t. That meaning was subjective, unverifiable, and yet still powerful. And that’s what fascinates me.
We like to believe that our world is made up of tangible things: objects, facts, people. But in reality, we move through a world shaped just as much by meanings. We give emotional weight to objects , tell stories about what events “really” meant, and build identities around labels, roles, and memories. These meanings are often invisible to us in a sense that we act on them without noticing and defend them as if they were facts. We are shaped—sometimes even ruled—by meanings we never consciously chose. This is where the idea of power enters.
We tend to think of power as something external: who gives orders, who gets heard, who controls what. But there is also the power of meanings—the way shared and inherited meanings guide what we fear, what we love, what we hold on to, and what we let go. These meanings come from other people, from culture, from language. They shape us, and we also shape them. It’s an ongoing, invisible exchange: we are both shaped by meanings and involved in shaping them in return.
Most of the time, we don’t notice the meanings that direct our actions and beliefs—they feel natural, inevitable, true. But we also participate in keeping those meanings alive, passing them on, reinforcing them. Learning to notice that meanings are made, not fixed, can help us begin to reclaim power—not the kind that controls others, but the kind that lets us reframe what things mean, and with that, how we live.
Meaning as Both Cage and Key
In Buddhist thought, there is a related idea: we see things through their perceived essences—this is good, that is bad, this is desirable, that is shameful. These essences feel solid and real. But they are illusions. They don’t exist independently in the world. They exist in our minds.
Believing that these meanings are real causes suffering. Liberation begins when we recognize this. When we see that nothing carries intrinsic meaning, we begin to loosen our grip—on objects, on judgments, on the stories that define us. And in that loosening, something opens up: a kind of power, a kind of freedom.
Was that coat special? Maybe. Would it be more meaningful now if we had kept it? Possibly. But its meaning was never in the coat itself. It was in the idea of Vysotsky. In the stories we told about proximity to fame. In the mystery of “what if.”
The story of Vysotsky’s coat is an example of how meanings work. They live in our minds, yet they are also the frameworks through which we see the world. We create them, but they also create us.
In that paradox lies both our power and our powerlessness. We can learn to notice the meanings that shape our reactions and begin to step back from them, even if we can never be entirely free. The human brain will always interpret through meaning—but awareness gives us room to pause, to question, to choose a different response. This is slow, often difficult work, and we cannot simply decide to “snap out” of the influence of meanings. But every moment of noticing, every time we change even one reaction, we reclaim a measure of power over the stories that guide our lives.
Practical Implications
This isn’t just abstract philosophy for me. I enjoy thinking and writing about these ideas because they are interesting, but I also see them as deeply practical. My work—trying to understand how meanings operate, and how they connect to power—has real consequences for how we live and relate to one another. I practice it myself every day: noticing meanings, and working to create some distance from them. But even after years of thinking, reading, and writing about this, I still find it difficult. I still get carried away by meanings. I still find myself following mental patterns shaped by them.
But slowly—very slowly—it gets easier. Over time, I’ve learned to process situations differently, to experience events in new ways, and to interact with people with more awareness. That’s why I write about this: because I believe others can practice it too. If more people learned to recognize how their actions and reactions are shaped by meanings, we might live in a society where people suffer less from themselves and from each other.
So this story is not just a curious anecdote about maybe owning a coat that once belonged to a famous person. I chose it partly because it’s engaging, but also because it shows how meanings work in everyday life. You can start noticing this in your own surroundings: Why is this object so important to me? How might someone else see it? How might it appear to people in another culture, another time, or even to someone close to me right now?
You might be less surprised when others don’t attach the same meaning you do—because there is nothing unusual about that. And by noticing these differences, you can start to understand your own reactions better and see where you have choices. The point is not to reject all meanings or conclude that “everything is meaningless.” Rather, it is to notice how meaning works in certain situations—and to see where your power to respond differently begins.
If you want to try this, here’s a simple practice: each day, pick one or two things—a physical object, a situation, a reaction—and ask yourself: What meanings am I attaching here? Where did they come from? How might someone else see this differently? Even this small act of noticing is a step toward reclaiming your own relationship to meaning, building better connections with others, and perhaps, over time, helping create a world where we suffer less and understand each other more.
Years later, my mother was given this coat. By the time I knew it, it was just a coat. I vaguely remember wearing it, especially when my mom and I would walk our dog in the cold snowy winter. It had a hole in one of the pockets—my mom once lost a key through it. It hung in our apartment like any other winter thing we kept around. And at some point, my mother gave it away. It was old. We didn’t need it. There was no proof of its origin anyway.
And yet, every now and then, I find myself thinking about it. Was that really Vysotsky’s coat? If it was, should we have kept it? And if it wasn’t—why do I care?
Meanings and Power
This story isn’t about Vysotsky. It’s about meaning.
That coat was either a worthless old jacket or a piece of cultural history. What changed its value wasn’t the object itself, but the story we attached to it. The meaning made it special—or didn’t. That meaning was subjective, unverifiable, and yet still powerful. And that’s what fascinates me.
We like to believe that our world is made up of tangible things: objects, facts, people. But in reality, we move through a world shaped just as much by meanings. We give emotional weight to objects , tell stories about what events “really” meant, and build identities around labels, roles, and memories. These meanings are often invisible to us in a sense that we act on them without noticing and defend them as if they were facts. We are shaped—sometimes even ruled—by meanings we never consciously chose. This is where the idea of power enters.
We tend to think of power as something external: who gives orders, who gets heard, who controls what. But there is also the power of meanings—the way shared and inherited meanings guide what we fear, what we love, what we hold on to, and what we let go. These meanings come from other people, from culture, from language. They shape us, and we also shape them. It’s an ongoing, invisible exchange: we are both shaped by meanings and involved in shaping them in return.
Most of the time, we don’t notice the meanings that direct our actions and beliefs—they feel natural, inevitable, true. But we also participate in keeping those meanings alive, passing them on, reinforcing them. Learning to notice that meanings are made, not fixed, can help us begin to reclaim power—not the kind that controls others, but the kind that lets us reframe what things mean, and with that, how we live.
Meaning as Both Cage and Key
In Buddhist thought, there is a related idea: we see things through their perceived essences—this is good, that is bad, this is desirable, that is shameful. These essences feel solid and real. But they are illusions. They don’t exist independently in the world. They exist in our minds.
Believing that these meanings are real causes suffering. Liberation begins when we recognize this. When we see that nothing carries intrinsic meaning, we begin to loosen our grip—on objects, on judgments, on the stories that define us. And in that loosening, something opens up: a kind of power, a kind of freedom.
Was that coat special? Maybe. Would it be more meaningful now if we had kept it? Possibly. But its meaning was never in the coat itself. It was in the idea of Vysotsky. In the stories we told about proximity to fame. In the mystery of “what if.”
The story of Vysotsky’s coat is an example of how meanings work. They live in our minds, yet they are also the frameworks through which we see the world. We create them, but they also create us.
In that paradox lies both our power and our powerlessness. We can learn to notice the meanings that shape our reactions and begin to step back from them, even if we can never be entirely free. The human brain will always interpret through meaning—but awareness gives us room to pause, to question, to choose a different response. This is slow, often difficult work, and we cannot simply decide to “snap out” of the influence of meanings. But every moment of noticing, every time we change even one reaction, we reclaim a measure of power over the stories that guide our lives.
Practical Implications
This isn’t just abstract philosophy for me. I enjoy thinking and writing about these ideas because they are interesting, but I also see them as deeply practical. My work—trying to understand how meanings operate, and how they connect to power—has real consequences for how we live and relate to one another. I practice it myself every day: noticing meanings, and working to create some distance from them. But even after years of thinking, reading, and writing about this, I still find it difficult. I still get carried away by meanings. I still find myself following mental patterns shaped by them.
But slowly—very slowly—it gets easier. Over time, I’ve learned to process situations differently, to experience events in new ways, and to interact with people with more awareness. That’s why I write about this: because I believe others can practice it too. If more people learned to recognize how their actions and reactions are shaped by meanings, we might live in a society where people suffer less from themselves and from each other.
So this story is not just a curious anecdote about maybe owning a coat that once belonged to a famous person. I chose it partly because it’s engaging, but also because it shows how meanings work in everyday life. You can start noticing this in your own surroundings: Why is this object so important to me? How might someone else see it? How might it appear to people in another culture, another time, or even to someone close to me right now?
You might be less surprised when others don’t attach the same meaning you do—because there is nothing unusual about that. And by noticing these differences, you can start to understand your own reactions better and see where you have choices. The point is not to reject all meanings or conclude that “everything is meaningless.” Rather, it is to notice how meaning works in certain situations—and to see where your power to respond differently begins.
If you want to try this, here’s a simple practice: each day, pick one or two things—a physical object, a situation, a reaction—and ask yourself: What meanings am I attaching here? Where did they come from? How might someone else see this differently? Even this small act of noticing is a step toward reclaiming your own relationship to meaning, building better connections with others, and perhaps, over time, helping create a world where we suffer less and understand each other more.