Anna in Malmø

When one listens to a singer day-in, day-out, one builds up a mental picture of how the singer looks.  Anna Ternheim's 'Seperation Road' had fastened itself in the CD player in the car, so Anna Lejon and myself had listened to it constantly all last winter on the cold bridge to Denmark.  The mental picture I had of Anna Ternheim is nothing like her presence on stage - sensitive, shy and restrained.

She played at Malmö festival and it was fantastic!  If Charlie was the bird and Edith was the kid sparrow, Anna is the dove.

Arne Zaring

I met a poet, or closer to the truth, we re-met a poet.  I recognised Arne from various art openings around Malmö.  He was always happily drunk, and I was invariably with Harry and pretended that I was Norwegian.

Arne is a poet, so did not buy my passable Norwegian.  He saw beyond it, like Underifrån, [from underneath] his most startling piece to date.  By a strange twist of fate many of his poems have been translated into arabic, possibly because his daughter is married to a Moroccan.  Maybe the poet like the profet is not accepted in his own country.

Renzo and I spent an hour over beers at the café trying to explain to him that emails were cheaper than six and a half crowns it costs to send snail mail.  Like my pigeon Norwegian, Arne didn't buy it. . . he needed to hold the paper and then scribble some more on it.

Moral: Suffer the fool, until you are sure he isn't

Listening to Martha in Saudi

Sitting in a hotel room in Jeddah and waiting for someone to take me to the airport for my flight back to Sweden.  Touring around here (Jeddah, Riyadh and the Eastern provinces - Al Dammam, Al Jabyl) has been crazy.  Adopting to life within a society ruled by Sharia law can be perplexing.  One struggles not to allow western prejudice rail against the black abaya ghosts that haunt public spaces and the noteable absence of women.  Then there's the heat.  

There has been one person that has kept me sane through this tour, so here's to you Martha.  I hope you never have to come here.  Heres a photo I found of her, in black, in solidarity with the women of this country.

Var blev ni av, ljuva drömmar om en rimligare jord?

When I was at Uni in the 90s, it was a cool political acknowledgement to make that 'the socialist experiment was dead.' Well, forget that rot. It's not. Just come to Scandinavia. . . or if you can't do that, just listen to Monika Zetterlund sing, Var blev ni av, ljuva drömmar om en rimligare jord?

Here is the last verse, and my crappy translation:

Var blev ni av, ljuva drömmar om en rimligare jord?
Ett nytt sätt att leva? Var det bara tomma ord?
Var är han nu, våra frihetsdrömmars junker Morgonröd?
Han rör ju på sig, så han är nog inte riktigt död....

What has become of you, wonderful dream of a fairer world?
A new way to live? Was it just empty words?
Where is he now, our dreams of freedom in red?
He moves himself, so he is not really dead...

Socialism o muerte!!!

Scanian – its mother couldn’t call it beautiful

Intuitively one could think that the Scanian dialect derives its rollercoaster diphthongs and occasional guttural grunts from the Danish language, which is of course in close geographic proximity, over the Øresund. Historical ties between the two have always been close. The Danes ruled Skåne until 1658, and similarities abound.

The idiosyncratic Scanian dialect shares little or no direct ancestry with Danish. The roots of Scanian are in French. French-speaking aristocracy, in the 17th and 18th century, on holiday from Stockholm used local Scanian servants. Thus a heavy dose of the Francophone was transmitted to the Swedes of the south. Linguists believe that this link is responsible for many of the features of the dialect that survive today.

I recently saw this theory born out in a piece of theatre sport, where a Swedish actor (non-gender specific, but she was a chick) assumed a ‘’Allo ‘Allo!’ type French resistance fighter accent. The result was basically pure Scanian, and the actor couldn’t keep a straight face.

The Scanian dialect comes hand in hand with a healthy belief that if you’re not Scanian, you’re a bit weird. This is in stark contrast to the Danes who believe that if you’re not Danish than you’re a blithering twit, and Denmark is the epicentre of the universe and the land of milk and honey. This comparatively self-effacing outlook is nicely exemplified by the joke about the federal politician who told the Scanian that there was good development potential in Skåne. The Scanian, to whom he had made the comment, replied


-Aou, ja ved ent de. Po tre sior har vi vann o på den fjärde Lappland.

-Yes, and what are those. We have water on three sides and on the other, Lappland.

The Church play KB Hallen 24/4

This is not a post but a plug for The Church who play Kulturbolaget in Malmö on the 24/4.  Steve Kilbey, their lead singer, is married to a Swede and spends a fair bit of time in Stockholm.  I guess that's why they are coming this way.

These guys have been playing together for 35 years, so they are not going to go out gracefully.  But then again, who would want them to. . .  You high theorists can call it spontaneous, drug-addled, fridge magnet poetry but I'm a sucker for lyrics like the unguarded moment.

Tales from Export Sales #17: Moghuls, Mongols and La Papa

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
-----Ithaca, Cavafy

. . .hello's are goodbye's, and the laughs are the sigh's, and the show disappears with the note, 'until next time'
-----Miserere, The Cat Empire


The trip was to Pakistan. I had spent a few days reading the graphs to a bunch of bored Paskistani’s and I had to get out of hotel foyers and coffee breaks, and being consistently congenial. So with one of the employees from the distribution company I jumped in a cab and went to Lahore fort.

The sign above the Alamgiri gate read, children-5 Rps, adults-10 Rps, foreign tourists-200 Rps. So we shelled out the cash and got in.

Immediately inside a guy approached us. He was wearing thongs (yanks read flip-flops) hovering over us and as far as I could make out wanted to take us on a guided tour. He reeked of sweat and shit, and his English was gibberish, yet the prosody of his speech sounded like a BBC history documentary.

We hired him and he began at the top of the ramp above the gate

-This at here is the munition part of fort when from where the Englishman he was when playing war here from eighteen hundred forty-eight seventeen until fifty-three [sic].

Then we walked on and I was trying not to get too close to this guy because of his stink. I asked how long it took to ride by Elephant from Lahore fort to Shah Jahanabad. He said

-about three or maybe forty on foot days with elephant [sic].

We walked up to the rooftop above Diwan-e-Khas where some ‘artisans’ where doing blasphemous restoration on some Pietradura work.

He said

-this is here where Shahab-ud-Din Shah Jahan would hold with the ladies of very many beauties and colours all in here in the baths and with magistrates above inside[sic].

The lack of comprehensible information was starting to piss me off so I tuned him out off my inner camcorder and looked out over the old city. The eagles hanging in the sky above the fort invited the spirit to venture with them back to a time where man in search of posterity built buildings and made great voyages. He killed with swords, he walked or he rode on an elephant and he changed landscapes and built edifices so that their ruins could inspire and evoke past life memories.

Next morning I took an early flight from Lahore to Islamabad. A stranger called Lafita Habazool had wound up at the Passport control at Islamabad International airport, with me. Islamabad International airport is organised such that there is only one departure at a time. I was in the queue parallel to Lafita, and Lafita too was bound for Denmark.

He was stately, plump and wearing the traditional Khaddar garb. The sweat that lined his brow could have been because of the sweltering heat or collateral damage from the pretty petty officials scrutinising his travel documents. He was trying to explain that he only spoke a smattering of Urdu but was fluent in one other language. . . Danish. I saw a Danish passport so said to him in the other language

-hot weather in these parts.

He said

-yeah, and they are not very good with foreign languages.

The petty officials were cute and one of them asked if I could translate for them. Lafita told me his date of birth in Danish and I translated it for the girls. They then asked him the purpose of his visit and I again translated. I’d never felt so ridiculous and necessary at the same time.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

There was another meet in Goa, so Mads and I went out and read the charts, as only we can.

We went out for a group photo, and a large girl in a Sari said that she wanted to stand next to me

-because I was like, a male model type.

I turned and said to Mads

-Did you hear that? I’m a male model!

He said

-Yeah, I heard it. She said a male mongol!

And so Mads had outsold me once again.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

There was some sales in Rome so I put my hand up for it. My sister had just been to a wedding in the south of France so we decided to meet in the city to which all roads lead. I walked into the hotel. Ten seconds later my little sister walks in and a joyous reunion. We dropped our stuff and went out to dinner.

One can argue about the gourmet traditions of the world, but it is a fundamental truth that a humble tomato never tastes as good as it does in Italy. So we gorged ourselves on Carpaccio de Gamberoni, Viletto, limoncellos, and traded details from the past six months of our lives.

The next day we roamed around Rome. We had a bit of lunch and walked up towards Quirinal hill. On the Via Nazionale there were some security stooges in a black Mercedes. Further up beside the Villa Colonna we could see a crowd assembling. I went up to one of the bystanders at the Palazzo del Quirinale and asked whom they were waiting to see. He told me that it was,

-La Papa e La Presidente

La Papa. . .? La Presidente was patently obvious, but I was having translation problems with ‘La Papa.’ I asked my sister and she saw it immediately as Joe the Rat, or His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. My sister had a serious looking camera around her neck, so I grabbed that and with the rest of the paparazzi, pelted down the steaming pavement while clicking away at the camera. The thrill of the chase was dizzying, but the pope mobile too fast and the streets of Rome too damn hot, so I gave up.

Sorry to be leaving my sister, and Rome, and in no small way, Export Sales, I jumped in a cab the next day and drove to the airport. Rome’s airport, Fiumicino has a sign on the roof. It is kitsch and Italian but well worth taking to heart. ‘IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE,’ in blue, and then in red ‘PLAY ON.’ I agreed with this in principle, and colour scheme, so went into the lounge and watched as two guys wearing matching ‘Saddam Hussein’ t-shirts drank cappuccinos.

Theatre Day in Malmö 07

Theatre day is where you buy a badge for 40 crowns (4£) that gives you entry to various performances and rehearsals.  I met up with Renzo and Åsa at Kafferösteriet at 2:00pm with pretty low expectations.  I had been the year before and it sucked. . . amateur and youth theatre at it's worst.

But this year was another story.  First we saw a dress rehearsal of Ibsen's The Wild Duck at Teater 23.  It's a heavy play and the suicidal/enigmatic ending was flawlessly rendered by the chamber cast.  My favourite line from this play is when Hedwig tells about a book she has seen from London:

-Jag såg döden med en timeglass, och en jungfru (I saw death holding an hourglass, and a virgin)

The laden symbolism got even stronger at the open dress rehearsal of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard by Malmö's Dramatiska Teatern.  To top off a fine day was some edgy scenes from Pinter's American Football.  Loneliness, Disorientation and Interrogation were the strong themes set beside a trombonist and an array of digital efects.

It was all fantastic theatre!  Later that night I introduced Renzo, Åsa and Calle to a little drink I have termed the Gammel Danskini.  Instead of a twist or olive, you use a nip of Gammel Dansk to spice a vodka martini - the perfect end to a magical, and quite political, theatre day.

Danish Dankort

Yesterday, on our merry way home from Copenhagen, Karlsson and I stopped for booze at Tårnby Brugsen.  It had been an exciting day in the hearing industry and we needed something to dull the excitment.  

I picked up a crate of beer and some wine and took i to the checkout to pay for it.  My Visa/Dankort card didn't work.  It kept teling me to use the magnetic stripe instead of the chip.  After half a dozen tries the checkout-chick rang for the manager who came over.  He noticed that I had an accent so asked,

-Er det en almindelig Dansk Dankort? Is this a Danish Dankort?

I thought of replying

-No, this is a Venezuelan Dankort. . .

Provincial views abound even in Copenhagen.

Tchaikovsky, Serenade for Strings Op. 48

If you ever are fortunate enough to study music history with a teacher who is both a scholar and a musician, you will learn that there are many wonderful works created in the last ca. 2500 years.  In a standard university course you would be given a listening list.  As centuries, artistic movements and history fly by, the comitted teacher will also point out other works, of no-less musical significance, but that cannot afford to be considered historically canonical.

One such work that Stephen Emmerson once pointed out to me was Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings Op. 48.  Tchaikovsky generally gets short shrift in Music history mainly on account of the fact that Brahms and Wagner were having a magnificent and drawn out aesthetic dispute over the role of drama and music, when Tchaikovsky was at the peak of his compositional game.  I thought nothing more of this untillast night when I was discussing music at a dinner in Copenhagen with T.S. Anand (Indian entrepreneur and mild mannered Seikh).

TS, in a throw away line admitted that he considered Tchaikovsky' Serenade to 
be the most marvellous piece ever written.  I raced home and bought a recording. . . it doesn't disappoint!