Beautiful Idiots - The Ark

Glam rock is a genre with which I am not especially taken.  Kiss was okay - in the eighties.  In the late nineties, Marilyn Manson did a lot for the marketing of drug dealers.  It was the Ark's In Lust We Trust that turned me on to them.  The drama of that album, and the charisma of the lead singer Ola Salo, was hard to ignore in 2003.

One of the very touching Ola Salo stories I read was from a young lesbian groupie from Gothenburg who toured with the band.  She wound up in Nyköping (or some other Swedish provincial town) and didn't have a hotel booked.  On hearing that she didn't have a bed to sleep in, Ola gave up his hotel room for her and slept in a room with one of the other band members. 

He is flamboyant, colorful and a 'showman' par excellence.  I write the gender-specific showman in inverted commas because it can't go unremarked; Ola cuts a rather androgynous figure as he struts his stuff.  He is probably best described as a closet heterosexual.  He has a wife and two kids, but to descend to mere pigeonholing is to denigrate the central tenet of the Ark: that we are all special and beautiful no matter what others think about us.

It sounds like the usual ecstasy-riddled rock cook and bull, but if one kid out there found solace in their message and could turn their self-hate around, then it was all worthwhile - and in the last 15 years there's been a lot more than one - there's a generation of Swedes to whom this music means so much.  In terms of impact on a national level one could think of Rammstein in Germany, or perhaps Oasis in the UK.

Perhaps I'm comparing apples with oranges, but the Ark is monumental, and their testament is not hindered by bowing out now with their heads held high.  There's nothing more ludicrous and devaluing to a message born in rock than old rock stars, but Ola we will miss you.

The last word is from Ola and Ola is never short on words.  This the last half of his prelude to a song played during the Ark's final performance at the Malmö festival last Friday night.   [clumsy translation mine - original video here]

-Exactly thirteen years ago, to the day, I sat in a cramped little apartment on Sturegatan in Rörsjöstaden, not far from here.  I thought about the times [we live in].  I sat and thought about how scared we are of each other, and how that fear suffocates us, and how that fear is expressed in so many different ways, like ironic and cynical jokes.  One should understand, that this was the ironic and cynical era at the end of the nineties.  It [the fear] is expressed in status and prestige and the fear of that which is different.  And I felt that I was so incredibly tired of that fear.  I was so tired of that fear that could be found everywhere.  I was so tired of that fear which existed in me.  And I felt that everybody was going around being scared about losing face in front of one another.  And so I thought, if only one could get people to be a little bit less scared of losing face in front of each other, think what a wonderful world we would have.  Because when we go around being scared about losing face in front of each other, then so many of the beautiful things about us disappear.  So I thought, I'm going to fucking well write a song that declares war on that fear.  A song that inspires myself and other people, to dare to be a little bit more ridiculous; to dare to lose face a little bit in front of each other; and that song wasn't just going to be a song, it was going to be a manifest.  It would be a weapon that destroys the fear and the shame that makes our life boring from time-to-time.  I am so proud that it was that song that was our breakthrough.  Because that song that I wrote thirteen years ago on Sturegatan in Rörsjöstaden, it doesn't just sum up everything that we stood for then.  It sums up everything we have stood for through all these years as a band.  And it sums up everything that we will always stand for, regardless of whether we are here or not.

So if you feel like beautiful idiots tonight.  If you are ready to escape the fear and shame, and let the beauty inside of you bloom, sing now with me. . . It takes a fool to remain sane.

Professor Frans Gregersen

Frans plays smart and wise because he is, but he is also humble and has the indelible gift of the teacher that constantly seeks to help and inspire, sometimes with only a few words.  The other mark of the teacher is also his: he has the ability to make things that are complex appear simple and enticing, without them loosing the intricacy that they may or may not have.  He also has a wicked wit, so, in short he takes all things seriously, but none too much.

I've just emerged from a five day course on linguistic research traditions (quite a Danish focus, and if one saw Per Stig Möller's field questions from an international press gallery in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons, one would know that Danes are formidable linguists).  Frans speaks in the now.  He maneuvers the debate, but there is always room for comments and new ideas.  Frans isn't afraid of new ideas and it is possibly this fearlessness that qualifies him most as a professor.

At another occasion he lectured on Copenhagen, the city/country town and the transformations that ensued after the re-building of the citadel in the seventeenth century.  It was riveting.  Of course, there is the exhaustive publication list in top tier journals, the regular academic laudations and membership and leadership in the pertinent scientific and research bodies.  Many others have acknowledged that Frans is a competent polymath and an encyclopaedic mind. 

After a week with him, are there any negative character traits that I can point to, apart from Frans' occasional sporting of the socks and sandals: emphatic no.  His article God og dårlig eklekticisme (good and bad eclecticism) has changed my life, forever.

Outrespective

It came to me first when I was in the backseat of Baz's car.  Ben put Tarantulla on as an interlude to the tomfoolery.  We were on a wildman weekend in Scotland.  We climbed a 900 metro peak in Cairn Gorm national park, had a swim in Loch Ness in the raw, and drank deeply of the whisky flagon.

But it was in the backseat of the Ford Focus that I realized that Faithless' Outrespective was a classic,  especially Tarantulla and We come one.  My fist listening of these was in a living room in London.  Before I moved to London I thought that dance music was for junkies and poofs.  In London dance music emanates from every car and every open window.  But this isn't dance music per se: there's something more destabilised about it.  Like the photo on the front cover the album echoes the riots in Göteborg and the civil disobedience and terror of a new century.

These songs, like great dramatic opera, meld into biting and comings of one.  Like the fado sung in Gerd Nygaardshaug's Mengeles Zoo, or any fado sung for that matter, a 'hyllning', that remarkable Swedish word that encompasses both tribute and glorifying song, to things that make you want to cry because for the few minutes that they last, you live.

Then I took over as navigator from Ben and found myself in the front seat and trying to steer the music choices on a wildman weekend towards Outrespective and these two songs.  A navigators life is never easy.

Meatballs in Tomata sauce a la Anna L (and Markus Aujalay)

On one of our many very long drives to work Anna L told me this recipe, well, more of a concept than a recipe. She had a hard time of frying meat, so Håkan and she would cook meatballs in a diced tomato sauce. It's fantastic, but don't be tempted to cook for too long. Only give them 10 minutes maximum in the boiling tomato stew.

Markus Aujalay provides a recipe similar to the one below in his book rigtig mat för familjen, [real food for the family], but there is really a lot of leeway when it comes to ingredients. I've put an asterisk beside the essentials.

meatballs:
500 grams minced meat*
2 eggs*
beef/mutton stock*
pressed garlic
thyme (half a teaspoon)
curry (same again)
saffran (same again)
salt and peppar

mix together and roll into balls to drop into the boiling tomato stew.

Tomato stew:
Garlic*
olive oil*
two cans of diced tomatos*
2 bay leaves
thyme
a glass of apple juice or white wine
sugar, salt and peppar
diced parsley*

Fry the garlic in a large casserole dish for a few minutes. Then add everything else. And great for lunches the day after as well!

Liam Viney: a Lion pianist

If anyone needs some inspirational music go to Liam Viney's homepage and check out the musical offerings available. This celebrated pianist is worth listening to and you can check him out playing classical, North American and Australian repertoire (yes you Scando/Europhile motherfucka's; Australians do have their own music!). Liam has studied with Boris Berman and won the inaugural Lev Vlassenko piano competition.

I remember Liam at about 13 or 14 years of age. He was a few years younger than I was and already precociously talented. As younger boys are want to do, we often ended up punching each other, always harmlessly in the shoulder. Liam had an eminently punchable shoulder, and he was always cheeky enough to land a few of his own on the bigger blokes. In those days he talked really fast, the words exploding out of him.

Some of us were part of a composition circle that met at Stephen Leake's place on Saturday afternoons. Liam's musical ideas were fresh and he picked up on subtleties that most of us didn't.

Enough nostalgia - nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For any of you that might have doubted the power of instrumental music listen to the first part of Hallelujah Junction - a joyous and monumental truckstop.

Play it again Liam!

Ein Mann ohne Bauch ist ein Krüppel

[A man without a stomach is a cripple]. Classic, thank you Ulrike!

Flaggermusmannen

This is the (I repeat THE) best book about Australia written by a foreigner. I first got to know the central character Harry Hole through 'Panserhjerte' and 'Frelseren'. These are wonderfully dark detective thrillers.

Although reading in the original Norwegian I am perpetually pole-axed by the depth of Nesbø's understanding of Australiana. He has obviously spent time in Sydney, Brisbane and Nimbin, and rubbed a wet towel all over these places and then wrung that towel out into Flaggermusmannen. For instance, when Harry meets the boxer Toowoomba just after he knocked out a hustler in a provincial boxing bout.

-absolutely magnificent, cobber - how are you yourself.

Ocker stride and even the syntax is Australian! There is even more poetry in the character of Andrew Kensington - Sydney cop, aboriginal, junkie, story-teller. My favourite passage is when Kensington tells the legend of Walla and Bubbur to Harry and the doey eyed, pale Birgitta at the Albury. Birgitta asks,

-and the moral is?

Kensington replies

-That love is a greater mystery than death, and be careful of snakes.

Another other good thing is that Nesbø doesn't compromise on the big picture to accomodate the details. This is fine (but Jo, p. 92 we drink 'flat whites' not 'white flats'; p. 117, it's the Bourbon and Beefsteak; p, 57, should be either Sydsvenskan or Skånska Dagbladet as there is no such paper as Sydsvenska Dagbladet; Robertson probably wouldn't have been keeping a Tasmanian devil in suburban Australia, though we can let this go under poetic licence)

If there is any downside to Flaggermusmannen, it is that those of us that have read further into Nesbø's opus know that Hole becomes more one-dimensional in later books. His relationships become more dysfunctional, the dialogue that is attributed to him becomes even more terse and the settings ever more bleak. In the cold dark Oslo winter it is heartening that Hole first emerged out of Sydney airport from a marmalade sky.

Night after Bertil's funeral 14/11/09

It's the night after Bertil's funeral,
we eat fish,
the bones make one of us choke,
but it's flounder and good fish.

Last night we drove through the snow,
and saw a fox on the road.
I almost couldn't brake in time,

the difference between life and death is just a fishbone away

Conversation with my daughter

I took my daughter to the sea where I grew up
It was dusk and shades of grey rolled in to us
She screamed

I explained to her that Deus ins nobis est
and because of that she shouldn't be scared
She still screamed


Hob.XVI:37,1

Doppler

I have been mildly surprised by the statistic that there are 283 other bloggers that list 'Doppler' by Erlend Loe in their favourite book list. This is not surprising in itself. Doppler is a fantastic book and deserves more appreciation.

For those of you that don't know, Doppler follows the life of an overly competent chap in Oslo who gets fed up with modern life. He has a breakdown of sorts and goes out and lives in the woods. He's sick of life and the interminable childrens television that his young son watches. He also has a large male member. In the woods he kills an elk and the calf follows him around. He strikes up a friendship with a neighbour who is absorbed in a model reconstruction of the last minute of his Nazi father's life. He also builds a totem to his own dead father.

That's a very paltry synopsis, but as a skeleton it shows that this book is, amongst other things, concerned with modern masculinity and paternity. The surprising thing is most of the bloggers who list this as one of their favourite books seem to be female and in their mid 20s. I'm glad that this book has a wide readership and that the young women of today appreciate the tanins that are woven together in this indomitable masterpiece.

There's a lot more Danes drinking around town. I was out with my daughters at around 10:30 and ran into two families on Stor torget who were drinking and sightseeing.

That's fine by me. But it is somewhat ironic. There used to be a much used Danish aphorism, something along the lines of, 'Do your country a favour and escort a Swede to the ferry [back home to Sweden].' The ball is now in the other court.

Beckett's Wagner putdown

The unnecessary and arbitrary nature of this putdown rouses me rambling but irate from a years blogging sabbatical. Why does Beckett think that his two cents count after invoking Rick W? It's not a put down; it just shows a lack of fantasy:


I cannot explain very well to myself what they have that distinguishes them from the rest, something arborescent or of the sky, not Wagner, not clouds on wheels; written above an abscess and not out of a cavity, a statement and not a description of heat in the spirit to compensate for pus in the spirit. -----Beckett, trying to explain some of his better scribbling, 1932

Caroline and Henrik

Went to a great wedding on Saturday. Caroline and Henrik got hitched in Bosjökloster, just a few kilometers away form the summer cottage. Henrik is a tennis player from Ystad and is as charming as they come. Caroline is more charming than they usually come.

Martin produced a quote about her at the reception from som old fool who once said that Caroline (like Monica Zetterlund) like a fig of lingon in a cocktail glass.

I went up earlier to cut the grass at the summer place and am just glad we made it to the wedding on time.

For more videos of Caroline see her: Caroline in Widex Passion commercial

Pik street and drinks like cousins

Last weekend I subbed in on a trip for a pregnant colleague to Estonia. I must report that it is rather bleak over there (sorry Will).

We did manage to find a humorous street sign (see below Danish speakers), and later on Saturday night we had a talk to a little drink that has an unpronounceable name, but the descriptor is memorable: it's like kissing your cousin; it tastes good, but you know it's wrong.

Otherwise I've got a stomach bug and therefore have had my face down the toilet for the last 24 hours. I must clean the toilets in our apartment. . .

Cheap Vodka and Kitty

On Saturday night I was part of a scientific experiment. I wanted to see if a technique that I had read about in an article on Dave Arnold (a moleular gastronomy prime mover) had legs. The hypothesis was that cheap vodka would taste better if poured a few times through a coal filter.

I bought a coal filter at Clas Ohlssons, some cheap vodka in Denmark and invited Renzo over (as a guinea pig). We poured the vodka through the filter and noticed a faint discolouration that became more pronounced with the next filtering. I made a martini out of it. I took a careful sip, but when Renzo refused to drink the grey martini, I also backed out. . . afterall he is a chemist.

Although we might not have drunken much of the carbon filtered vodka martini, we did notice some subtle behavioural changes and the evening wound up in a late morning in the corner bar of KB with Kitty Jutbring djing (at least I think it was her).

Kitty has really good taste in music, and I really don't know why she is involved in that crap-ahh-I-think-my-sisters-friends-cat-is-gay-but-what-should-I-do-about-it-television.

Galatasaray 1 Fenerbahçe 0

Take a mega city and divide it into a European side and an Asian side by a narrow strait.  Cast an historical hotch pot of religions in there and you wind up with Istanbul.  Give the European side one football team (Galatasaray) and the Asian side another (Fenerbahçe, and let's leave Besiktas out of the picture) and let them go at it on the football pitch.  The local derby that results can only evoke some rather strong reactions.

I was watching the match in a pub in Ismir.  Hang on, I hear you say.  An Australian watching football - or 'soccer' as we use the new world diminution  What is wrong with that picture. . . ?!?

Well, nothing.  When I landed in London they told me to never trust a man who didn't like football, so I quickly joined the Arsenal fanclub.

Anyway, and more to the point, who does an Australian cheer for in such an alien match - the underdog of course.

Go Fenerbahçe!

Cate the creator, we love you

This speech leaves me absolutely speechless.  She is the bees knees (read reems of the usual Blanchette psychofantic/hormonal babble).  She is also an amazing orator, and all this after giving birth two days previously. . . see here.

(it's worth watching just for the Bill Clinton anecdote)

El nino busca su voz (or some quote to that effect)

I was in Valhalla, Hell's Kitchen last weekend and was trying to explain to a girlfriend of Uncle's the nature of the mutually exclusive yet symbiotic relationship that I had with Pat Rafter all through the 90's (whenever he won his game, something always went right in my life).  She was a tennis fan and never missed the US open, so she understood.  I was pouring out my heart but was forced to retire early as my voice gave out.

Then one of the girls Baz was with started asking questions about the incident of the untrouserly Francophone in the toilets in Camden.  On a regular night 
this is my party trick and my third drink vignette rolled together with my Magnum Opus. Once again, I found myself looking on from the sidelines as Baz stole my thunder. . .  

I am by nature a scribe but it is also hard when I lose my voice.  My plight in Valhalla and later on at Down the hatch, reminded me of Lorca's Mute Boy:

The little boy was looking for his voice.

(The king of the crickets had it.)

In a drop of water

the little boy was looking for his voice.

Swedish Documentary

I have been struck not once, but twice by the high level of documentary film making that is alive in this country.  These are haunting stories that pack a tremendous punch.

Exhibit 1
Hasse Wester's extremely poignant and empathetic portrayal of the decay of Goan village life in Den Gyllene Stranden.  When Hasse first came to this village twenty years ago it was a coastal pastoral idyll.  He learnt the language (local, not Hindi) and and learnt the ways of the people.  The documentation of his return visits seen from within Hasse's quintessential Swedish life provides is the material of this wonderful story.  The Goan sands, and the village become 'touristed.'   

Exhibit 2
Ett Stycke Sverige is the story of Eric, a north Swedish farm boy.  He worked for a general and through dilegence advanced through the agricultural ranks.  Then came the message that the farm he had worked his life on would be made into a golf course.

Eric could not bear to watch.  He went out the back and shot himself.  I'm partial to swinging a club now and then but will never tee off for a round at Vidbynäs Golf club.  

The two tales are of people and the erosion of their self worth.  The people are separated by continents and the documentaries only share the fact that they were aired last month on Swedish 
TV,  yet they strike a unison chord, and ask few questions but tell no lies.

Sheila

Quaint and slightly annoying, Sheila has stuck in my head, like the sound of the overland trains if you live near the northern line in London (and also because Sheila's what we call birds in Australia).   The samples are a bit overpowering. . . particularly the old pommy git going on about his walks around London 
and the vast surburban churches. 
Samples are there to refer to another time and place but the nth degree is always challenging.  More to the point, one must dig Jamie's lyrical sense:

Her lingo went from the cockney to the gringo
any time she sing a song, the other girls sing along
and tell all the fellas that that lady is single
a fickle way to tickle on my young mans ting

He relishes that London existence that I once did, but the highs come with the lows and Sheila meets her fate

i say giggidibigidiup just another day
another sad story, thats trajegdy,
paramedic anounced death at 10.30
rip it up kick it to spit up the views. . .
i guess the carpet weren't rolled