Manafonistas

Good morning world :-)

 

Tonight you slept well. Tonight you had dreams from both sides of the border.
In one you were in America. The land of the Brave and the free. You were in a house with many rooms, and in every room so many things, unused and dusty. And you went from room to room without your feet touching the floor. And you looked at the objects wondering what to take with you. But as you reached for them they dissolved into nothing. And then you woke up in your bed, your hands empty.

These days you seem more obsessed by the thoughts of giving away  and getting rid of than collecting more. Yet things come to you and cling to you, as if they have decided that you are a safe haven where they can rest peacefully for a while.

What is possessions? What is it that fills up the rooms in your house? What is it that is yours, and that you do not have to leave behind on that final day?

 

The final shirt has no pockets.

 

I am watching you, growing up between books somewhere in a big house in one of the nicer parts of Oslo. Not rich, but certainly not poor.

 

And you were traveled with.

 

You were a child in Africa. Your father: a surgeon for the Croix Rouge – Red Cross. That`s were he got ill. Growing up with fences surrounding the blocks were you lived. Outside: the black children. You: not allowed to play with them. Yet, there were trades. They made toys of wire and brought sugar cane to sell. You had money. Negotiations across the fence. Deals made. Goods and money exchanged places.

And later when you had to go back to Norway because your father was ill. Cancer of the colon. Normally easy to cure, if discovered in time. But my father had been to busy saving others, to have time for himself.

Then: going to Spain because the climate was not so harsh as in Norway. Bag of books in the backseat. Paper to draw on. Comics. Walking under the burning bright sun through the dried up landscape to El Vikingo to have a dip in the pool, and afterwards a vanilla icecream before returning the same way continuously creating ever-changing stories always centering around some deed to be done, like dragons to be killed or universes to be saved.

 

Then: back in Oslo, your father died.

 

It was august. You were eleven. You knew it was to happen. It was no surprise. The reason why you cried was not that he was dead, but that your mother had not told you in the morning when she sent you of to school. That you had spent that day as if nothing significant hat happened in your life. That you had been lied to, kept outside of what really happened.
And so on. You learned early that there were something as dying. And that things have an end.

 

But also that even endings end and then turns into new beginnings.

 

I watch us as we read what i have written so far. You observe that this is one possible version of the story, one remix among many remixes. Next time you tell the story it will be different again. Only liars who have rehearsed tells the story the same way every time. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.

You were never good at learning by heart. And you are not to start now. Either you perform what you have written or you let the words form in your mind as you speak – never knowing where you end up – or if you have an idea about your destination – not a clue about how you get there.

More than once you have been stuck in a corner – and you have had to wait for the paint to dry. But also: wings have grown as you were falling into the abyss, and you just learned to use them in time before you would have splashed into the ground and the story would have been over.

 

I sense you are getting restless.

 

Soon it is time for breakfast. I will let you free to eat. There is no hurry. There is always tomorrow. Or is it? Is every today turned into a yesterday one less tomorrow? Or is that number always changing? I remember that summer when I started a new habit: walking into the street without looking. I was worn out, tired from constantly being on the move.

Anyway, these days, I look both left and right before crossing any street, sometimes I even wait when there is no cars passing. It does not make me immortal, but should i ever die, let it not be because of a metal box with wheels.

 

I choose to end with a song from the other dream:

 

Bo Jo Cie Kochom – Depress.

Nine to go.

 

*

 

Written with

Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie – Before the day breaks (2007)

on repeat in the background, every composition played 3 times before moving on.

Here I am, finally writing to myself. It seems it is about time. Harold Budd and Clive Wright is playing in my room. I love the titles, like

 

Blind flowers

 

They are poems in themselves. Just reading them makes me see the flowers still reaching towards the sun – even when it is night, even when it is dark. Like they can’t let go of the warmth that is still shining inside them. They are not touched by the fact that the sun is not there. They are not made blind by reality.

 

I am watching  you, typing as quickly as you can as to follow the words, rather than you trying to make them follow you.

Sometimes you stop, like a dog sniffing for the next word, and then! Off you go – left –  right through the high summer grass of your imagination, when you where a child, and Crawlin‘ King Snake was already in you, not as a song, but as being. Crawlin‘ King Snake was in you way before you heard the song, the guitar, the voice. And when you heard it, you recognized it and made it yours once more.

 

You are amazed by how rich the music of Harold Budd is, why did it take so long to discover the rest of it? Yes, you heard The Pearl right away – an unusually beautiful record that you have played over and over in many differing circumstances…

Like when you wanted time to change, when you wanted the world to expand, when you wanted to imagine the hundred years or so between every heartbeat – or the slow motion waves of breathing crashing in on some faraway beach.

 

I write to you, because I have been watching over you these days. You had fever. You have been coughing. You had to sit up in bed to sleep. When you slept some short flashes the colors were strong and vivid. You dreamt new names for yourself. You dreamt of broken down buildings from your childhood, and of naked people walking around like it was normal to be naked, and clothes were something unthinkable. And you dreamt you became the leader of an organization called „The central commity for a meaningless life“.

 

And as the temperatures came back to normalish and the flu gave way to your normal pains you were two places at the same time. You were inside your body, and outside your body at the same time watching yourself. And the image of being watched and of watching yourself remains in you.

 

So if there is two of us, which one is the real me? Or maybe even the real us? I never felt alone when there were no one else around. I need my solitude – the place where I meet with myself.

 

Harold Budd and Clive Wright – The Saints Of Whispers is in my room and he talks to me as i am writing to you. Sometime you heard those whispers – sometimes you ignored them, but sometimes you did what I suggested even if it seemed like crazy riddles and penguins hitchiking.

I whisper to you from a different point in time. Not from the same here and now that you live in. Whereas you are locked inside of time and space, I am locked outside.

 

So I can never be you, and you can never be me. Or so they say. But we both know better, don`t we?

 

Maybe i should talk to instead of writing to you, make a youtube video – then it is clearer that we are on each our side of the screen. That time ceases to exist on one side. That it continues freely on the other. That space is wherever we decide it should be.

 

I look at your hands. From the outside the pains are not visible. It is not that bad in the evening. You have nice hands, many have said – they feel good.

Maybe because when you touch someone else you do not want to hurt yourself, then you are not the only touching – you are aware of being touched as you touch. Harold Budd playing the music. The music playing Harold Budd.

In front of a mirror I often wonder: what does my mirror image do when I am not there. Does it disapear? Does it wait patiently for me to return? Does it sit down with a book? Spend time with a loved one that he has not yet introduced to me? Writing a letter to a different version of himself?

 

Slowly moving towards the end of this first letter.

It will be ten letters.

Ten letters to myself.

 

*

 

Written with

Harold Budd and Clive Wright – A Song For lost Blossoms (2009)

on repeat in the background, every composition played 3 times before moving on.