Wow.
Just wow.
That’s all for now.
New Orleans
July 11th, 2010The Teetotaller: Literature intoxication
July 10th, 2010Time for this blog to sober up. There’s been a lot of of drunken rants lately, which might serve some function in small quantities, but given too much space seems to drag on into hostile territories, hostility uncalled for, really, until they collapse and end up as bores (or recitation of pop songs; all the same, though). Or so I am told. By my mother. So I better shape up and behave!
At this moment I am sitting in the car to Nashville, Tennessee, listening to Johnny Cash (what else?), in our all-American monster, a Dodge Charger; the manliness of this car had me giggling like a little girl when we picked it up at John F.K. in New York. The world has known the Red Shark and the White Whale, and I shall continue Hunter’s legacy of fascination for the life aquatic, and baptise our darling the Black Jellyfish.
Alright, let’s backtrack; I never was a man for chronology anyway. Memphis, Tennessee, the birthplace of music, at least according to Sun Records, and maybe Mr. Presley, yelling out from wherever he is nowadays – conspiracy theorists, this is your cue – but there is no denying that Elvis lives, at least in this little backpocket of Americana that is Memphis. Naturally, they are still down in the Elvis-mine harvesting gold with all their effort; their fortress and throne, the mythical Graceland, which might most of all be the very essence of the phrase “tourist trap” – where you’ll have to board a tour bus just to cross the road and pass the couple of hundred feet up to the hallowed mansion, and where you’re made to wear headphones, and some voice from far beyond keeps telling you to take one step forward, one to the left, one to the right, turn around, watch this way, no! that! and for god’s sake, don’t forget to hold the handrail as you descend the stairs!… and still, it feels satisfying to wander the same halls as the King – who certainly might or might not have invented rock and roll, but who certainly might or might not have popularized it, certainly maybe for the white folks at least, but who certainly was one of its biggest stars, hey you! Stop belittling Elvis, that’s a capital offense right there for ya, mister – wandered, going to the bathroom, or picking up some eggs to make an omelet, or some other mundane everyday stuff, back in the 50′s.
Though I must say that Sun Studios was more to my liking, mostly because our guide was human this time. And if you could cope with her lightning fast talking, you’d find a charming girl who so obviously burned with a passion for these sacred halls of music, where stars of all kinds took their first dive into the water; where Bob Dylan came visiting just to kiss the floor tile where the King once stood – X marks the spot – his launching pad from which he skyrocketed to superstardom.
But Memphis is all about the blues, and that applied to us as well. The night before, in B.B. King’s blues club, I learned to enjoy the unpretentiousness of the Blues once again – too bad the genre died a long time ago, and now, all that these virtuosic guys are reduced to, is some band playing on Beale Street on a Wednesday night.
Driving from Chicago, I couldn’t help but notice that every single building down on Highway 61 seems to be either a church or an insurance company – and certainly, at least half of the commercials on TV seems to be for insurance; yet, the other half is for food – which had me wondering: where do they buy this food, and more importantly, where do they buy all the stuff that they’re so eager to insure? Maybe the churches down here are nothing but coverups for supersize malls, I really don’t know. But why then, why all these confusing slogans – “don’t despair, even Moses was a basket case” being my favorite so far (“you think it’s hot here? Imagine Hell,” dwelling somewhere in the lowest tiers)? Or maybe they just buy all they need at the insurance offices and insure them right away, killing a couple of birds with one stone right away, and throw a theft insurance in just for the heck of it while we’re at it, will ya? Do they insure their food? Or rather, the imaginary food that is no doubt being advertised for but which no one can figure out where to buy…?
Anyway, our hostel room was occupied by a raving drunk hillbilly the other night, in some outback town with no name – and though I had the feeling of being held hostage in my own room, I managed to fight back the Stockholm syndrome. And just when we had almost come to terms with the fact that he might never leave and that we would have to do without much sleep that night, his 16 year old niece, dying of embarassment, came and dragged his corpse off and got his alcoholized mind to bed, driving off in the mosquito-ridden Tennessee night. So I went to sleep in my sheets full of dead, suffocated cockroaches and other assorted bugs and insects, of course not forgetting to sing a little lullaby to and kiss the huge spider nestling above the lamp good night first.
Chicago! Chicago was a blast though. 4th of July; the family fun fair vibe of the Navy Pier obviously didn’t really cater to our tastes, so we rather watched the unimpressive fireworks show from 300 metres above, atop the Hancock building, sipping expensive drinks, and then went on to rave about our own neighborhood – the neighborhood of our Ruby Room, which does indeed sound mostly like a shady whorehouse by name, and maybe was, underneath the New Agey, Yoga-infused Bed & Breakfast-facade – we had books on the magic of crystals and the supernatural meaning behind water ripples in our room for god’s sake – but I put the whole thought to rest after taking a steam shower and getting a good night’s sleep in the large double bed with my guy friend. Wait, that sounds terribly wrong.
Enough of the digressions already! After a while, we did at least hook up with some true Americans, and though a bunch of them ditched us after dragging us downtown for no apparent reason at all, we had one guy left – our guy – a Polish-American, with his own, home brewn moonshine (hot pepper was the shit, I am told). And though we had some kind of unwritten deal to stay at his place and being guided around a bit the day after, the exchanging of wrongly written phone numbers and email-adresses in the intoxication of that darned booze put an end to that, or maybe it was more a case of hungover, sober regrets, but I am not one to dish out no blame – and at least we got to have an interesting conversation with the receiver at the other end of the Wrong Number, some Dwayne, or Wayne, or whatever, who went along with it, and took his time to realise that there might be some mix-up in the whole contact information business – what a night he must have thought he’d had, suddenly some strange Norwegian folks are talking about places and people he couldn’t at all remember, “now what just happened after everything went black last night?”
But none of that really matters, for we ended up at a rooftop party, or afterparty, with our newfound friends and a lot of other real characters – crazy, insane, cool people, even Irish people, real characters – and watched the sun rising over the beautiful Chicago skyline, before we crawled back home at 7 AM.
We have soon reached the journey’s end, or more like the start, really – New York City. Where we saw King Kong dressed up as a man – or was it the other way around? – in the Empire State Building lobby, before proceeding to the top, the Top of the World, and watching the lights of the New York night.
But New York was perhaps all about the last night, which started in a commie-outfitted dive called the KGB Bar, with pictures of Lenin and with Russian vodka on the counter and all that; a bit risky in the US, no? Well, that was the start of it all, until everything spun totally out of control. But that is another story entirely. One that should and perhaps must go untold forever, for the sake of mankind, or some other noble goal.
The girls from the other day didn’t show up for lunch, though.
And that brings us to the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning, or something similar. Or somewhere just in between. For really, we have already passed Nashville, and I am in Tupelo right now – y’all remember the Nick Cave song? – but on the road, even the internet has a tendency to lose track of time and live a life of its own; right now, it’s lagging behind a couple of days, really – but let me tell you about Nashville once it regains its pace. Some other time.
Mother, I assure you I haven’t even had a single drink today, honestly.
United States
June 27th, 2010United States of fuckin’ America.
For once I am not the guy to puke from the Single Malt Whisky, no, for now I’ve got a mate that have taken up that role. But luckily, he has also taken up the role as assigned ladies’ man, the one who fixes everything, who does all the hard work, who fixes us up with brunch with pretty New York girls (hopefully, one could say), and then goes on to succumb to the torments of drunkenness, barfing up his lungs in the toilet on $60 whiskey, Laphroaig, that is. Naturally, I had my self-defense of cynicism and self-awareness to back me up, so that I was guaranteed to be the strange guy standing on the outside chain-smoking while He was doing all the work; for better or for worse, most likely for worse.
Anyway, we are in The United States of America, the land of the Holy and the Free and the what-have-we-not, and we wandered around Manhattan for an hour only to find a place to eat, and the best spot we came up with was a McDonalds. But that is beside the point, for as my partner in crime has written on his Facebook-status: being drunk and watching movies on Manhattan sure as hell beats being drunk and watching movies on Randaberg, Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway.
And so I have gone on to watch that fucking “Lila” for the 16th time, alone, and I don’t know if it’s to remind me of WHAT THE HELL I’ M DOING ON THIS TRIP anymore; for of course, the ambition was to make a film, but a long time ago I found myself eternally lost in the mesmerising allure of “Califronia Dreamin’” and other such pop songs; they ruin my game totally, because I get too nostalgic of a Dream I’ve never experienced, but what does it matter?
Again: I am on Manhattan, and that is my sort of obscure point; we are driving across the USA, living the American dream as foreigners, and that is all that matters: after being to South-America and feeling like a free spirit, and roaming Japan and feeling Lost in Translation and just generally Lost while listening to American shoegaze-music (now that’s a bomb!); I find myself in the USA, where our culture was born, for though I’m Norwegian, we are spoon-fed with this culture, and for some sort of reason it feels just too close to home while still feeling just RIGHT!
For some reason I am inclined to say: the real Trip starts here!
While I’m far away from you, my baby. I know it’s hard for you my baby. Because it’s hard for you, my baby. And the darkest hour is just before dawn… each night before you go to bed, my baby! Whisper a little prayer for you, my baby! Yeah!
If only I knew who to dedicate it to, like the Mamas & The Papas; Dedicated to the One I Love.
What the hell am I talking about? According to my internal clock, the time is 11:02 AM right now. That damned jet lag! And that damned $60 whiskey!
Nuclear holocaust and all that stuff, you know: reprise!
June 14th, 2010And all of a sudden I was having this discussion with a Japanese and a German over which was the worst: the Hiroshima nuclear holocaust or the Real Holocaust of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Dachau; and I still can’t decide, but of course it felt like a messed-up situation anyway, because I was chosing between two Evils so great that they can’t be seperated in the Darkest Hours of History.
But apparently, Hiroshima has recuperated, and is now just like Osaka; a loathsome, disgusting Western town with a fully operating night life and people going to their day jobs and caring about infantile stuff like money and career; and all I can think about is: WHY? When your town has been bombed to the ground by the careless, faceless forces of Western Imperialism, how can you embrace it in such a way? After all, it has only been 60 years, which is hardly anything in a historical perspective. How can a country, a city, 200 000 dead people burned to death by the incinerating gammaforces of Big Boy and Small Boy and Little Man and whatever I do not care; how does one forget these crimes against Humanity? Apparently by turning the blind eye against it, like in every other moment where the Winners went one step over the line, or one toke over the line; for the Winners always write History, and writes it in such a way that suits IT best. But still, I’m asking a Japanese guy about how HIROSHIMA, the place where the world learned the consequences of Doom and Destruction; I ask him about how it is today, and all he can say is: “It’s sort of like a normal town.”
I really don’t know what to answer to that.
Alright, it’s time for another 4 AM update. Japan has just won the World Cup automatically by winning against Cameroon; what team really doesn’t matter, they won, and therefore they are the Champions of the world.
And I was just like: “Yeah! I made 7000 Euros a month for two months without an eductation!” and I of course felt like a dick with a major D, D major, “for yeah, I am more priveliged than you guys and don’t it all suck!” yes, it all sucks. And it’s unfair.
And I have seen both the World’s largest wooden building and the World’s largest indoors-Buddha, and still I was more impressed by the Kawaii school girls feeding the tame deer walking all around Nara begging for food, deer-crackers that is.
I really don’t know what to write about Japan other than that I’m drinking another bottle of wine and listening to psychedelic music, for it is the only way to cope with the strangeness over here.
Auschwitz
The Friendship Test (part two; for which I am very sorry for)
June 13th, 2010And it’s time for another 4 AM update written on a rooftop terrace, edited down to coherency the next day and messed up the following night.
I could grind on about the weirdness of Japan and the cultural shock of coming from the ‘laxed out South-America to Japan, where both perversity and formality rules supreme, creating a mixture of a highly sophisticated facade where everyone adheres to the rules, but with a seedy background like no other country – but I shall try not too. For the first time during my trip I have been threatened while filming. Of course by an expat in Shinjuku at night, so I shall not blame the otherwise kindergarten safety of Japan.
Apparently, I only needed to travel to the other side of the world to find that the clubbing scene is not to my fancy at all. I’ve been fooling myself for too long. For it really isn’t too hard to find your Europeanized haunt wherever you go: I even got a reprise of my South-America torment, the Black Eyed Peas’ “I’ve Got a Feeling” boomed out of the speakers even here in Osaka, and even with the added obnoxiousness of a pole dancer thrown upon it all. The world seems to be closing in on me, for it is all the same wherever you go. White guys acting like Imperialists and acting like the Idiots of the World; partying, getting laid, getting drunk, whatever is your poison.
But still! it is of course possible to find these moments of pureness. Listening to Loveless on a rooftop terrace while emptying a bottle of red whine would be one of them, but alltogether too ordinary, for what would I be doing if I was at home right now? No, I’m talking about gazing at the Kyoto river in the middle of the night with two beautiful people in all senses, Japanese even, while being passed of as a local by the Gaijin asking for directions; and eating nothing but an ice cone among the loving couples gathered around the river bed each and every night.
Being guided around by locals does of course help in Japan, because you no longer feel like the outcast in the Outcast Society; to tell the truth, I have felt like it for the past soon-to-be 3 months; the tall, intrusive white man with the big, silly camera. In South-America it was the stares and low buzzing voices, in Japan the giggling girls covering their mouths, though I’m still not sure if their giggling at me, for they seem to be doing nothing else even when I have my weapon concealed.
What you want me to say is probably that Japan is a crazy country. And indeed, it sure is. My stay in Tokyo was both hampered by jet lag as well as the creeping cultural shock, of coming from the most chilled-out place on the earth to the most organized and foolproof city of them all. Tokyo does seem like a Disney Land for the Urbanites, a city where everything is possible and where nothing can go wrong and where everything is draped in neon and noise and asphalt and immense crowds. It was all too much, like the Beatles song, on my first try, but I will be going back before my stay here abruptly ends, and hopefully I will be able to grasp the all too apparent craziness this time around. Consider it a city easy to get lost in as of now.
As a Lost in Translation-fan I have of course tried to follow in its footsteps carefully, and though my plan was to visit the Park Hyatt, I instead settled for a Japanese katana – which will probably be a damned hassle to bring over the Border – and a visit to the Heian shrine in Kyoto (yes, you all remember Scarlett tip-toeing over the carefully seperated stones in THAT garden). Now I only have to see the Mount Fuji through the window of the amazing Shinkansen, and all will be complete; for the neon madness of Shinjuku and the crowds and the TV-screens of Shibuya have all been done. Except for the girl situation of course, as always; but hooking up with a Gaijin girl in Japan feels too close to home.
And still, after spending a week in Kyoto with the locals, getting a Japanese girl make dinner for me, crashing at her boyfriend’s tiny apartment, staying at his university, being treated to a public bath, walking around Tokyo for a week without any purpose at all, meeting up with the future Prime Minister (or at least he said so himself), being rejected to film the cosplay gathering at Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon, being told off by three different girls handing out flyers for maid cafés – all dressed in skimpy maid-, school girl-, anime-outfits, of course, to cater to the poor nerds of the world – riding the subway a million times without daring to film a sleeping person like Chris Marker, but still visiting his famed Cat Shrine; honestly, visiting too many shrines and castles alltogether AND STILL, when all is said and done, I find myself writing Literature, or at least an attempt to do so, on a rooftop terrace while listening to Loveless and downing a bottle of red wine after way too much beer and gin and tonic; the same as I would do in any corner of the world. And it hits me: the world really is the same all around, for my “friends”, which I met two hours ago have run off with Japanese hookers or are still dancing on the deserted floors of the Gaijin-clubs of Dotombori, and life just seems tragic sometimes, when you realize that there is a definite possibilty that there are idiots everywhere, but still, there is some beauty to be found in every tiny moment of space and time on this Planet – though I have pierced my neak on posion ivy and thistles; for the Sun is already rising, and Loveless is coming to and end – as well as my wine bottle – and these moments of banality are to be cherished.
Of course this is all a lie, and I’m even ripping off Chris Marker’s blasé hunt for banality. For it is a new night already, so the chronology of this whole piece is messed up, a good thing perhaps. And the highlight of this particular night, speaking in the present tense that is, has been waking up the robot dog unintentionally at 2 AM and wondering if I had to take a walk with it to make it shut up. Do robot dogs sleep?
Though Japan is a country which is inspiring in every way, I’m amazed at my lack of success in converting this inspiration into something worthwhile; for a week I considered writing about Tokyo Toilet Stories, from squat holes to high-tech toilets with deodorizer, seat warmer, built-in bidet, three modes of flushing – I even found one with a speaker system which would play a flushing sound on request, for what reason, I am uncertain; but writing an allegory of Japan’s two-facedness based on toilets seems entirely stupid, and toilets are really a thing of the past for me now, they don’t concern me. I’m used to most things after spending two months in South-America throwing used toilet paper in a stinky bin beside the loo.
And my trip is coming to and end. Already. I have no ambitions to try to capture the essence of Japan in three weeks, such a thing would be foolish. For it is too broad in scope and, at first exposure, too.. weird. There, I said it.
time for another 4 AM update – which is always awesome – written
on a rooftop terrace – which is always awesome.
I could grind on about the weirdness of Japan and the cultural shock of
coming from the ‘laxed out South-America to Japan, where both perversity
and formality rules supreme, creating a mixture of a highly sophisticated
facade where everyone adheres to the rules, but with a seedy background
like no other country; but I won’t, for now. Apparently, I only needed to
travel to the other side of the world to find that the clubbing scene is
not to my fancy at all; I can’t work there in any conceivable way, with
girls nor guys, with normal conversation nor sweet-talk, and I always was
a fucking greenhead at the latter anyway.
For you really don’t have to look too hard to find your Europeanized
haunt wherever you may find yourself in the world: I find the torment of
South-America haunting me even here, the Black Eyed Peas’ “I’ve Got a
Feeling” was an inevitable fact even in Osaka. So however hard I try to
avoid the Idiots of the World, I just can’t seem to do it when it all
boils down to an atmosphere of the ordinary; partying, getting laid,
getting drunk, whatever is your poison. The world seems to be closing in
on me, for it is all the same wherever you go.
But still! one can find these moments of pureness and uncorruptedness,
even in Japan, and I won’t even mention listening to Loveless on a
rooftop terrace as one of them, for that is more like an universal rule
than a true moment of time and place; no, I’m talking about staring at
the Kyoto river in the middle of the night with two beautiful people in
all senses, one of them a guy but who really cares, while being passed of
as a local by the Gaijin asking for directions; and eating nothing but an
ice cone among the loving couples gathered around the river bed each and
every night. These are the moment of true peace which I haven’t
experienced anywhere else but in Japan. It seems utterly banal, and
though I must admit I am a man of Clichés at times, if you only know how
to appreciate the SERVILE aspect of Japan there is no way to have a bad
time here.
Being guided around be locals does of course help, because you no longer
feel like the outcast, which I have felt like for the past soon-to-be 3
months; the tall, intrusive white man, and the big camera of course
doesn’t help. I’m almost used to getting stares and giggles everywhere I
go, but it is a process, as everything.
What you want me to say is probably that Japan is a crazy country. And
indeed, it sure is. My stay in Tokyo was both hampered by jet lag as well
as the immense cultural shock (yes, I lied to you last time) of coming
from the most chilled-out place on the earth to the most organized and
foolproof city on Earth. Tokyo does seem like a Disney Land for the
Urbanites, a city where everything is possible and where nothing can go
wrong and where everything is draped in neon and noise and asphalt and
immense crowds. It was all too much, like the Beatles song, on my first
try, but I will be going back before my stay here abruptly ends, and
hopefully I will be able to grasp the all too apparent craziness this
time around.
As a Lost in Translation-fan I have of course tried to follow in its
footsteps carefully, and though my plan was to visit the Park Hyatt, I
instead settled for a Japanese katana, which will probably be a fucking
hassle to bring over the Border, and a visit to the Heian shrine in Kyoto
(yes, you all remember Scarlett tip-toeing over the carefully seperated
stones in THAT garden). Now I only have to see the Mount Fuji through the
window of the amazing Shinkansen, and all will be complete; for the neon
madness of Shinjuku and the crowds and the TV-screens of Shibuya has all
been done. Except for the girl situation of course, as always; but
hooking up with a Gaijin girl in Japan feels like the easy way, just as
you avoid the White Backpackers in South-America; for it feels too close
to home.
And still, after spending a week in Kyoto with the locals, getting a
beautiful Japanese girl make dinner for me, crashing at her boyfriend’s
tiny apartment, eating dinner at his university diner, walking around
Tokyo for a week without any purpose at all, being rejected to film the
cosplay gathering at Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon, being told off by
three different girls handing out flyers for maid cafés – all dressed in
skimpy maid-, school girl-, anime-outfits of course to cater to the poor
nerds of the world -, riding the subway a million times without daring to
film a sleeping person like Chris Marker, visiting too many shrines and
castles and getting the traditional Japan shoved up my throat to a degree
where I just can’t take it any more, and simply being in a country where
everything seems to WORK once again, as opposed to South-America where
everything seems to be broken in some kind of way, intentional or
unintentional – AND STILL; I find myself writing Literature, or atleast
an attempt to do so, on a rooftop terrace while listening to Loveless and
downing a bottle of red wine after way too much beer and gin and tonic;
the same as I would do in any corner of the world. And it hits me: the
world really is the same all around, for my “friends”, which I met two
hours ago has run off with Japanese hookers – fucking them in the anal
asshole, oh the obscenity! and I still feel like a child – and how many
nights and lonely evenings before I decide to throw myself off the
precipice? – or are still dancing on the deserted floors of the
Gaijin-clubs of Dotombori, and OH LORD aren’t life just tragic sometimes,
when you realize that there is a definite possibilty that there are
idiots everywhere, but still, there is beauty to be found in every tiny
moment of space and time on this Planet – though I have pierced my neak
on posion ivy and thistles; for the Sun is already rising, and Loveless
is coming to and end – aswell as my wine bottle – and it is in these
moments of Banality that one must indeed cherish the Banal, for the
beauty of life and people can be found anywhere at any time, if you look
hard enough, that is.
And now for something completely different
May 28th, 2010Entering Japan. Cultural shock commence in 3… 2… 1…
But nothing happens. Perhaps I have grown somewhat accustomed to this wierd place from the other side of the world; my general interest in Japan must surely help overcome the menacing difference. So far I find it simply cute to observe, and I can’t help but becoming an awfully romanticizing urbanite. Finally back in the big city jungle. The biggest of them all.
As I boarded the express train from Narita airport to Tokyo I put on my headphones and gave My Bloody Valentine’s “Sometimes” a spin. And it hit me: ‘Holy shit, I’m in Japan!’ A vague dream I’ve had for a long time has finally been realized. I watched the beautiful scenery of rice fields and old wooden buildings and neon signs and skyscrapers drift by, and I had delightful shivers down my spine for a full 50 minutes. I felt the inspiration flowing, and filmed my first half an hour of tape. I expect myself to do a lot of it here. And no doubt, Loveless and Psychocandy will accompany me through this Other Planet.
I have spent the previous 48 hours in airports or airplanes, sleeping in intervals on cold stone floors or small seats, I have traveled through time, crossing the date line, and now I am a tired wreck. The fun will start tomorrow.
In the Maw of the Beast
May 28th, 2010Fuck Canada.
Sorry for putting it so bluntly, but I will not silence my acidic pen on this ocassion, but let it flow forever flow. I am of course writing this in the moment of affection, of fear and humiliation and stress.
I walk through the gate labeled International Connections, walk up to the booth, present my passport and tickets, and the shit hits me in the face immediately.
“You’re coming from the States?”
“Yeah, but only in transit, and now I’m going to Tokyo.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Brazil.”
Menacing face.
“And what was the purpose of your trip?”
“Uhm, well, just travelin’, backpackin’.”
“Were you any other places?”
“Chile and Argentina.”
“And why are you here in Canada?”
“Well, I’m not! I’m just gonna catch my plane and I’m out of here.”
A look that says ‘oh no you’re not’.
“You’re from Norway?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do in Norway?”
“Why is that any of your business? Well, I used to study but I quit.”
“How did you afford to go on this… trip then?”
“Uhm… what?”
“What were you doing in the States?”
“Well, I was just in transi…”
“And where are you going after Japan?”
“Uhm… home for a couple of days, then back to the States.”
Unconcealed, harassing half-laughter.
“Back to Norway, and then BACK to the States, am I hearing you correctly?!”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why?”
Shocked, condescending expression.
“Well, my travel insurance expires and…”
“Why is that?”
“Well, let me finish!”
“When does your plane leave?”
“Hold on, man, why are you questioning me like this? I’m not a criminal and certainly haven’t done you anything wrong! A little humanity never hurt anyone did it?”
The observant reader will of course guess that the conversation didn’t play out exactly like this, but a writer must never be concerned with the chronology of the Real but with the chronology of the Imagination. After 10 minutes of brutal questioning of everything regarding my person, my intentions, my morals, my mind, my spirit; the aggressive bulldog behind the counter writes a number on my customs slip and tells me to step out of the line, walk down one floor and go through the regular customs.
“But why? I’m just in transit.”
“Step out of the line.”
Goddamn, I thought; and here I was thinking about Canada as the USA’s liberal little brother.
I arrive at the regular customs and pass on through immediately without a hassle. Alright, finally over. But apparently, I have to pick up my bags and check in again.
But my bag doesn’t arrive on the belt. On the speaker system I am told that everyone has to pick up their bags regardless of what they were told in the US. Every employee I ask tells me the same thing. But my bag is still not there, and the belt has emptied. And meanwhile, I have had my passport checked 5 times in 15 minutes by every robot security guard who happened to stumble upon me. What is this? I check the oversized luggage area; nothing there either. ‘Alright, fuckit, there goes my 20 hours of tape from South America. I guess there will be no film. Great.’
Finally, being referred to my airline, I am told that my bags will indeed be transferred to Japan as I had been told, and that I do indeed not need to pick them up and check in again.
Growing increasingly tense by the lack of, and the contradicting communication, and feeling like an innocent suspect targeted by every goon in the goddamn building, just having survived a bad-cop routine questioning, I claw my way to freedom; the exit.
New bunch of security guards: faceless, anonymous robotic beings. I present my papers. He takes one look at my customs slip, studies the number the Gestapo Officer upstairs had scribbled down on it earlier: “Alright, step this way, please.” “But… the exit is that way…” “I don’t give a shit, SCUM!”
I am led into a slaughterhouse of a room; institutional, sterile atmosphere of pure Evil; this is the end station for every decent human being and the breeding grounds of brutal formality and ignorance. “Wait for an officer.” I am trembling with fear. ‘I’m getting the glove for sure.’
The officer, just as faceless as the others, walks up to me.
“How are you today?”
“Uhm… fine, sort of.”
But what I want to say is of course more along the lines of
“You nazi swine! Stop criminalizing me with your bullshit and treat me like a human being! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
But I do of course realize that I am now in the presence of the most dangerous people on earth: the evil pedants who blows of their steam and their fascistic tendencies in a neatly packed framework of legality; guys who have finally grasped the power they yearned for since torturing kittens in their childhood, psychopaths reformed by ignorance and rules, who’s only goal is to dominate the Innocents. And now they have the perfect excuse for doing so: ‘We are controlling the border, mister, we make the rules here.’ Airport security: the Fifth Reich.
“Is this your bag?”
“Obviously, knucklehead.”
“Did you pack it yourself?”
“No, I hired a purple-assed baboon to do it, paid him in peanuts and booze (readers of Naked Lunch rejoice).”
“Empty your pockets.”
I can do nothing but cower in his presence of mean and strict formality, and out of fear of making everything all the much worse, do as I am told. A new round of even more intricate and barbaric questioning commences.
Why are you staying in Canada for one day/where have you been/why are you travelling/what do you do in Norway/how did you finance the trip/what were you studying/why did you quit/a fisherman?!/where are you going/are you alone/how much money are you carrying/who are your parents/how was your upbringing/where do you live/how can we track you down/what are your sexual preferences/what the FUCK were you doing in South America, eh, the VILEST of all the places on the face of the earth?!/were you or have you ever been engaged in UNSPEAKABLE acts of PERVERSITY?!/are you a MORALLY ROTTEN RAT?!/are you a dope fiend a criminal a child molester a rapist a terrorist revolutionist abortionist a LIIIBERRRAL (rolling the R’s obscenely)?!/answer me, answer me! Answer me! ANSWER ME!
He checks through all of my belongings with cold, methodical, evil efficiency; seems to halt a bit when he spots the condom in my wallet, but proceeds to drop The Final Bomb: what I, he and everyone has been waiting for:
“This is a tissue to check if your baggage has been in contact with any drugs, ILLEGAL drugs for that matter, the VILEST shit of them all, The Doom of the human Race! Mindbending EVIL SUBSTANCES, some may call it freedom but oh no I call it terrorism, my ungodly friend; an insult to our Dear Society, a BLIGHT on our dearest homeland!”
He is foaming at the mouth and spontaneously ejaculates from his own words. He grows spider legs and dead, black insect eyes, blinded by Duty, and an obscene arm sprouts from his torso, grabs me by the throat; his voice turns metallic and hollow and alien words of pure aggression rings out from his intestines.
Getting his act together and returning to his vaguely human robot form:
“Ehem… are you a druggie, humph, ehm… I mean, is there any reason why this tissue should reveal anything… unusual… SIR?!”
(In mind: YES, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! You have caught me like a fish in a barrel! Humiliate me and torment me some more with your didactics and you can all take turns in gang raping me in the back room before you drag me off to prison! I shoot heroin through the eyeballs, swallow condoms full of coke and dash across the border! I drink human blood for breakfast and in the night I molest young boys! I am the man you are looking for, the one you have been looking for your whole life! Is that what you want to hear?! Drag me to the depths of your Sterile Hell, you may catch me but you will never take my SOUL!)
“Uhm… no.”
I am literally trembling for the three minutes he’s gone analyzing his Fascist Semen Tissue. I will quote Hunter once more: “I felt raped. The Pig had done me on all fronts, and now he was going off to chuckle about it,” before coming back, going in for the kill. I didn’t know exactly how or why I had stepped into this, but it was certainly Burroughs’ nightmarish Interzone. Sure, I could have imagined something like this happening in the States, and sure: no good words about Homeland Security, endless lines, terrifying forms and a couple of “go back in the line, we need another useless filled out form from you, sir,” but this was another dimension entirely; the real Nightmare. And in Canada?!
The Officer returned, looking beat and broken. “I’ll follow you to the door.” I had escaped his Nazi trap somehow, and ran for it, as fast as I could, towards the exit; for if not, he would surely club me to death with his baton to retaliate his humiliating defeat.
I opened up the doors and escaped Hell. I drew large breaths of fresh air – as fresh as it gets in an airport certainly – and then proceeded to chain smoke for an hour.
Fuck Canada.
Being is more than life: part three (finally! says the brick man)
May 26th, 2010Now let’s play it nice. It all leads up to this: me leaving South America. Reporting from a generic airport hotel in São Paulo, I have mixed feelings of sadness and nostalghia and excitement. Here’s the mother of all clichés, but I feel like I’ve just started, and these two months feels more like a short week; though, looking back, it seems I’ve been here for a lifetime. Perhaps only because I have grown accustomed to being here.
But Japan lies around the next corner, and though the cultural differences will probably be a punch in the face, I’m thrilled to go somewhere modern, where things actually works. Yesterday, I tried withdrawing some money in Rio, and managed to reboot three different ATM’s just by inserting my alien debit card (they run on Windows, of all things, by the way). And though I will certainly miss the relaxation and the informality and the vivacity of South-America, where everyone’s a surfer and half-bum, I do, in some perverse way, look forward to being strangled by the hypermodernity of the metropolis; Tokyo of course.
Fate would have it that I met up a Japanese guy during my last days in Rio, and from the moment I said “hi, where are you from?” it took approximately 30 minutes until he had promised to contact some friends of his who would welcome me and guide me around. So now I am presumably going to be led around the Tokyo jungle by a hip, clever guy, and shown through Kyoto’s ceremonious beauty by a “very beautiful Japanese girl”, or so I’m told.
There’s no easy way to summarize two months on the road; at least not my first two months on the road alone, and my first time outside Europe. And to squeeze down a whole continent of experiences in a couple of sentences seems entirely banal. Among the 20 hours of tape I have filmed so far, there must be some short moments which can illuminate my feelings in a better way. And thus, you’ll just have to wait. Here, I will only resort to the utmost banality, and simply say that I loved South-America, and will come back on a later occasion.
For those interested (click to zoom in):
The next time I write, I will once more be on the opposite side of this planet of ours.
Being is more than life: part two (of how many? asks the thick man)
May 23rd, 2010And so we decided to go out, and it was bliss all around us. The Brazilian guys obviously desensitized by the destruction of Habit, but me – as always, in some pretentious way, looking for the abstract definition of a Soul in whatever time and space I might find myself in – bought the ticket, took the ride, as Hunter S. Thompson would have said.
And once we had settled on a hang-out, it turned out to be the worst choice of them all in all of Rio. High-class, phony-ass, expensive, unreal dwelling of the fashionate Living Dead, but nevertheless, this was to be our poison of choice for the night. It didn’t take long before my contemporaries and partners in crime thought of me as overtly gay, as I couldn’t resist but admire the dancing of an explicit Homo doing the Life routine: it was Saturday Night Fever without all the illusions, without a rehearsed act, without John Travolta; it was once again, the simple joy of dancing but naturally in a more uptight and impressive and showbiz kinda-way. Swinging the girl with such fluid motions and so devoid of underlying intentions that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that his act wasn’t at all distracted by the obstructions of the erect penis in itself nor the Game of it. “No, I like girls, though I have, like any other William Burroughs-fan, a fascination for the male genitalia,” I said, and of course it didn’t convince them.
And of course it was the ultimate contrast to yesterday, when everything seemed so real and touchable: tonight, the cold distance of European culture seemed to close in on us all, but somehow kept its nerve and strayed from our presence, leaving only a handful of drunken idiots to roam the downfall of civilization that is nightclubs.
And the fat Brazilian was of course urging me to bullshit the gorgeous girls with promises that I was an Oil Tycoon, only in Brazil to buy up some oil companies to expand our holy monopoly; but of course she saw through it, afterwards seeking me out to verify her accusations – and I could do nothing but admit – and to disband the stereotypes Brazilian men force upon their own women; that they are money-hungering whores and gringo-hunters, while they really are, quite naturally, like any other girls, with the same needs and desires and thoughts of every other normal human being. I don’t think I made a good impression though, as she left me for one of the Brazilian Greek Gods just a few minutes later. I would have done the same.
And then there was Rambo; the Brazilian who kept on screaming whenever he spoke, like he was trying to save some half-dead, half-fallen teammate from the terrors of the battlefield, going: “LARS! HEY MAN!” patting me on the shoulder with such intensity that I dislocated it several times; even if he was in the middle of embracing and kissing and halfway-copulating with a female; for his urge for Masochismo and testosterone was stronger than that of reproduction.
And there was madness all around me, all up until the end, when my beloved partners in crime found out that the dissidents had left without paying their fair share of the bill, and we were held up with a $400 debt to pay to the Man for our debauchery. Naturally we didn’t have that kind of money, so we had to fight the guards and strangle the ticket girls, but as expected, none of that helped. So we were reduced to wrecks – sleeping on the hard couches while the evidence of our’s and the Other’s excesses were cleaned up by the silent collectors of dirt and trash that you’ll find in every Human Waterhole of the Earth – until one of the sinners somehow got back and covered our enormous bill and brought us home.
And of course the sun was already rising, and by the time we passed glamorous Copacabana and took a slight detour for the sake of the taxi driver’s money problems and ended up at the border of Ipanema, it was already close to day. The sun is already up now, and the buses and the cars and the bustling of the South-American metropol has already commenced! and once again there is madness all around me! and there is a guy sleeping in a hammock right beside me! and the other Brazilian is filming pretty girls with my camera! and they are renovating the bathrooms, so in two hours I will be awoken by the sharp sound of hammers and chisels, destroying our dear sanctuary of sleep! and really, it’s time to eat breakfast and go to bed like any sane being. I will probably sleep on the roof today, to avoid the noise and the people but not the light. Finally my mosquito net will come to use.
This is the essence of the Night in the Underworld.
Being is more than life: part one (of how many? asks the wise man)
May 22nd, 2010The Christ of Rio is shedding its skin like the tarantula offspring of Bergman’s Spider God. Covered in scaffolding, there is nothing to see there. So rather, I went to the obscenely erect Sugar Loaf mountain and viewed the sun setting on the bays of Rio de Janeiro. After dark, I found out that I only needed to go out with the most boringly apathetic Westerners – who it was doesn’t matter as they’re all the same – to experience the frightening superiority of South-America in every single aspect that really matters. It’s hard to not feel inferior in Brazil, walking among men who equals Greek gods, and women who are so primitively brutal in their seduction, with the physiognomy which seems to awaken every single primal instinct of reproduction in every single male, on the beach and on the street and around every corner.
While these obvious parodies and self-inflicting stereotypes of Westerners did what every Westerner does, playing with the salt or the toothpicks or trying to look occupied with finding a secret meaning behind his own palm or the menu or the surface of the table, I watched and observed. People-watching is the nice way of describing voyeurism. And the primal joy of Brazil unfolded in front of me, in the form of dance. Girls and boys seemingly driven by some unearthly passion; once again, a reaction to music driven solely by instinct; succumbing themselves to the joys of musical oblivion, abandoning every thought but joy and movement.
I have never seen a culture so alive.
My Westerner psyche, for indeed, I am one of them too, kept me back from participating in the anarchy. The mental blocks of irony and distance and cool observation that are imprinted on us from early age so apparent; the vilest form of brainwashing ever to emerge; but then again, that’s in some ironic way the essence of culture, or at least the difference in culture, and as such, what makes this world so interesting. I’m simply counting my days until the sheer passion of these Other Cultures, living and breathing and teeming with life like nothing we’ve ever seen, decides on World Domination.
We won’t stand a chance. This is the essence of the World.
Interzone: Brazil
May 20th, 2010So I spent 15 hours watching running water and the deafening roars of Garganta del Diablo at high flow, and joined in on the refreshing ritual of showering in the waterfalls at the end of the day. Witnessing Iguazu was an ultimate experience of the greatness of nature, and I caught myself whispering “good work, Nature. Good work,” to myself many times. And though one can never have this paradise to oneself, it didn’t really matter if for once I was among the exploitative Watchers who cling together to experience exactly the same thing and take pictures of exactly the same thing and become overwhelmed in a collectively introverted way, until there were nothing left of us but awestruck admirers of the World’s wonders: the coatis’ picked our bones clean after the show was over.
Yes, I am giving Naked Lunch another try, and think I will be able to complete it this time around, but for the moment I’m lost in hallucinations and fever, free association and incomprehensiveness.
My journey in South-America is coming to an end, but not without the joys of Brazil, like skinny dipping in the water of Florianopolis’ public port dead drunk in the middle of the night with a suicidal surfer-Swede; and not to forget Rio. My first day has been all about the destructive currents and beautiful people of Ipanema beach, but hopefully I will be able to dip into this unreal city’s soul in the short time span called a week.
For now, I am daydreaming and finding myself far away, in Japan. Living in the moment does indeed get progressively harder as you’re nearing the innevitable end of one trip and are about to step into another one. But tomorrow will be the future, so I’ll be living there until it arrives.
Philosophy lesson (etc.)
May 11th, 2010“How was your day,” she asked.
“Good, I guess.”
“I guess?”
“Yeah, I just walked around the desert.”
“All by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
She stared at me as if I was a crazy person and kept silent. I guess I could have told her that I’m making a film but didn’t bother, as that usually leads to a fair bit of explaining, and I didn’t really mind being perceived as strange at that moment.
My philosphy of being here is probably none other than being here. I’ve never cared much for organized tours and a defined occurence of events, where to go and when to go there and when to go away and what to see. So instead I find myself walking around the desert without any particular purpose, being satisfied with just the fact that I’m right there in that tiny frame of time and space. One could probably say that I’m not experiencing as much as I should in the traditional sense, but I find the essence of traveling in doing ordinary things. Observing daily life and people and simply existing in whatever setting I’m currently in without any restrictive timeframes or frames of any kind.
*
On my way to Salta the bus dived down from 4000 metres into a valley filled with clouds. As we passed through the white layer of living gas, every gringo in the bus were taking pictures of exactly the same thing with their compact cameras. I rather kept my cool and listened to Bohren & der Club of Gore, contemplating the great coexistence of dark jazz and the strange natural phenomena, and cursing the pathetic hive mind actions of the tourists, and thought “damn… I should have brought my camera onto the bus as well”.
I finished Salta prematurely, mostly because the Argentinean way of partying is killing me. Getting home at 7:30 the next morning is by no means an exceptional night that will be talked about for months to come, but rather the norm. So I’m retreating to Brazil, which is probably only worse, come to think of it. And when I hear stories like: “Once I got three machine guns in my face because they wanted to steal my shoes,” from people living in Rio, we’re probably looking at a nervous breakdown on my part in about a week.
But first Iguazu awaits. I’m hoping for a highly spiritual moment of emerging childhood nostalgia tomorrow, being gripped again by the same obsession over waterfalls that I had as a kid, passionately yelling “falls! falls! falls!” out of the car window at the powerful demonstrations of the forces of nature.
And everything in between
May 5th, 2010The best friends are usually those you can walk with in complete silence without feeling a hint of embarassment. Saying that this blog has turned into a friendship test would be a stretch, but I consider it a relevant excuse for the absence of updates. Deep down I do of course consider it a good thing, and in these days, now that Godspeed You! Black Emperor has returned from the depths, it feels almost trendy to think of the internet as a “petty tyrannical monster”, end of quotation. But most of all, I guess it must indicate that I’m doing something worthwhile enough to forget about this online-pandemic.
Most of all I needed people, and I indeed got them in Santiago. The city perhaps not entirely unique or remarkable in itself, but at least I got to watch a guy trying to jump off a building, sitting on the ledge of the top floor, throwing out papers at the crowd below, as if motivated by some last contemptous rebel against the clamps of society that no doubt were strangling him, just as the suffocating smog strangles the whole of Santiago. Of course he backed out in the end, but his display made a point; or rather, his papers dancing in the wind towards the ground did, like some strange, morbidly beautiful metaphor. And down on the street the men in the park, uninterrupted, kept on with their chess playing.
Never mind though, the essence of Santiago for me was to be found with the gringos for once. And the wild partying, which I had sort of isolated myself from up until then; after which I thought I had lost my mobile, totally panicking, only to remember that I had put it inside my boxers after being paranoid about getting robbed while walking home alone at 5 am. One is his own’s worst enemy, as always. It culminated in a night of total craziness, not so much because of our, the gringos, state of mind or wrong-doings, rather that Sunday seems to be the day that all the strange ones occupy the street of Pio Nono; the countless druggies asking for money, the pregnant woman chain-smoking while walking around the same block a million times, the toothless old guy giving out Pablo Neruda-cards for free, talking about cannabis and raving about how Norwegians have a cold heart, the futbol-girls partying in the middle of the street with the dogs barking after winning some undefinable match; things like that. But they were beautiful people, beautiful people.
I went to Valparaiso but soon found it too cool for me to really grasp. The bohemian feel and the grafitti and the awkward architecture, everything was right, and I should have enjoyed it, but rather felt myself crippled by the overwhelming hipness and lingering insecurity of it all. So I did nothing.
I rather went flying on the isolated beach of Ritoque at midnight to Fennesz’ Endless Summer. I watched the sea and befriended a dog in the total darkness, a dog that had never been petted, and all I got was flea bites.
And when I landed, I suddenly found myself on the moon. In Atacama desert.
Anywhere I lay my head
April 21st, 20105000 kilometres in 10 days undertaken by car, and I suddenly find myself in Chile. My first impression of Pucón obviously marred by bad weather and the fact that my room looked more like a closet than anything else. And I had already overdosed on small towns and desolate landscapes and the European atmosphere of the Lakes District, so I had to go to Santiago, perhaps because I needed some big city chaos and shops that never close but most of all I needed people.
I instantly fell in love. It might only have been triggered by the immense contrast to my misery on the seemingly neverending 12 hour bus trip, without having eaten anything the whole day, with a guy that just had to occupy the seat next to me because it was his seat, although the bus was almost empty. Or maybe it was just the joy of seeing two-lane streets again, actually illuminated by street lights, and tall buildings, and the smell of exhaust and asphalt. But in my starvation-induced haze, seeing the lights flashing by through a taxi window, accompanied by Frank Sinatra and unknown Spanish crooners on the stereo, I felt refreshed.
I have found my bohemian hostel at last and my bohemian neighborhood, and the kind of restaurants where the waiter will actually spend an hour just talking to you in his limited English, and a striking impression of being at home has gripped me. As a British girl told me in Uspallata, it’s all about expectations. She hadn’t been blown away by Iguazu but rather by Rio, since she didn’t expect anything from the latter. I expected nothing and got everything, or so I hope, though it really is too early to say.
He’s the chief alright
April 16th, 2010Just another routine police control, though I must say there are a lot of them today. “Destination?” he asks. “Júnin”. He starts talking in fast, incomprehensible Spanish, and I employ my usual tactic when I can’t understand a thing, of just repeating “Si! Si! Si!” and hoping for the best. Another guy starts walking towards my car, and I get the picture. I’ve just agreed to give this guy a lift. Well, what the hell, why not.
Turns out the guy is just not an ordinary guy, but a cop, a police chief in civilian clothes actually. Of course my nerves are tense. Am I driving too fast? Am I breaking any rules? His English is quite terrible, but not as terrible as my Spanish, so I assure him that his English is great, if only to avoid an awkward silence for a couple of hours. He apparently does this hike almost every day, back and forth from Neuquen to Júnin, where his girlfriend lives. Of course he’s got a wife in Neuquen as well, but what’s up with fidelity anyway.
In all the tumult I have completely forgotten that I planned to fill gas in Zapala. There’s less than a quarter of a tank left, and some 250 kilometres without a gas station awaits. “Pft! Fine! Only 200 kilometres! You can go 500 kilometres!” he says. Well, he should know, shouldn’t he?
He reveals that some guy killed a cop in the area yesterday, while wildly waving his arms and imiating a machine gun with great passion, and that that’s why there are so many police controls. Which would also explain the complete chaos I met just outside Neuquen last night, hundreds of cop cars and ambulances flashing and people running around like they meant business. I drove cooly off.
I try to explain him that I’m from Norway, but he’s never heard of that, so I mention Sweden, and he yells “Ah! Suiza!?” which I suspect is actually Switzerland, but hey, close enough. From here on I’m Thomas from Switzerland. As every other conversation it delves into football and Lio Messi, but only after he’s recited his entire family tree a couple of times and told me about his work as a policeman. Turns out he’s just an ordinary guy who happens to kill criminals for a living, as he demonstrates with his lively machine gun impression once again; who doesn’t dance tango because that’s a touristy Buenos Aires-thing, who listens to the Stones, who doesn’t really like his bad-pay-long-hours job, who dreams of Europe and thinks Argentina is somewhat of a shithole. Who doesn’t believe in religion nor politics but in girls, and who breakdanced when he was a teen. Of course we have to talk, for we are both trapped in this car running out of gas, and when he doesn’t understand my questions in English, he simply gives an answer about something completely else; and when I don’t understand his longer passages of Spanish, I just repeat “Si! Si!” and try to imagine somewhat what I believe he’s talking about and make my own conversation in my mind. And we get by.
There are two or three more police controls along the way. Each time he just waves off the police officers without me needing to show my papers or opening my trunk which may or may not hide a cop killer on the run. “I am chief!” he exclaims each time, laughing loudly. Just as I drop him off in the tiny town to the mercy of his girl, after a hundred “thanks” and “goodbyes” and some pats on the back, and drive into the gas station, the gas warning lamp starts flashing on the dashboard.
The Birds
April 11th, 2010Patagonia is strange, immense, infinite. The whole world seems freezed in time in these vast landscapes of nothingness, me being the only element in motion. If I stay here for too long, I don’t know if I can ever return to city life, so I better head north again soon.
Today I drove 70 kilometres on a shitty dirt road in a tiny car without power steering to get to Cabo Blanco, thinking it was a small town, as marked in my map, where I could stay for the night. When I got there, I found it inhabited by sea birds, with only a towering lighthouse atop a cliff and a small cemetery down below. It was getting dark, and I had not eaten the whole day. But the sunset bathed the cliffs and the hundreds of birds in scarlet, and I got to see my South-American lighthouse, just like in Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together, and though I wasn’t really at the edge of the world, the long, terrible drive didn’t feel like a waste at all. Dodging both the frightened hares running towards my headlights and the numerous holes in the road, I drove back in pitch black darkness.
My box of salty crackers saved me today. Good planing.
Tom Waits en castellano
April 1st, 2010Just a couple of hours outside Buenos Aires, I fell in love with this country. As great a city as it is, the semi-European feel of Buenos Aires made it feel somewhat familiar, perhaps not spectacular. But when I saw the endless rural landscapes dotted with small towns, a straight road stretching on as far as I could see through the bus window, I suddenly began romanticizing the Southern hangouts of USA; just that this was an entirely other continent (I guess, depends on how you look at it). This was Tom Waits land, if Tom Waits had sung in Spanish.
I am now in Mendoza. When I saw the hazy contours of the Andean ridge, I felt somewhat overwhelmed, positively overwhelmed. Now I just need to find a car so I can cruise these endless roads myself.
Atleast it’s a start
March 28th, 2010Two nights in Buenos Aires, and I’m just starting to get a hold of this. There’s so much new that it’s quite hard to know where to start, and being all by myself doesn’t really help. Taking initiatives is hard. I brought my camera with me for the first time today, after having spent the past two days wandering around town, getting an impression of the atmosphere, of safety, and such and such.
Yesterday I spent some time at Cementerio de la Recoleta. Sure, a true tourist spot, but just before closing time, deserted, it was quite an experience. Of beautiful dread, and quietude. It might be a bit absurd to contemplate the dead in a city so very much alive, but one has to have peace of mind at times.
I went back there today, and found my special place ruined by packs of tourists, the magic of yesterday somewhat destroyed. So I went back to the living; tangoshows in the street, outdoor markets, parklife, chaotic shopping streets as the sun sets. But I had to go back to the cemetery in Recoleta once it was emptied, and I think I found what I was looking for.
I’m starting to understand what this city is all about, I think. Too bad I don’t have many days left here. And I’ve shot my first hour of tape. It’s a start.
Here are the essentials:
March 21st, 2010
I’m traveling the world this spring/summer, mostly by myself, and plan on making a film depicting my experiences. How it will turn out, I’m not too sure yet. My current description as an essayistic road-documentary hopefully won’t be too far off, and hopefully it won’t be too much of a Sans Soleil-rip-off. Obviously, I can’t give you a thorough description yet, as the film will be largely dependent on what I experience along the road and the people I meet on my way. If any.
Today’s million dollar question: guess what the working title of the film is?
Anyway, I’m kicking it off with approximately two months in South-America, arriving in Buenos Aires on March 25th. In addition to Argentina, I plan on visiting Chile, Brazil and possibly (hopefully) Peru, if I’ve got enough time, ending the trip in Rio de Janeiro. The journey will be undertaken primarily by bus. Perhaps some hitchhiking in the safest areas. I will rent a car in Argentina though, and do an all-out road trip through Patagonia, both on the Argentine and Chilean side. Carry on Che Guevara’s legacy, and all that. The only plan other than that is not planning too much, and trying to go with the flow as much as possible.
After South-America, I will spend roughly three weeks in Japan, not just staying in Tokyo, of course, but also exploring the more rural areas of the country. As this is further ahead in time than I can bother to plan on just yet, I can’t really elaborate.
In the middle of June, the USA is next up, and this time around I’ve got some company. Me and an old buddy intend to realize the collective dream of everyone capable of dreaming, the American Dream perhaps; the cross-country road trip in the United States, from the East to the West. And all that in no more than a month. Perhaps a bit more.
This will most likely not be a traditional travel blog, as I will mainly focus on making the film, not publishing updates on the internet every single day. Still, there might be some updates underway, so keep in touch, at least for updates on how the film is coming along. If the result is good enough, perhaps I’ll publish it on this page (or if it turns out REALLY good, spot it at a film festival near you, or something like that)! Unless my camera gets stolen the very first day.
If you want to get in touch, you’ll find some contact information on the right hand side.
Cheers!
Lars Thomas