A PSYCHEDELIC DAY
Take a bath in the green grass.
It’s where you learn to swim,
like a fish in the tree.
– –
WRITER’S BLOCK
There are writing schools in Norway.
I don’t know much about them,
it reminds me of Amercian Idol concepts with a judge,
as if you are in court and have something to prove.
I’m just writing for me. It’s a writing course online
where all the wannabees hang out.
It’s a poetry teacher there.
I read some of his poetry books and I can’t remember
a single sentence that is worth quoting.
I don’t fit like a fan in glove there.
If I were to learn to write then I would learn it
from someone I admire.
The great Øystein Wingaard Wolf
or the legendary Jan Erik Vold.
I write poems about all the ugly shit that exists
but that nobody wants to see.
If I’m not banned, then I’ve failed.
– –
AN AMATEUR’S GUIDE TO WRITING (IN BROKEN ENGLISH)
I like my own writing. I enjoy to read it.
I have to, because I don’t have many readers.
I work on a text until I’m satisfied with it. I sculpt it,
not to (may God forbid) a product, but to a piece of art. Oh yeah,
it’s art-placement, not product-placement.
Everything is art, and if it isn’t, then it does not exist, which is also art.
Whether the poem is ugly or beautiful, I’m indifferent to,
if I think it works within a frame of words coming from the heart,
or the basement, or the sewer, or a complete idiot. I accept all aspects of myself,
for better or worse. That’s what drives my writing. If the writing did not have
a perspective beyond presenting myself well, I might as well talk.
I do not always write about myself, but it is always written by me.
I’m used to writing without readers, it doesn’t take away the desire.
I post it on my blog, to the silence of no applause. I probably miss out
on the launch party and being accepted by the elite and the excitement
of reviews and buyers of my book, but I’m a cynical person,
I like to think that If I was a hip writer, I’d be unhip in a not so distant future.
It would just be a matter of time before I’d be deserted. One can of course
appreciate the success one has, anyway, no matter how big or small.
I realize that one-hit wonders can get tired of the popular hit,
I can understand it too, they have to sing it every night. Well,
back to the writing, I trust my decision. If I’m happy about a poem I wrote,
then a good or a bad review is superfluous.
I don’t feel inferior to Ernest Hemingway or William Shakespeare,
but I know professional writers may feel superior to amateurs.
I welcome it, I love to give people a sense of greatness.
– –
TOO MUCH OF NOTHING
I have had feedback from publishers, but it is many years ago.
It’s too much work. And I criticize Norway, not with political opinions,
but from my own life situation. I’m nasty. It’s a word of revenge.
It’s not legitimate. Art has support from the state.
I do not fit into the postmodern poetry context, the scholard,
where a poetry book must contain a group of themed linear poems,
like 70 poems about a light bulb, even if you said everything you wanted
to say about the lightbulb, already in the first poem.
You can’t write a poem about a lightbulb, then a trout, then a bike.
It is considered uneven. And all poems must be equally balanced,
where moving from page to page is like listening to one who is tone-deaf,
and no matter what he sings about, high or low, it is with a flat voice.
All poems must be the same poem. They cannot have individuality.
It’s like a hangover from socialism in the 70s.
Everything else is wrong. you can’t write a ballad, then a rocker,
then a jazz poem, a slow blues. Nah, it’s uneven.
And most importantly: Literature is more important than people.
I don’t think that way. If you’ve seen the movie “Deliverance”
and the inbreeds in the swamps. To mingle with them,
you must be like them. And you’d rather not …
– –
DEAD POETS SOCIETY
I know of poets who write poems with a revelation of nature in it,
even if they hardly go outside. They sit at home
and read books and write poems,
yet their poetry is filled with plants and animals,
as if they were David Attenborough on a tent trip in the Amazon Jungle.
It’s aestetically beautiful. It’s a metaphorical resource.
Nature Poems. It is typically Norwegian. A hundred years ago, it was credible.
They lived in nature. Hard-learned. They were not nerds.
But now, when they are online 24/7, and write one nature poem after another.
I think it’s cheating. It’s cheap. Does it make beautiful poems?
Certainly, but sugarcoated, and superficial.
I sit a lot in my living room, in front of my computer, and the nature
is whatever is in the room with me; the record collection, the books,
spiders, flies, ants, house mice, and surfing on the internet.
I have a peony on the table, but it is made of plastic.
Much of the world I live in comes from my mind.
Am I full of shit? It’s good fertilizer.
– –
THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL
I looked at commentaries I had given on YouTube, and they had likes,
people had pushed the like button,
and it puzzled me to see 167 likes on a comment I had given about my dog,
in a video about mourning.
I recieved an answer to my comment that said: “fuck a dog where talking about humans”.
It had 1 like.
I answered back with: “Fuck humans. I’m talking about a dog. I’ll eat your kids for dinner. They mean shit to me.”
It had 27 likes.
I’ve written poetry for years, but never had anything like it on my blog.
I decided to turn my broken English into a piece of statement, a best of commentary, a greatest hits.
It did not help. Fuck Norwegians, I’m a World Citizen, a YouTube-member,
I have likeminded people spread around the flat globe – 2 in New York, 3 in Los Angeles,
2 in Copenhagen, 1 in Sidney, 1 in Hong Kong, 2 in Moscow, 1 in Kabul, 1 in Tel Aviv,
1 in Cape Town, 2 in São Paulo, 3 in Berlin, 1/2 in Reykjavík, 1/4 on Jan Mayen…
– –
SILLY LOVE SONGS
I had readers on my blog,
but then I decided to write something personal,
and they all disappeared. I became hateful, and bitter,
and it was not always justified.
Don’t blame the society, they said. But I did it all the same,
and everybody’s gone.
I am guilty on trial to have had politically incorrect thoughts and feelings.
I’m not perfect.
I’m not surprised. In popular music,
you can have one hit after the other, no one cares about the lyrics,
then you decide to write a personal song, because you think the audience loves you,
and it kills your career.
It’s something I don’t understand in people, the all-consuming need for
impersonal talk about the weather.
It’s why climate change is a thing. It’s about everybody/nobody.
I know of people who don’t consider “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”
a proper John Lennon album, because it is not about being positive
like “All You Need is Love” by The Beatles.
Lennon described the album as ‘all meat, no fat’,
he was very proud of it, because he treated the most difficult subjects in his life,
he had the courage to be an open wound,
to give personally from him to the listener,
and the general public’s response was – this is not what I want.
This is not the John Lennon England is proud of.
I like to listen to David Icke, but you have to read him between the lines,
he believes in reptilians… what does it say about him?
Nothing he says is directly related to him.
The same about Russell Brand, on his channel
there is nothing he won’t talk about, interpersonal relationships,
he’s a good talker, a good seller, who sounds confusingly like someone
who knows what he is talking about.
But if you listen closely, it’s all about everything/nothing,
and if it wasn’t, nobody would listen.
– –
ADD SOME MUSIC TO YOUR DAY
I don’t think it is anything wrong with present day popular music,
it’s just the sound of a generation. I don’t like it particulary,
the overkill of autotune on the vocals and the computer processed sounds.
It happens that I check out some new songs on YouTube,
at the time of writing, there is a new video with Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber
called “I Don’t Care”. Nicki Minaj, Avicii, Madcon, Beyoncé… It’s showbiz,
they’re performance artists, song and dance, DJ’s, not musicians
in the traditional sense of the word. The computer is a new instrument.
What I miss on the charts nowadays, is diversity.
When I grew up in the 80s, it was not unusual to see
the neo-rockabilly of Stray Cats, the blues rock of The Fabulous Thunderbirds,
a jazz album by Miles Davis, a synth-pop album by Howard Jones,
hair metal by Van Halen, and the blue collar rock of Bruce Springsteen, etc.
all in the top 40. Somehow, along the way, that variation disappeared.
Apparently. We live now in a multicultural society,
one should think that the music scene would flourish with variety.
But the opposite has happened, and the music sounds the same.
On the charts, it does. It’s almost all solo artists, hardly a band.
When I dig deeper, into the underground and the indie scene,
I notice that orchestral music, medieval folk music, jazz, blues,
rock ‘n’ roll… it is still being performed, but it rarely makes the charts.
It’s not even played on the radio, or shown on TV,
it’s non-existent except for those in the know.
I realize that there are bands who make a living without being ‘famous’.
They have a faithful audience that they play for and who buy their records
and follow them on the internet.
It was harder before the indie labels, back when EMI and Warner Brothers,
and the record company giants of the record industry ruled everything.
And they wanted smash hits, million selling blockbusters, or else —
They still rule, it is those who dictate popular culture.
Win some, lose some?
– –
MIXING THE CARDS (YOU HAVE THE FAR-RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT)
I admire Morrissey. He is outspoken and brave. A true individualist.
It does not matter whether I agree with him or not. He is entitled to his opinion.
If you have a problem with Morrissey, it’s because you are a coward.
Norwegian copycat music journalists criticized Morrissey’s new album “California Son”
because he wore a far-right pin when he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Make no mistake. They are entitled to steal their opinions from Rolling Stone.
If you go back and research the humble beginnings of things that is now considered safe,
like planes and parachutes, and how it was pioneered, we should be grateful for those
who had the courage to take the first steps. They failed so people can now
sit at home and watch tv with a safety belt and a helmet on.
– –
POLITICAL WORLD
I’m not a political person.
It’s not what I like to spend my thoughts on.
It does not make me feel good, it makes me feel
lousy, angry, helpless,
because I’m so sorry for all the injustice that goes on.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
I’ve become more involved in politics lately,
not from a watcher’s tv viewing distance,
but from my own life situation in the darkness on the edge of town.
To be honest.. It has not made me wiser.
Norway has been on a right-wing roll, they made some decicions to sink
the abandoned ship I was on, they threw out a balloon for a life vest.
But they supposedly are about to change it.
I’m not a conservative person, I’m not a capitalist.
I’m not a socialist, I don’t like their groupthink.
I don’t like or dislike people. Either I admire you or despise you.
I do not identify with Norwegians. I have to live somewhere…
It’s the 17th May today, the Norwegian 4th of July.
I don’t celebrate it. I always vote blank,
like a nowhere man in a nowhere land.
Apparently, you and I, we live in the same world.
But still not.
– –
GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES
It’s good times for people
who don’t think too much.
It’s the age of nerds. They read facts
and statistics and prefer to google life
rather than to live it. They will read
an article that says people are 15% thinner
than 20 years ago, and that’s their ‘proof’
that times are better now. You must admire
someone who is so single-minded.
Nerds do not have an extra chromosome,
preferably just too much of nothing.
– –
BLIND HATRED
Everything is “dangerous” on the internet.
Someone said the word fuck on Twitter,
and people yell; Ban him!
Morrissey wore a far-right pin in a music video,
and people yell; Ban the video!
David Icke said on Australian tv that climate change is a hoax,
and people yell; Ban him from the country!
Meanwhile, yet another decent person has committed suicide
because they can’t stand to live in a world
with you scumbags in it.
– –
URBAN DICTIONARY
That you are not a racist, not a pedophile,
does not make you a good person.
You cannot write a CV based on things you are not.
Who are you? What have you done?
You are not a racist, you are not a pedophile,
yet I experience you as a no-good piece of shit.
– –
THE BOTTOMLESS PIT
Finally, they have protected
all the world’s assholes
against “Hate Speech”.
Whatever they do with your butt,
you only have the right to protest
if you are polite.
When you thought the human bean
could not sink lower..
– –
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Because people lie all the time,
and they don’t even know it.
I do not automatically believe
in conspiracy theories,
but I do not automatically believe
in conventional wisdom either.
The history of human knowledge
shows that what is considered a fact today
may be out of date tomorrow.
The scene changes, sometimes overnight.
People like to think that they are smarter
than people used to be, that they know better,
while in reality, they distance themselves
from what their mother and father did,
disguised as progress.
We live in a time, which is generally
neither better nor worse than other times,
just different.
It’s the technological age,
the geeks are soaring.
– –
CHEW ON THIS
Technology is not man-made.
They need the homeless
to experiment with chip implants
in human brains.
That’s why nothing is done about it.
5G is coming soon.
Homelessness will grow rapidly
in cities and countries that are
no longer controlled by humans.
Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sweden.
It will spread from there.
New York City is Ground Zero.
Smoking, freedom of speech, compassion.
Humanity will be denormalized,
so that technology becomes
your only friend,
to prepare you for the moment
when your brain is connected
to artificial intelligence.
A takeover is set to 2030.
– –
35 MM
It’s fun to watch old photographs from the 1850s,
and old films from the 1890s and early 1900s, on YouTube.
Before film tricks. When people talk about these times,
it’s all about the plague and tubercolosis. Everyone died
when they were 40, they say, toothless since they were 14,
even if the pictures show 80 year olds with teeth.
It was so grim, they say, you got worn out by hard work,
even if people are enjoying everyday life in the films.
As if the whole world was a mass grave of suffering,
which has now been cleared up, thanks to progress.
It does not take a small amount of human contempt
and self-love to look at forefathers that way.
– –
ONE MAN AGAINST THE WHOLE WORLD (IN BROKEN ENGLISH)
We are in the age of generality. Life experience is not listened to.
It is despised because staying young is the goal. The conventional wisdom
of what youthfulness is, as if young people are not different from each other.
What’s listened to, are talk about global warming, the expanding universe,
what’s good for humans, what’s not good for humans, cats are like this and dogs are like that,
as if you don’t know your own pet better than science does.
It’s prime time to speak on behalf of, to take it for granted that an encyclopedic knowledge
of the human race is greater than anyone’s personal need.
Everyone must be alike, exercising is good for you, without considering that many
do not like to exercise. It is proven that exercise is good, so you have to.
It rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like people who think like that.
It’s not even a thought process, it’s a gathering of information.
– –
BLACK HOLE SUN
Everything fades into black. It’s an ongoing ground zero
and starting over. New generations laugh at the old generation
and what they did and want to turn it around and do everything
differently. When I was younger, it used to scare me to be dead
and forgotten. It was a black hole, but now I think of it as peaceful.
Good music does not go away but neither do the ‘fat Elvis’ jokes.
And for some, the harassment has only just begun, the books, the movies,
the documentaries about Mother Teresa, Che Guevara, Michael Jackson,
John Lennon… They keep on coming, for no other purpose than to drag
them down from the pedestal. There is money in it. Eventually,
the difference between truth and fiction becomes blurred and difficult
to distinguish. The person has been dehumanized and shaped into
a public image that he cannot defend because he is no longer here.
You become a relic from the day you cannot be a dedicated follower
of fashion. People look at a picture of you and laugh. They think they
are smarter than you, they think of themselves as representatives
of human development, and do not realize that they are on their way
to the same eternal cemetary. Remember Gandhi, remember Hitler.
That’s enough, I think. The human race is better off forgotten.
Rest in peace.
– –
LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS
I tried it once, on a music festival in 1991,
it was a bad trip, I freaked out, went mad and was arrested
and had fallen asleep on the floor in the police station
where they failed to wake me up, and had called an ambulance
and I woke up in a hospital with a tube down my throat
and doctors trying to revive me and an all-absorbing paranoia
that would stick with me for months.
I had been drinking beforehand, partying the night before,
it was a weekend festival and I had been drinking all day
without becoming drunk but with a high consumption of alcohol.
And possibly smoked some hashish too, in an experimental haze.
I remember I said yes to LSD with a carefreeness.
I also remember that I thought it did not work,
and out of the blue – I was in hell; Everything was on fire,
people had horns in their forehead, I could see through their
crawling skin, the heart pumping, the intestines twisted
like snakes, the maggot brain, and I dealt with it violently;
I wanted to fight. It was my experience with it, everything
with good humor, I just regret things I haven’t done..
I still love psychedelic music and I don’t preach about it.
– –
JUST A THOUGHT (IN BROKEN ENGLISH)
Once upon a time I liked rock stars,
but now it feels more like listening to a celebrity,
especially in interviews, a privilged person, and people
are in awe because of the social status of the rich
and the famous. I can’t escape it, even when I listen
to Keith Richards. Rock as a challenging form of expression
is reduced to entertainment, there are not many manners
and attitudes left below middle to upper class.
Brian Eno has said that the art of an artist can be
very interesting, but that an artist as a person
is neither more nor less interesting than other people.
I can feel awkward about myself when I listen to
yet another talkshow featuring Paul McCartney
or Mick Jagger on YouTube, and in the comment section,
people cannot praise them enough, how successful
they are, not only their music career, but what they did
for the rainforest… the charity events,
as if they have the key to the universe. Back when
I worked in a record store, I realized that if you
are not established as an artist by the time
you are in your thirties, and somewhat of a celebrity
in your forties, it may be difficult to breakthrough.
– –
ISMS
I cannot relate to gender in general.
I’m a male, but it does not mean that I relate to all men.
I can’t speak for men, and men in general does not speak for me.
In reality, I only relate to a handful, not to the world of men.
There are men I like, but many more I dislike.
It can be masculine men, or feminine men, winners and losers,
repressed men or oppressive men, undervalued or overrated men.
You can say the same about women. Feminism, manism. It’s not for me.
There are women in positions of power in society,
and there are homeless women. You can say the same about men.
It is the only world of men and women I recognize.
– –
SOCIAL DISTORTION
I don’t function socially anymore. I live with pain, but even worse than that
is the tinnitus in my ears. I have no concentration. If I try to concentrate,
tinnitus gets worse because I attach myself. The only thing that helps is to think freely,
to let go… and forget it for a while. That is why I write poems, not as a career, or as a format,
but just as it suits my imagination there and then. It’s not therapy, but it’s a way to treat it,
to live with it if you can call it a life. I have an inner life, expanding like the universe.
So if you try to take my freedom of expression away from me, and thus become a burden on my shoulders,
then I see the antichrist and you stand in the way of my health.
My patience is not what it was, I will or will not slay you with my well-chosen words of contempt,
if you try to surpress me. My energy is not what it was either. I’m a little bit behind…
I’m not a clerk, I’m not a banker, I’m fuckin sick!
I’m disabled, I behave as it suits my illness, because losing control is my best medicine.
Do you think I’m afraid of being perceived as abnormal or mentally ill?
I’ve been getting into serial killers on YouTube, Ted Bundy… Give me an axe and
get in the way of my sky blue sky. Excuse me if I try to be tough. I need it.
– –
PLASTIC PALACE PEOPLE
What’s more important to me than to be happy,
whatever it means.. is to be true to my real feelings.
That way, I will be an honest person instead of a liar,
give and take white lies, mood swings, a love for nonsense.
It’s more exhaustive to force positivity than to be negative,
they way I experience it. If I fake too much smiling,
my facial muscles will hurt and I get a stiff neck.
It’s a problem from before, but it makes it worse.
I’m going for authenticity, and try to keep my mouth shut
if I dare not say it as it is. It’s better than lying,
even if the ups and downs of life make things contradictory.
I hate myself when I get too polite. I experience it
as self-destructive. I hold back and let others run over me.
I fake it, for their sake. They can’t handle the truth.
And I can’t always do that either. It’s not black or white.
There’s not enough people in the world who say
what they mean and mean what they say.
– –
SCIENCE FRICTION
Statistics and mathematics is not evidence
above all and of itself.
It’s 7.2 billion people in the world who experience
the same life in 7.2 billion different ways.
To think that science knows-it-all
because they have the calculations, is inhumane.
And that’s why it must be challenged.
It’s why I personally welcome conspiracy theorists,
even if conspiracy theories is ridiculed,
because when science becomes the allmighty God
who have all the answers, is when your life,
life-experiences and opinions means nothing.
It is much of a religion, the way I see it.
They use fear mongering about the end of the world,
if you don’t believe in climate change. In fact!
They use fear mongering for most anything,
if you are not a science-religious.
They want to frighten you into believing,
like an echo of Christianity five hundred years ago.
They want to rule the world. No doubt about it.
They are therefore authorities
that should be questioned about their integrity,
again and again…
– –
YOU PEOPLE
You people,
you live in Disneyland,
you can’t handle
a non-moderated reality,
a non-moderated conversation,
of a non-moderated truth.
You spend your life
in front of a computer screen
with photoshopped pictures
for your convinience.
You sit in front
of a TV-screen,
where you live through
Hollywood-movies
and celebrities
with plastic surgery
and hair transplants.
You sit and stare
at your favorite artists,
who look like cartoon characters,
when you listen to
their autotuned voices
on your smartphone.
And you zombies,
you think you know whether
the earth is round
or flat.
– –
RING OF CHANGES
I like the flat earthers.
They’re not crazy,
in my opinion. It’s imaginative and poetic.
Biblical. And it’s rebellious.
It takes guts to go against the grain.
The round earthers googles the facts.
It’s their alibi. Conventional truth.
They stick to the program. NASA.
The school books.
“They’re idiots”, say the round earthers
about the flat earthers;
“They have low IQ”.
Maybe they are right, I don’t know,
but even if their IQ is higher,
I am still not impressed.
– –
YOU CAN’T REHEAT A SUFFLÉ
I’m not a flat earther, screens are flat, tv is flat, books are flat, floor is
flat, mobile phones are flat, tables are flat, people arrange their life on a
flat assembly line, to be around humans is a flat experience – the head is
round.
– –
HOSPITALITY
Rikshospitalet is the best public hospital in Norway,
from my personal experience. I was hospitalized
at the ear, nose and throat department in 1993 for surgery
of a tumor on the balance nerve in the inner ear.
It was painful but it was a good experience.
It’s at the westside of Oslo. On the eastside of the city,
there’s a hospital called Ahus, and it is the worst.
I was hospitalized at the neurological department in 2014
due to a bloodclot in an eye, and the consultant doctor
was so bad-tempered, he made everyone edgy with his precense.
Besides him, there were two specialist doctors, which I had
the most verbal contact with, even though they never
had time for me at the hospital bed or at the doctor’s office,
the consultations we had took place in the break room,
where both patients and visitors stayed. I sat in a chair,
while the doctors stood in front of me, like a cross-examination,
coming down on me like vampires, and I had to speak up
about my problems, with an audience present around me.
I regret that I accepted it, but I did there and then,
the defense mechanism was down. It only made me angry afterwards.
I’ve met a variety of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde through the years,
but this is by far the worst hospital doctors I’ve had
to deal with. I don’t understand why anyone will be a doctor
when they don’t have social skills. Those who have money
in Norway, use a private hospital called Volvat.
– –
HOSPITALITY II
I will be treated with Botox at Rikshospitalet next week. It’s not for beauty,
it is for painful muscles in my neck and around the head and in my face.
I belong to Ahus from where I live in the county, but I asked the neurological doctor
at Rikshospitalet to do it there. It took longer go get the appointment, but it is worth it.
I have mentioned my hospitalization at Ahus in 2014, I was also hopsitalized there in 2016,
at the ear, nose and throat department for surgery of a tumor in my jaw.
The surgeon was also my doctor at the doctor’s office, I was more worried about the severe
tinnitus in my ears, that had appeared out of the blue about half a year earlier.
I was suicidal, to say the least. I could not care less whether I had cancer or not
in the tumor in my jaw. But he wasn’t interested, and said I shouldn’t worry about death,
because statistically, thin people lived longer than thick. He noticed that I was very thin.
I said it was because I have no rest and never sleep properly. The sounds in the ears are torture.
His answer was that when we have tinnitus, we hear it most when it is quiet and when we sleep
at night. We? I hear the tinnitus when I stand by the highway! He concluded that no one understands
tinnitus. Fair enough, I thought it was the smartest answer so far. The surgery of the tumor went well,
I could go home the next day. The doctor bandaged the cut that went from the cheek along the ear
and down the neck below the jaw. He had to remove tissue to prevent the tumor from growing out again.
He bandaged me up, and ready to go I wondered if I might need painkillers? The doctor looked at me
as if I was crazy and said it was an operation that didn’t hurt. He cut up half my face? And it doesn’t hurt?
He looked at the two nurses, they nodded their heads and comfirmed. So I went home, and it was so painful
I could hardly move my jaw. I could not even scream. After a week, I went back to remove the stitches.
There was another doctor because the doctor who had operated me was on vacation. She removed the stitches
while fear mongering about being in rooms with cigarette smoke, it would cause damage to the wound
and it would heal badly and look ugly. She said I had to stay out of the sun for a year.
While giving me this speech, she had not removed the stitches properly and I got an infection in the wound.
It constantly flowed fluid out of the wound and it didn’t grow properly. My regular doctor removed
the stitches and I was given antibiotics, which led to a urinary tract infection,
for which I was given another antibiotic, which did not work, and the urinary tract infection
developed into kidney pelvic inflammation. It was seriously painful. And on top of that,
the worst of all – my beloved dog, the Cairn terrier Scott died of complications from diabetes.
Half a year later, at Rikshospitalet, I learned from the neurological doctor
that you are supposed to be hospitalized for kidney pelvic inflammation,
it is not a disease to be treated with antibiotics at home.
– –
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO
I sent a complaint to the County Governor about my previous regular doctor
and a health secretary who sabotaged my application for disability benefit.
The doctor said he was going to send the documents that the consulting doctor
in the welfare system wanted, but he never did and the progress of the case
stagnated and took up the whole year of 2018. I hardly had money.
The health secretaries never told me that what was going on was wrong,
they supported the doctor, not the patient. For a while, I sticked with it
and thought that it was my fault and that I deserved it. I rang up a laywer
who gave me an advice to change doctor. So I did, but I never got an answer
for why he did it. My new regular doctor did not want to talk about it,
but I told it to my neurological doctor at Rikshospitalet. I wondered
if the doctor was a psychopath. I didn’t have a better word for it.
And to my surprise, she said yes.
– –
POOR MAN’S MOODY BLUES
People go to the doctor to get help
when they are sick. They go to the dentist
to get help if they have a toothache.
People ask for help when they are at the store
and get mad if they are not helped at once.
Everything they own was made by someone else
and given to them from generosity,
yet they are incapable of giving respect
from a humanistic perspective.
People who have nothing but hatred
for the homeless,
for the disabled,
because they ask for help,
should be starved to death by law.
They don’t care about people,
and therefore don’t deserve
that people care about them.
– –
NORWEGIAN WOOD (THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN)
An interesting Norwegian does not exist.
Not at this day and age. Well, maybe somebody,
a nobody, hidden from the public eye, on a loft
or in a basement somewhere.
There are only non-original thinkers in the media.
If you can call it thinking, it’s always on hold,
on the watch of what’s going on internationally.
It’s not allowed to make up your own mind,
you import it
after it is proven to be a bulletproof,
economically safe opinion to adapt to.
– –
BROKEN ENGLISH
I’m a Norwegian, yes.
And I suffer from a neurological disease.
I’m 51, and I live with my mother,
there is no chance for me to pay the bills on my own.
I would have had to live in a hospice with drug addicts
and gotten food from the Blue Cross or the Poor House.
And I have no disability check.
Both my daily doctor and my neurological doctor
want me on disability, but the welfare system
called NAV in Norway, works against me,
it’s extremely hostile, it’s all about the money,
I’m not worth anything, it’s an invitation for me to give
up and commit suicide. And they save a lot of money
for the state by keeping me on the lowest support
year after year.
Life is hell. It sure is. I ask for help,
and they give me the opposite. Nothing makes me angrier
than Norwegians who’s never been there themselves
but only heard politicians brag about the system on tv.
All the falsehood makes me sick to my stomack.
Grown up people, and they don’t even know
what’s going on around them. In Norway,
there’s winter much of the year,
and many people don’t live very social lives.
All “knowledge” comes from the tv and the internet.
They don’t even know who their own neighbor is,
but they are know-alls on everything else.
– –
MUSIQUARIUM
Bruce Springsteen
U2
Madonna
they’re popular
they play the stadiums
they’re rich and famous
they must be the greatest
everyone has heard about them
they’re iconic
larger than life
they must be better than other artists –
it’s popular culture
like the boy at school
when you were a teenager
who was the girls’ favorite
it’s not about genius
it’s about appeal
– –
CONFESSIONS OF A TORTURED MIND
Modern-day doctors are rubbish. I call them Dr. Moron & Mr. Retard,
a play on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, because of their lack of social intelligence.
They can’t hold a conversation, and they don’t have the ability to reflect,
they have no interest in hearing what the patient have to say, they can’t wait
to interrupt, they’re legends in their own mind and I’m privilged to listen
to the doctor’s voice when he speaks, HE who knows my best, not I,
to be bombarded with fear mongering and health hysterical advices,
based on the latest fashionable trends in the medical industry. In Norway,
Helsedirektoratet (The Directory of Health) has plans for a smoke-free Norway,
so if you smoke and are sick, the doctor will blame it for everything.
Anti-smoking, no-smoking, is incorporated wherever you turn,
it’s part of their agenda. It’s like being back in the kindergarten,
where all the most bothersome kids have become bothersome doctors.
I become obsessed with the ‘Kafka-process’ of it all, because they step on me
and I want revenge. I hate myself for having health problems.
I hate every second of a conversation with a doctor. It is a necessary evil.
There are exeptions to the rule, it is the only thing that makes it livable.
The surprise of meeting a doctor who makes me feel good.
– –
CLIMATE OF HUNTER
The environmentalists are the poison of the world.
They have reinvented the purgatory for a modern society.
They pollute every fresh mind they come across with fear mongering,
the end of the world prophecy. The high priest of science has spoken;
you are doomed! As if life is not difficult enough as it is,
from beginning to end. As if there is not enough misery in the world,
they generously drag you down to their own sea level.
As if you didn’t have your own worries… They couldn’t care less.
I generously hate them from the bottom of my heart.
I see nothing good in them, or what they do. They disgust me.
If I’m in a room with a climate change environmentalist,
either they leave or I leave.
– –
THE CIRCLE OF LIFE (A SEQUEL)
I can’t handle it. I’ve been in a difficult place lately, and there is no one there,
it’s all ocean, and I have to row the passenngerless boat all by myself.
I watch the news, and there’s a climate change environmentalist, he is talking about how
the previous generation fucked up everything, and now he has this burden on his shoulder,
he must save China, and the North Pole, and the seals and the polar bears, and the next generation.
He will make life easier for his grandchildren of the earth by correcting everything
the previous generation did wrong in the twentieth century, and if not – it’s the end of the world.
Everyone must make an effort, he thinks. He is going to refurbish his kitchen, with eco paint.
It costs a little more money, and you can see the pain in his face when he says it,
but he has decided that it is worth it, because he is doing it for the poor.
– –
LIKE A PRAYER
Please don’t become like doctors. Don’t let them take over the world.
They are so clinical and sterile, they are almost not human.
Neither of them smokes, neither of them drinks, neither of them is funny,
the party is over when they arrive, yet they see themselves as role models.
They even want healthy people to live by their advice, not just the sick.
They warn that if you do not live by their advice, you will get sick.
They are more obsessed with smoking than smokers are. It is a phobia,
like arachnophobia, except that they are trying to scare the smoker
despite the fact that it is the doctor who is afraid of cigarettes.
Smokers love to smoke. Doctors love to ruin the joy.
They infect the smoker with the phobia by using scaremongering.
They show pictures of black lungs, bad skin and rotten teeth,
which may be due to anything. Who in the world does that?
They must be seriously ill… They need help!
Don’t let doctors rule the world. Life is not a hospital.
Your life is your life. Don’t let doctors kill you.
Be proud of your choices. Whatever the price.
– –
GLOBAL WARNING
As an observer to life on earth
in the 2010s, it is interesting to see how democracy
in the Western world is being replaced by dictatorship.
A one world (trade center). It’s done carefully,
long term plan, one step at a time, they tighten the rules
with a light-handed approach to regulations
and let you adapt to it slowly but surely.
– –
SHADOW GOVERNMENT
I don’t think animals is a good metaphor
for human beings at their worst; “They were like animals!”.
It’s a superiority complex; People who value themselves
higher than other animal species.
It’s for someone to come up with something
that shows the grotesque sides of humanity
without calling people a reptilian.
– –
THE DAVID ICKE DOT-CONNECTOR VIDEOCAST
What I like about David Icke
is that he influences my confidence to trust
my own instincts and opionins no matter how far out they appear to normies.
I hate when people in my face, tells me what to think and how to live
based on random facts and statistics. They don’t even know who I am,
what I have lived or where I come from. They don’t care. It’s mathematics.
Nowadays, it’s all about quantum physics and black/worm holes. Outer space.
I’m more interested in the inner space and the space between us.
That’s why I like David Icke, he is the rarest of birds – a freethinker,
even though I don’t agree with everything he says
and may even be provoked by what he says.
– –
YOUTUBE CHAT MEDLEY
It looks idyllic on the surface.
It’s the nature of film and photography
to stage and edit reality, not to capture it.
Honesty, no matter what personal cost.
It’s what I find in great artists, singers,
painters, poets… And a lack of honesty,
in lesser artists, no matter what personal cost.
“Anodyne” by Uncle Tupelo, and “Grand Prix” by Teenage Fanclub.
It’s my favorite guitar-driven albums of the 90s.
When Uncle Tupelo broke up, it was all about
Jay Farrar’s new band Son Volt in the music magazines.
But it was Jeff Tweedy’s new band Wilco who took off.
New York City in the 1970s. It rocked. CBGB, and Studio 54.
It must have been a party to be part of that club scene
if you were at the right age for it. It’s legendary!
Maria Callas had a husky voice for an opera singer.
It sends shivers up my spine when she sings “Carmen”.
If the music you are listening to is not intelligent,
it is because it is tailored to your intelligence.
That’s what all assholes say. They’re never mean,
they treat you like shit for your own best.
This world is not for me. I can’t stand the people in charge.
There is nothing left of the Woodstock Festival
in the people. Not that I was there,
but I miss it anyway.
– –
ANTIPOETRY
I’m not sad about my own passing,
only people and animals I’ve been close to.
I’ll wear a yellow chicken suit in an open casket funeral.
It is disturbing yes, I can’t write poetry, it’s only a hobby,
I am in a posthumous life mode, one of those artsy people
who’s repulsed by escapism and Disney Channel.
I like the early 90s black metal because they lived it,
and dislike the theatrical. Spherical widescreens.
I don’t quite know how to interpret the “Lazarus” and “Blackstar” videos,
it’s something occult, I wonder if Bowie was thinking a lot about death
in his later years? There is more than a butterfly to catch,
for an analyst (which I’m not), it’s so associative..
You can’t really find another artist who treated his own mortality
the way David Bowie did. It’s a masterpiece, the song, the video,
everything about it. Excuse my broken English.
In a dictatorship, it depends on how democratic the dictator is.
The problem with modern politicians
is that they run a democracy like dictators.
It’s always a bonus to me when it is not made up for showbiz
but comes from deep within,
when it is an experience, for better or worse.
– –
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
I was a big fan of Bruce Springsteen in my youth. He was so natural, organic,
I enjoy all kinds of music, the characters of David Bowie… but no one was better
at being a guy next door than Springsteen. He was like a close friend.
I heard “The River” when it came out in 1980, on a cassette at my oldest brother’s house,
and even with my limited understanding of the English language, it struck a chord in me.
It spoke to me, the way he used his voice and expressed himself so passionately,
and the sound of the E Street Band sent shivers up my spine. It still does.
When I was at my father’s house in the summer of 1981, he bought the double LP
for me as a birthday present. In ’82 “Nebraska” came out and it didn’t catch me right away,
it was murky, dark, and bitter. I was 14, and I wanted to party. I got into “Born in the U.S.A.”
in ’84 first, and in 1985, I discovered underground music, and I began to explore records
that felt more personal and intimate, I’d been a fan of The Beatles since I was a kid,
but in the mid-80s, I got into “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band” and I was rediscovering “Nebraska”.
When “Tunnel of Love” came out in 1987, I thought it was his best album. It was so personal,
and miserable, and I sank down in my own self-pity with it. It was a period of my life
I will never understand, both my father and my stepfather had died the previous year,
I went into the army in the summer of ’87 and I became very ill.
But I denied it, I told everyone I was fine. I thought maybe it was a mental problem,
on the heels of my parents’ passing. It was confusing…
because the muscles and the joints in my body, and my stomach, it was all so painful,
and I existed in a fog. I was so dizzy and I felt disconnected.
Some felt sorry for me, they knew I was struggling, but you know… others didn’t,
and got angry with me because I wasn’t mentally present. I became very thin and I had hair loss.
I was sent to the doctor by the commander. I was even sent to the priest. Maybe they thought
he would make me open up? I said I might have felt better but that it wasn’t a problem.
I stumbled on. There was also talk of letting me go from the military.
I refused, I thought it was embarrassing, I was on a leave from work. Now thirty years later,
the neurological doctors are wondering if I may have been subjected to a staphylococcal poisoning,
because of the cronic headaches and painful muscles years later,
and I’ve had a brain tumor and a tumor in my jaw, etc. and my bloodpressure swings from one extreme
to the other. There is no balance. And I was a healthy kid. It all changed in 1987/88.
In short, even though the sickness disappeared, I have never really recovered.
I have a chronic health problem that only gets worse with age. I am rheumatic and showing signs of
Sjøgren’s syndrome… I am a collector of disease. Please be glad you didn’t marry me.
Every woman out there. The girlfriend I had had two abortions, she was three years younger than me,
it was probably for the best. It was not easy for me to admit being sick when I was young,
I went to school and did my job no matter how I felt or how ill I was.
I wouldn’t admit I wasn’t healthy. I wanted to complete fifteen months in the Navy, and I did.
In the summer of ’88, I attended my second Bruce Springsteen concert at Valle Hovin in Oslo.
It was nowhere near the mythical proportions at Nya Ullevi in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1985.
Looking back, it was clear that the exuberant Bruce, had approached a midlife crises.
And so had I, at 20. To this day, “Tunnel of Love” remains a painful album to listen to.
I had it on a cassette on a walkman in the military, and as I sat there, or lay on the bed,
in the barracks, I felt so bad while listening to it, I was an explorer in feeling bad,
and all I wanted was to have fun, and it became the soundtrack to it all.
It’s still a great album for what it is, but I prefer the cool rockin’ daddy in the USA
to the miserability of “Brilliant Disguise” and “Two Faces have I”. Since then,
Springsteen and I have been moving in different directions.
– –
MY FATHER’S HOUSE
It’s why I relate to a writer like Charles Bukowski, and an artist like Morrissey.
They are at war with the values of the mainstream society. And that’s my kind of people.
I feel at home in their books and records. I favor any outsider before I defend
so-called normal people. It may have something to do with my father being an alcoholic.
As a kid, I noticed that people talked disdainfully about people who were alcoholics.
I did not argue, but I can still feel the intense dislike I felt for these people,
their self-rightousness. I’m talking about adult people. In their view, they thought
they were better than someone like my father. There was nothing special about them,
but they were supposedly like everyone else. My mother remarried, and I lived with them,
but I was with my father at holidays from school. He lived by the coast, on Hvasser,
in a generation residence, a location which is or was.. back in the 1970s-80s, idyllic
in the summer with beaches everywhere, and abandoned in the winter. I got to know the
local drunks, from Tjøme to Tønsberg, the so-called losers, and old sailors, and when
they drank, they told stories, which I would not have had differently, even if half
of it was too adventurous to be true. I loved the atmosphere. I was twelve and I felt
like a man with them. They did not talk to me like a child. I loved the old-school
drunks. My father was not a violent drunk, but it happened that he lost control
of the drinking and just drank and lay on the couch for days, in an inaccessible fog,
before it calmed down and he came back from nowhere, and the body trembled from
withdrawal symptoms, because of the massive amounts of alcohol he had been consuming.
The drinking stabilized, and he became himself again. We went fishing. It was impossible
to keep a job with his drinking problems, he had a social support, but it was not much,
and he was stranded in this area with an alcohol addiction. I don’t know why he became
an alcoholic. He was shy and restrained when he was sober, but opened up after a drink,
he became the juggler, so it clearly had an effect on him that he liked. My father
died in 1986, at the age of 56, of heart failure at a rehabilitation for alcoholics.
– –
ANGER IS AN ENERGY
I was not a punk rocker in my teens. Maybe I should have been angrier
when grandma gave me an ice cream, and it was chocolate I wanted?
Me and my stepfather argued. He was as obsessed with football as I was of music.
He liked Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole and Boxcar Willie. But the way he talked
about them was anemic compared to how he spoke about Tom Lund and Pelé. And
the way I talked about football players was anemic compared to how I spoke about
The Beatles and Elvis Presley. We had things in common, but different interests.
In my teens, I wanted to try everything. If it was a sport other than football,
we went to the flea market and found the cheapest equipment. If it were football
I wanted to play, we went to the sports shop and bought the most expensive.
He was a coach for the football club Ull/Kisa. I played junior football for Ullern
in my early teens, but I had no actual talent for it. I stopped when I was fourteen,
just to get rid of the pressure. I thought deep down he knew I wouldn’t be a football
player. He shouted to the players on the field, like coaches do, it was in his
temperamental personality, and if he was 110% involved, he could be heard
over a jet. But off the field, it is not always the best way to deal with me.
I may take it easy, but it can also trigger a tourette syndrome of abusive words.
If he made me angry, I used it against him that he was not my real father.
I knew it would be the worst I could say. It was the last thing we talked about
before he passed away from leukemia in 1986 at the age of 52. I’m glad we were
friends before he died. I was not just honey, as a teenager. I had ugly sides.
A punk rocker? I disliked school, but I wasn’t angry with it. I was bored.
Much of what I thought was uninteresting then, I think is interesting now.
But in this world, you must learn everything before you are born, and everything
else is too late. I’m a punk rocker now, when I’m middle-aged. I become angrier
every year, as I experience more. I hate this world, I hate people.
But still not.
– –
MOTHER NATURE’S SON
So why do dogs get cancer?
Cancer is the leading cause of death in older cats.
If you smoke and get cancer, the doctor will blame it for the cancer,
and they will blame it on the lifestyle, if they don’t approve of it,
because the only thing they can approve of
is a strict diet, early to bed and daily exercises. And if you still get cancer,
even when you live by the book, they shake their heads in disbelief.
If you want to make a horror movie for doctors,
just film a person who is smoking and drinking and eating red meat
for two hours. It has the same phobic effect
as for people who are afraid of flying to enter a plane,
who are afraid of heights to stand on a mountain,
and if the doctor ask you if you smoke or drink,
and you say yes, beware of darkness..
– –
BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE
They have created a death monster,
healthy people who are so self-conscious,
anxious and afraid of illness and death,
that they already think like a hospitalized person.
Terminally afraid of their own safety,
everything and everyone
poses a threat to their health,
they are afraid to live, afraid to die,
obsessed with what is good for me! me! me!
It’s the gift of science to modern society.
So much for a cure for cancer.
– –
INSANE IN THE BRAIN (HYPOTHETICAL)
The psychos have the upper hand.
The fascists. To repel the ongoing steps
of smoking bans, you have to become violent,
like arranging a global attack of killing sprees
on anti-smoking authorities. I’m all for it,
“the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
What angers me abut terrorism, is the aimless act
of bombing and shooting and stabbing random people.
I don’t have the strength to be a warrior,
but the thought of ending my life with a BA-BOOM
in an orgasm of hatred, directed at people
who deserve it, makes me peaceful.
– –
HELTER SKELTER (IN BROKEN ENGLISH)
“Lie: The Love and Terror Cult” by Charles Manson,
an album of demos recorded in 1967-68, and released during
the Tate-LaBianca murder trials in 1970,
is a creepy listen, partly because of the history,
and everyone who sings and plays on it is a killer hippie,
but there is an unsettling eerie vibe to it.
“The Family Jams” was recorded by members of The Manson Family
at the infamous Spahn Ranch, during the trials in 1970,
but not released until 1997. Charles Manson does not perform on it,
he is given writing credit for all of the songs.
Tribal folk round-the-campfire, and not without musical merit.
Catherine “Gypsy” Share, who was a member of the family,
released a single in 1965, under the name of Charity Shayne
called “Ain’t It?, Babe”. It’s a folk pop type of song.
It was released before she had met Charles Manson.
She has an alright singing voice, in my opinion.
Bobby Beausoleil, who was charged for the murder of music teacher
Gary Hinman, recorded a soundtrack for “Lucifer Rising”
in the 70s, while in prison. It’s quite spooky and psychedelic.
Lady Gaga used a portion of it in her documentary
“Gaga: Five Foot Two” in 2017. Don’t ask me why.
Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, met Charles Manson in the summer
of 1968. He tried unsuccessfully to arrange a record deal through
the talent scout Gregg Jakobson and the producer Terry Melcher.
He rewrote the lyrics to Manson’s song “Cease to Exist”, and recorded it
as “Never Learn Not to Love” for the album “20/20” by The Beach Boys,
in 1969. Manson recieved royalties from it, but not writing credit.
It’s a pretty good song, I think. Kind of a cult classic.
Guns N’ Roses covered “Look At Your Game, Girl”, Charles Manson’s most
famous song, as a hidden track on “The Spaghetti Incident” in 1993.
Let’s not forget the influence on Marilyn Manson.
And “Helter Skelter” by The Beatles, from the 1968 “The White Album”,
a song fatally misinterpreted by Charles Manson,
according to “Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders”,
a theory put forth by attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted
The Manson Family.
And that’s it! The essence of Charles Manson and The Manson Family,
on vinyl record, not criminal record.
Why? Because I am a music-historical oracle. I can’t remember
reading such a summary of their ‘musical heights’ anywhere.
They were quite a musical family, albeit a twisted one.
Take a listen… It is downloadable.
There are transcripts of the trial to read on the internet,
interviews and parole hearings with convicts on YouTube,
and interviews with survivors of the victims.
It’s the “privilege” of the online era.
If you don’t mind a nightmare.
– –
DON’T BOTHER ME
I go to the grocery store every other week.
And at the pharmacy once a month.
It’s the only time I’m out of the door.
And it is for practical reasons, not by desire.
It can be for health reasons,
but also because there is nothing out there.
Talking to people is lame and boring.
They have no thoughts about anything.
They are afraid of imagination, shopping is safer.
They sit staring at the smartphone,
the only friend they have.
I live my social life on the internet.
There are still some interesting people there.
People try to destroy it too,
make it family-friendly, by smoothening the edges,
like on the tv, and in the cities,
soon it will be smoking bans on the internet too,
parents demand it, for the sake of their children!
– –
TALK IS CHEAP
He does not speak from his heart,
he speaks like a googler,
and he is trying to make what he is marketing
look good,
by dragging people who drink alcohol
and smoke cigarettes
down in the the trash. It drags him down with it.
I have a golden rule (not really),
if I want guests in my house,
I want them to visit me because they like me,
not because they dislike my neighbor.
I don’t eat from people’s trash can
only because it is considered
safer than to eat from their toilet.
You have to actually convince me
that your trash is tasty, by making me hungry,
no stories about how it is supposedly
healthier to wear sneakers than to sniff glue.
What do you recommend… And who knows,
maybe I’ll try both!
I have Tor Browser, and the dark web available,
I have never smuggled in the mail before,
if I were to be put in a silent cell,
I depend on a sound source,
so the noise in my ears does not drive me crazy.
I always listen to nature sounds on my mobile
if I don’t listen to music.
– –
REFLECTOR
I’m a reflector,
I can only meet love with love,
it’s why I speak fondly
of the Woodstock Festival,
Mother Teresa and Gandhi,
it makes me peaceful to think
about peaceful people,
if you are indifferent, I’m indifferent too,
if you are angry,
you will make me angry too,
if I suspect you are false,
I do not believe in a word of what you say,
if you ignore me, I’ll remember it
and walk past you
in a moment where I otherwize would
have called an ambulance,
if I can feel your hatred,
it makes me want to kill your family,
and let you live,
if you try to control me,
I want to nail you to a coffin
and bury you alive,
and given the chance,
I will
But on the other hand,
I won’t,
because I don’t want to be like you.
– –
SCOTT WALKER
I became a fan of Scott Walker when “Tilt” came out in 1995.
I thought it was an amazing album. It did not insist to be listened to.
Part of the appeal was that it tried to push the listener away.
I worked in a record store then and I listened to a whole lot of music,
and “Tilt” stood out from the crowd like a shining blackstar.
I had never heard anything like it. The records he made in the 60s-70s
with or without The Walker Brothers had been out of print for decades.
Scott 1-4 had been rereleased on CD and there was a resurgence
of interest in the music of Scott Walker, but it was clear from “Tilt”,
his first album in eleven years, that he was done with making records
for the radio. It was a daring piece of music for an artist who had made
his name as a pop star, it was unheard of that you could reinvent
your pop career as an avant garde composer. Nobody had done that before.
It was as if Elvis Presley returned as Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The music was dark and claustrophobic, people wondered if he was
mentally ill, if something had happened to him.
Music is supposed to be ‘nice’. He once sang with the most beautiful
baritone voice, but now it was disturbing to listen to.
When an interviewer claimed that his new music was too far out, Walker
replied that it was not far enough out, but that he was working on it.
What he had started with “Tilt” would form a trilogy with “The Drift”
and “Bish Bosch”, released in 2006 and 2012 respectively.
– –
SYD BARRETT
Syd Barrett is my favorite Pink Floyd.
Despite the rumour about mental illness
and being spaced out on LSD,
I have always felt that he was the most
down to earth,
and the one closest to me.
He speaks to me, not from the moon,
or as a career musician, but as a person.
He was famous but not a celebrity.
He did not land with his private jet
in Pompeii to sing about climate change.
His professional career as a musician
lasted three years.
He was the Vincent Van Gogh of psychedelia.
While others tried hard to be surreal
in the year of flower power
and singing about the fifth dimension,
Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd
made the most psychedelic album of all time
with “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”,
singing about scarecrows, gnomes and bikes.
He was fired from the band a year later,
because they had ambitions.
“I’m only a person”, he sings in “Dark Globe”
from his solo album “The Madcap Laughs”.
Thanks, Syd! I have run out of people
I have something in common with.
And what exactly is madness,
and what exactly is normal.
Shine on you c̶r̶a̶z̶y̶ diamond.
– –
(WISH ME) A GOOD DEATH
I supposedly came here from nowhere.
I therefore consider this life to be
a life after death, so to speak.
The question is whether there is life after life.
I can’t believe life after existence
is less likely than life after non-existence.
The birth is the entrance to this life.
One has been given a body.
It’s a material world.
– –
STOP MAKING SENSE
They do not believe
in life after death,
it is unimaginable,
but they believe in slime
shared by man and woman
in their genitals,
which grows into a person
with arms, legs, a face
and a personality
that happens to be you.
– –
AXE THE MONARCHY
I’m neither for nor against the monarchy.
King Harald is a genuine person.
That’s what impresses me. Not kings.
In the world of capitalism,
some must be poor for others to be rich.
The saddest thing in this world,
is that some live in Buckingham Palace
and others live in a garbage dump.
And that it is socially accepted that it is so.
If someone deserves to live on the street,
I think everyone does. All or none.
If you are going to live at Buckingham Palace,
you need cooks and butlers and gardeners…
It’s a household. It’s not for everyone,
but everyone deserves a place they can call home.
Lower class, middle class, upper class.
Maybe royalty should live in a tent on skid row
and represent the people from scratch,
not from wealth?
I think it’s a much more interesting topic
than people who love it or hate it.
– –
IT’S OK TO LISTEN TO THE GRAY VOICE
If you write a poem
about how life
can be gray and monotonous
and lost in the scheme of things
and how everybody should be
wilder and freer,
people will nod their head
in approval.
But if you write
a wild and free spirited poem,
you meet a stiff upper lip.
– –
HOSPITALITY III
It’s a one-way street.
Lately I had a conversation
with a physiotherapist
at Rikshospitalet.
When she picked me up in the hallway,
she was so busy
that I had to struggle
to keep up with her,
as if we were late for the bus.
They are doctors, (((healers))),
with a ten-year education ???
I sit in the doctor’s office,
and while she switches between
watching my case and looking at me,
I lay my soul bare
and tell my story again…
to a stranger in a white coat.
– –
JOHN LENNON
Honest, yes.
He was always so personal,
and you don’t have to be personal
in popular music.
It makes him stand out for me,
next to his songwriting.
We connect,
from person to person,
not product to customer.
– –
PAUL McCARTNEY
I love his playfulness with music.
He is always rebelling against formalism.
“Yesterday” is so classy that one doesn’t notice
it’s an experiment with strings,
which was unusual for a rock ‘n’ roll band in 1965.
There is hardly a music genre that he has not tried.
His discography is extremely eclectic,
with or without The Beatles and Wings,
no one has made albums more delighfully disjointed
than Paul McCartney.
His style is to play with style. Yet his songs
are easily recognizable, and irresistibly catchy,
written as a reggae number, rock song or a ballad.
“Fuh You” was met with criticism
of how an old man should behave.
He still pushes the envelope, at the age of 76.
– –
GEORGE HARRISON
He had a spiritual quality.
He was attracted to Hinduism
and it influenced his music and lyrics.
“If you don’t know where you’re going,
any road will take you there.”
You don’t have to write songs
with depth in popular culture,
but George Harrison did it anyway.
– –
RINGO STARR
I have never been in tune with people
who claim that Ringo is not a good drummer
just because he is not a technical virtuoso.
He nailed every song by The Beatles
he played the drums on,
despite the style variation.
I don’t miss another drummer on my stereo
when the fab four blast from the speakers.
He has played with everyone
from progressive rock musicians
to 80s pop and blues and funk
in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
When he joined The Beatles,
they went from a local pub band
to a phenomenon. His drumming on “Rain”
is my favorite. And by the way;
Listen to his expressionistic drumming
on “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”.
– –
HELLO GOODBYE
Now that I’m not in the work-life,
I notice how I become unidentifiable
in a society that cultivates titles.
I can present a poem I have written,
but it’s not me they want to read,
it’s an author.
People want to become a dentist, a writer,
an athlete, a sociologist…
And as soon they achieve it,
they lose their identity as a human being.
They will no longer be spoken to
as a person, or a friend,
they have disappeared long ago,
you are just a colleague, an acquaintance,
a neighbor, The Director,
if you are a director of a company.
Apart from that, we have nothing to talk about.
And since I’m not working in the company,
we have even less than nothing to talk about.