And a compass wouldn't help at all – but fiction might

Le fils de l'épicier (The Grocer's Son), 2007

Happy March y'all! I'm currently procrastinating. But writing a blog post means it's structured procrastination, so we're good.

Last night I watched The Grocer's Son, a film I inherited on DVD from a former flatmate, like, six months ago. In short, it's about a young man who, having left his family years ago to live in la City de Light, returns to the country when his father falls ill. Taking over the family business of a travelling grocery shop, he finds himself quite unable to relate to the people he's meant to be helping, or his family, or... anyone, really.

I found myself really liking this movie. First off, the south of France is gorgeous and now I want to go there. I adored the snappy exchanges between the characters, and the visuals are beautiful. What got me most, however, was the humanity.

This film does an extraordinary job capturing human emotions and human behaviour, and doing this in a very subtle way. The three main themes I recognised were bitterness (Antoine is so caught up in his resentment of his parents that he's unable to relate to other people), pride (Antoine's father, forced to rest and unable to provide for his family and help the people who depend on his work, lashing out aggressively at the people closest to him) and something like fear of commitment (both Antoine and Claire are unable to fully acknowledge their mutual attraction, and it ends up in painful awkwardness and hurt feelings). There is certainly more – I also saw compassion, friendship, and a good deal of sorrow (especially in Antoine's mother, bless her soul). It's not an epic story, nor a hugely impressive one. But I enjoyed it thorougly, for the very reason that it wasn't outstanding. These things happen. Often.

The way people behave has been a mystery for as long as I can remember. The more people I meet, the more confused I get. Hell, my own actions and reactions barely make sense – quite often I find myself doing or saying something, while some part of my mind goes, "What is happening? Why is this happening? Why are you doing that? I DO NOT APPROVE."
I don't know if anybody else is as clueless as I am, but it isn't easy. Maybe that's why I go for pretty much anything that could possibly make some sense of this mess – psychology, cognitive neuroscience, social science. All my non-fiction books fit into one of those categories. (Anyone read The Examined Life? I only read it last week; during some chapters it was like a brilliant ray of light had come shining down straight from the heavens to illuminate the darkest corners of my clueless mind. Seriously though, it's good.)
But most of all, there is fiction.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."

— George R.R. Martin

I've had discussions with people who don't read fiction. I've had discussions with people who think studying literature is useless (the audacity!). Fact is, as much as it is entertainment, fiction is also the study of human nature. DEAL WITH IT, haters.

In fiction I find stories similar to my own – situations and people I can relate to. But even more importantly, I can find stories that are not my own at all. And this becomes invaluable when I can use it in my own life.

Take The Grocer's Son, for example. I'm not a very proud person, so I don't relate well to proud people. Watching the father in the movie, unable to work and provide for his family, take out his frustration on his loved ones, gave me a lightbulb moment. I understood him (somewhat) – and then I remembered scenes from my own life. Slightly similar situations, and people whose behaviour was a mystery, and BOOM – some assholes have just been humanised.
I'm not saying I've found the capital-T Truth in this movie, but there is the occasional discovery of parallels that makes it just slightly easier to at least imagine other people being people. And whether I'm right about them or not doesn't matter. What matters is that someone I've filed under "massive douchebag" becomes a lot easier to deal with once I entertain the idea that there might be an understandable reason for their behaviour. (Which, funnily, is what the capital-T Truth is about after all.)

Not everybody might know a Sherlock Holmes or a Severus Snape, or even a Walter White. But their stories will always be, in some small way, reminiscent of other people's stories, and by humanising them we can hope to find a way to humanise our own personal enemies and enigmas.

And if some "entertaining" movie, or novel, or comic, helps me with that?
Then, I say:

---

PS: Yep, the first part of this post title is totally from this song.
PPS: I'm also mighty proud I managed to link to three fantastic and improving texts you should absolutely read within just one post. Must be the structured procastination.

Productivity Month, Week 2 – On Internet use

When in doubt about life and all that, go to the V&A.

So last week I said I would not use the Internet, from home, for six whole days. I did not make that completely (I read my RSS feeds on Friday night, and was back on Youtube on Saturday), but I've definitely calmed down a lot. It's been an interesting week.

I believe my current Internet behaviour is a remnant of the olden times, when I was growing up. I'm old enough to have experienced a world completely without Internet (in those days we read books!), but I still had my first own email address at the age of ten.
However, it took me and my mum a relatively long time to switch to a fast 24/7 connection. We must've used dial-up for at least five years, so my use of the Internet was always characterised by

1. Paying by the minute,
2. which led to a limited time span of availability (1 hour a day),
3. which led to long afternoons of offline activity,
4. and a painfully slow connection.

For a long time I didn't take part in online discussions since I wasn't around often enough to follow the conversations. Every day that precious hour needed to be planned in advance, and every day, after the obligatory question "Are you finished? Can I turn it off?", I knew I'd only seen a tiny glimpse of what was out there.

Now being connected everywhere, at all times, is what we all know, but I haven't outgrown this sense of urgency I felt during those years. Whenever I am at my computer, and the Wi-Fi is on and I'm connected, I get just the slightest bit nervous. I feel like now is the time, and if I don't use it I won't have the time later. So this compulsion to browse the Internet whenever I have access never really goes away.

And it seems to trump everything else. For example: I like buying magazines. (They're like tumblr, but on paper! Hah.) I always buy them, flick through them and never read them. This past Monday, when I woke up and found myself with my morning cappuccino and no Internet, what was the first thing I did? I picked up a magazine and read it cover to cover. And I registered a thought, running somewhere very quietly in the background: I've got nothing better to do.

Our brain loves new stuff, and the Internet constantly provides us with new stuff, and at any time, some of it could be interesting. While this is obviously a fantastic thing (I just spent five minutes googling for an article to link to, looked at about ten and found about three suitable ones – so much information!), this is what glues us to the Internet. This is why we constantly and habitually check our social media channels. This is why I can't get off tumblr or Youtube.

I also can't get off tumblr or other blogs because especially these outlets enable me to live vicariously through others. My own life isn't always great, but LOOK AT THAT BEDSPREAD and LOOK AT THOSE MOUNTAINS aaaahhh that makes me feel better. It's escapism. It encourages imagining and dreaming, and no matter how many productivity and self development articles you read, looking at someone's lifestyle blog is instant gratification and working on your own life is not. And unfortunatly, as usually, the more vulnerable people are, the worse the effect:

Regular media habits don't become really bad media habits or addictions without some help – often, depression or anxiety is involved. For those experiencing these states, being online starts as a pleasant distraction from everyday worries but can soon become a problem of its own. What can happen is that going online becomes a habitual reaction to feeling depressed, or experiencing some other aversive state. Once the linkage between emotional state and habitual response is established, it can be remarkably difficult to break down. It's a vicious cycle because depression leads to bad media habits, which leads to negative life events, which then leads back to more bad media habits.

Jeremy Dean, Making Habits, Breaking Habits

My own Internet behaviour worries me because this is what could happen. I don't like my living environment at the moment, and I find that, when I come home, I just want to put on headphones and shut out the world around me. When I didn't have the Internet this week, I just put on a DVD and did the same. I didn't automatically get to work, so I don't think that connection to the Internet per se has an effect on my productivity – it's more how I use it.

Before I went off the web for a few days, my level of distraction was so high I sometimes paused one video to start watching another. I've calmed down now, and my habits have been broken – I don't need my RSS feeds first thing in the morning. I don't need a connection as much in general. I'm perfectly happy to just be out of the house in the evenings, and I don't miss the online world.

For the upcoming week I will keep my computer off in the mornings, simply because that makes my mornings a bit quieter. I will also try what I'll call the Joe Hill approach – recreational use of the web only after I've completed a number of tasks I've set for myself. Wish me luck.


For those interested in reading about the Interwebs and our brains, best start with the classics:

• Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (2008)
• Nicholas Carr, "The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember" (2010)
• [Video] "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains [Epipheo.TV]"

Merry Christmas

This was taken at the Christmas market on Sunday. Can you tell which city?

I'm in Germany, where Christmas is celebrated the only possible way: you get presents on Christmas Eve. Then you eat tons of potato salad, play with your presents and go to sleep. The next two days are more food and more play.

So this morning I woke up, looked at my presents, did this wonderful yoga practice right next to our tree, finished reading my latest book and had a ginormous breakfast together with my parents. Christmas has always been a quiet time in our family, where the stress is reduced to a minimum; where anything goes but nothing must; where we consume a ridiculous amount of calories while reading a ridiculous number of book pages and watching at least four or five movies; where we speak to family, and visit our grandmother, and try not to think about anything that usually worries us.

For me, it's time to relax as much as I possibly can and re-charge my batteries before I go back to the big city. It's time to review the past year and prepare for the months ahead. A time to be grateful, and a time to plan.

I hope that whoever reads this has a wonderful couple of days.

Thoughts on a Sunday

The UK seems to be getting a long autumn this year. The weather has been beautiful, the colours vibrant, and not even the storm a couple of weeks back managed to blow all the leaves off the trees. It reminds me of the year I spent living in Scotland, where autumn in all its glory seemed to last several months.

It's amazing how time passes; I absolutely don't remember how we got from 10th October to 10th November. The past few weeks have been demanding and stressful, so it was only a matter of time until I caught a cold, and on Thursday I left work early to avoid keeling over somewhere between my desk and the kitchen. Since then it's all been about self-care: watching movies, reading books, lots of tea and lots of sleep.

A few days ago, after a disappointing phone call had finally left me completely mentally drained, I realised how much I not only miss, but need meaningful conversations. I haven't been in the adult world (read: work) for that long, but it should be long enough to finally have gotten used to the breathtaking amount of bullshit smalltalk that goes on in it. Still, I'm not used to it, and it drives me up the walls.

Whenever I feel like this I'm reminded of this quote. I don't like the whole "me vs. them" attitude, mostly because I know, because I've glimpsed bits and pieces of many people, that they're highly interesting human beings; intelligent, funny, and passionate, with opinions, and knowledge. Which is why I can't bear this talk about work and the last movie we watched anymore. Every time somebody starts to tell me about how their TV set started showing a frizzy picture last night I want to physically shake them and yell, "When was the last time something made you really angry? What do you live for? Who is the most important person in your life? For the love of the deity of your choice, at least tell me your favourite colour!" If we're going to be vomiting out words for the ten minutes we're having to spend in the same room together (because ew silence so uncomfortable), then why don't we at least use them for something interesting?

Like to describe how this song feels:

That One Movie: Winter Passing

For weeks I've been waiting for the perfect afternoon: a cold, preferably rainy autumn day when the world seems to have gone quiet and I have a few hours to myself. Today, I decided, was the day.
So I watched Winter Passing.

 
Meet Reese (Zooey Deschanel), a young actress living in New York. Her career, just like her life as a whole, is not going well, so when she is approached by a literary agent about a series of letters once exchanged between her father and late mother, both highly celebrated writers, the estranged daughter decides to return. Upon arriving at her Michigan family house, Reese finds herself in what seems like a bizarre parallel universe: the place is inhabited by two strangers named Shelly (Amelia Warner) and Corbit (Will Ferrell), while her father Don (Ed Harris) writes and sleeps in the garage, only returning to the house to have dinner and demolish the bedroom by playing golf in it. Not wanting her father to know that she only came for the letters, Reese moves back into her old room and has to learn to adjust to what seems to be her new "family".

The first twenty minutes or so focus entirely on Reese's life in New York. With her unkempt hair, bare face and heartbreakingly empty eyes, Zooey Deschanel’s character is the image of a young woman’s depression: confused, lost and forlorn, she tries to act tough, but constantly tiptoes along the edge of despair.
Returning home at first does not do her any good either: the house, held up by mountains of books and Shelly’s good intentions, reeks of torment and hopelessness, and in the garage Don slowly, but painfully drowns himself in Bourbon and grief over the recent death of his wife.

The film is set in late autumn and early winter, and you can feel the cold. It's a calm movie, one that rarely ever raises its voice, and yet it cuts as deep as the cold on a crisp November morning. In some parts, it aches.

It was early October and university courses were just starting. I was nineteen years old and had just moved into my first own studio flat. Something had gone wrong with the phone company, so for the first month, I was without an Internet connection. To pass the time I went to the local library once or twice a week to pick up DVDs. That's where I found a copy of Winter Passing.

From the very first time I watched it, this film spoke to me. I think it's very well made in terms of cinematography and soundtrack; I would recommend it to anyone just for the atmosphere, and of course the acting. (If you dislike Zooey Deschanel and/or Will Ferrell because you think all they can do is silly comedy, I urge you to watch this.)
It's painful, though, and I can understand it if some people think it over-the-top painful. However, in that month of October when I was nineteen, I felt that I got this movie, and that this movie got me. I had just gone through the worst summer of my life thus far, and had just started to learn the meaning of solitude. This story at that time lined up with my life, and it's been part of my life since.

Watching Winter Passing has become somewhat of a ritual for me. There are candles, tea, chocolate and at least one tangerine (for the smell; you just need the smell of tangerines at this time of the year). Even though the painful parts don't speak to me as much as they used to, it takes me back to those first weeks of living alone, during those first weeks of autumn, when I was in the process of climbing out of a dark void of my own. Watching it makes me strangely wistful and optimistic at the same time.

I'm glad this movie exists.

One "Siste Dans" – Saying goodbye to my favourite band

Last night my favourite band, the Norwegian alternative rock band Kaizers Orchestra, took to the oil barrels for the final time in one epic last dance before splitting up for good.
Because the city of Stavanger cannot possibly hold all Kaizers fans, and not every Kaizers fan can make a trip to Stavanger possible, there was a livestream. And it was emotional.

The first time I came across the Kaizers, I was lazily flipping through some TV channels, when the German music channel VIVA popped up, playing this:


I know what you're thinking: a bunch of dudes in suits, playing mildy weird, gloomy music on a stormy beach? Bloke wearing a gas mask and a pump organ? Look at this colour scheme! What is that language? This might be the best thing of all things ever.

I was fifteen years old, and on a music channel that normally played nothing but Destiny's Child (or whatever was cool in 2004; I certainly wasn't so I wouldn't remember), I had just found my music.

At that time Kaizers had been officially a thing for about three years since the release of their first album, Ompa Til Du Dør; their second one, Evig Pint, had just hit the market. Listening to samples of Evig Pint at my local music store (they still had those in 2004) was like a revelation. I was hooked immediately.
They weren't a huge deal outside of Norway back then, so for the next couple of years, their tours included my hometown, where I saw them twice. I'm not much of a concert person, so I can't speak as an authority, but I'm not alone when I say holy shit this is the best live band ever. The atmosphere they create, the passion and love they show to their fans – I've never had a better concert experience. Also, in the olden days, they used to start their concerts by playing Tom Waits' Russian Dance – I mean, it doesn't get any cooler than that. (They introduced me to Tom Waits. I owe them so much.)

I saw them a couple of times after that (the best venue was always the Postbahnhof in Berlin, by the way; small but awesome), and one song from their third album (which has a special place in my heart for reasons I can't quite name) quickly became my favourite live song ever:


(I don't scream very often, but when I do, it's "sving din hammer".)

I must admit that I've never been a die-hard fan. After the release of their fourth album Maskineri, I followed them less enthusiastically, but still with great interest. There's something wonderfully different about them: how they stuck to Norwegian, no matter how famous they became outside of Norway; how their albums are collections of stories instead of love songs vaguely applicable to my own life; and of course, the oil barrels, because I like that industrial sound. Their music opens up worlds to immerse myself in; their music is captivating, their sound interesting and not always entirely pleasant to the ear, yet still an absolute joy to listen to. I've always cited them as my favourite band and meant it.

I hadn't been able to see them for a while, but kept checking their tour dates, so when I found out that this one was going to be their last, my heart sank. They'd become big now, even across the pond, which had made it difficult to see them, and now they were going to split up.
Their music had also become big:

(I love this song and this performance and everything. So dapper.)

Last night's final concert was equally big, and yet it was no different from the tiny venue in my hometown I'd first seen them perform at. Even in my small bedroom in the UK, glued to the screen for over three hours, I felt the exhilaration and the excitement I'd always experienced when seeing them in the flesh.
Kaizers Orchestra have been a constant part of life for nearly ten years, so much that they've become a tiny part of my identity. Their music has seen me through many a difficult situation; when everything else was changing, I've always had Kaizers.

I don't get very emotional about specific bands, or music in general, but oh my god I love these guys, and last night's concert reminded me about it, over and over again. I might have cried a little.

It's been great. And instead of some heartbroken last words, have that one special version of that one special song:

Yet another new beginning (this is getting old)

Confession time: I’m a scanner and an opener.

I love to learn new things. I love considering the possibility of new things. And I love to start things, all the time. What I’m terrible at is sticking to the things I’ve started.
My room is scattered with half-filled journals and sketchbooks, novels with calendar pages turned bookmarks from 2012 stuck around page 230, and open cosmetics (I only ever wear one eye shadow, why do I have ten different ones). My web browser has about 20 open tabs at the moment. I speak two languages fluently and know the basics of four others. I now move house every six months, and I like it – who doesn’t love decorating a new room? I have some sort of talent or potential for about seven different activities, and I switch between them so frequently I’ll never be properly “good” at any of them. I have started and deleted more blogs than I want to count.

I’ve now come to the point where my inability to make up my mind is getting out of hand. Last week I had my first ever performance review at work. Everything had been going swimmingly (I’m lying) until the dreaded question came: Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
After much “er” and “uhm” and “pffff” and, yes, “I have no idea” – how am I supposed to know what I’ll want in five years!? – my manager now thinks I’m an uncaring sea slug devoid of any aspiration.

This will not do. There’s got to be something I properly want.
And maybe, if I’m documenting the things I do and the things I like, I find out what is is. So here’s to another new beginning.



PS: I watched singing lessons on Youtube while writing this post.