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Good morning world :-)

 

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

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

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

 

The final shirt has no pockets.

 

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

 

And you were traveled with.

 

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

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

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

 

Then: back in Oslo, your father died.

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

I sense you are getting restless.

 

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

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

 

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

 

Bo Jo Cie Kochom – Depress.

Nine to go.

 

*

 

Written with

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

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

“ … We were in a hotel. A bit worn down. A memory of better days.

 

Where I don’t know, perhaps it was in Sylt? I haven`t been there yet so I don’t know.

 

I recognized Michael of course and there were other people (whom I had not yet met, but I understood they were the other Manafonistas – perhaps Jochen, Gregor, Martina or Marcus – there were no individual identities that I could separate from each other, just an identity as a group).

 

We (perhaps Uwe, Wolfram, or Lajla – again there were no individuals – just shadows bleeding into each other) were sitting around a big table in a room with very a strong light. White and strong.

 

The food was being served – cut into small cubes. There were no cutlery – no knives or forks. And nobody seemed to get the idea that it was possible to eat without knives and forks.

 

We (or maybe Henning or Jan or Ian – or rather a creature consisting of us as if we were one) started looking everywhere, but the only cutlery we found had been dipped in paint or so broken that we couldn’t use it.

 

Finally we returned to the table to discover that the food was gone) …“

 
 
As I woke up this morning the dream still lingered in me. And it is still lingers on, and I have the feeling having met you – the other Manafonistas – already.

 

What it means that we could not eat our food (cut in small cubes) without cutlery or that we didn`t find anything suitable when we were looking for it I don’t know, neither that the plates with our food were gone when we were back from our search.

 

I usually do not remember my dreams so clearly, and also during this dream I remember the feeling of knowing that I am dreaming. I feel I dream so much with my eyes open, that I prefer to not use my dreams as source of creation, whether it is with sounds or images or words.

 

As I am writing right now – the dream mixes with the sounds of Daniel Lanois Flesh and machine – that I have played quite a lot the last days. Or have I? Is it rather that it is a record that was already playing inside me, and I have just needed someone to record it for me to recognize it? And it happened to pass thru Daniel? Flesh and Machine does feel like home, in a quite unexpected way.

 

Flesh and Machine grows on repeated listening, and also when i am just trying to remember the sounds (without playing it, like just before going to sleep or just after waking up) and it has a lot of the same effect on me, as visualizing Stalker by Tarkovskij or the playing of Coltrane, whose record Live at the Temple University has been equally a revelation this week.

 

But that is another dream waiting to dream me.

 

*


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