papirfugl

Letter to a Building

I’ll try not to romanticize:
You aged, and so did I.
The world moved on, like life itself
Wherein nothing really stops,
Except in death, or when in love.

Now filling brand new cardboard boxes
With yellowed books and crumbled notes
On how to not become nostalgic,
Time, it seems, still made
A brilliant hoarder out of me.

And you, I hate to say, will long
Be spoken of in exactly the same way:
With fondness and with slight disgust
At why the end put an end to
All that could have been:

A narrative simplicity only granted
Things once loved and lost.
An innocence you only sense
Once you’re forced to shed it,
Remembering too much

Is handicap for what’s to come.
Despite, or given that, I halo you
With love, hoping that I’ve brought
Just enough, and not too much,
Of everything we made.

In memory of the Main Building
at the University of Hong Kong.
 

*

To provide the background for the poem: In 2012, the University of Hong Kong finishes the construction of a whole new campus, which means that the Arts Faculty, an unsurprisingly nostalgic bunch, has to move from the Main Building, a beautiful colonial work (complete with clock tower and everything - not bad?) where they have been since the dawn of man, into what I suspect many consider a half-glass, half-metal structure of modern architectural gore.

Given their unsurprisingly heritage-horny nature, the Department of Comparative Literature (where I’m studying) has decided to create a collection of postcards with sketches and poems commemorating the Main Building. I was fortunate enough to be asked to do one, and since I’ve spent most of my university time in the building myself, I wrote the above poem.

As you can tell, I’m not very good at disguising that I make pretty much everything I write revolve around love and loss and letting go. It’s basically just another love poem that happens to have a tag underneath it, saying “In memory of the Main Building” etc. Then again, most feelings for buildings and places are tied people anyway.

Nettdebatter og barsamtaler

Nettdebatter er rare, og unike, sammenlignet med debatter i det offentlige rom. Ofte ligner de pubsamtaler: to eller flere parter er uenige om en sak, og sammen kaster de ulike partene argumenter frem og tilbake; debattene blir ofte høylytte (på nettet, “skriftlig” høylytte, det vil si, frekke), og ofte tyr en til personlige angrep. Men i motsetning til pubsamtaler trenger ikke nettdebatter å ende. I en pub slutter debatten når samtalenepartnerne blir for slitne/fulle, eller når baren stenger; internett har døgnåpent. Etter å ha skrevet i timesvis til en fremmed på andre enden av landet kan du legge deg, lade opp debatteringsbatteriene, for så å lire av enda flere argumenter dagen etterpå. I motsetning til debatter i det offentlige rom, tillater nettdebatter deg å ta pauser, legge deg, gruble ut nye poeng, og det samme kan samtaleparteren din. Og slik kan det fortsette, så lenge dere vil, til begge partenes glede og/eller frustrasjon.

Lena Lindgrens artikkel i Morgenbladet om hvordan internett påvirker veksten av konspirasjonsteorier nevner noe kanskje enda viktigere enn det at internett, som et forum, er døgnåpent: i motsetning til debatter i et fysisk rom, involverer ikke nettdebatter å møte samtalepartneren din ansikt til ansikt og konsekvensene av et slik møte:

Er det bare de faktiske ytringene som gjør at nettdebattene på de store riksavisene er blitt det forfatter Øyvind Strømmen kaller «sydende pøler av hat»? Kanskje skyldes det også at på internett – vårt følelsesløse nervesystem, ifølge McLuhan – kjenner vi så vidt et tastetrykk. Du sier masse til andre mennesker du aldri ser ansiktsuttrykket til. Du har grenseløse muligheter til å sette fakta sammen til nye bilder, og du er Kongen av internett, men sitter likevel alene i stua.

Debatten her i Norge i etterkant av 22. juli har, så vidt jeg har fått med meg, handlet mye om hvordan den norske offentlige debatten bør (eller kan) være, og hvorvidt den kan motbalansere nettdebatter, der en often kan velge seg samtalepartnere og -miljø der motargumenter ikke får slå rot. Nå er en pub kanskje ikke den beste metaforen for en offentlig debatt. Utover det at en pub ikke er typisk norsk, så er det kanskje som et mikrokosmos av det offentlige rom kanskje for mye fyll inn i bildet. Men på en annen side er ikke metaforen så altfor ulik virkeligheten i nettdebatter. Hvor ofte har vi ikke sjanglet og lent oss, som vi gjør når vi argumenterer med en øl i hånda, på spekulasjoner, falske påstander, og konspirasjonsretorikk når vi taster ut poengene våre på nett? 

Om ikke annet så viser kanskje barmetaforen, i form av en simplistisk og litt feilaktig sammenligning, hvor unike nettdebatter sammenlignet med samtaler i det offentlige rom. I barsammenhengen vil det å kunne velge et spesifikt samtalemiljø, slik en kan på nett, tilsvare evnen til å lovlig stenge ut upassende kunder, eller det å gi enkeltpersoner makten til å be andre kunder ha på seg øreklokker, slik at de ikke vil finne på å avbryte din debatt. Er det her det umoderne ved den ellers unektelig moderne nettdebatten trer fram? Som Lindgren sier:

Den borgerlige offentlighet har institusjoner – for eksempel redaktørleddet, forlag, debattprosedyrer – som bryter ned mulighetene for at disse slutningene løper løpsk og blir enorme byggverk av tankefeil. På internett eksisterer ikke de offentlige mekanismene. Slik sett er vi tilbake i en førmoderne tilstand.

Selv om internett virker (og ofte er) nesten idyllisk demokratisk, selv om det gir oss muligheten til å si hva vi vil til hvem vi vil, tillater det oss også en fysisk avstand som gir albuerom til å grave etter akkurat det vi ønsker å finne, uten å nødvendigvis bli konfrontert med hullet vi har laget.

A strange year

Summer came, as usual, spreading hope 
across the town. It melted us each year, the sun
- a stiff, self-conscious people as we were -
we’d wait for it to come before we’d dare
to undress our fears. Too nervous otherwise, 

we depended on a shot of that
seasonal amnesia to forget
the coming winter, the trailing tracks
of light-less days and all-dark thoughts
wherein life would soon be forced,
one snowstorm at at time.

Yet, when wintertime arrived, snow was 
a symbol, only thought, a weather report
metaphor. Looking up that year, we saw
no trace of it at all: it just didn’t fall.
Instead, the skies just gave us

silence. Imagine, that silence of sleep,
those four cold months of muffled, snow-up life
but without the snow: no blocked-up roads,
no shoveling, no almost-deadly accidents.
Not even any freezing hands. 
Oh, and all that silence! So much silence you could 
wallow in it, build igloos of it, throw it, chew it,
make angels in it: so much silence 
you could freeze to death in it.

But no one froze that year; there was too much movement.
The streets were bare at first, but soon we started 
using them: we’d meet, we met to move; sometimes, 
we met just to prove that we could,
that we could shape the streets we’d built. 

Together, we would sit and talk, and think, and ask
why the snow was missing; why this silence had arrived, 
what we thought it meant, and whether it would last. 
But most of all, we’d sit in silence,
just listening. We’d meet to listen in, even though 
on what I’m still wondering. 

Those who were young then often say
that it was the sound of something new, 
of something being made.
The older ones, well, they used to say
that they thought it was something 
very, very old, slowly emerging again.

What’s one of the most meaningful travelling experiences you’ve had?

Sitting on the bus today, not travelling anywhere special, I suddenly felt like asking everyone I knew the following question: “what’s the most meaningful travelling experience you’ve had?” Since I obviously couldn’t ask everyone one I knew, I emailed one of my best friends, who replied, then asked me to ask myself.  This is what I wrote:

“Flying to Mumbai to see K and India, I think. India was and is one of those countries I keep hearing about, first since two of my closest Norwegian friends went and were completely fascinated by the place. Coming from one of coldest, most slow-paced, wealthy and least populated countries in the world, India is interesting just by the sheer contrast that it offers. You can talk about poverty tourism, and how dubious it is when middle-class Norwegians fall in love with India, but I’d like to think the accounts that I got were both delivered, and received, in a pretty balanced manner. In other words, I wanted to love it too but I also knew better than to romanticize one of the poorest countries in the world.

The two main realizations that I did were probably, one, if you have the chance to, you should absolutely, definitely impulse-buy tickets to visit people that you love; and two, never stop manufacturing opportunities where you might learn or think something new, be enchanted or inspired. That doesn’t necessitate travelling, but travelling just happens to be one of the ways you can do this very effectively if, that is, chance and will wants it so.

Another trip was when I interrailed around Europe alone. It took me a few years to admit this but what I learned from it was actually that I don’t like travelling alone. Pretty adorable in hindsight. There I was, 20 years old, I had just broken up with my boyfriend, finished my course in Denmark early to do something completely on my own. Note that in my decision to take on ‘the world’, ‘the world’ was Europe, one of the safest continents in the world. Anyway, it was still one of the smartest moves I made. I remember feeling very brave during the trip and afterwards. In hindsight, I think that confidence turned out to be so generative that it hardly matters now if what I did was actually very ordinary.

And of course, I watched Before Sunrise before I left, so I was continuously disappointed when I realized that most trains don’t have handsome, introspective men built into them.”

Advice to self and him

Tell me nothing lasts forever
That there’s no guarantee
That this is still the closest thing
To something somewhat real

Tell me this when I’m afraid
Tell me I forget
We’re both afraid and on our own
And think we know ourselves

So, I might be wrong right now
But if you’d like to try
Next time, tell me I’m just scared
And tell me I told know why

Blood love

Eroding ties, retracing lines
Of argument and hurt
You turn your blood loves into water
To prove what you are worth

But you look tiny to me now
Dwarfed by your own scheme
Like a child still scared of sin
You revolt, yet stoop in guilt

Love takes years to build
But seconds to break down
That is what you tell yourself
To detonate the bomb

Losing you is not as bad
As knowing that you’ve lost
The battle’s with yourself
Yet, you make us the cost

You taught me how to read
To not give up too easily
Now, when you rewrite your role
You expect me to let go?