10 reasons why Norwegian Music Rules

1. Thomas Dybdahl, period. 

This guy is reason enough, but I'll provide nine more just to fill the list. A musician in every respect. Music is all about communication and Thomas knows it. His tools are subtlety, melancholy and majesty. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW0RddCyow8&fmt=18

2. Christel Alsos - Come Back To Me. 

Christel is from a small island on the west coast of Norway, and appeared suddenly. Eva Cassidy is a obvious reference, and she's absolutely fantastic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf9sCwDjEN4&fmt=18

3. Madrugada - Majesty 

Norway's probably greatest rockband, now dissolved after the guitarist died. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJCdfZk2eVo&fmt=18

4. Turboneger (Turbonegro) - Get It On 

An underground sensation for almost 15 years before they exploded, with probably the most hardcore fanbase ever. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH9WY3YtV4g&fmt=18
Also check out "I Got Erection:"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEJGk8qfAgI&fmt=18

5. Ane Brun - To Let Myself Go 

A very distinctive voice, and a distinctive sound makes this song haunting and wonderful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7tQiDHSe5E&fmt=18

6. Marit Larsen - If A Song Could Get Me You 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq7fTA7lVu8&fmt=18

Cute? yes. Catchy? yes. Pop? yes, but if this is pop, more of this please.

7. Madcon - Dandelion 

yeah, these guys sold out big time, but with charm, and considering they tried for 12 years, it was their time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMonZApAMQQ&fmt=18

8.Annie - I Know Your Girlfriend Hates Me 

Little Annie from Bergen was a well kept secret for a long time, until people realized she had it all to make it, so now she's playing in the big leaues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pq4eDHGIVs&fmt=18

9. Cato Salsa Experience - So The Cricus Is Back In Town 

Note: Scandinacia was Indie waaaaaay before the rest of the world. By 2008, vintage hipsterfashion a-la VICE Magazine is the shit, but back in 2000, people thought J-Lo was the next Britney. Alot of good bands came and went cuz the world was not ready yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l66htuMyQPg&fmt=18

10. Ida Maria - Oh My God 

The newest sensation, already on the iPods of hipsters everywhere, few know where she's from, and I've heard "I think she's Swedish" enough times. She's norwegian, there it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naQSB1Ozyds&fmt=18

To summarize, I noticed that there are a lot of girls on the list! Another reason to be proud, I say.

10 songs I'm kinda embarrassed that I like for whatever reason

In no particular order:

1. Training Montage Song from Rocky IV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8xHjC27YvM&fmt=18

2. Bobby McFerrrin - "Voicing" Air by Bach, a little tacky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slUW5IBVo_8&fmt=18

3. Tom Green freestyles with X-Zibit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebi-_o_3dgs&fmt=18

4. Telstra Ad - We are one, we are many.
I'm a closet Aussie, and this song makes me teary some times (really!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuKpJv0PlSE&fmt=18

5. Honda ad featuring Andy Williams "The Impossible Dream:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB_1gPRCLCo&fmt=18

6. Amy Winehouse - Valerie (live).
Done to death in all kind of versions (most notably by the Zutons), but Amy does this one 
justice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqSKVv6YO8g&fmt=18

7. Nessum Dorma - Paul Potts (BGT final) He's not Pavarotti, and this version isn't really that impressive, but considering his story, it's heartwarming: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_5W4t_CBzg&fmt=18

8. Guy Sebastian - Climb Every Mountain. 
Originally from "Sound of music," the first Australian Idol Winner kitsched it up, but it's a really impressive and heartfelt performance regardless:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwWzUnenem4&fmt=18

9. John Mayer - Free Fallin' (cover).
A gaudy 80's classic softrocked up (or down, depending on how you see it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wJ-VPqFzy0&fmt=18

10. Pennywise - Fuck Authority
It was the nineties and skatepunk was hot. Nonetheless, this song was one of the songs that was the soundtrack of my life when i was 15:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZVc0h8Gok&fmt=18

This Is My House

About two-thirds down on the page of the Baghdad Musem (http://www.baghdadmuseum.org/) is a snippet of text, an extract from a Mesopotamian text thousands of years old.

It touched me.

I'm also ashamed by it, because it illustrates how little humans have learned in this time about human suffering, and that one of the basic paradoxes about human existence is how prolific inhumanity still is:

Dead men, not potsherds
littered the way.
In the wide streets
where the crowds once gathered and cheered,
the corpses lay scattered.
In the fields where the dancers once danced
the dead were heaped up in piles.......

This is my house:

where food is not eaten,
where drink is not drunk,
where seats are not sat in,
where beds are not made,
where jars lie empty,
and cups are overturned,
where harps no longer vibrate
and tunes no longer sing.

This is my house:

without a husband,
without a child,
without even
me.

Photo by Buddy Stone
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/50087332@N00/444492912/)

Hot & un-bothered

Lars' garden
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr

Why are you reading this?

GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!!!

How to make the ultimate advertisement

According to the movie, getting married to rich men, having sex with wealthy men and striving to create the nuclear family with a rich man should be at the top of every strong and egocentric woman's agenda.

COMMERCE IN THE CITY:

When the HBO series Sex In The City dropped onto TV-screens 10 years ago, I found Carrie to a sympathetic character who observed and deconstructed with an ironic and critical eye, the blazing singles-meatmarket that is New York. I had no qualms mentioning to people that I watched and enjoyed the show.As the series gained popularity, the focus shifted from snappy and sophisticated glances and observations about the relationships between men and women from a woman's point of view, to become more about the superficial things that made up the mise-en-scene of the series: the shoes, the food, the apartments. In a matter of seasons, the series became a the entire back-catalogue of the Vogue Magazine Empire, and then I am including Conde Nast Traveller and Vogue Living.

What strikes me as most disturbing, is the packaging of the show, which is manipulative and subtle. Women seem too willing to swallow the whole concept as Neo-Feminism and be in denial about the incredible egocentric and patriarchial tone of the show. Even though Samantha, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are in charge of their own lives and are, in many senses of the word, strong women, their entire existence is made up in the pursuit of happiness in the form of a man, and the ultimate goal: marrying the perfect man and having the perfect wedding.

The Sex In The Series Movie symbolises what the series has become: an incredible opportunity for companies to showcase their products and to reach consumers on a whole new level; I realised today that this movie is the ultimate marketing tool. Recipe for success is as follows.

How to make the ultimate advertisement:

1. Women are, as many know, the ultimate consumers. When rightly motivated, they can be convinced to develop a level of consumption that is unrivalled in other capitalistic economies.

2. In order to reach a huge female demographic, it is important to not just have one character, but four. These characters must, as fashion and other fashionrelated products, change according to season. In this way, it is possible to differentiate the enormous variety of products that will be showcased and also to use the different characters to target each consumer more effectively. For example, those viewers who sympathise with Carrie, are most likely to buy Manolo Blahnik shoes, buy Belvedere Vodka and Vivienne Westwood clothes.

3. One of the hardest thing about branding, is developing brand loyalty. But, how to by-pass years of efforts in trying to build relationships with possible customers? Why, by having consumers adopt fully and wholly the loyalty and taste of brands of another person they look up to and almost worship; the ultimate way to sell a product is to create a cult following, a hardcore base of fans, because these fans will never question, never doubt any product reccommendation the corresponding character will make merely through the stylised consumption of the products.

4. Build this advertising vessel over ten years, spin it off into a movie, and you end up with an advertising channel that will propogate itself into all eternity in and even generate its own income in the form of DVD-sales and box-office sales.

Think I'm too cynical?

Check this out:
Vanity Fair got two reporters to watch the movie twice and find all the product-placements. Productplacement is for all that don't know or have never noticed, "a type of advertising, in which promotional advertisements placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in media, where the presence of a particular brand is the result of an economic exchange (Wikipedia)." In short: whenever you see a product or service in a movie or TV show, chances are someone paid to have it there. It is a great way for a network or movie-studio to keep costs down and secure Return On Investment.

Designers:
Manolo Blahnik (consistently and constantly)
Vivienne Westwood (more than any other designer, most notably as Carrie’s wedding dress)
Louis Vuitton (lots and lots and lots)
Chanel (at least five times)
Dior
Ferragamo
Roger Vivier
Diane von Furstenberg (a scene was filmed in her New York City store)
Hermès
Christian Loubutin (one very clear shot of bright red soles)
Prada
Escada
Versace
Gucci (several handbags—including a big white “Gucci heart NY” one—and brown glossy shopping bags)
Vera Wang
Oscar de la Renta
Carolina Herrera
Christian Lacroix
Lanvin
Nike
Adidas
Burberry
Tiffany and Co. (Carrie’s wedding gifts)
Swarovski (constantly sparkled on Carrie’s encrusted cell phone; also shined on a clip in Miranda’s hair, Stanford’s wedding tuxedo, and on Charlotte’s daughter’s cupcake purse)
Hello Kitty (décor of choice in Charlotte’s daughter’s room)

Stores & Services:
Henri Bendel
Scoop
Bluefly.com
Duane Reade
Manhattan Mini Storage (boxes and boxes in nearly every scene shot in Carrie’s apartment)
Bag Borrow or Steal (referenced, explained, and punned on repeatedly)
Netflix
U-Haul

Gadgets:
Apple (Carrie’s computer)
iPhone (Samantha’s cell phone—not exactly Carrie’s style)
Blackberry (Miranda’s phone)
Bang & Olufsen (Samantha’s shapely phone in her Mailibu pad)
Dell (Miranda and Big’s computers)
Cuisinart (wedding gift for Carrie)
Sprint (Carrie’s service provider—flashed frequently)

Publications:
Vogue (the real editorial office and staffers, a photo shoot, and the magazine itself)
New York PostPage Six (what better place for an engagement announcement?)
Entertainment Weekly
New York magazine
Marie Claire
The Wall Street Journal (Big’s before-bed read)

Sips and Snacks:
Starbucks (again and again)
Pellegrino (on a table or two)
Skky Vodka (to drown Carrie’s many sorrows)
VitaminWater (first an ad hanging on a wall, then on every seat under the tents for Fashion Week)
Smart Water (the water of choice—all over the place)
Pret a Manger (bagged lunch in the park for two)
Cup of Noodles (New Year’s Eve feast)

From the Pharmacy:
L’Oreal
Garnier
Fructis
Nivea
Jergens
Clean & Clear

Places and Ways to Get There:
New York Public Library (the wedding locale)
Lumi (the site of Charlotte and Big’s confrontation)
Buddakan
The Four Seasons
Mercedes-Benz (Big’s chauffer-driven car)
Lincoln Town Car (Carrie’s wedding limousine)
Christie’s (the girls attended an Ellen Barkin-inspired jewelry auction here)
American Airlines (on an ad in Samantha’s office)

source: http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/blogs/daily/2008/05/sex-and-the-cit.html

SJP's wardrobe divided up. After the movie, countless magazines like Cosmo and Elle will dissect the characters' clothes and suggest other clothes that are similar. In this way, other clothing brands can piggyback off the image of a high-fashion label. Clever.

How much is tragedy worth?

As a communications-professional, I understand newsworthiness.

I live by it every day as I have to relate to gatekeepers all the time . I understand that there are several criteria the press have in place for something to be newsworthy, that being a gatekeeper is a tricky role because one has to balance commercial interest and news.

But this perplexes me:

It shows a part of human nature at its most inhuman, I think, when the majority of us are more interested in what some deranged austrian did to his daughter, than 100.000 casualties in a country that is run by a military junta that has closed off the country to outsiders and consequently are making sure many more will perish.

It also seems that for a newsstory like this to catch on - to get our sympathyjuices flowing - someone from a first-world country has to be involved, on other words: someone from the first-world has to die.

If they do, chances are the rescue effort and the subsequent media coverage will take on epic proportions. If, by chance, several tourists are involved in a tragedy, there is no end to the lengths of our sympathy and capabilities for action. It seems, brutally, that a westerner's life is worth a thousand third-world ones.

In Nettavisen yesterday on the crisis in Burma, was an article named "why does noone read this story?" that questioned why some obviously tabloidised stories were more frequently read, even in the face of enormous disaster, which means even members of the media are asking why this event has only managed to get people to click on the headline, read a few lines and then go walk the dog or go buy an ice cream and not really care.

So, who do we blame? Sadly, I believe that the mere abundance of information avaliable today and the speed of which we are accustomed to it being updated, has a devastatingly inhumanising effect. The respected sociologist Anthony Giddens says that

'[f]ateful moments are times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands, as it were, at a crossroads in his existence; or where a person learns of information with fateful consequences (Giddens 1991, p. 113).'

The way in which this story is unfolding, seems to me that for most of the western world, the rape of an Austrian girl is more powerful, fateful and devastating than the gruelling death of almost 100.000 burmese people.

This illustrates a core fundamental trait in human beings:

'..if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing (Foucalt 2004, p. 95).'

It also illustrates what people such as the influental scholar Edward Said has been theorising about for over three decades; because of the history of western elightenment, imperialism and subsequently the growth of a western world view which has been adopted globally, westeners are for some reason worth more than "easterners:"

'[s]ince the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric (Said 1978, pp. 25-28).'

Power and discourse are important in this respect, because I think many don't reflect on how they function. According to Foucault, any event can be seen as a a "text." Just as a text has been "authored," any event or situation can be authored, and can subsequently be critically examined in order to reveal the agenda behind it. In this way, any biased event (any event period, really) can become "real" because it is actively produced through discourses of power, in other words the way language is structured around an event by the groupings that are the most influential.

It's a hard pill to swallow, to realise that we can be inhuman sometimes, and therefore I think most people try not to think about it. Therefore, it's important to remember that every time you click a link on a news-website, it is registered, and that means that every person sitting in front of a computer screen has some degree of power over what is represented in front of them. The reason why the letters of a raped austrian girl are more intersting and gets more attention, is the simple fact that people are more inclined to click that link than the one saying a hundred thousand people have been killed, and so the blame really has to placed on each and every one of us.


Bibliography:

Dagbladet.no, 8. may 2008, accessed 09:45

Nettavisen 7. May, accessed 14:50

Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press)

Michel Foucault, (2004) 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 95. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell)

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978)

No go

No go
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr

I see that it has been almost a year since I blogged last. For a second I thought it was because I've read alot, but when I think about it, I really haven't read alot either... no more than usual.

I took a look through my mailbox at at all the times I've taken the time to write something, and it turns out I've been most prolific at times when I've had doubts about the future, for example when I left Australia after three years of study, the oddness of getting used to being home, going back to Australia again and so on.

Is happiness a creativity-killer? It would seem so, especially writing. There's nothing that can feed good literature as much as doubt, insecurity, suffering, anguish and unhappiness.

Generally, when people are capable of writing when they are happy, it's uninteresting gibberish.

But I'm going to try again. It doesn't mean that I'm completely happy, but that I've been working hard to get to a point where I can be.

The Arctic Ronin is officially back.

Curse Of The Meridian

50 metern
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr

"Where shall the weary rest? When shall the lonely of heart come home? What doors are open for the wanderer? And which of us shall find his father, know his face, and in what place, and in what time, and in what land? Where? Where the weary of heart can abide for ever, where the weary of wandering can find peace, where the tumult, the fever, and the fret shall be for ever stilled.
Who owns the earth? Did we want the earth that we should wander on it? Did we need the earth that we were never still upon it? Whoever needs the earth shall have the earth: he shall be still upon it, he shall rest within a little place, he shall dwell in one small room for ever. Did he feel the need of a thousand tongues that he sought thus through the moil and horror of a thousand furious streets? He shall need a tongue no longer, he shall need no tongue for silence and the earth: he shall speak no word through the rooted lips, the snake's cold eye will peer for him through sockets of the brain, there will be no cry out of the heart where wells the wine …The dead tongue withers and the dead heart rots, blind mouths crawl tunnels through the buried flesh, but the earth will endure for ever; hair grows like April on the buried breast and from the sockets of the brain the death flowers grow and will not perish, O flower of love whose strong lips drink downward into death, in all things far and fleeting, enchantress of our twenty thousand days, the brain will madden and the heart be twisted, broken by her kiss, but glory, glory, glory, she remains: Immortal love, alone and aching in the wilderness, we cried to you: You were not absent from our loneliness."

Thomas Wolfe, Of Time And The River

SoHotRightNow (May):


Charlotte Gainsbourg / The Operation
Star You Star Me / Sweet Thing
The Shins / One By One All Day
Bloc Party / Like Eating Glass
Christel Alsos / Still
The Whitest Boy Alive / Burning
Van She / Kelly
Cornelius / Omstart
Jori Hulkkonen feat. Jerry Valuri / Lo-Fiction
Peter, Björn & John / Young Folks
Teddybears STHLM / Little Stereo
The Hives / Main Offender
The Strokes / 12:51
I Want You So Hard (Boys Bad News) / Eagles of Death Metal

READ:
Richard Dawkins / The God Delusion
Umberto Eco / The Island Of The Day Before
Tom Wolfe / The Bonfire Of The Vanities
Aldous Huxley / Brave New World
Edgar Allan Poe / Selected Writings
Thomas Wolfe / Of Time And The River

---Curse Of The Meridian---

It seems ceaseless sometimes, this Australian escapade. Comparable to an exhaling breath in slow motion, all I have to report is that we are still here, still up-rooted, still fixed upon this subcontinent as the hemispheres revolve and the seasons turn to favour northern shores once more. How fitting then, as we here in Melbourne have enjoyed a frivolous and vivacious summer, now watch it flutter across the seas eastward over the meridian and then north, how fitting to imagine that it now tiptoes into glacier-moulded inlets, whisks across thawing fields, warrens through bourgeoning valleys until it finally vapors under your doors, still with dew on its eyelashes, carried transversely from where its was waved goodbye priorly, suppressing a giggle as it slowly slinks into your beds as you lay dormant on the verge of a new day and lies impatiently next to your ears, lingering to announce that spring, finally, is coming.

These words are carefully chosen, almost forced; willed keystrokes that have been suppressed by hazy days now are being penned, because, as I will testify to you my friends, it is not laziness that has provoked a sustained drought in my correspondence, au contraire! It is much more so the other way around. Summer entices above all the visual senses, and as zenith approaches circa mid-day, this desire to express one's self through prose, through recorded thought upon paper (or indeed in digitized form), is constricted. Try if you will, on the commencing of a bluebird giorno, as the breeze beckons you to seek relief among the waves, the sand, the bottled water bottle lying in wait in the freezer, to sit down and articulate, to fix and fasten your thoughts in structured outline when the very fleeting and ephemeral nature of the season, the very splendour of the day in conjunction with your other senses, manipulates your attentiveness towards a more hedonistic and effervescent use of the remaining hours that by now is whizzing past your temples. Couldn't I, you may ask, have written this sooner? Well, in a way I did.

My phrasing, as a matter of fact, is the result of a recent purchase. Melbourne and its' surrounds is blessed by a number of establishments that deal in secondary goods, one of which is literature. And so, our modest household is now home to a number of new inhabitants that, although corporeally deceased, are alive through the legacy of their written word. And now, as my esteemed company stares back at me from the bookshelf, I should hasten to disclose that my wording, although antiquated of styling, is far from lacking in its' motifs. "Being modern is just being old-fashioned, but quicker." Oscar Wilde had a way of saying things. But I digress.

Had you all, as I have far from moderately insinuated (through a link to my digitised photo-album in every electronic update that tickles your in-box now and again), followed the pictures that I have been steadfastly and devotedly been uploading, you would have followed the events as they have unfolded on this remote continent. Hundreds and hundreds of frames, frozen moments that singularly or accumulatively tell our story, of my darling and I, stylised through the careful and intricate, sometimes impulsive, harmony of aperture and shutter-speed, and expressing beyond any mediocre prose I can conjure up in electronic correspondence (and more economically and more poetically) the Zeitgeist, the very essence of our existence as the days accrue down under.

It is only now, when the pangs of summer are but a reminiscence, that the words - dormant under the sheets of the conscience - spring to life. As a consequence, I have saved you from the vile and crude jabber of my premature rambling. As one wouldn't dream to open a bottle of vintage wine before its prime, nor shall my words be ejaculated upon the screen before the words are ready, so that no notes are left sour and the contrasts are there to be nuanced upon the palates of your thoughts.

There have been events, mind you. My girth and beard are not growing because I am a human tree. But, for now I will rest my correspondence with the notion that we are in sound mind and spirit, overstretched at times and nostalgic at times, but harmonious.

Piacere
Jon-Eric

Flux

Signal
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

September:

SoundtrackOfMyLife
Bo Kaspers Orkester / Cigarett / Vi kommer aldrig att dö
Ralph Myerz & The Jack Herren Band / Think Twice / L.i.p.s.t.i.c.k
Jose Gonzales / Crosses
Zero 7 feat. J.Gonzales / Futures
Sofian / 45 Degrees
Kings of Convenience / Gold for the price of silver (erot rmx)
Modaji / The One and The Same (Jazztronik rmx)
Lupe Fiasco / Kick, Push
Mos Def feat. DJ Honda / Travellin' Man
Blackstarr / Definition
Talib Kweli / Never been in love
Thomas Dybdahl / Stay Home

PicturesOfMyL ife: www.flickr.com/photos/jonmelsa
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man can not keep in pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music that he hears however measured and far away."
(Henry David Thoreau)

Flux
It is with a certain sense of deja vu that I now find myself sitting in front of a computer screen in an Australian university-library writing to friends that are far away. As far as I can tell, by the accents I hear and by the disconcerted atmosphere of acedemic doom that looms over studying faces that form this multicultural network of young people hurrying about their business, I'm in Melbourne, more accurately, Monash university.

How do we go about it all, constructing ourselves over and over, in different contexts, in different modes, and still end up feeling like the same person? As an old friend of mine puts it, "it sometimes feels like I've lived two lives... Maybe I was unhappy and insightful before. Maybe I'm happy and oblivious now. Most likely, I'm somewhere inbetween."

I went away again. Can't really explian why, I don't have any overarching justifications. I just did. Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe it was reaching for something always beyond my reach. Most likely, you so eloquently observe, Mort - it's somewhere inbetween. In any case, coming home in November '04 was inherently like coming to a halt. The seasons came and went, but my mind was lingering in another place, so impossible to define, so easy to draw simpleminded conclusions about. So I left again - almost on a whim.

A weekend trip to a cabin in the woods for a couple of days, and suddenly I had made a decision that was completely out of left field.
A smart career move? Definetely not. Widening of network? Not really. The next step in life? Nooooo. As the misty hills and raindrenched fields of the southern coast of Norway folded itself open like a wet newspaper, I was sitting in a train coupe thinking stupidstupidstupid.

Wikipedia defines Stupidity as "the quality or condition of being stupid, or lacking intelligence , as opposed to being merely ignorant or uneducated."

The parallell tracks of Sorlandsbanen end abrupltly at Kristiansand's doorstep, and that's why I never liked trains - they never diverge. It's always with stern purpose that they churn away towards their destination, and once they reach it, they turn around and go back, always bound by the constraints of their twin iron lines that carry their load of people, all with a purpose, a single goal. But I diverge... As the case turned out, I was suddenly trawling the streets of Kristiansand, looking for a restaurant that hadn't been built, with a boss that I didn't know, and people I had never met. As far as the definition of stupidity goes, I was a textbook case.

But come July and suddenly words like coulis, consomme, aigre-doux, gremolata, petit-pois and souffle were part of my everyday vocubulary. I could with tantalising quickness and in savoury detail explain the difference between a Verdicchio and a Sancerre. I could make a perfect cortado, mix a breathtaking martini, know the differences in temperature in which a Semillon-de-bordeaux or an Amarone della Valpolicella should be served. In short, I was a waiter. If I served you, chances were you would at the end of your meal be reduced to a blobbering, moaning, blissful heap of gastronomic delight. At the same time, I was lucky enough to trick Kristiansand Gymnastics to hire me as one of their head coaches, so there I was, theatrically performing gastronomy and oenology in the evenings while disciplining little boys and girls with ADHD tendencies, by making them do limbstretching and pushups until they dropped. A young, educated bright man suddenly constructing myself in a totally new setting. As autumn came and went, the cold winds from Skagerak suddenly draped the cosy old buildings of the old city in a harsh veil of snow and ice. It's true what they say about southern norwegians, that when winter comes, misery creeps in.

As luck would have it, it was the perfect time to fall in love. Come November again, and winter didn't seem to matter. And as spring approached, everything crystalised, and as the bitumen stretch leading back home rolled away beneath summerwarm tyres in the end of June, I caught a glimpse of Kristiansand one last time and kept driving until the air was thick with the smell of strawberries and appleblossoms. The summer however shortlived, was the first norwegian summer in a long time, it leapt up in your face, begging to be enjoyed. As luck would have it, Benedicte's grandparents live only 10 minutes away from Tranby, before we could start to take in what lay ahead, we were on a plane headed for Melbourne.

We try to go to the market every tuesday, we eat pancakes almost every weekend, we squeeze our own fresh juice, we have a lake right around the corner in a park that we never seem to get to jog around, we play BubbleBobble, we both have almost an hour to commute to uni but we don't really mind, we visit our local OP-shop every week, we will never get over and revel on the fact that almost all menus are in italian, we make pastasauce from scratch, we always watch South Park, we're going to Cairns in October and we're taking it day by day.

I got a golfset for under 20 bucks the other day, and when Bene said I should go play when the weather gets better I was absolutely certain that I've fallen in love with a mad person.

Reach

Reach
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

I'm reaching again.

For what I may never know. Maybe we're supposed to live in a certain state of ignorance, maybe happiness is never truly knowing.

17th June, 2005 (last year) - having moved into a tiny room in a idyllic old house sitting on top of a hill in Kristiansand, I was contemplating the rather impulsive decision of moving to Kristiansand. I'd agreed to work in a completely new restaurant in a town I had only been a few times. Meeting the owner a few weeks earlier on, he had painted a pretty picture: a new, soave concept-restaurant, with rich, sophisticated flair and a touch of fusion based in the textures of the mediterranian and the exotic falvours of Marocco. Still in my mind, was the question of why. A need to get my thoughts straight, was the usual reply, but I'm still not any closer to any real answer. Just that it felt right. It's been a year of no money, not knowing from day to day whether or not I'm going to work, late nights, unbelievable stress and no weekends. On top of that I startet working with gymnastics again, coaching kids 3 times a week. But it has also been a fantastic journey. Extensive knowledge about wine, gourmet cuisine, being around children, having fun with gymnastics, even insight into how to run a business, it's all a matter of how you see it.

Now, exactly one year later, fate is leading me back to where I came from - Australia.

I leave Kristiansand the 28-29th of June. I leave for Australia the 9th of July.

Wish me luck. My thoughts go out to all of you.

Jon

Will write soon

greek texture 5
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Too busy working.
Too busy loving.

Bored, broke and blue

Almost work time
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Found this entry from last march. Quite interesting:

Es tan corto el amor, y tan largo el olvido.
-Pablo Neruda

The great wheels of a disjointed life with no direction are slowly
winding down and adapting to an arctic tempo. Like an overture, I'm dancing on the tip of a feathered pen, Vivaldi's violin sings to me
from the dotted ink, it is winter, but the snow is missing.

I exist in the heavenly arrangement of light, I linger between piano
and mezzoforte, it's so different here, so different. So...quiet (so
lonely). Every morning greets me with every shade of the palette,
albeit sometimes only grey. This great feeling, as if another prescence guides me through the day, it follows me wherever I go, as if every tree, every rock and birch notices my uneasy breaths, the wind whispers comfort in my hair as I walk.

I run. Every day I run. Through clouds. Perched on top of the valley I
grew up in, as cold temperature forces them down into the basin, I run
through them and feel the smiles of unborn drops of rain tingle my
cheeks. Too much winter numbs your limbs, but too much summer numbs
your senses, I realise.

My mind has forgotten to return.

It still lingers in the hills of Brisbane, it still bathes in the glow
of a jealous afternoon sun, every heartbeat beats in places and faces
that are no more than memories. It's so bizarre, suddenly all the people I know, I knew - only exist as small electric impulses flashing between synapses in my brain. It's as if I'm writing this in a shed on
a distant planet. Where did everybody go?

It's like watching a bus leave with someone you care about on it. As
your eyes meet and lock for what may be the last time (lightning might
strike you any second, you know), you realise: this moment, this
bittersweet instant will only be a poor quality polaroid carefully
etched onto your retina. And so, as the squeaking twin doors close, a
part of you leaves you, in a daring leap it jumps out of your heart
and takes a quick glance back at you, mid stride. It gives you a
fearless shrug and a boyish smile and slips between the doors of the
speeding coach in the nick of time and disappears around the corner.

We all have a dream that left on a bus. It's comforting to know that
on the shoulder of every person leaving, there sits a tiny whiff of
hope from the person left behind, like a small daffodil perched up
against the neck and tickling the ear, a forget-me-not. We all have
our flowerbeds of burden to wear on our shoulders, we all feel a
whispering tickle now and again, from a hope and a dream standing a
tip-toe blowing in your ear, making sure you never forget the little
instants that make up a life.

As I write, my hectic mind continues to fill the office wall at the
back of my eyes with ever fading polaroids, whispering through
clenched teeth: I must not forget.
I understand that it is only my eyes forgetting. Every tip of my
fingers, every laugh and smile I've felt is locked securely away in a
vaulted heart.

Tap-tap, goes Leopold's white stick. As I look up, I realise the overture does not stop, I'm up soon, gotta stay focused, the violin's playing now, and I smile. Life goes on, it strikes me. Like a kiss that's still on your lips, years later, life goes on but never leaves you.

It's just intermission, that's all.


Bored, broke and blue

Solitaria

BBB
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Sick.

of it all?

Most of it, but there is light, waay
down the corridor.

Just have to open all these doors first,
see where they lead.

Come april, and things will happen...

some thoughts from a year ago

Oh my soul. Hear me now!

Apathy is a blinding noise. This wall of noise, of blindinglukewarmness, of newness, it holds me down, stops me in my tracks;this sponge of everyday life drains me of my dreams. I float on words,they barely hold me up in this sea of disjointed existence. I'm home,but only in corporeal fancy. When will life begin? I'm still in thewaiting room waiting for my appointment, tapping my fingers on thetable of time. Ten more minutes, she says - Ms Fate pops her headthrough the door and smiles that smile that makes me believe her.

This air is my blood, so a part of me, the snow that is supposed to behere, it fills me totally yet I long for something, a gust of windperhaps, a tornado of hope? "Save me!" I ask my pen. Where did mylight go? Is this it? Is this really it? Save me from this stasis.Le mie parole care, sogno non posso. Risparmi me da apatia.The world waits for no one, the wind holds me, locks my feet down infrozen grass. We all hope for stolen glances from a phantom skulking in a dark corner, with admiring eyes transfixed on dancing hands.

Where did the slow days go, wtih sleepy sunshine and the comfortinghug of a flat white resting on your temple? Where is your braziliancup, Spock? Your big brekkie, Fat Boy? I left your vibrating circus toperform in real life. Nobody's laughing, not any more.Give me life, give me everything, for I know nothing, I see nothing, Iam nothing.Who would have thought torpidity was so deafening, so blinding, sodistracting, so full of sonorous life and sound.

Every breath I take I exhale in well-known bitumen streets, which lumpy surface carried myhopes and led me to smiling faces I now miss terribly and only see inflashes of faded 0s and 1s. Do you remember me still? How we laughed,how we drank and toasted and rejoiced in happy oblivion! Please do notforget, for if you do, I will die in your minds.

I do not want to die, yet now time passes me by like a thundering herdof pandemonium, and leaves me out of the loop. Ten more minutes, shetells me.Ten more minutes. Tap-tap-tap go my fretful fingers.Li manco, i miei amici - nonlo dimentichi.Molti desideri e molto amore

HAPPY new year

Sweet & Bubbly
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Anything can happen.

LAVMÆLT -

Morning dew
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

Ord
bare små
små ord
og lavmælt
nesten uten pust
for oss

som brukne strå
ord uten lys
og nesten uten form
ord som hos trær
små halv-ord
som i søvn
for oss.

Mellem alt det store
små, små ord
å gjemme bort
på baksiden av en hånd
og ved din øreflipp
små ord
helt uten lys
som dyr
og gress.

--ROLF JACOBSEN

Bulb and plastic

A star is born
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Going for it

Jon goforit
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Strange how inconsequential it all becomes when your heart is consumed. The irony of it all; everything is suddenly unimportant, and everything is important. Every little detail filled with meaning, a macro-microscopic world view fuelled by the delusion of love.

But all it boils down to, is the fact that you have to nosedive into it, headfirst.

I'm plunging right now, and for some reason, I'm enjoying it. it feels right.

Other than that, it's business as usual, Mr. Melsa. Wine, Food, Tract, in that order.

Jumping Jon

Jump #2
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

I have every reason to jump.
Just for jumping's sake.
Just for another perspective.
Just for Joy.
Just for Love.

Just for Love.
Jump.
Jump.

Leaves

Leaves
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Leaves are doing their last slow dance before they fall dramatically into their bitumen- or grassgraves.

It doesn't really bother me.

I'm in love. This might be it.

I'm invincible.