Hamburg flak tower, August 2023
I’ve hit the clock and the time starts now. I have thirty minutes to write my heart out. So what is this project? I’ve proudly stolen this idea from my hero Visa where he has pledged to write one million words in on thousand block chunks.
He had many reasons for it but mine is pure curiosity to see where I will end up. I see it like scaling a mountain to see what’s on the other side. As people take arduous journeys to find out about themselves, I feel this mental journey will reveal things and patterns in my mind that I didn’t know existed or exist in a way I was afraid to acknowledge. Perhaps less than a mountain to scale, this is a walk into the labyrinth of my memories, experiences and dreams. I will follow the paths and take my time to smell the flowers that grow along it. I will be acquainted with the creatures that live in the dark. I will befriend the trees and their roots which stretch beyond what I can see.
If I keep this up every day I will need about three years to reach my goal. Three years of writing. Three years ago I was still somewhat fresh in Oslo. Three years ago I was playing Girl From The North Country, I still do now and will do so in three years.
If you’ve found this, I’ve probably sent you the link to this site because I do not intend to advertise it. This is my staging area. This is the backstage of the backstage. I’ll attempt to work through ideas but straddle the line between being intimate and personal. There are a lot of personal things that I need to work through in my own time in privacy. Things around family, friendship, intimacy, sex, death. I will need to shout into the void with all my indecency and fear. This is not that place and I will need to remind myself of that. This place is not for anguish but for release. This place will be pull the threads apart and examine them with you.
Who are you? You are my friend that has been with me and seen me grow. You are here because you care about me and are curious about what goes on in my head with almost no filter. You could be me in the future. You could be you in the future who has lost touch with me, maybe we had a nasty breakup, maybe we just drifted apart and lost contact, maybe we’re still close, maybe we just went camping. Maybe you love me, maybe you don’t.
This place is the compost heap. This is where the worms of my mind will live. Eating the detritus of the day and shitting it out to be eaten again and fertilize my future thoughts, my project on youtube, my tweets, my conversations, my whispered secrets. This place will stick, it will be knotty and gnarly it will be raw and real.
I am sitting at a cafe in Hamburg and I am watching the rain fall on the umbrellas of the people outside. It must be strange to be in the countryside and see no one that you don’t expect. Then it must be weird to see people in the city that you’ll probably never see again. I spend a lot of time thinking these days about relations. What is attachment, what do we need and what do we fear?
I’m very lucky. I’m lucky that I am understood. I’m lucky that when I speak that others listen and ask questions, that I can explore the interior of my mind and my friends stay with me, and are curious about all the darkness that I try to poke at.
One of the bravest things is to admit weakness but it is the shining of the light upon that perceived weakness that washes away the fear around it. For the most part, I think fights between people occur because they’re trying to cover their asses. If we could say, “hey, I’m insecure about this” and that person responds in kind it actually goes a long way to healing.
Ultimately, I think one of the biggest fears that people have is to live without love. Someone to have your back, to celebrate in your wins and to commiserate in your losses. Who can we grieve with? Who can we shout from the rooftops with? I have been alone and there is a sweetness to solitude, it reminds me that life is experienced subjectively but being with people that I love and that love me show me that that subjective experience is undoubtedly more beautiful and precious when shared with others.
It seems like it took me almost twenty minutes and eight hundred words to get to that last line but it really is golden. Is this a walk through a dark forest or a digging of a mine? Who knows, but I know in my bones I need to do this. I wake up and I think of writing, I go to sleep and I think of writing. I write to my friends and I write to twitter. This I think is a combination of everything but also will be the source. Something, something ouroboros.
The fact that Visa could spit out a thousand words in fifteen minutes whereas I take twenty five astounds me. But I’ll catch up, I’ll be happy to take him on and keep the pace. I find already that our styles are different. Whereas his is direct and self-helpy mine is, I daresay, more poetic and explorative in its own way. I enjoy this throat clearing and warm up exercise. I enjoy finding my voice.
The coffee cup that used to be a flat white is empty. The timer has run out and I’m over time. The demons are in my mind but they are held at bay for one more day. I take a sip of water and press ‘publish’ on the menu, a first step into the unknown.