Henie Onstage Kunstsenter, September 2023

Day three of the streak and I feel like the engine is starting to come to life. I can think and type at the speed of my thought. There may be a use to stopping and considering the lines and sharpening the ends but for now, in this practice it is about free flowing and tap, tap, tapping on the typewriter.

Intimacy begins long before and ends long after any action. It is the tension, it is the slow coming to ground. We are humans and I feel like the most important thing we have are our minds or at least the relation we have between body and mind.

Maybe this relates to everything else actually. I don’t get to see my friends in Oslo that often but they always exist in my life. We are always discussing ideas and coming up with new concepts. The physical reality is of course incomparable but a lot of the joy I get is from before and after our meetings. Maybe we’re always meeting “in our minds”.

Maybe this is what this essay is as well. It is a part of my mind pulled out and glued to a page or a screen. It’s a part of me that exists outside of me and can live on and maybe even interact with other parts of me. For example I sometimes take the time to look through my old youtube videos and reference them.

The parts of our minds can speak to other parts. One idea I get from “the journey to western norway” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBmWfuXcn8E) is that we are all part of each other’s lives. It was funny. I was going through a pretty serious crisis earlier this year and she helped me through it over a few days. We climbed a mountain and slept in a cabin. We talked for days up and down the sides of the hill and even saw a sunset lower itself gently into the infinite sea.

I thanked her for being there for me and she said that she was only there because I helped her get to that place. Maybe I had sent her there to help me in the future. I like the idea of that. Us catapulting each other beyond where we could go ourselves. Like climbers tethered together and helping each other up hills beyond what we can see.

I like Henry Rollin’s cure for depression: do stuff. Exercise. Do stuff. Don’t die. I can’t imagine how hard it is for someone deep in the shit. Deep in the black of meaninglessness. I have been there too. I think he was free in the sense that he had no expectations of him. He was free to make a life of his own. In many ways I am too but we have to answer for things, to people who care about us. I think people who come from ‘good families’ have freedoms but only in certain paths. To have an education paid for but only a certain type. To have a lifestyle supported, but only a certain type. That can be stressful.

I need to do more stuff. I need to get a routine. I need to not die. We’re on day three and I want to make it to day seven. After that, I don’t know but I know I’ll be a different person. There is a softening I think that comes from dealing with people, you’re aren’t able to take yourself too seriously because now there are stakes. I like that. I have terrorised the people I love with my own terrors. My friend told me once that he’s always there for me, to hear me out but next time I come to him I need to have leveled up my narrative. I needed that. I need to know that the people in my life will get sick of my shit at some point. I think that spurs growth. You can’t live terrorized forever because you’re going to terrorize others. That pressure, that wall, I could push inwards and it gave me a positive amount of pressure to control some of the bad thoughts I’ve been having.

I am caught in a deep limbo phase where so many things seem up in the air. I’m not quite here not quite there. Maybe I’m floundering. I have to find my feet soon and push. One push each day. One set of 750 words. One set of calisthenics. One foot ahead of the other and a transformation into something new.