Beginning around 2007, I started traveling through Scandinavia a bit.  At that time I was awarded a Fulbright and given an award to spend some time at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, where I have recently been made a Global Fellow.  At some point I will discuss what research I am engaging in there (I don't really like to talk about things while I am doing them - hint: it is about repression and contentious politics).  Regardless, with my travels to and through Norway, I began to notice some important as well as interesting things which brought out comparisons to the other places where I was spending time: US, India, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.  It was at this point that I started writing my "Tales of Norway".  This is the third installment.


The Old are not Wasted on the Young: Leonard Cohen in Oslo

“Care to go to a concert?” I was asked by one of the Havards (many Norwegians have this name which is kind of confusing sometimes).

“Who is playing,” I asked – skeptical but interested: 1) to see who Havard liked and 2) to see who played in sleepy little Oslo.

“Leonard Cohen,” he responded.

I was like, “the off-beat, crooner from the 1960’s with the golden voice?”

Havard was like, “one and the same.  He has a show tonight and tickets are available.”

“He’s still playing music,” I asked – innocently enough.

“Of course,” he replied, “he’s one of the most popular singers in Oslo.

This I could not believe.  “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, not at all,” he said quite earnestly.  Norwegians don’t lie.

We then rushed to get tickets at the post office.  Don’t ask, different story and when I got up to the counter, I paid my $102 for my ticket.  Now, I’m not quite sure of the price for one of the first rules of having a good time in Oslo is that you never, ever convert local prices to dollars: it’s just too depressing and psychologically draining (immediately one cascades into “how can anyone live here,” “who can afford this,” “why has the American dollar dropped so much,” and then about 15 minutes later you come out of it).

Tickets in hand, Havard 1, Havard 5, R, Cy and myself went to the concert.  At first glance, on the tram ride past the crowd, I saw that Havard was not lying.  I mentioned that Norwegians were truthful, right?  The crowd went on – seemingly forever, winding in and out of the cobblestone streets, into/around alleyways and far, far away from the outdoor stadium.  The crowd was shocking not only because of its size but also for its age.  I could not believe the range.  You had the older crowd (60+’s) but you also had teenagers (not with their parents or grandparents), twentysomethings and everything in between.  To be honest, I was expecting an older crowd or for them to be in the majority and an indoor venue.  But there was no majority.  The distribution was almost proportional (perfectly balanced) – like everything else in Oslo.

Once inside and even through the warm-up act, all I could was watch the crowd. 

“How do the young people know about Leonard Cohen,” I asked.

“They play him all the time,” I was told.

“On the radio… regular stations,” I probed.

“Yes, of course.  All over the air waves.”

I thought that this could not be true.  Leonard Cohen was an acquired taste in the U.S.; hell, if he had not been in the film Natural Born Killers (singing), most under 45 would never have heard of him.  He was Canadian afterall.  But this was immediately confirmed as the increasingly liquored up crowd sang song after song after song with/to/for Cohen.  They totally knew and got the man.  They felt his pain (as he bent forward to croon), long for his love, squealed with delight at every turn of phrase, tilt of hat, which Cohen delivered with grace, dignity, style and likely a little hair of the dog.

The show was truly phenomenal in its depth, showpersonship and finesse – somewhere between Robert Plant meets David Bowie meets Frank Sinatra.  At some point, I realized that I could not even imagine seeing him in the states – at least not like this.  There were no explosions, no breakdancers, no snakes, no naked breasts, no 50-person marching band, no video clips of random violence, no rockets, no red glare.  Just mellowness.  His soothing voice, some relaxed music, the coolness of the night(ish) breeze – it was July so there was no darkness coming any time soon and, of course, the constant flow of beer.  These people can drink.

I racked my brain for most of the concert, trying to think of who America would sit through at a comparable age and degree of mellowness at a similar size venue with this type of variation in the crowd.  A few names came to mind: Elvis or Michael Jackson (brought back from the dead), the aged U2 (U60?) and maybe the remaining Beatles.  Springsteen, Billy Joel and Barry Manilow still got some people to see them, but not this size. 

“What’s up with Americans,” I thought.  “Why do we eat and/or discard our old?”

Then I thought that maybe the Norwegian crowd was like Deathwatch 2008; everyone was there to see the old guy’s last hurrah.  Maybe they thought he wasn’t going to be doing this much longer and in that context every concert could be his last.  Wanting to be a part of the event, therefore, they came out – in droves.

That was the theory.  This did not seem to fit with the reality though of what I was coming to understand about Norwegians.  It did not jive with the audience’s participation (including the 4 curtain calls when Cohen’s age began to show).  They were really into LC (abbreviated to make him a little hipper) and they celebrated each note (however off-key), each sermon (however preachy or corny) as if it were delivered by a good friend.  And for their friend, they listened, they laughed, they clapped, they roared, they drank (of course), and they sang into the dark/lightness(ish) of the Norwegian end of day.

After the event (at around 10pm), we went to sit on the grass under the still blazing sun. Watching several thousand people walk their separate but collective ways under the watchful eye of two unarmed police officers, one whom was holding an LC t-shirt in his hand.   

There is something elemental about it.

At once, mechanical and transcendent;

Habitual and mystical.

It starts simply enough:

The sun emerges, light is shed and warmth is distributed.

            Wherever they are, Norwegians feel its presence.

            In the throes of the call, everything else is suspended.

            They move to open spaces, remove clothing and find their way to the earth.

This must be as I was; as it should be.

Nevertheless, I sit inside pondering the disjuncture – ever uncomfortable is the high-strung, new yorker

How could we occupy the same space but be in such different places?

They look at me and feel pity: “he does not share the sun with us,” they likely think.

I look at them and feel derision: “how do they ever get anything done with all the sun-             
            worshipping,” I definitely think.

We gaze at each other, through glass and several thousand miles of cultural differences, but we do not see each other.

I envision other sunny days, after I am done/after my deadline.

Then I will enjoy it – content with my completion and movement.

They see no other day;

            Remembering dark days and darker nights

            They run to celebrate it, now.

I seek to erect, chisel, carve a legacy one word at a time.

They seek to disassemble, curl, extend into the grass, one limb at a time.

Don’t ask them about it. 

The answers make no sense for the questions are senseless, baseless.

How could one not commune with brother sun, sister moon is coming and she is a lukewarm and tempestuous being?

“Tomorrow will come,” they tell you, “but there is no guarantee of lightness.”

“Winter will also come,” they tell you, “and it is without question going to be no light then.”

Just a dark gray, a cold that wraps around your spine and a slowness that rivals tree
growth.

I have not completely transformed but after several months, I now take my papers and read them outside when beckoned by the sun.

I now walk along a river when I take in the afternoon breeze and midday reflection.

And, I gaze at the sunbathers at 8:30pm to recall the feeling of grass underfoot.

I never thought of Norwegians as funky (i.e., into the music of Parliament/Funkadelic) but they seem to get it: Everybody’s Got a Little Light Under the Sun!

Note: Between 1999-2004 I traveled around Rwanda during research. Many things happened on my trips and it is only now that I start to share them. 

I had seen bars on windows, houses with gates as well as armed guards, even a dog or two at an opening of a fence, but Rwanda was quite different.  For those that had and wanted to keep their stuff, there were armed guards with machine guns and bats with nails in them and the walls were eight to ten feet high, topped with pieces of broken glass as well as barbed wire.  Now, these were not ordinary pieces of glass; they were immense shards, jagged and multicolored of about two by three inches a piece.  They stretched upward from the wall like a thousand little knives, sharpened to pointed perfection. 

The combination of all the factors struck me as bizarre but especially the last.  Would not the barbed wire do so much damage that the glass really served no purpose, I thought?  Well, yes, probably but this was not the point.  Barbed wire was not part of the average Rwandan’s life whereas most would be familiar with what broken glass could do. 

On entering a wealthy Rwandan home, one would see immense lawns, the shadow cast over the remaining wall – moonlight bouncing off the shards in between the beams of light like a prism of (in)security.  The house was huge but sectioned off – more defensible spaces I suppose.  We were led to the living room, greeted by the Ms. (not the Misses – different house, different story) who was adorned in a stunning shock of color and excess.  While we could not see the rest of the house and were offered no tour, one could see eight doors on different sides of the room.  We were in the center of the maze, very fitting I thought.

The house was elegant, tastefully sparse, decorated with a few masks, fabrics, paintings and pottery from different parts of Africa.  Before sitting down, Mason, myself and Francis (another colleague from Maryland on the project) to see the different pieces of art a little closer.  At some point, the Ms. excused herself (she needed to check something in the kitchen), leaving through one of the doors.  We looked at the handmade crafts (the chairs, table and bowls) and then looked at each other.  By any standard, this place was amazing.  The Ms. blew in and out about five times in one door and out another.  By the time we turned around the table was filled with food of all kinds – the ripest of fruit, the tenderest of meat, the sweetest of smells, some potato-like dish and something else that I had never seen.  Very quickly, we knew that we were in for one hell of a meal.  The four of us started eating out of the handmade bowls, later being joined by others – emerging from the different doors.  Every now and then I glanced though the window and out to the wall, seeing someone with a machine gun walk past. 

The next day we walked through some street in Kigali (the capital and home to the hotel in the movie Hotel Rwanda), closely navigating near the restaurant fronts whose guards kept the hundreds of beggars and money-changers at bay. One could see several hundred more in the cracks of the city (between buildings, in alley ways, on the hills).  The street was a buzz with activity, as always.  There were a million and one colors, smells, accents, faces and outfits.  Some wore three-piece suits, some wore only an old piece of African cloth.  Interestingly none wore shorts, despite the ridiculous heat.  This was considered rude and left for Mizungus.  Given the heat, being viewed as an outsider essentially sucked on every dimension but this one.

As we walked, three cars blew down the street, moving faster than anything else.  One of them seemed to miss everyone by inches and then as quickly as it turned onto the street, it turned and moved toward the bank.  Never slowing down, the car came to a screeching halt.  Guards came up on either side and someone in a fabulous two-piece suit stepped out.  If I had to guess, I would say Armani - all black, well-tailored.  More guards showed up and now with about six people on either side the man walked toward the building.  After he was inside, more guards came out, opened the door to the car and then three more individuals came out – one looking more important than the next.  Greetings were made and then they all entered the building.

We asked our guide: who was that?  To this, he only responded: “there are many in Rwanda with a great deal of money. That was obviously one of them.”  We looked at each other and smiled.

Sitting down for lunch across the street from the bank, behind an open fence, three guards, two machine guns and a big stick, I tried to pinpoint my feelings.  I had felt all this before but could not find the moment.  Then I remembered.  On one street in New York city, a homeless woman walked up to a bank deposit drawer, opened it, pulled down her pants, leaned back and furrowed her brow as she took a dump.  At the same time, some guy with an equally beautiful suit and amazing briefcase under his arm walked out of the bank and into a limousine.  The two most likely did not see one another but through me they occupied the same space and that cohesion as well as tension was tremendously unsettling.  How could the two exist in the same space?  What was I supposed to do with that information?  How was I supposed to ignore it?  Why was I allowed/guided to see it?  How could such stark differences exist?  Did they?  How could the car pass through the crowd like a ghost?  Which one was dreaming – the one or the other?  Did it run through the crowd or over it and I just was not able to see the poorer victimized?  What would happen if the bars were not there or the guards or the glass?  Would there be some Hobbesian “free for all”?  Was I not seeing one already? 

Too much thinking.  Where the hell is my tea?

From 2007-present I have been visiting Norway, collaborating with individuals at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo or PRIO (facilitated by a Fulbright and an award from the Center for the Study of Civil War) as well as traveling around the country a little. These are some of my stories from those days.


Strawberries went bad (lasted 3 days)

            Back to the store to replenish

Bread went bad (lasted 5 days – barely)

            Back to the store to replenish

Milk went bad (lasted four days)

            Back to the store to replenish

Welcome to Norway!

When describing what I had learned of Norwegianess, I mentioned shopping more than once.  My conversational partner (a Norwegian who [as usual] will not be truthfully named but will be called Thor), called me on it:

            “Why do you associate Norway/Norwegianess” with going to the store?”

I laughed, noting that: 

“Everything keeps going bad (getting spoiled) and I have to get more, which in and of itself is one thing; the exorbitant cost makes it quite another.”

Somewhat defensively, but not really (for the speaker was Norwegian afterall and they are seemingly never defensive), they replied:

            “Well, this is because the food is fresh.  There are no preservatives.”

“Well then,” I replied, “give me some preservatives back so that I do not have to keep walking to the store, so I can get more work done.”

As is frequently my way, I was half-joking.  One part of me found it an imposition that I had to break out of my work routine to walk up the street (well a few blocks) and get to the supermarket before it closed (6-8 depending upon the day and the type of store).  I had a book to write and was on a schedule.  Accordingly, I wanted my bread for a week or two; my milk and strawberries for the same (they were all in the refrigerator for goodness sake).

The Norwegians had no problem with any of this.  The store was outside afterall – their preferred domain.  They had things to see and absolutely nothing to see; Things to do and absolutely nothing to do; places to sit, conversations to have, drinks to imbibe, deadlines to ignore.

This well captures the people and the place.  I loved them for it but at the same time despised them (well as much as you could an angel of humanity - they are generally kind as well).

Just the other day, the magnitude of difference between Americans and Norwegians came to me.  I was talking to someone from America about the three t’s: trying to write, trying to get grant money and trying to get some reading done, and a colleague from PRIO (Odin we will call them) came down to tell me that their inquiry on my behalf regarding access to some data was delayed.

            “I could get no response,” they said.

Looking at my watch, I remarked:

            “well, it is after 3” (it was 4:05).

Without missing a beat, they said

            “life is short.”

In a moment of intense duality, I thought, “yes, it is short.”  

Although we had used the same phrase, the moment was divided however because part of me understood about taking the moment, going outside and doing something or doing nothing at all.  The other part thought that “one is not remembered for their walks, laying in the grass or drinking beer.”  I was then puzzled for I wondered if we should be.  I then wondered if my metric was off.  Instead of thinking about the time after I departed this life – using it to build some pyramid of paper (a memorial of reflection and/or wasted effort), perhaps I should be thinking of the time during this life.

Then I was like, well – they could not be so relaxed without the oil money.  The cash allowed them to take to the streets, parks, motorways and mountains.  Like a country full of lil Budhas they now had the wherewithal to find enlightenment in the hillside or in the beer glass.  Almost immediately I wondered if this was not the essence of hedonism – a reification of the flesh, of the immediate.  Indeed, if everyone took off at 3, with an hour for lunch, what could be accomplished?

Well, of course, the immigrants kept the Norwegian wheel greased and moving.  They had their shops open most of the night – a light in the dark or a dark in the night (given that they were generally people of color in a sea of whiteness).  I could not even dislike Norwegians for this because they were seemingly kind to the newcomers.  Well, at least until their numbers increased too much – then we would see (Cheikh Anta Diop would note). Strangely though, I would bet on Norwegian kindness.  My optimism troubled me.

I then started to wonder about whom the hedonists back in the day were fighting with.  What was the argument against living in the moment and not indulging every whim/desire that one had?  My thoughts were disrupted by two things: 1) whoever the hedonists fought against was irrelevant at the moment (I seemingly embodied their competitors position); and, 2) whoever won, I had 10 minutes to get some milk at the store.