THE DRUNKEN ELK

We do what we must to keep life interesting.

A typical night out on the forest, I was lurking lazily in the cliché sunset searching for my delicious autumn treat: apples. This fruit is nice and mature after summer, with a noble taste of rot and an appropriate smell of shit not quite appreciated by the masses.

I had my dose of apples, and one thing led to another, one unstable hoof in front of the other. I ended up alone and bitter, stuck at an afterparty the shape of an asshole. I was rather drunk, but instinct convinced me there was even more booze to be consumed at this sorrowful sight. Nobody else was there to do the job, so I took the offer. ”Säkert,” I thought. ”Skål!”

I did feel the subsrcibed stomach ache accurately arriving and telling me to get out, but I couldn't really move. Bored,  I OD'd. I climbed even higher into the party venue, an ancient apple tree that reached the sky.

I passed out with some random stick tickling my private parts and woke up with my raisin eyes all dried up and my sweaty body shaking like a bad egg dough still in the mixer. I honestly thought I'd climbed a long way last night, but now find myself almost on the ground. I am stuck, but not in the sky; in something that only just qualifies as a bush. With Beethoven's Sonata No. 8 playing repeatedly in my sore head, I am currently in the process of welcoming the familiar cocktail of sticky post-nutrition making its way, with pressure, out of my battered figure.

Still, it was fun.

Please also read the true story of the drunken Swedish elk. 

THE PIANIST'S FINGERS

The pianist needs a hand 
more than most of us.


The pianist walked with disturbingly long strides and had a strange snap in his left knee every time he bent that leg: it was his fingerprint, it actually gave rhythm to his piano music as he pushed the pedals, they said. Each evening, he determinedly made his way to the National Opera, the architectural monster, which often hosted grand performances. He, however, did not play for these extravaganzas, but instead for the small piggy girls practicing their pliés and échappés in the uglier part of the horrendous yet glorified building.

On this day, he once again obscurely entered the rehearsal room and sat down quietly on the familiar stool in front of the black, shiny piano, the opposite in its appearance of him, the pale pianist in his worn-out greyish suit. As always, he tapped the cover three times before opening it and unveiling the beautiful keyboard. He took his fingers along the black and white keys and tried to deeply feel the instrument, his love affair for more than 20 years.

The pianist was a timid man in his thirties. He had an exceptionally boring face, not a pianist's face at all, which he had tried to lighten up the previous evening with a few drinks. His playing had lately worsened alarmingly, and he, with strong defence mechanisms, had concluded that the reason was his recent birthday: age was making his fingers stiff and numb. In a desperate attempt to stop time, the pianist had taken several sips, perhaps even glasses, of old absinthe in his dusty, dark attic room.  For that night, he had forgotten the growing pain in his limbs and enjoyed the unexpected pleasure of not being able to play properly.

The hungover pianist now bent his arms backwards and forwards and stretched. And, like so many times in the past three weeks, he felt a strange tingle between his fingers, in that small bit of skin that ties them together and keeps them from spreading out all over the place. The round girls in their white leotards took their positions next to the ballet bar. The teacher's indifferent hand gave the pianist a sign: begin, please. For a quarter of an hour everything went rather well – he was able to forget the pain, you could even say he played with ease, passion and confidence.

Unsurprisingly, disaster struck soon. Mistake after mistake after mistake after clumsy mistake! The pianist just couldn't order his lifeless hands to find the sharps and flats on the keyboard. The girls had to stop, they had to start their movements over again every time the pianist played a wrong note or rhythm and interrupted their développés, their awful arabesques and graceless fondues. At first he made a pathetic attempt to cover up with an awkward laughter. Next, he tried extremely hard to gather himself and concentrate, but it went from bad to worse. In his pain and embarrassment, even the simplest chords were impossible.

And so the pianist finally took a closer look at his hands, something he had been avoiding for as long as possible. Surely this kind of pain was not normal for his age, he now thought.

He lowered his heavy head, and in this bright light, in this terrible moment, he immediately noticed what was happening to him. Deep down he had known it for some weeks, but it hadn't been apparent until now. The skin between his fingers had begun to grow towards his fingertips, and now almost reached the first joint on each finger. It squeezed his hands into an uncomfortably curved shape and tightened the sore fingers together. Oh dear, the fragile, almost see through skin was growing quickly and visibly. 

The shocked, web-handed pianist collected his sheets, cigarettes, gloves and coat and quickly began to make his way home. Snap, snap, snap, said his knee, as he left the grand instrument, the long-legged teacher and her piglets forever. He falsely imagined them missing him deeply.

PLAY – ORGANIZED AND ORDERLY

Play is practice. 

Play is simulation. 

It aptly activates children's brains, 

but it is not innocent.

 
Games, toys and children's equipment are designed to incorporate and promote certain skills. The little girl nurtures her piece of plastic and dresses it in pink, while the child in blue is caught up in a simulation of war or the act of driving his 3-inch metal car.
 
Fortunately, gender-neutral modes of play do exist, too. The outdoor playground, with its jungle gyms and monkey bars, originates from Germany and is in use worldwide today. The playground is, ultimately, a version of the man-made park: nature reconstructed in city space, tamed, shrunk and adapted to the needs of us humans. It is safe and restricted, usually fenced and physically differentiated from other public spaces. In all its ostensible freedom and good-willed simulations of nature, it is still a venue of control.

When childhood is understood as a passing chapter in life, it is appropriate to shove this short, mental play phase into physical areas of acting out needs and developments necessary for leading a successful life. Let us cage and control the conformist little monkeys! Let's program them to learn how to climb an aluminium igloo in the city centre, to try rock climbing on an apathetic mini mountain made of small square stones. Most importantly, let us Keep An Eye On Them.

”City streets are unsatisfactory playgrounds for children because of the danger, because most good games are against the law, because they are too hot in summer, and because in crowded sections of the city they are apt to be schools of crime.” (Theodore Roosevelt, 1907.)

Play, isolated and categorized like this, is sadly separated from adulthood and from inspiring public spaces not designed exclusively for it. Thus, play is accidentally deprived of important forms of freedom and healthy anarchy. It begins to lack life. 

Amsterdam 2011

Amsterdam 2011

Helsinki 2011

Amsterdam 2011