Touched

Chapter 14 of Search For a Dancer, a memoir of a week I spent in Iceland in 2022. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

I stare into nothing, I yearn for the innocence
I once thought I had
A lack of sense for a fear that grows as I grow older
I've carried these thoughts and I've drowned them in work
And I've worn myself blue on the way down
Oh, mother, would you cry if you hear this song?*

There were a couple of hours remaining before the first off-venue show of the day.

I was back in the apartment, thinking that I’d just lay down a bit to recoup from the chasing around I had already done earlier. I set my travel alarm (Braun BC02XW for those of you scoring at home) for 1600 hours just in case I happened to doze off. Which I promptly did. I woke to a knocking and the sound of a female voice saying “Room Service… ” I jumped up out bed and opened the bedroom door to find a vivacious young woman standing in the apartment “Oh, excuse me, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said. “It’s fine!’ I replied, “I must have fallen asleep. I should have put out the do not disturb sign. I won’t need any towels, I shower at the pool, I’m good here.” She smiled at my TMI and said, “I’m sorry to have woken you, Is there anything else you might need?” “No, I’m here for the music festival, it runs late so I need all the sleep I can get in the day. I always stay at the Castle House when I come to Reykjavík.” She smiled again, thanked me, and closed the door. A different kind of sprakkar, another woman of Iceland eager to help me (although I think she was originally from Poland.)

It was only a short walk from my apartment to the Hildur Yeoman boutique, up the hill and around a couple of corners, down Ingólfsstræti and then a right, just past Prikið on Laugavegur. I’d be making this walk several times in the coming days. I was ten minutes early for the off-venue show by Jófríður Ákadóttir, AKA JFDR, a musical artist whose development I’ve followed for 13 years now. She has had some real success, first with her sister Ásthildur in the folk-tronica Pascal Pinon, then with the techno-poetic Samaris, as well as numerous collaborations and even compositions for television and film. Her musical journey has been a bildungsroman of sorts—her lyrics focus on her psychological and moral growth from childhood to adulthood. She has developed her solo career over the last five years even though it was interrupted by the Covid pandemic.

By the time she arrived the boutique was quite full. I had nestled in against a wall behind a rack of dresses to avoid being in the way (my usual M.O.) She was late, she explained that she had just come from the sound check for her evening show and had been delayed by the band before hers. When she finally got set up but she had forgotten her capo—in the dressing room down stairs. This meant another trip through the crowds. She wasn’t reticent about plunging into the teeming masses; when you are wearing a high-fashion skin-tight body suit you already have pretty much killed any remaining shyness you may have once possessed. She brushed against me going out and coming back, but it wasn’t the first time that we had made contact. In 2018 I was hiding (again) against the back wall of a Julia Nini Bang off-venue show at the Nordic House and she came in (late then too) and banged against me with her backpack full of gear. The crowd in Yeoman was much older than what I remembered from prior Airwaves, a trend I had noticed at the preview the previous night. What that means is hard for me to say, is it that the younglings aren’t interested in live music as much, or is it that they can’t afford it? Maybe they are too busy with TikTok to make the effort to see live music? On the other hand, I’ll be the first to admit that her ethereal art-songs of love and despair aren’t everyone’s idea of a good time.

You look for one thing and find another and everything in between
You think you’re smart but don’t know whether you’re thirty or seventeen
Your feet are shaking, your hands and hanging out and your head doesn’t understand
These last days you’ve lost the count of lines that you have crossed
When searching for a solid ground, but in this world you’re lost
You want to cry but there are no tears cause you know how silly it would be
The good and bad things are slowly beginning to make a little sense
From times to times the trouble comes then quickly fades away
Leaves your lungs in wounds and leaves both heaven and earth all gray
The world is going to be another way when you wake up another day*

The boutique made for a memorable venue, the management just pushed the clothes to the sides so I felt as if I was in Jófríður’s bedroom. She was, in her sylph-like attire, almost an apparition, her muse sent to beguile us with magical incantations. She was inspired—the crowd transfixed—by her songs of love and longing:

i carve too deep and i move too much
a gentle affection a struggling touch
i’d forgotten how sweet and sunny it was
there’s no wonder it hurt like a dagger at last
can i do it again*

Was she the dancer I was searching for? And where does JFDR’s music fit in today’s crass world of entertainment? I can’t say, I can’t even begin to imagine what makes for a successful career nowadays. But hers is the voice of the ancients; a siren and also a singer of lullabies, love songs for all the lost and aging children of the new millennium:

A line that meets another line
Arrows shooting endlessly
And the anchor in my rib cage
Reminding me of the gravity

I feel how I'm hopelessly
Warping all reality
Wishing things were different
Between you and me

I’m veiling thoughts in counterpoint
Alternately wavering
There’s miles between the water
And the moon, oh the moon

When my eyes meet with your eyes
Briefly leave the clouds behind
Oh, to feel your breath and mine
Constellating
Constellating
Constellating

Even when I get the things
I dared to dream and wanted
I can't defy the gravity
I can't defy the gravity*

It had gotten dark outside during her performance so in leaving the boutique I felt as if I were falling from paradise into the portals of the underworld. But I was not discouraged—there were to be more moments of import to me on the evening’s agenda, much more.




The sun is white tonight
Tomorrow it will be red and bright in ardent stillness
An ocean wave is welcoming
Yet it is carrying all of my sins and all my troubles

Hey hey where were they hiding
The seabirds that return in the summer tide?
Hey hey where were they hiding
All my loving, giving, receiving?*

* All lyrics by Jófríður Ákadóttir


Search for a Dancer Index…