Mondays in Iceland - #101

Lovers, Ráðhús Reykjavíkur and Tjörnin, Reykjavík, October, 2012

My Covid Confinement musings have returned to Iceland with the gradual rollout of the vaccines giving me hope for one more visit in the not-too-distant-future (I already have a ticket!) And what better way to nurse these dreams than by resuming this weekly photo feature?

Some other good news about Iceland, besides their effective Covid control measures (4 cases diagnosed in the last two weeks!), is that the canceled Iceland Writers Retreat of 2020 is going to happen, albeit virtually. While it won’t be the same as being there, it will actually have a wider slate of writers, and I’ll be able to take in as many seminars as I want. Hallgrímur Helgason will also present there, a fact which makes me very happy!

Much more on Iceland…

Covid Confinement Companion #4

Five Star Reviews

This is the fourth in a series of informative posts on FITK offered with the intent of giving those who are house-bound some intelligent diversions during their period of isolation.

More musical musings, this time on female performers, each of whom have made a difference in my life. I thought it would be an interesting idea to showcase one from each decade of my existence, but I found that the 1980s were problematic (i.e., Pat Benatar, Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Madonna—fine artists all but not in the same category as the rest, IMHO.) Here’s my list, with the some added comments and an essential album for each:

The 1950s saw the emerging of my musical consciousness as well as certain stirrings that were not yet defined. Julie London definitely stirred that pot. In 1956 she had a hit with the ultimate breakup/putdown song Cry Me A River, which remains the definitive version. She wasn’t a songwriter but she was a great musician, accepted as an equal by the best jazz players of the day. Around Midnight, one of her best albums, is a collection of forlorn jazz standards that features sensitive interpretations of the best songwriters of the day. The track In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning is a great example of her intimate style.

Dusty Springfield was actually a precursor to the British Invasion of 1964 with hits with her brother in the folk group The Springfields. Dusty then became a star in her own right and was a true icon in England where she hosted her own variety show. By 1967, however, this bombastic style of orchestrated pop had fallen out of favor so she moved on to a more R&B approach with her later recordings.  
Where Am I Going is her last hurrah in the old-school style, with first-rate orchestrations of well-crafted songs. Her impeccable singing style reached its climax on the album’s title tune Where Am I Going.

Obviously, Joni Mitchell has to be on this list. Her 1971 album Blue is the standard by which all deeply personal songs are measured.

There is nothing meaningful I can add to the praise this album has received so I’ll link to some other voices:
An interview with David Bazan, Seattle singer-songwriter sharing his reactions to hearing Blue for the first time, Nathan Rabin gets Blue, and Christopher Y’s Colour of Melancholy essay. If you need any further proof of Joni’s brilliance in Blue, here is Prince’s cover of River.

If the 80s were a bust, the 90s were a boom time for female artists and none made as a defiant and shattering debut as Liz Phair in her 1993 Exile in Guyville album. Liz examines gender power games with an unflinching gaze. This is hard-edged music, crude at times, but effective. You can’t sit back and have an “easy listen”, you have to work to get it. Here is an excellent extended interview with her that gives good look at the way she deals with the darker side of fame. Take a look at a great 2010 live version of Flower, performed with an audience member. Fiona Apple is carrying the torch that Liz lit.

Björk recorded her first album in the seventies (as a child) and became famous in the 1990s with the Sugarcubes and her own career. In the 2001 album Vespertine, Björk turned inward with an album that was just as introspective as Joni’s Blue. If Liz Phair is somewhat difficult, Björk is exponentially more so. Written in the emotional rush of a new love affair, this album is a defining point in her career,  a apex beyond which her music became really weird.

I have followed her career since then and she hasn’t made as a coherent album since. These songs are on YouTube, some are NSFW.

JFDR, as the youngest of these women—still at the beginning of her career—already has a long discography with many different musicians. She got her start with twee folk-songs in Pascal Pinon, then made poetic electronica with Samaris. Her later releases are more on the art-song side with her new solo album New Dreams the most experimental yet. She certainly has enough exceptional songs for a greatest hits album but her muse is fickle—she wants to do it all—and her output is not always consistent.  When I finally do get her latest release (still in Amazon’s Covid-19 quarantine) I’ll post an update. An artist to watch.

Covid Confinement Companion #3

Image: RogerEbert.com

Sheila O’Malley

This is the third of a series of informative posts on FITK and is offered with the intent of giving those who are house-bound some intelligent diversions during their period of isolation.

The role of a media critic in the internet age is drastically different than it was twenty-five years ago. Shelia O’Malley’s The Sheila Variations website is a stellar example of how to successfully adapt critical writing to the internet age. Her seemingly inexhaustible coverage of performing arts, literary arts, and pop culture is presented there in an extremely accessible form with sidebar links to: recent posts, categories, a writing archive, a viewing diary, actors, movies, as well as a search box and a chronological timeline going all the way back to 2002! Sheila’s acting background gives her reviews an added depth; her articles on actors and acting go far beyond the usual puff-pieces one sees on commercial sites. Her listening diaries are a multi-genre road trip across the American musical landscape.

Variations recycles a lot of its material (especially on the birth anniversaries of her cultural heroes), but that fact doesn’t diminish its effectiveness in the slightest. Updated almost daily, it is a great way to broaden your awareness; if you do miss a day there is a good chance you can catch it again next year, especially with the longer pieces. The site doesn’t have a whole lot of personal posts, but those it does have are often profound.

A good example of her literary biography is this piece about F. Scott Fitzgerald (with a guest appearance by yours truly in the comments.)

Covid Confinement Companion #2

This is the second of a series of informative posts on FITK offered with the intent of giving those who are house-bound some intelligent diversions during their period of isolation.

The Weight

Last year Playing for Change issued its version of Robbie Robertson’s seminal song, performed by soulful musicians from around the world united via some beautifully choreographed video editing. Here is that video, along with some insightful supplementary material as well as The Band’s Last Waltz version:

Covid Confinement Companion #5

Páll Óskar

This is the fifth in a series of informative posts on FITK offered with the intent of giving those who are house-bound some intelligent diversions during their period of isolation.

This one might be a bit of a stretch for many: a performer who is nearly unknown in the United States, who usually sings in Icelandic, whose biggest hits have been in disco/EDM/techno styles, who is an outspoken advocate of human rights and, who is flamboyantly and unapologetically gay.

Are you still with me? Good.

I’ve mentioned him here on FITK, I’ve seen him in person (thrice!) and even had an email from him once concerning a post I wrote for I Heart Reykjavík! Here are some various videos that feature this wonderful human being:

A Tale of Two Women

A Fist or a Heart

A Novel by
Kristín Eiríksdóttir
Translated by Larissa Kyzer
Amazon Crossing, 2019

Another Icelandic book read during my Covid confinement is the exceedingly melancholy A Fist or a Heart, the story of two Icelandic women: Elín, an elderly prop-maker and Ellen, a nineteen-year-old aspiring playwright who also happens to be the illegitimate daughter of a notable but deceased Icelandic author. Elín takes an interest in young Ellen at the initial table-read of Ellen’s play, Feathers and Sinews, to be performed at the city theatre. Unbeknownst to Ellen, Elín was the person who discovered Ellen’s father’s body when he died on a Reykjavík street some years earlier.

Got that?

That is a lot of baggage to be carried in a book this slim. Elín’s memories start to overwhelm her at the same time that Ellen’s life also starts to disintegrate. The Icelandic locales add to the appeal of the book and the writing is fine; Kyzer’s translation is subtle. Despite its positive attributes, the novel is somewhat diffuse. I read it twice and still felt that I missed the point of it all.


Wednesday: Miss Iceland

Covid Confinement Companion #6

This is the sixth and final post in a series on FITK offered with the intent of giving those who are house-bound some intelligent diversions during their period of isolation.

Feeling Good

For today’s companion I’m posting some videos that made me smile and/or laugh.

Please don’t hold the Jerry Lewis interview against me.











Special bonus vid…

Puzzled

It’s taken nearly a year of Covid Confinement to break me.

I’ve completed my first jig-saw puzzle.

Instead of a serene landscape or, perhaps, a cute kitten, I choose the above map of Greater London. It started out well, but after the obvious clues (edges, rivers, the old city's borders) it became fiendishly difficult. The plethora of many similar place names (a lot of “… hams…” and “… hills…” didn’t help. There were even two different towns with the exact same name:

As I progressed I found all sorts of ways to locate a piece: assembling the names, using the latitude and longitude lines, even the almost microscopic train stations helped:

I had begun to doubt my sanity, but then found a Guardian article that convinced me that it was a good thing.

Nice Things

One of the by-products (buy-products?) of Covid-confinement for many is an increase in interest of all things domestic—if one can’t go out in the world, have the world come into your home.

When does culture become clutter? While I’m not impervious to the siren call of possessions (and I usually make a weekly trip to various second-hand shops), I do have my limits. The image above is not that of Flippist World Headquarters, albeit the room’s overstuffed nature has some kinky appeal, I prefer my dust collectors decor contributions more humble and elegant.

The Hopi vessel below is my most recent addition; while hardly museum grade, it was made and decorated by hand, some living entity brought it into existence. Its iconography suggests Jungian archetypes, a refugee from the dream-world made real…

And we can all use a little extra dream-time in our decor, amirite?

Covid Confinement Companion #1

Kate the Great

This is the first of a series of informative posts on FITK offered with the intent of giving those who are house-bound some intelligent diversions during their period of isolation.

Kate Wagner is a critic/writer who first came to my attention with her acerbic (and hilarious) dissections of dissertations on the hideousness of modern residential housing at her website McMansion Hell. She still posts there from time to time but has also blossomed into a prolific pundit, featured on several forums, where she dissects modern culture in myriad ways. When she gets on a roll it’s fantastic.

Here are links to some of her “greatest hits”:

Curbed

The Baffler

Architectural Digest

The New Republic

City Lab

Metropolis

21CM

The Atlantic

The Nation

She has also started writing enigmatic short fiction as well.

Roller Girls

Image: Fox Searchlight

Whip It (2009)
Directed by Drew Barrymore

My movie reviews of Covid Confinement Winter #2 start off with a BANG! and an OOF! and a POW!

This little gem of a film is packed with clichés but uses them so beautifully that I couldn't help but smile. Elliot Page (billed as Ellen) portrays a Texas teenager who is roped into beauty pageants by her mother but finds her true calling in the world of Womens Roller Derby. This is a true “chick flick”, most of the major roles are women, and the men that are in it are supporting the women. A dream cast of A-list actors (and Jimmy Fallon) makes it very watchable, and many of the Roller Girls portrayed are real life Roller Derby participants.

When watching it I couldn’t help but remember the conversations I once had with Jennifer Smith, a real-life Roller Derby athlete who used to come into the photo lab where I was working. We talked about the film; I wondered how accurate it was; she thought it was especially good in how it showed the personal side of the women who were on the teams. Alas! I never did get to see her perform, but those conversations (and the film) made me appreciate a part of culture of which I had been previously unaware.

Jono’s Letter from Grand Marais

As the Great White North turns into the brown and white north with the advent of spring we find ourselves staying indoors a bit more than we wish. While the daily temperatures creep above freezing and we are expecting between half an inch of rain or six inches of snow which would normally get us all out to complain to each other about the weather we are pursuing a different course. The Covid-19 virus seems to have us all in adaptation mode. People are out walking even more than usual as we are not used to confinement and, after being indoors for much of the winter, we want out! The good thing is that in a small town where most of the streets are paved we are surrounded by Superior National Forest on land and Lake Superior for those who prefer water.

This is a tourist based economic area and now we would be going into our shoulder season where we wouldn’t be expecting a lot of visitors until about the time of the Fishing Opener which is often considered a high holiday in these parts. That is the 9th of May this year. Things really get rolling about June, though, as kids get out of school for the year. This year is different. The little buggers are home now for their spring break, but they started couple of days early and will not be going back this year by the looks of it. The teachers are working on lesson plans for the kids to do at home in order to make headway in achieving the knowledge they are expected to have by the end of the school year.

The biggest down side is that many folks are without an income at the moment. Thank goodness for unemployment insurance, but many up here are small and/or independent businesses who only get paid when they work and aren’t covered. Many people are about one paycheck from financial disaster. In this county we are at least 25% aged 65 and older and many of us in that age group still work. Fortunately for me, I am in an “essential” business so I still can. It is normally a quiet time of year for us in the building supply business, but things are still going on. We are small businesses (only 7 where I work) and many of our builders work alone or with one or two other people. It is easy to keep our distance from each other. For introverts like me this isn’t too much of a lifestyle change. I think what gets to people is the uncertainty. If this goes on for more than a couple of months it could get really painful.

One of the bright spots in this for our little community is that we seem to have more people that want to do something to help out their fellow residents. The grocery stores have needed help in order to get food out to all their customers, but also need to stay safe and keep personnel safe in what is now referred to as “social distancing.” Volunteers are pushing shopping carts around in the stores gathering orders that have been phoned or emailed into the stores and greeters are outside dropping off grocery bags to the waiting vehicles (or bikes or pedestrians) when they arrive to pick up their food. Amazingly, the system is starting to smooth out and folks seem to be getting the hang of it. I have even started volunteering a couple of times a week to grocery shop for people. From what I see on the signup sheets there are enough folks to do what needs to be done. 

While there is very little vehicular traffic rolling around and the town has its moments of apparent desertion, you can detect the energy of things going on in homes and between friends and neighbors. Gasoline is down to $1.99 per gallon, but no one is buying it as there is nowhere to go. I was going to take a few days and go south to visit some friends, but will put that off until I know everyone is safe and healthy and this plague has gone by. They have closed the Canadian border so there is much less traffic crossing that. Just commercial traffic seems to still be moving to and from our northern neighbors.

In Iceland they have a phrase that is used often enough to be considered a national motto of sorts. “Þetta reddast”. It means something to the effect of it’ll all work out okay. In time everything seems to do just that.

“Jono” is a resident of Grand Marais, Minnesota (and a long-time follower of FITK); I have met him on a couple of occasions. I asked him to write to me, telling of the situation there. Grand Marais, at the beginning of the Gunflint Trail, is almost like a home-away-from-home for me—our family has been using it as a base of operations for summer excursions ever since the kids were little. We have rented a place near there for a weekend in July, but it is too soon to know how that will play out.