And so the new season starts. I hit the ground running with back-to-back weekends in Finland. I caught a flight on the afternoon of Wednesday 30 August to get to an Ecosoc gig in Helsinki the following day. I checked into my functional hotel, relaxed by watching a film in Finnish which I couldn't really understand. However, what I was able to deduce from the images, body language etc. was that it was about the confrontation of an older, more innocent Finland with the trendy, "liberated" world of late sixties flower-power. The story-line was, very basically: country lad falls for rock-chick visiting a summer house. She leads him on and returns to the city. He looks her up in town as she hangs out with her band cronies and she gives him the bum's rush. Rude awakening. He takes a boat out on the water and it sinks. He is rescued by his nerdy mate. End of story. What this précis fails to convey is the sense of affection for quirkiness, which I suspect is something very close to the Finnish soul and the real point of the movie.
Film over, I quit my cell to get with the action on the streets. Drifting down from hotel-land in the direction of the station, I move through a semi-abstract environment of super-rectangular modern buildings and souless restaurant-bars. Unwilling to patronise such establishments as a lonely single diner, I continue on down to the station, the inevitable magnet for that great mass of human flotsam-and-jetsam of which I am now a part. I order a bratwurst and beer at a hot-dog joint. The robotic night-staff reveal no emotion, but I know that they know that I know that they know that I am just one more of the mad and the bad and the sad who habitually congregate here at humanity terminus. My suit and tie do not debar me from the company of my fellow losers. This is the most democratic club in the world. Here you are taken for what you are, and what you are is a saddo with nowhere better to go.
I sip my beer and observe the clientele...the homeless shell-suited youths, the semi-comatose drunks, the tarts, the pimps, the faggots and the junkies, the upright citizens with no business being here, the lonely, the insane, the phantasists, the eighteen-year-old perfect doll seeking admiring eyes, the young "artist" dressed all in black with his cocked Dutch bonnet, the ageing sports cyclist in full regalia at eleven at night. The blond, blank-eyed, poker-faced staff work on mechanically, monosyllabically. I strike up a conversation with my neighbour at the bar. He's a Swede. We talk about Finland and Sweden and Denmark. There is an unspoken consensus not to pry too deeply, but he has the manner of an unemployed roadie, ekeing out what little money he has travelling, not to get anywhere particular, just to seek some relief from an unbearable inner loneliness. I buy him a beer in exchange for a cigarette. I draw hard and, having grown unused to the effects of nicotine, am immediately high as a kite. The whole drugs thing becomes instantly clear. When you're right down there YOU DON'T CARE. Any relief from the present reality, however momentary, however self-destructive, is infinitely desirable. The conspiratorial bond of the shared high is the nearest thing to human warmth you can hope to experience. The only cure - a reason for living. Our society does lifestyles, the consumerist simulacrum of a life's purpose, but what suffering humanity needs is a sense of participating in a meaningful Life. I know how you don't achieve this - by setting up as your greatest goals the hellish Trinity of Money, Sex and Prestige.
Perhaps that should be the title of the film. Maybe I can get the maker of the quirky country-boy meets flower-child movie to help me. Probably all you'd need to do is hide a camera and film the comings and goings at the hot-dog place. Surely the truth will be stranger than any fiction.
Film over, I quit my cell to get with the action on the streets. Drifting down from hotel-land in the direction of the station, I move through a semi-abstract environment of super-rectangular modern buildings and souless restaurant-bars. Unwilling to patronise such establishments as a lonely single diner, I continue on down to the station, the inevitable magnet for that great mass of human flotsam-and-jetsam of which I am now a part. I order a bratwurst and beer at a hot-dog joint. The robotic night-staff reveal no emotion, but I know that they know that I know that they know that I am just one more of the mad and the bad and the sad who habitually congregate here at humanity terminus. My suit and tie do not debar me from the company of my fellow losers. This is the most democratic club in the world. Here you are taken for what you are, and what you are is a saddo with nowhere better to go.
I sip my beer and observe the clientele...the homeless shell-suited youths, the semi-comatose drunks, the tarts, the pimps, the faggots and the junkies, the upright citizens with no business being here, the lonely, the insane, the phantasists, the eighteen-year-old perfect doll seeking admiring eyes, the young "artist" dressed all in black with his cocked Dutch bonnet, the ageing sports cyclist in full regalia at eleven at night. The blond, blank-eyed, poker-faced staff work on mechanically, monosyllabically. I strike up a conversation with my neighbour at the bar. He's a Swede. We talk about Finland and Sweden and Denmark. There is an unspoken consensus not to pry too deeply, but he has the manner of an unemployed roadie, ekeing out what little money he has travelling, not to get anywhere particular, just to seek some relief from an unbearable inner loneliness. I buy him a beer in exchange for a cigarette. I draw hard and, having grown unused to the effects of nicotine, am immediately high as a kite. The whole drugs thing becomes instantly clear. When you're right down there YOU DON'T CARE. Any relief from the present reality, however momentary, however self-destructive, is infinitely desirable. The conspiratorial bond of the shared high is the nearest thing to human warmth you can hope to experience. The only cure - a reason for living. Our society does lifestyles, the consumerist simulacrum of a life's purpose, but what suffering humanity needs is a sense of participating in a meaningful Life. I know how you don't achieve this - by setting up as your greatest goals the hellish Trinity of Money, Sex and Prestige.
Perhaps that should be the title of the film. Maybe I can get the maker of the quirky country-boy meets flower-child movie to help me. Probably all you'd need to do is hide a camera and film the comings and goings at the hot-dog place. Surely the truth will be stranger than any fiction.
posted by asbo at 9:59 AM
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