The Airportline: Observations

I wanted to go back to basics.
So I moved here.
No drama.
Just more white.
And maybe a functioning comment section.
Thank you.

No Longer No Longer
What You Ask
Strange Steps
Heels Turned Black
The cinders the cinders
They light the path
Of these strange steps
Take us back take us back

Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddeley complete me
Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddenly complete me

Oh oh aaayyy
Oh oh ayyee
Hysteric
Oh oh aaayyy
Oh oh ayeee
Hysterical

No wonder no wonder,
Other half, strange steps
Heels turned black.
The cinders they splinter
And light the path
These strange steps
Trace us back trace us back

Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddenly complete me
Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddenly complete me

Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysterical

She raced past me on the street, wind in her hair, tears from her eyes. I was always the one passing people by, leaving them behind me, staying ahead. Now she catapulted herself past me, left me among the other cyclists, in some slow stew of people who appear to stand still. 'I've got a devils haircut in my mind', Beck sang in my ears but the only thing I saw in the morning commotion was my speed being reduced to sand by the tears of a speeding woman. The fleetingness of the specialties we carry around.

Everyone changed their clocks except for me, or that is how it felt when I biked along the canal to the office thinking that it was unusually quiet. Normally the roads are filled with biking people trying to avoid hitting trucks, tourists, trams, tourists, walking people, cars, tourists, and all the other things that constantly is thrown at you while you try and reach the office in a reasonable time. Not today, today life seemed quiet and I thought that it was a very pleasant way to start the week. Then an appointment called and asked where I was and I immediately realized that I was in a different time zone. Jet-lag without flying. When I flew the 45 minutes flight between Las Vegas and Phoenix (an airport with no clocks!) and missed my connecting flight to Charlotte I had a similar feeling. That time I got drunk on white White that I bought in a gas station, this time I biked a bit faster and played catch up with time during the whole day.

In case you need something beautiful to rest your eyes on this weekend. Airportline present two visual stunning movies. New York I Love You has some great acting and if you are into love and dialog (as I most definitely am) it is a must, I found parts of it incredibly moving. Heima just makes you want to go to Iceland really bad. Really really bad.

I'm working on something, many things, might be useless, although nothing is, might be brilliant, but that is unlikely. All I know is that it is stealing time from the blog and you might look at this space and expect certain things, and rightly so. All I can say right now is that watch your RSS feeds cause no one knows when Airportline might tumble along in a more coherent manner again. And I was gonna give you quotes and music tips and write something about how the birds look through my glasses and the sounds of certain people and all that kind of stuff that you are used to. All I can say it that I am not out of words, they are just being typed in another place. Maybe I will tell you later.

In Amsterdam right now according to the fucking weather.
Today my mission is to minimize me moving around since I got a bit too excited by the coming of spring.

For music matching these dreams go here.

In Ukraine they have a saying when three people live together and have a sexual relationship with each other: a Swedish family. I learned of this yesterday and together with Bulgakov's master piece novel The Master and Margarita it made me sure that this nation is crazy. Not necessarily in a bad way, although their Swedish picture seems to be influenced by my home country's 1970s porn revival.

I've been sitting on trains and in airplanes again, and I've heard people describe my life as something that its not, maybe its my blog, maybe they are under the impression that this space is a true reflection of my life. Be assured that it is not, if you are sitting there in your office thinking that Airportline sure is up to crazy shit all the time, be assured that this is not the case.

I travel the functionalist road as well, even though I do spend time playing ping-pong in squats and run after rabbits in Eindhoven occasionally. I don't say this to be apologetic, or because my life is really boring, to me its not. I just worry sometime when I hear people describe the life they think I live and I keep thinking: wow, that sounds amazing.

Then again, I am sitting with a freshly brewed coffee, listening to Beach House's magical song Walk In The Park after watching the latest episode of the Daily Show. To me that is quite amazing, so maybe I'm just really easy to please, at least today, when I know that I don't need to do anything more or be anywhere else before I go to sleep.

Perhaps I did not convince you a few days ago when I suggested you listen to Joanna Newsom. For you, I present this paragraphs from a very nice interview in The Independent:

She is after all, just a girl. A girl who likes fashion (she has modelled for Armani and tells me excitedly that the sisters behind the avant-garde label Rodarte are "in their own amazing artistic world"); one who dates the Saturday Night Live comedian Andy Samberg (probably most famous over here for his "Dick in a Box" comedy skit with Justin Timberlake); a girl who likes to "go out to eat with my friends and family", and listen to Dirty Projectors and Roy Harper. One who loves Hemingway and Nabokov. I ask her when she would live if she could live at any point in history, and she responds with, "Now. Twenties Paris I wouldn't have minded, or 1970s southern California, but I wouldn't have been able to know the people I know. The main things that matter to me are relationships and friends and family."

click here for the whole interview

File under: Fuck you I won't do what you tell me (Swedish remix).

'A 41-year-old Swedish man has been arrested at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport after flying for years on a false pilots license, the Telegraaf reports.'

The rest of the story takes some of the drama away, the pilot did have a license before, but only for freight flights and it had expired years ago. But with the success of Stieg Larsson and other block-buster crime writers, such as Henning Mankell, Sweden is changing into a dark place with crime, grime and prostitution. Now we have illegal pilots flying around to emphasize that the picture of a freedom-loving liberated porn paradise that people thought Sweden was before no longer is true.

The time when Sweden was seen as a moralist tranquil nation of blond diplomats (its peak doubles being Carl Bildts involvement in the Dayton Agreement and the end end of the war in Bosnia) is slowly crumbling together with that IKEA lap you bought for your first student apartment. Maybe the Italian made shockumentary above saw this coming before the rest of us Swedes.

I myself can't wait to head out to Schiphol tomorrow evening for some flying.

’I’m an ant fucker,’ he said and laughed while I struggled to keep a straight face.
‘Yeah, that is what we call it in Dutch when we are really anal about things. ‘Ant fucker.’
‘Ant fucker?’ You guys are weird, I told my friends colleague when we stood in their studio in Eindhoven, trying to figure out what to do with my lap top before going to a party. The studio was situated in a former Nazi building in the city built by Philips, only a free kick away from the PSV Eindhoven stadium.

It is this night I blame for my current state, for the knives in my throat, for the unappealing fleece I am dressed up in as I try and be productive from home instead of from the office while a cold is trying to grab hold of me.

Before the ant fucker discussion we had been at a lecture where three title sequence directors gave talks and showed of their skills in front of an international crowd of design people, and me. One of the directors was French and had a highly impressive mustache. He also quoted Jean-Luc Goddard: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to”. He was naturally my favourite. He was also a real quote machine and told us that he had ‘holes in his head’ when he didn’t find the right words. Even the designers found this to be amusing.

After some beers at this exhibition (now unfortunately closed) we went to a far away squat/art installation party where we got accordingly drunk and I engaged in a heated discussion about free press with a man with a giant Afro from Eritrea. He said that Dawit Isaak (Swedish journalist in jail in the country) should have known that you cannot criticize the government. And even though we did not come to an agreement, he had a very interesting perspective of the whole situation (which has been hotly debated for years in the Swedish media) and a revolutionary heart which he had taken to Geneva a few weeks before to protest the UN sanctions against the country. After a while he left me as he said that he needed 'to devote some time to the ladies’. We proceeded to get the Goddard quoting French man drunk and confused, we talked about French music and he brushed away my love for Phoenix, Tahiti 80 and Sebastien Tellier claiming that Serge Gainsbourg was the one and only true genius, which I personally felt was a bit cliché for a mustache wearing French man. This was not information I passed on to him.

When the party music was toned down, and my accomplices felt that it was time to leave, we jogged home (I still have no idea why, or how, we did that) through Eindhoven in the middle of the night. The city was quiet and strange buildings were lit up and industrial sites were abandoned. I was also chasing rabbits. Unfortunately they were faster than me.

Joanna Newsom's new album is called Have One On Me and it is absolutely brilliant. I know I say a lot of music is great, fantastic, breathtaking, etc, but this is something that together with the new Beach House album truly stands out. I'm too hungry to have the energy to write something, but for those of you who likes this harpist playing folk singer before, you will most likely embrace this without thinking twice. For those of you that could not stand her voice, this is the time to give her another chance cause she has toned down some of her most extravagant sounds and gone for a more toned down expression. And as a writer, her dreamy perspective is as poignant as ever.

What in the world are we waiting for-
building glowing cities along the shore,
where the wind batters in
baiting my kin like a matador

So much value, placed upon
what lies just below our plans:
waiving my handkerchief,
running along, to the end of the sand

Long-life, speak your name.
I'm so tired of the guessing game
But, something is moving
just out of frame:
Slow-heart,
brace and aim.
'Occident'

Among the many fine Swedish authors I've read Bodil Malmsten stands out as one of the most important. This many people know. Bodil also has a blog (in Swedish), where she writes long and short things, sometimes fiction about a faimly of tejp, sometimes small sad observations of life, a life she used to live in France but now does in Sweden. She has humor, like when she linked to this article in The Guardian titled 'Ten rules for writing fiction'. Her only comment to this link, with numerous novels written? 'I've always wondered.'

The article lets authors give their advice on the writing process, and even though I am against rules in fiction writing there are some good things, like reading what you have read out loud or Magraret Atwood's suggestion of what to think about when writing on airplanes:
'Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.'

I finished a novel in Swedish this past week, and in the spur of the moment sent it out to some people who I trust. This was, according to Atawood a good plan as her number 8 rule is:
'You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.'

Anyway, read the article, its funny and even though I do not agree with many things I always find it interesting when authors discuss the writing process.

A new Vincent Van Gogh painting, depicting a windmill in the Paris area of Montmartre, has been founds in the city of Zwolle in The Netherlands NRC International reports. Pretty big news and perhaps a bit of consolation for skater Sven Kramer's historic mistake yesterday which has the whole country in shock. Otherwise Airportline is looking forward to Inter - Chelsea tonight , Sweden - Slovakia tomorrow morning and then a bit of culture on Saturday when the sweet twee duo Slow Club come to Amsterdam for an intimate show in De Nieuwe Anita. And, today was the official release date for the new Shout Out Louds album. I will get back to this soon, as they are one of my favorite Swedish bands, but until I do, have a click on the video bellow and keep your French dictionaries close at hand

Shout Out Louds - Fall Hard from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Do you remember that Belgian man who was paralyzed for 20 years and then suddenly could communicate again? Well, turns out that he can't communicate at all, he is just conscious (which I guess is a good thing). But I, who thought this story was amazing, it made me think of one of my favorite movies of all time The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (based on the true story of a French Elle editor who gets a stroke that leaves him paralyzed and goes on to write a book (as amazing as the movie) by blinking with one eye), feel cheated by this inaccurate information. In this story in NRC International a scientist claim that "It was too good to be true and we shouldn't have believed it". Don't like things that turn out out be too good to be true.

All of the stage names evaporate
And it's just a blood flushed and heart-rushing rates
Either to kick off too soon or stick around too late, to be far too dear or too cut-rate
Hold my hand again
Like at the lake

Hold that mirror, babe
Up to my face
Hear the whippoorwill
Am I breathing still?

A Hollywood Babylon bike-athon for breakdancers all broken down in their beds
Now intravenously fed
From a bag hanging over their heads
Can I put you down for some miles?
What do you say?
Cause don't you know, it's going to be a long, long way
But if you've got the cash
I'm ready to bust my ass

So, take this thin broken down circus clown reject and give her the name of a queen
Don't I know her from the mezzanine?
She didn't look like no princess to me
But with the proper words
Bestowed
And with her morning shoot
Her evening clothes
Don't call her a prostitute
Well, she ain't one of those
Just call her a proper little statue
Come unfroze

The Movie Dan In Real life is very influential in some of my writing. The music in this terrific Steve Carell movie comes from Norwegian pop crooner Sondre Lerche. I like this guy, and at times I become angry for never seeing him live although I've had my chances. Watching this clip from him playing at the Troubadour in Hollywood, when he is talking about he movies role in his career (somewhat ironically perhaps), shows some of that nice character. The song is a very sweet pop number about being in love and includes Lillian Samdal in the album version. In case you guys need a reminder, one week after Valentine's Day and all.