The Airportline: Observations

This is the third part of the Airportline founder and CEO answers random questions from a questionnaire that he has adapted from a Swedish blog and answered three weeks ago

Do you rather receive emails or letters?
There is something very nice with hand written letters, but since I receive more letters than I send I do feel a bit guilty about this. My mom send me letters with cows sometimes, I like that. But the message is more important than the medium.

Do you believe in love at first sight?
Yes, although it is a matter of definition because the love you feel at first sight is very different from the love you feel after getting to know someone. But they are both beautiful feelings and I believe in them both.

Have you puked in public?
Yes, in a friends lap on a bus in Karlstad. To my defence I told him I really needed to get of, but he assumed that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Never assume.

Are you satisfied with your life?
Yes, I am living it the only way I know how. Even though I lack some things which I might perhaps would have liked to have at this stage there are many positives in all the uncertainty I walk around in.

Are you spoiled?
I used to complain that I wasn’t but considering the people I've met and the places I've had the possibility to visit I think the only acceptable answer would be yes. Then again, I have no bed or money. But that is of course (partly) my own making.

What do you do tomorrow?
What I do everyday, do some work, do some writing, maybe meet a friend, make some food, do some reading. Listen to some music. I find amazing reward in some of these activities.

What is the worst thing you know?
People who only think of themselves. People who are not uninterested to meet new people or learn new things, people who complain that their life is boring but refuse to change even if they can, people who don’t know what they are talking about but still feel like they need to have an opinion, people who question art from a economic point of view, old ignorant people who claim that my generation is lazy and not willing to work hard, teenagers listening to bad commercial hip hop with their phone-speakers on busses and trains.

How much money do you waste during a week?
Depends on how you define waste, since I have very little money I feel that most of it goes to things I really value.

What celebrity do you think is a good role model?
Joyce Carol Oates

Last week I said that I was gonna make fun of Norway. But, as the faithful reader of this blog knows, nothing I say ever comes true. But, since making fun of nations is something of a favorite past time I will take a knock on Canada instead. But, since I destroyed my brain during the weekends celebrations I will give the word to Joyce Carol Oates and a section in her diary dated May 28th 1978:

'Who are our neighbors? They keep moving, we keep moving. There's no continuity, no sense of a whole. And we're in, after all, a country determined to see itself as foreign to the United States though in every way it is American, and linked to the American destiny. The exhibistionistic hypocrisy of Canada! Making great profits out of the Vietnam War while pretending in public to disapprove of American aggression.'

Joyce Carol Oates, I read her diary slow but always enjoy it thoroughly. The musings about her persona and thoughts about writing feel both effortless and honest. Everyone interested in writing, the writing process and the distinction between the public/private persona should read it. It makes sense to me know why she wrote Blonde, which I have not read but really feel I should read.

'When the soul speaks one must only listen, not attempt to transform, analyze, comprehend'

I fell asleep in my bed. I was gonna do other things. But I fell asleep. When I woke up I decided that I needed a belt. I biked in the sun with My Morning Jackets album Z in my ears. I looked for Joyce Carol Oats diary in a book shop, and I bought a belt and tried to find a bar that would show Sweden - Denmark. The cobble stones rattled under my bike when I went around the city. I love that sound. Gave up on the football game and bought a small bottle of whiskey instead. Someone called me, he had found a bar which would show the game. Now I'm home, and I feel like sleeping again.

There is some banana remains in my speakers. It has unknown impact on the audio experience which at this moment consists of Kings Of Leon's fantastic debut EP from 2003, The Strokes meets southern rock sounding Holy Roller Novocaine.

Swedish television program Babel (one of three programs I watch every week on SVT Play, the other two are Hype and Kobra) went to Princeton to sit down with one of the big American writers, Joyce Carol Oates. It a beautiful interview where she talks about herself and her writing. For her writing is thinking:

Writing is some form of expression of thinking. If you don't think, you won't write. So people who watch a lot of television, or have noise in their ears, from music, or see a lot of people, they can't write or create any art because they don't have any time to think about it. But they may not miss it cause they are so busy. And young people that have music in their ears all the time, well, they're probably not gonna be writers, they have no time to think.

And even though I don't completely agree, since I think a lot when I listen to music, and music was the reason I started writing, the concept of not having time to think, and that people who always surround themselves with people or other forms of stimuli do not have time to think, says something that I think is very true.

Update: The Phoenix concert I told you about this past Saturday is now sold out by the way. Don't say I didn't warn you!