Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.02.2011, Blaðsíða 30

30
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 2 — 2011
poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
The most important thing to
keep in mind during a fistfight
(or while writing a poem) isn't
what to do with your arms and
knuckles, but where to place your feet. If
you keep them too close together, you're
liable to fall over—and if you keep them
too far apart you leave your genitalia
vulnerable (you don't want to do that,
not even if you're a girl). If you have one
foot directly in front of the other, you
might keel on your side, whereas if you
keep them side by side, you risk falling
on your ass—or alternately, your face. So
while your fists may be doing most of the
bodily harm, your punching is pointless if
you don't mind your footwork.
The same goes for writing. Or, for that
matter, living. (I have now assumed the
position of life-changing prolonged met-
aphor—do not stop reading!)
Writing does of course not cause
much bodily harm. In fact writing entails
only a bare minimum of bodily harm and
it's mostly harmful for the person doing it
(long bouts of writing have been linked
to bad blood flow, back aches, haemor-
rhoids, alcoholism, sleeplessness, severe
angst and frequent panic attacks), while
the person reading need not worry. At
least not much.
But just like when you punch some-
one in the face (which I'm supposing is
a reality most Grapevine readers are
intimately familiar with) to perform any
good (nevermind great) writing you need
to find a comfortable base-stance from
whence you throw your jabs, strophes,
plots and uppercut in-rhymes.
And yet. And yet. And yet.
And yet most poets, most writers—
and indeed perhaps most people (not
excluding me, a lot of the time)—tend to
put a great deal of effort into perfecting
their punches (the most obvious aspects
of their technique) while failing to seek
good grounding. Now what I'm trying
(and failing, obviously) to aggrandizingly
metaphorize towards (besides changing
your life), is that (sometimes) I get the
distinct sense that most writers, poets,
painters, musicians and performance art-
ists seldom stop to think about why they
do what they do, what it is they seek to
accomplish. That is to say: where they
want to place their right foot, and where
they want to place their left foot. Rather,
they seem to have perfected their quick-
jabs and knockouts—their paintstrokes,
metaphors, plots, frills and moaning,
without seemingly having the slightest
idea why they are doing so. And so the
world slowly but surely gets filled—not
with revelatory art curious about life, its
bits and pieces, but hollow posing.
Now, lest I be misunderstood (oh! the
horror of possibly being misunderstood!):
I'm not saying everyone should now go
fill their poetry with social consciousness
or political messages. I'm not saying art
can't (or shouldn't) be made for the sake
of art. I'm saying art shouldn't be made
for the sake of nothing-better-to-do or
being-an-artist-seems-fun (or, at the
very least, if so, then be it decisively so).
What I'm saying (with any and every
ounce of whatever authority I may have,
and a lot of assumed authority I have nev-
er had) is that the fundamentals of what
you do are more important and deserve
more of your attention than your techni-
cal prowess. When you know what you
want to do, you may accidentally stumble
upon a great way to do it. But if you don't,
you most definitely won't.
The art of any impact
F.R.i.e.n.d.S. | Valur Gunnarsson branding | Eiríkur Kristjánsson
One of the things visitors to Ice-
land, especially those venturing
from southern climates, often
comment upon is that Iceland-
ers seem very hard to approach. That is,
until the clock strikes twelve at midnight on
a Friday or Saturday and everyone starts
speaking very loudly and largely incoher-
ently at the same time, as if everything that
has been kept in during the week must be
let out at once. Surely, this is due to the cli-
mate (well, it’s actually not that bad these
days), the darkness and so on. This may be
true, but history probably has something to
do with it as well.
Many social historians in larger coun-
tries suggest that 'friendship' as we know it
only came about in the 18th century, with
the emergence of a middle class and city
culture. Before then, people had little need
for friendship in the modern sense. This is
largely corroborated by the Sagas. Family
is here of the utmost importance. People
make friends, but then they are incorporat-
ed into the family structure. The most obvi-
ous example is the institution of Fóstbræður
(“Foster-brothers”), one of the strongest
bonds that can exist between two men. To
initiate such a thing, men must first mix their
bodily fluids. This is done by digging a hole
in the ground, opening up yours and your
partner’s veins, spilling the results into said
hole, and then mixing it all together. This
gives both parties all the rights of family
towards one another and has, sadly, been
discontinued.
FRiendShip and SobRieTy
In a rural farming society such as existed
in Iceland up until the 20th century, one
had little need for paying social calls on the
neighbours, there usually being no neigh-
bourhood to speak of. Instead, Iceland-
ers held occasional feasts which went on
for days, the guests then being sent away
bearing precious gifts from the host. Your
social standing depended on the opulence
of your feasts (or, failing this, on where you
sat at a feast), and an invitation came with
responsibility. If you accepted, got your food
and drink and your going away present, you
owed a favour in return to your host.
Since city culture here is relatively new,
one might surmise that the idea of casual
friendship might be too. Icelanders tend to
enter into strong friendships, loyal to the
point of stupidity at times, and bonds to
friends and family usually trump any con-
nection people might feel to society at large.
This has its benefits, obviously, but it can
also lead to the sort of crony corruption evi-
denced during the recent economic boom.
It can also explain why people don’t really
feel comfortable in the company of strang-
ers, at least not while sober.
The Facebook eRa
If casual friendships among men are com-
paratively rare, they are even rarer among
men and women. Largely, you see them
sitting in groups according to gender, until
that all-important hour of midnight strikes
and they start to mix, usually with an obvi-
ous purpose in mind.
These things only change over genera-
tions, but technology has come to our aid.
Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga games (the
ones you see on Facebook), says that with
the advent of the telephone, the number of
people you frequently interacted with rose
to 125. Whether this applies to Iceland or
not, Icelanders certainly have kept up with
new phone technologies and embraced the
mobile phone with its text feature almost as
fervently as the formerly silent Finns did. In
the Facebook era, says Pincus, we now have
regular contact with around 500 people
apiece. Small wonder then that the Icelan-
dic nation has more or less logged on in its
entirety. It’s a way to keep in touch without
having to be drunk all the time...
Friendship in The 21st century Gapping and ellipsis
In January there was a discus-
sion in Iceland about whether
H&M would set up shop in
Reykjavík or not. Here are
some thoughts.
Let's start with an excerpt from a recent
Financial Times column:
"Last week, for the first time ever, the
mob on Twitter and Facebook forced the
management of a big company into defeat.
This victory of democracy over autocracy
was scored over something people feel
strongly about: whether three letters belong
inside or outside a box.
For the past 20 years, the letters G-A-P
have resided in a dark blue square, but two
weeks ago the management of the cloth-
ing company announced that the letters
had escaped and that a smaller blue square
would henceforth sit above the P. All hell
then broke loose. Thousands of people pro-
tested online and, a week later, Gap backed
down. The big box was going to stay."
(‘Listening To Customers Can Be Bad Busi-
ness’ - Lucy Kellaway)
Note that the opposing sides are "the
management" vs. "the mob" (GAP is an "au-
tocracy" where the workers are irrelevant).
GAP is not the only company doing this:
Starbucks is deleting the words "Starbucks"
and "coffee" from its logo. When the going
gets tough, the tough change their name to
"going".
In a similar vein, an infamous debt col-
lecting firm in Iceland, Intrum, has changed
its name to "Motus". According to a spokes-
person, this is done (my paraphrase) "to en-
sure the company's independence and effi-
ciency going forward to be able to meet the
needs of the market at each time.” Whatever
that means, it cannot be done with the same
old name (though Motus will supposedly do
its best to associate itself with the old name,
let's see how that goes).
Alex Carey (‘Taking the Risk out of De-
mocracy’, 1995), citing a study, lists some
"Business Strategies" to be used if a com-
pany is doing poorly:
"1. Do not change performance, but
change public perception of business per-
formance through education and informa-
tion.
2. If changes in public perception are
not possible, change the symbols used to
describe business performance, thereby
making it congruent with public perception.
Note that no change in actual performance
is called for.
3. In case both (1) and (2) are ineffec-
tive, bring about changes in business per-
formance, thereby closely matching it with
society's expectations."
Sidenote: Kellaway thinks that "when
a company panics and surrenders", as in
GAP's case, it is "not progress". "It is fee-
ble." One is reminded of Chomsky compar-
ing governments to corporations (which he
often calls totalitarian institutions): "The
government has a defect: it's potentially
democratic. Corporations have no defect.
They are pure tyrannies." One person's tyr-
anny is another's autocracy.
In January, it was also announced that a
Chinese company, Blue Star, had acquired
a Norwegian company, Orkla, that runs a
factory at Grundartangi. It is reported that
Orkla's owners will be paid handsomely
for the company. Not too long ago, people
were wondering whether they wanted the
Chinese investing in Iceland. Well, this an-
nouncement renders any such discussion
irrelevant (I suppose one can be for the Chi-
nese or against Grundartangi, if we keep to
the common standard of discussion in this
country).
Who knows. Maybe we'll get our pre-
cious H&M. If they are "feeble" enough, we
might have a say in how they use symbols
"to describe business performance". Then
the Chinese might acquire H&M and get
a bit of smelting going downtown. By then,
I will hopefully have moved to Mallorca,
where (if Halldór Laxness has his facts
straight) they're not at all stingy with their
rum.
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