Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.11.2013, Blaðsíða 19

HALLGRIMSKIRKJA CHRISTMAS MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013
DECEMBER 1ST - DECEMBER 31ST 2013
FESTIVE ADVENT CONCERT
SCHOLA CANTORUM – CHAMBER CHOIR OF HALLGRÍMSKIRKJA
DECEMBER 1 – 1ST SUNDAY IN ADVENT – 5 PM

PREMIER OF CHRISTMAS CAROLS BY HAFLIÐI HALLGRÍMSSON AND ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS A CAPPELLA
MUSIC BY MACMILLAN, ARVO PÄRT, KREEK AND SVIRIDOV.
CONDUCTOR: HÖRÐUR ÁSKELSSON. ADMISSION 3500 ISK.
ADVENT LUNCHTIME CONCERT
SCHOLA CANTORUM – CHAMBER CHOIR OF HALLGRÍMSKIRKJA
DECEMBER 4, WEDNESDAY – 12.00-12.30 NOON
CONDUCTOR: HÖRÐUR ÁSKELSSON. ADMISSION 2000 ISK.
OTHER EVENTS:
December 1 - 1st Sunday in Advent
11 am Festive Mass with the Bishop of Iceland,
the Hallgrímskirkja’s Motet Choir, cond. Hörður
Áskelsson and organist Björn Steinar Sólbergsson.

12.15 noon Opening of a new exhibition with
artist Hildur Bjarnadóttir in the foyer. Free entrance.

2 pm Reykjavik Boys Choir at
Hallgrimskirkja Advent concert
Lenka Mateova orgel
Conductor: Friðrik S. Kristinsson
Admission 2000 ISK
December 5 – Thursday
12-12.30 noon Advent Music and Meditation
with the Klais organ. Free entrance.
Ticket sale at Hallgrimskirkja, tel 510 1000 open
daily 9 am - 5 pm and at midi.is

www.hallgrimskirkja.is

HALLGRIMSKIRKJA FRIENDS OF THE
ARTS SOCIETY – 32. SEASON
Step into
the Viking Age
Experience Viking-Age Reykjavík at the
new Settlement Exhibition. The focus of the
exhibition is an excavated longhouse site which
dates from the 10th century ad. It includes
relics of human habitation from about 871, the
oldest such site found in Iceland.

Multimedia techniques bring Reykjavík’s
past to life, providing visitors with insights
into how people lived in the Viking Age, and
what the Reykjavík environment looked like
to the first settlers.
The exhibition and
museum shop are open
daily 10–17
Aðalstræti 16
101 Reykjavík / Iceland
Phone +(354) 411 6370
www.reykjavikmuseum.is
19 Opinion
Cabbie Confessions
Travis Bickle works as a taxi driver in Reykjavík.
His name might not be real, but the rest of it is...
“I get my iPhone out, not
knowing whether to film
this or call the police, but
the snitch in me prevails.”
The man is enveloped in an aura of ominousness. He stum-
bles forward, about to trip and fall at any moment. As he
reaches for the handle of the cab door, I nearly put my foot
down on the pedal, but then she appears. She is like nag-
ging in the flesh. It’s as if she has a litany that contains all
of your life’s misdoings and sins, and she is going to tell you
off for each and every one of them. Then two wispy little
things follow in their footsteps. Daughters, but not sisters,
in their twenties, each the offspring of these mishaps of
creation.
They all mix like a laboratory experi-
ment waiting to explode. The man
gets in the front. The ladies get in the
back. The man can’t piece together a
sentence and lies slumped over on the
verge of unconsciousness. The woman,
on the other hand, pieces sentences
together at such an alarming clip I sus-
pect she’s trying to get proper mileage
out of each and every word she knows
before they all go out of style.
They want to go to the farthest
reaches of the city. But first one of the
girls must get downtown. Admonish-
ments fly left and right. At a hip down-
town address she moves to get out, but
not before her comatose father tumbles
headfirst out the door and bangs his
cranium on the pavement. The blood
comes gushing out of his bruised tem-
ple and the woman goes off like fire-
works.
She yanks the girl out of the car
as if she were a pair of jeans from the
closet. A fist to the face is her reward.
Bowed down like hunchbacks they pull
at hairs and throw haymakers at each
other. The other girl moves to join the
fray, but gets sidetracked by the bleed-
ing husk of a man, now semi-erect. The
fisticuffs move along to a soundtrack of
name-calling. She is a slut to him is a
drunk to her is a bitch to her is a cunt to
him is a whore to her.
I get my iPhone out, not knowing
whether to film this or call the police,
but the snitch in me prevails. Before
the bright blue lights arrive, the tragic
woman and her long suffering child re-
enter the car amidst a flurry of blows,
and as the doors close, the other girl
bellows a catalogue of curse words and
kicks the side of the car like she was at
football practice.
He is a fiend with a checkered past.
His stories reek of embellishment and
his life seems like a tragedy of Greek
proportions. He namedrops like he
is flipping through a rolodex of state
prison inmates and his millions illegally
gained seem like they could at least pay
for the cab fare, which he can’t afford
in the end. Like the bums of the down-
town benches and squares, his saga is
urgent and needs to be heard for him to
feel like he still exists. Like the recollec-
tions of his glorious heyday somehow
justify the bleakness of his today. I’d not
like to walk a mile in his shoes, although
maybe having one of his stories to tell
as your own might make you the centre
of attention at a dinner party. Depend-
ing of course on what kind of lowlife
dinner parties you frequent.
To round up the shift I get stiffed.
This jogging suit wearing son of a bitch
be showing up at 7 am on a Saturday
seeming totally legit in his utter sobri-
ety and talking all casual on the way to
Mosó, where he pretends to have lost
his card and goes inside to fetch legal
tender, never to show up again. I got
sumbitches number though. He about
to get stepped on.
Illustration by Magnús O. Magnússon