Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2016, Page 57

YOUR GUIDE TO
LIFE, TRAVEL &
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IN ICELAND
It’s the age of the crowd.
Events, leaders, history.
Nothing escapes it. Ev-
erything is instantly con-
sumed by the ever-expand-
ing crowd. The crowd’s
dialogue with the world
is both aimless and eter-
nal and there’s something
almighty and monstrous
about it. A true mysterium tremendum.
The necessary aim of every crowd is to kill
the individual—the most dangerous force in
the world—and slowly this is happening now,
in digital times. The likes and retweets. The
shares and trends. They shoot across horizons at
the speed of light, streamlining human absur-
dity and convictions, converging markets and
minds, styles of writing and ways of thinking.
The individual is doomed.
Meeting the most powerful man in the world,
he wore a single Nike shoe. Black. Matching
the suit. In the brilliant final moments of his
Wagnerian downfall, he became Schrödinger’s
Prime Minister, alive and dead, both flesh and
not. A constitutional ghost haunting the day.
A quantum politician, belonging to several di-
mensions at once, like all important historical
leaders.
He was the arch-individual and this is what
I liked about him. On the ropes from the very
beginning, he was a beautifully Nixonian char-
acter to watch, bent on taking advantage of
every single opportunity to display his first-
class paranoia and self-destructive fantasies.
So gloriously incapable of forged expressions
and pretence, of appearing graceful or friendly,
condemned by the naked realness of his deeply
flawed character. A political Moses, a corrupt
liar, a relentless mind and frail body. Sigmundur
Davíð. A perfect name for a poet of politics.
Not even on the most banal of Sunday talk
shows was he able to hide his obsessions, his deep
struggle, the mesmerizing terror and dread of his
gaze. In the eyes of the professionally smiling
host he saw the smug pride of the digital crowd
that hated him. The Seinfeld-quoting intellectu-
als, the Liverpool-supporting atheists, the vegan
saints. He despised all their silent riots. Con-
stantly mocking him, rearranging his arguments,
provoking his fading old world with empty com-
mercial selfie rebellions. Every day they fabri-
cated new versions of his exiles, forcing him to
answer to the details of their creation.
They said he collected napkins and boiled
meatballs in coffee makers. They said he
stumbled out of toilets in front of foreign roy-
als, zipper down. They said his billionaire wife
dreamed of being propelled into space. I liked
to picture him alone in small rooms at night,
sinking deeper into the erotic oblivion of great
plots and conspiracies, escaping his own small
reveries and desperations, just for little while.
I always found it gratifying to disagree with
him on every issue. I couldn’t help finding his
complete lack of charm somehow moving and
always knew in the back of my mind that one day
I would fall in love with his memory. In the end
they exposed him with a decoy, pedophile-style,
cameras rolling. It was an agonizing watch but
also deeply human and poetic.
A godless nation will never forgive him. Every-
thing will be dull in comparison to the spectacle
he was. This will be our curse.
SHARE: gpv.is/ghost
Halldór Armand
The Ghost Of
Sigmundur
Davíð
LAST WORDS
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