Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness - The Poetry of The Music In Writing

The journey begins here. My tribute to one of the greatest musical works of all time. I have attempted to unleash its hidden images in writing, and will now take you on a journey through this album different from the one you take in music:

Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

Dawn to dusk

Peacefully treading down mellow roads, the sun smiling at me while greeting the rainbow on the other side. It will set, but the little trees by my sides store a faith for me in everything green and sea-blue. That which outlives all else and makes scenes beautiful, be they tragic or joyful. There’s a stream flowing along the path I’m walking, it sparkles of sunshine and I’m showered in it from both sides. The stream flows from the land of the real to the land of dreams, far in the horizon where the moon is now benignly peeking up.

This is the way. I’ve got years and years to live, I’ve got a heart that can feel from gutter to crystal, I’ve got a pocketful of chaos to be unleashed, and tonight is Pandora’s box in my hand as the outline of the sparkling city shows itself before me. I am lifted off the ground by an excitement that carries me like a choir of muses, surrounded by music as I fly into the majestic skyline. So much life below me, so many places, so many smiles and tears joining to make for a beautiful piece of starshiny life. Rivers and lakes, towers and houses, all blur around below me and I am shot through with life as I descend further and further, I want to be another smile, another tear, a part of it all tonight with you. I land.

My head in circles faster than sound, swimming in lights of pink, red and green, this is the street of the living, racing through immutable crowds, the haze of piercing intensity flooding this place. There’s an explosion of truth from the music. Uncompromising, audacious truth roaring at the world, run away if you’re too mellow, if you’re too closed or too small. This is the life of the astral beings, the voices that can dance among the flying impressions, the smashing rocks of time.

A cigarette thrown by the lake, the smoke joins the streetlight, for the streetlight was not enough. Nothing was ever enough, and I want to pin that up, scream it at you and everyone else. I give you signs, I run rampant with random psychosis, I turn my back at the sunrise and look up the bottom of my bottle. Can you scream loudly enough for yourself to hear? Scream with the noise of your unrequited desires and you will hear yourself.

What is to become of the unbecoming? How could you and I not rule the world? You’re another star in my sky, you’re a symbol of unknowing beauty. Give me your hand and we’ll kick the world from hilltops, I want to roll through the mud with you, taste the dirt with you, I want to prove that we can taint ourselves to the neck and still shatter our surroundings with dazzlement, like a bomb silencing the sounds, sending them to die like litter in the river. Such is the power of your hand in mine.

Don’t trust yourself, don’t trust your heart, don’t trust your mind, don’t trust the truth. I’ve got nothing to say to you, you’re a prologue to the apocalypse, you’re a symptom of your time, we are all symptoms of each our own time. Locked up in cages, tearing and tearing and we never give up. We have a joy in our despair like a drunken rage, like the hazy moments before the end of the night. And here I can stare into the ceiling no more, I jump to the floor and give myself to it all, I’ll try to touch you and I’ll fail with a crash, I’ll crash into you. Crash... Where has it all gone? Life is dead, love is dead, god is dead, only I am alive, only I am burning through, only I possess the love, possess the powers of a violent ruler over my world.

Dawn comes even to forests that are empty, where little straws of grass have wavered in every direction a thousand times in perfect peace. Dawn rises over every field from China to Sweden to the Andes mountains. Even the sheep see the sunrise, even the sheep are affected. And you my dear, the sunrise is in your eyes too. This is what we know, this is what we shape in our hands like little gems. Today is just for sitting down and pondering over all the things that float by on these endless waters. We can flow with the grace of the river, lose ourselves in following a kite, nearly drown to find the pearls in the sand. But we come back like shooting stars, every year we’re here, every year you’re with me and time is just a circle somewhere in the blue skies, far away from everything that matters. Far away from here.

Far away from here, in a land where purity has left like a summer wind given in to the storm. It’s not all going to be alright. It’s not alright now. And if the world is playing a symphony from the sky, it was fucked up and raped somewhere on its way to this forgotten, wretched corner of sulphur and ashes where the living human lives, the living example of black stillness dying to move, irony that pulls every string apart with sadistic glee. Condemned to live in an impossible middle of everything. True to a dead dream we remember no more. These are the fireworks, this is the beauty of the destruction of our love, this is our entertainment that we live for.

Fly, fly back, there’s a luminous illusion alluding lucidity. We’ve built a staircase now we climb it, there’s a reward for us at the top. And I remember once again, ah yes, I am too tough to die. There’s too much heavy and unscrupulous myself rolling around these roads, flowing from my body. A body of love and hate built from the past like a pyramid, thousands and thousands of years old, with no origin and the unrevealing sky showing us nothing but this truth. Love never dies because it never lived, I create it every single moment, you create it when you smile and know this is the last dance, this is just a wonderful flight before the crash.

And how wonderfully we dance when the clouds are soft, stretching from afar. How strangely we move, how satyrs and goddesses tell us secrets in this slowly brooding forest of enchantment. Every touch is like a rollercoaster ride on light, colours so fragile and wonderful that we once again appear blue and stillness can be felt like cool grass, no earthly shade of green, on my hands.

I went out far across sandy stretches, until I had forgotten how long I had walked. Stones were spread out like moments upon water that seemed already to be inside me and around me as I looked. What a joy to have a day, to hold it in my hand like sand and make every falling grain into a moment like this. I sit on the rocks and watch the waves. On the other side there are magical shores, where no man has ever set foot, where the sunset is an eternal treasure, buried in scrolls of myth. Here there is seaweed drifting with the wind. All that I can never reach and all that I have right before me, dancing to a sad song as the sun passes.

I hear the laugh of the immortals ringing in my ears – I hear it ringing and I take it inside. This is my jewel – I can never die. And pain can hit me like an axe impaling my heart, and it will, it will again and again, but my heart will bleed and dissolve and then rise, rise again. The phoenix flies for me, I can see the beauty of this, I am immortal.

I have seen enough, the city has given me a new dimension, like another chapter of a beautiful book. I now set myself free, facing the winds that draw me in like cloths of velvet, shrouding all the disharmony behind me, drawing me into a pure world where every moment resounds like romantic poetry. I kick off the shore and a sky vaster than ever orchestrates my unfathomable freedom. The sea holds such infinite wonder, it can hold the most lost soul like a universal mother – never turn your back on her. I throw out my thoughts to the furthest corners of the oceans, black birds and white spirits bidding the world goodbye and hello, and I am not at home, no, home is in me. An eternity has passed and this is somewhere unreal – I have the key to this place, there is a kindred spirit here with me, inhabiting the peaceful sky. This is my ode to you, my love, this is my chaos for you, this is my truth across all of the skies, all of the waves. The waves, the blue waves, you lift up my heart and I’m bursting with gratitude. Your praises be sung! The blue flows in all time, quietly and infinitely, surrounding my ship and drawing it through lands of peace without emptiness, through your lands – nothing could be anything without you. And it’s you who sends stars to every end of the sky, you surround me now and forever.

Finally, night falls. I close my eyes on an island, where leaves blow so quietly, each singing a small song of yearning, never knowing for what. This yearning is the angel that puts me in soothing sleep. There are too many tomorrows for one person to ever comprehend. Falling asleep is an end and a beginning.

Twilight to starlight

We’re in time to breathless life. Tight, punching kisses on the walls and the flying roads as we race. Bridges and tunnels cut through cities, life cuts through death, we are rolling on something bigger than ourselves. I’m keeping a chrysalis of glowing time in my hand, and the night rocks out in waves through me, through you, sends us on our way.

I tear myself apart with a scream, tear the world into crumbling pieces, the heavy life is glued together with rot, sinking and seething, burning in fury. This is perfect, bombs fall all over, exploding time, explode the infinite spaces between us, let us fall.

A room stands still and the white wall hums, the air hums distantly like butterflies flying in patterns of sun. My sadness is as bottomless as my joy is topless. Vertical infinity enfolds me, blows me kisses from the future and caresses me from the past. With this step I create a melody, with my eyes I draw lines on the sky like the lines on my face that curl in silence. Your love lives in me, wherever you are, I am a spirit of grass and birds, asphalt and neon, a spirit of myself in a small moment standing hushed.

And as I drift lightly – do I dream or am I here? Here in the soft air, splashing on my cheeks like water. Things that disappear leave a shadow, a sad mark somewhere, causing a solemn gaze upwards and stretching out the gravity of our steps to past and future, all woven together. I stop and sit down on the edge of this country road to watch the twilight and the little pearls of dew on the high grass disappearing as twilight thickens into black. Where are you? Where is anything? I can only find myself, here in my home, in nowhere. Night falls cold, but I am half warm inside my body.

Memories travel through the electric wires, high above us in the night. Red and green gleams sparkle all around, flickering in the dark. A life left behind comes back again, smiles painted in endless folds, drinks and parties lost in fog, faces sinking through a sea, this is me. And I celebrate this moment as I celebrate the fire, still burning within me, as life falters, as life always falters. Dreams that lived and died and lingered like seagulls on the roofs lie stretched across the streets tonight. Cherish, cherish...

A box. Break out. Stay locked. Crash into yourself, a hell of bones, primeval blood and skin, the human condition that cuts your throat, smashes you away to the side. And we ride, we dance along with ruthless decay, amplify the sound of killing blasts until our ears are dead and immune. The truth that slashes your heart. I feel the venom running through the veins of the world, in harmony. Everything is already screaming in complacent panic...

The sea opens its eyes to a coral of red and green. You swim away to somewhere, I know the lands you search for. You are the queen of an island where colours are reversed, where we go when we’re drunk on the edge of normality. I swim with you, follow your trace under the sea, I search for the gems cast out in patterns, embroidering the ocean floor of our dreams and nightmares. This is the feast of our unlimited skies, we are the rulers with eyes of diamonds, speak now and your words will create a world. Speak... And we start spinning, and the world goes around, and we spin and the seas begin to dance... Into a blur. Complete without a shooting star, we close our eyes and feel the people, feel the city, feel the life around us, intensely zooming through, let’s join the fray! Here we are for all to see, I love you all and the world loves me, no matter what it says. I hold out my hand to rays of blaze, moving like a spinning top, drifting in the light.

I’m back in the room, against the white walls. A small line traces itself silently along the path in the dark. leading forward. There are voices at my sides, a ballet dancer in white and someone smiling, forgiving me for all the mistakes of the future. I’m just a creature in white throes, funny and true and happily lost.

The continents shift. The clouds change. The Earth around you wraps up and closes down and falls into a furious crimson. Something is tearing at the ground and the mountains are ringing with rolling thunder across the horizon. Explode! Run away screaming! Your steps are set in stone, pillars on a collapsing world. Your hand holds a glowing pact. Tearing at the sky, make this canvas crack, break out, break away. The reality must be attacked, with nuclear bombs and fighter planes, crashed with missiles and shattering shots. Everything melts apart into a cacophony and we stand in the broken debris, a hall of mirrors with reflections pale, distorted, up below around beyond. This is the new life... This is it.... And with a final move... SMASH THE MIRRORS, glass glittering falling like rain.

The stars are painted on the sky, comets and moons are painted on the sky. The journey leads us together , to stand in a circle, echoes of graffiti and moonlight, cigarette butts and unlucky love. We paint the road in silver and make it shine, our voices sing the glimmering into the city lights, the magic into the echoing music from inside. And we know each other by the eyes, a glance to a glance in a secret society of dreams and sly smiles.

When our painting is done, there is grass we can fall down on and let time turn sideways. You are an effigy of peace, the stardust falling choreographed on all my longing, turning my heart silent but for a breeze, like snow in the night. Your eyes are too big for life, I am so dazzled that you can even exist – a human being that should be a dream. I painted you with the brush of my intricate harmonies and disharmonies, and yet you can see, hear your favourite song, feel the cold grass under your back. And no words can capture you, you are free as the morning, light as a bird, a silver angel intertwining all the paths, hovering over even the smallest nodes.

When time has finally stopped short like a black and white picture from an uncertain past, I find myself at home with my wandering eye and the fumes of memories filling the dim light with strange treasures. I stretch out my hand to catch a melody from the past, floating like a bubble. Inside the melody I find a small piece of life and bury it in a garden where even the old trees know me.

And when the cold of the night’s end falls over a hushed world of empty streets, I walk to the top of a hill where my view stretches out over hopes and fears, flowing dreams and cutting nightmares. There is only me and the stars, arrived together at the end of a long journey. This is where I am, now. The wind blows from me through cities, over oceans, among people. I am alive, still. I am a body of life, free and drifting, blue and purple from life’s loving kisses and treacherous stabs. I am, more than ever.

The night evaporates, up a staircase into the sky, just a breezy fog, smaller and smaller, further away. The grass says goodnight, the waves say goodnight, the moon wishes you goodnight, the stars wave from their stands. In the city the streetlights bow and go out, the neon signs bid you au revoir, the last drunken dreamers’ thoughts go out to you. The way disappears like beautiful smoke into blue light, condenses into a stone white memory, vague in the corner of your deepest thoughts. The infinite sadness and the infinite glow. The choir exits the stage: Goodbye! Dreams have been, dreams have gone and they shall come again. Goodbye!

Essence of The Darkness

In silent darkness that asks no questions and tells only the reflected truth of yourself, which is the only truth, I pondered in a state where the past was calmly flowing around the back of the room, and the future, small, hovering in front of me without a sound. Gradually my head saw it fit to leave my body, and float around in the middle of the room, surveying the drowsy past, forgetting itself in velvet folds of thick darkness that are waves aside forever, creating new worlds in every inch of this heavy room-air. And the room becomes big enough to hold in my soul that used to be tight-fitted even when spanning over the whole word. Or is it my soul that has become small, lost all but a single trail of existence in this dreary hour? The distance between me and the wall becomes like miles. Something in me sails on a distant ocean, on towering waves, wind like a shroud over everything. It stands, star-faced on a small boat in the cold splendour. And the other part of me feels all the warmth of the sleepy night-stray who
finally surrenders to the deep embrace of the sheets and the darkness. Properties begin to ooze into the air and migle with my future and my past, books ooze ideas, my bed oozes comfort, and the candles dissolve in happy melancholy. The darkness is not only darkness. It contains all these things, each embroidered with a reflection of the full spectrum of my mind.

On Contentment

Perhaps I would like to be content. I have been generally unhappy for so long that everything that came before it seems like it was lived by another person. Contentment is something that depends on whether the quality of your life at the majority of given moments exceeds what you want from life. If all you want from life is to be healthy and have a few nice people around you, then it is easy to be content, at least for someone who isn't poor. If what you want from life is something impossible, it is also impossible ever to be content.
To a certain degree, you have the possibility to decide how much you want from life, in the same way that you can impose other kinds of decisions upon yourself. It may not be easy, but in the same way that it is possible to decide that you want to take an interest in something, it is also possible to choose to want less from life. So by that logic, it is possible to decide to be content. For a healthy person, contentment is basically neither something you achieve by chance, or something you achieve striving to live the most fantastic, exhilerating life. Choosing to want less from life is by far the easiest way to become content.

But some of us are equipped with a longing, that we are not capable of controlling in the same way that one can control expectations from life. The longing for the other-worldly, and the rare but sure moments of complete ecstasy that come with it. The fact that we have this longing does not mean we have less power to choose what we expect from life, it only means that if we choose to want less, we will forever be fighting something deep inside us that will never go away. This longing affects us both by motivating us to strive for the highest high, and by setting ordinary life into a sharp relief, making it seem dull and useless. (there can of course also be other kinds of longings, such as the ones described in The Cure's "Want", but I guess they have the same characteristics).
If one chooses to give in to this longing, and keep wanting something impossible or at least nearly impossible from life, then life will thus be mainly dull and useless, but at times very dazzling and intense, in a way that is incomprehensible to those who do not feel this longing, or have calmed their expectations down to more earthly levels. The best impression I can give you is this quote from Ian Curtis:

"But if you could just see the beauty
these things I could never describe

these pleasures a wayward distraction
this is my one lucky prize"

The choice stands between a life of despair and dullness, but occasionally "wayward pleasures", and a more simple life of savouring small things, striving for nothing but what is within my reach, and yet never quite losing the longing for something more.
I find it striking how much this situation resembles drug addiction. I am then the drug addict, considering quitting the drug. My life is a streak of despair and vile boredom, expect for the few "fixes", times at which my spirit flies higher than the sky. I long to quit because I hate the work that the quest for these moments requires, and I hate to be so wretched inbetween them, but I know even if I quit, I will always know the splendour of the drug, and always want to relapse. I could find a life with room for enjoying simple pleasures, but I they would always be overshadowed by the "wayward pleasures" that carry a trail of suffering.

Everyone says one should quit in these cases. Is it true? Do I just need to open my eyes? Or is the other world so important that nothing can compare to it?
I long for contentment. I long to be able to simple watch the sea and be blissfully happy. To hold a rose in my hand and be blissfully happy. To be hugged and be blissfully happy.

Both of these ways of life (that of contentment, low expectations from life, and that of striving for the skies) are frequently taken up in literature. Dostojevsky wrote the beautiful story of Rodion Raskolnikof, who committed murder, nearly went insane, then faced his guilt, took on his punishment and finally learned to love life for what it is. Hermann Hesse wrote Siddharta, the story of the open-minded man who sees life from all sides, but finally learns to love everything without question, and be in union with everything. Learns simply to be able to sit by a river and be in peace and happy forever. Novalis wrote the story of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, whose life is recounted as so poetical and beautiful and diverse that the other-worldly seems to be walking by his side, hand in hand with him.

A book I am soon going to read is Jack Kerouac's "On The Road". A story of someone who is never content, always wanting more.

Is it more desirable to be very content, regardless of the greatness of your life, or to live a life full of greatness, regardless of whether you are content with it? The answer to that question paves the pathway for my spirit to walk during the coming time.

Music of the soul

I define myself perhaps more from the music I listen to than anything else. I feel that nothing can express my soul and personality better than some of my very favourite and most treasured songs and albums. Marc Almond's "The Stars We Are", The Cure's "Disintegration", Depeche Mode's "Songs of Faith and Devotion". When I listen to these, I feel strong because I know exactly who I am. But if I was asked to put this definition of myself into words, I couldn't do it. The definition is in the whole sound and spirit of the song, the lyrics being only a part of it. These songs represent whole ways of life. To put it in very poor and incomprehensive words: Songs of Faith and Devotion represents the dark side of the night. Strength in the face of decay, the harshness of a search for beauty or simply a liveable life. The pitfalls from faith. "The Stars We Are" represents the magic dreamer, making everything out of nothing. Really making you believe that we are stars.
I love this music, but I find it so very hard to express in my way of life, my behaviour, my words and actions the same as this music expresses - what I consider myself to be and what I want others to consider me to be. It's so hard to be a personification of these songs, even though the songs in themselves are partly mirror images of the inner parts of my own soul.
I come across in so many ways as quite normal, and if not that, then often silly or on good days clever and funny. And although these parts of me should never be denied, they are only little unimportant details compared to the "Disintegration" in me, the "Songs of Faith and Devotion" in me... The parts that never show through, and whose spirit I can't seem to make lead my life.

I am wearing a "Disintegration" t-shirt now as a feeble attempt to show that I am a part of that world. I can paint eyeliner, wear necklaces and more, but it is still only a show - I am only stating what I am, never living the life that this identity requires, because it's hard to find out exactly what it is.

I have difficulty being myself, and I think if finally I met the woman of my dreams (I never will, of course, as she is of my dreams, not of life), she would not see the true me, and would never what I could be to her. I wonder what life would be like if everyone true and deepest selves showed through when you met them. Much more would come out of all relations, friendships and love-affairs alike, because you would understand each other's thoughts, and know what to say at all times without fear, as there would be no masking and no acting at all. And it would be possible to know with whom you could experience the magical and indescribable feeling it is to see right into the middle of the beauty of the soul of another human being, and to have the beauty of your own soul seen and valued by another human being.
But for now I will have to accept to be a pale and incomplete reflection of what I really am.

Conquering the Night

I feel weary, and I don't want to write, but I do it anyway.It is probably in its right place that I tell you now, that the main reason why I write is that it makes me feel better. It is exactly when my life feels the most empty and meaningless that I write the most, for getting it all written down helps to make the meaninglessness seem less important. I dream of my diary becoming as good and appreciated as Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet", but deep inside I know that it is wrong to dream anything like that. Fame and appreciation are as hollow as everything else. The ultimate reason why I write may be the same as why I like to cry, as I wrote about yesterday: I somehow spill my troubles onto the paper, and they are gone from my body. I also sometimes feel that I may have created something brilliant, when I have written. Artistic creation is the very last fortress of satisfaction I hold. The extremely rare moments when I have written something really really good, or created music that I find fantastic are the only moments when I feel truly and deeply happy, provided something else is not preoccupying my mind. Of course when I say "happy" I don't mean the same kind of happiness that I believe most people feel, which is superficial and pleasant, like the pleasure of eating a cookie compared to the pleasure of reading a poem. My happiness is the poetic one, it is the only one I can appreciate, though only that rarely. Perhaps because I have the "gift" of feeling that deep happiness, the other means nothing to me. I often envy the people whose whole worlds seem to be golden if any trivial good thing happens. Just like children at christmas... My deep happiness is no better than the other, just simply deeper, and the only one I can appreciate.

I found out why I am semi-goth yesterday. It is hidden in the Depeche Mode song "Dressed In Black": "As a picture of herself / She's a picture of the world / A reflection of you, a reflection of me / And it's all that you see / If you only give in to the fire within". That is why I am goth. I am semi because I don't dare go all the way, and because there is too much "nice intellectual" in me to be fully gothic. I don't despise this side of me, I love both sides, but they block each other's progress, never lettin me develop fully in any direction. Instead of being a whole beautiful symphony, I am a whole sheet of beginnings of symphonies, every single of them dazzlingly beautiful, but when put together they just sound like an unmotivated chaos.

Yesterday I was going to the conquer the night and fail. I did. The night looked like a catastrophe for a long time, but then redeemed itself a bit at the end. -- (now I find myself singing along to the beautiful music I'm listening to (Agnes Poetry - Forgotten (the song))) -- anyway, I mounted my bike and rode out in the middle of all the roads, crossing right over the middle of the big road crossing just by my house. That felt strange, as I had never biked there before (but walked several times). But I already lost a lot of momentum when I found out that it was too cold, and had to fetch more clothes back in my house. Momentum is indeed the word, for it is essential in situations like these that you start the walk at the right moment, when you are in a sufficiently dreamy, hopeful, magical mood. This moment might last only for a very short time. But I didn't give up, only drove back to the house to pick up a sweater, and then back onto the roads as if nothing had happened. I rolled towards the city, to the city and through the city, and nothing happened. I felt peaceful, but this peace was also a dance on needles. My soul is so sensitive that the particular area of the town that I am in means the world to my mood. There are some places that simply kill all this magic inside me, and other places that stimulate it. But even these places can only be used once. Once I have been at them in a night, they won't work again the same night. At Nørregade, I heard a scream. I took my bike in the direction of the sound, to see if there was a rape going on, and stop it if there was. I am really fearless... but I didn't expect it to be a rape, and my expectation proved right. When I came to the site of the scream, a girl was sitting crying feverishly, while a man at her side was on the phone with someone, urging her to take the phone, but getting only slaps for the effort. The girl cried "PETER!" again and again, and her tragedy and the vanity of her voice touched me so deeply that all my dreamy and philosophical thoughts were swept off my mind. I assumed someone had cheated on her, and so it happened that someone else's tragedy came so close to me that my own mind was taken over by it. After driving by (I wouldn't stop), I stood motionless for many minutes at "Børnenes Jord" before I went on again. When I came back, there was no trace of the girl and the man. I went on, and explored backyards on the way. I have both a realistic and an unrealistic purpose of exploring backyards, but the unreaslistic one is the dominating one. The realistic purpose is to find beautiful or obscure places where I can sit at night and drink with friends, or just be philosophical with myself. The unrealistic purpose is that I always hope to meet my Pistorius. The mystical man, or woman, who understands what is on my mind, is a steppenwolf likeme, and can teach me something inportant, just like Pistorius led Sinclair onwards on his journey towards self-acknowledgement. An open door with dim light protruding from it, inviting creatures of the dark in... But it never happens. Not this time either, and nor did I find beautiful or obscure places. I was beginning to feel empty. The trip had meant nothing to me yet, and I might as well have stayed at home. I strayed around north of the city, but then decided to go into "Botanisk Have", to sit on the steps of the amphi-theater and relive a very magical night I had had when I was 16. At that time I sat swallowed in thought for 2 full hours while watching night become dawn. I was so consumed by thought that a hedgehog came up to me, stood right beside me and looked at me. The shy creature that even uses spikes to keep everyone away. It looked me right in the eyes when I looked back at it, stayed like that for perhaps 10-20 seconds, and then very slowly started moving away again. But that was then. Normally repeating myself like that doesn't work, and I had an inkling somewhere inside me that my mind would be drawn back to the dreary everyday again, but it wasn't quite. This time it was okay. I sat at exactly the same place, because back then I had also known it was the most beautiful place, and looked at the clouds and stars. I began to sing. First Martin L. Gore's "Lost In The Stars", but many more beautiful songs followed, and I drew myself closer and closer to the stars with my own mouth. Then I felt inspired, and recited an improvised poem into the air. I don't remember it, but it was romantical, and had the word "stars" in it. I had partially succeeded in making the world what it isn't. To create the alternativity the I always so vainly strive for, with my own mind. That is what I wrote on an earlier day is the true purpose of any romantic. I sat there for a bit more, but then it was the right moment to go home. I froze all the way, but when I passed by the subway that I love so much (it is under the wide ring street, full of writings and graffiti on the walls, and not used very much, I had to go down there and do something. I put up a note, on which was written: "What makes you human?", and then I replied to someone who had painted a large part of the wall white and written: "I say yes to white walls, what do you say?". I wrote: "Yes please, if they are used for writing something important on." And on the other side of the subway passage, I wrote a very small poem: "The magical night disappears in light, and my soul evaporates like water, to rain down over the town again when the stars call once more"
Then, after all, I felt that I had experienced something that night. I bought coke, chips, garlic bread, went home, and listened to Martin L. Gore's "Counterfeit 2" while I sat by the window, looking at the empty street in the quaint light of very early dawn, and read "The Book of Disquiet". I still felt magical, but before too long, I went to sleep.
Nothing special has happened today, except from my taking a long training ride on the bike, on the route of Marselis Løbet, and my writing this. Now we'll see what happens, I want this night to be a bit magical too, and don't know if I should see Thomas or not. Maybe I will find out... I miss him, but I want to be alone too. It's tough. Now I've written from the start until the end of the album. It fits perfectly. It is really perfect, but I fear for the near future. This night might end in hopelessness easily... I can only pray and hope, there is no one to help me or tell me anything.

The Romantic Quest

So now several days have passed by, and I haven't really acheived anything at all. I haven't been well. The only time I had fun was when I walked around town with Thomas and HC. We took pictures of each other, and filmed each other. Some of the footage is usable, other parts are funny. We drank a couple of beers, but not that many. Perhaps it is better that way, then you become modestly funny and inspired, but without running completely amok. In total drinking, there is no inspiration, only the complete thoughtlessness and liberty which is often what one seeks in a very big drinking binge.
I felt for a while that I was young again on that day. It seems ridiculous to say something like that when after all I am only 20 years old, but I feel so old and close to death. I've realised all the absurdity and pointlessness of life, and now I am short of anything to do about it. As far as I can see, the best way is to deny the truth in the same way that the true romantics did. Novalis... If the world is not beautiful to us now, let us make it beautiful with words. Let us pretend with all our imagination that everything is beautiful, and let the new beauty of the world mirror the beauty of our minds back to us twofold. Joseph K. was deluded in a negative way, but is it bad to be deluded in a positive way? To put it into Kafka's "The Trial", would it be bad if Joseph K. did not fear his court at all, saw its members as friends or representatives of a fair justice, and took every atrocity from the court's side with ease and ultimately (importantly!) oblivion? At least I think this comparision can be made. "The Trial" makes the world seem terribly unfair, but maybe it is either not that unfair, or the unfairness can be efficiently ignored for the sake of a better life. The quest of the romantic is then either to turn unfairness of life into something quite as beautiful and touching as "The Trial" makes it seem harsh and destructive, or to turn the mind away from the unfairness and instead to all the beautiful things in the world that pass you by when you are pre-occupied with things like that (or with other things such as work, money, status etc. etc. etc.). Then the romantic is truly a servant to the purpose of giving the individual a better life.
The first sacrifice the romantic makes is realism, just like religion sacrifices realism. The difference is then that while religion strives for many different things... moral, law, a certain kind of society and a strange lockup of the human life, romanticism strives only for beauty...
I know now that life is short. I should not expect it to last more than a couple of years, for that is that it will in real time.
I know that this day will become worse and worse with the passing hours, and that I only feel a little freedom now because it is early morning. I think this is ultimately because I know everyone else is asleep.

Fading hope

I thought for a moment that tonight, just like in the most nostalgic of my memories, I might be able to fly into the stars and be the true shape of myself, whatever I perceive myself to be at this particular moment. I thought I would be able for just this night to pass out of this world, and into the gleaming world where the night never ends, and where every thought is tied not to the ground, but to the sky, where the air is as light as my existence.
I miss this world with all the futile longing of the yearning for a lost childhood. When even at 2 AM, being half-drunk and having nothing to drag me down, nothing I need to do in the morning and no duties hanging over my head, I cannot feel anything but the heavy grey sensation of having an empty life, I know that I am lost. When my last safe entries to the other world of darkness and philosophy - alcohol and nightly solitude - have failed to work, I know that nothing can save me from bland ordinary life, and maybe I am destined to become like everyone else. Maybe everyone else has in their young years had a period of philosophical reflection, in which they thought they could achieve more than anyone else, and that they in particular were destined to become great and solve the puzzles of life. Maybe my thoughts of this kind are as laughable as everyone else's. Then the only difference between me and them would be my deep-settled hatred for the ordinary and unimportant. A hatred that makes it impossible for me to accept my very existence.

"After I've come so far, is this all that I'll find?"

Desert of nothingness

I want to do something that is so extremely extreme that it would pull me into another life. Something so innovative and bizarre that sets my whole life in such a huge relief that it will never be the same. I have no idea what this should be, and somewhere I know that I will never really find out. This is yet another dream, but somehow it's a dream of not having to dream anymore. My current life is what I wish to escape from, and my current life consists only of dreams - dreams that are so beautiful that if they were true, my life would be the most beautiful of all, but as they are not, my life is ordinary, nothing to interest anyone. Only sometimes when I talk with really fantastic people, they can pull me out of this nothingness, and make me believe, not only in the way that I always dream it, that my life could be great with just a few changes, just a little will and determination. But I never have this will or that determination. My life is a streak of dreams that are broken, and it's only my fault, because I am not strong enough to make my dreams come true. It seems that I may soon realise the futility of these dreams and stop dreaming. When that happens, I really don't know what is going to become of me. I feel nothing for life, it is unimportant to me.
I don't commit suicide because I might as well get drunk or sleep.

"If only I could fill my heart with love"

Unjustified panic

Is it fair that I should feel such panic at the idea of leisure as I do?
I have bought the new Harry Potter book because they are great, entertaining, exciting books. But in addition to that, they are absolutely unimportant. So while I want to lay down and read it now, the fact that I would then grow mere hours older without doing something important keeps me from doing it. The fact that I could instead read "The Book of Disquiet" and learn something about myself and the world, makes the thought of reading Harry Potter seem sinful to me. But as I currently don't really want to read "The Book of Disquiet" (though I certainly sometimes do), the result is that I do nothing particular. If only this obligation never to grow older without doing something important actually was fulfilled, it would make my life interesting, but as it is now, it stalls my life in circles of despair, whenever I don't find myself in the rare moments when my desires and my goals interfere positively.
Although death is rushing towards me faster and faster, perhaps some time can justifiably be what the police in my mind would call "wasted". Or maybe I can think of some elusive way to shove this Harry Potter book into the category of "self-development" and thereby fool myself into reading it with good conscience.

But I don't want to need to fool myself, I want to have one mind, one will, one existence...

Sparkling delusions

The format of this blog is "thoughtful diary". Although I believe I can write about only myself, and still interest other people with what I write, I realise that nobody will be interesting in simply hearing what I have done on a given day. What has happened to me only has a relevance if I interpret it, weave upon it, perspectivate it, and derive something important from it. Assuming that my mind is a creative power that can spark an interest.
Today, for an example, I took my bike and drove out aimlessly. I do things like this often, to seek a part of myself in nature and the world around me. I sometimes get a feeling of being a part of something higher, not in the same way as a leaf is part of a great tree, but like there is something in the spiritual sphere, quite in the same league as heaven, but unknown to me, that exists through me. Then I feel an intense longing for this other world, that I can't really describe, and don't know how to reach. As Hermann Hesse put it "We are lost, with nothing but our homesickness to guide us". It seems to me that this world exists in mysteries, in the most beautiful of poetry, in the dark unknown of the night, in music that brings you into ecstasy and many other situations. The longing always lives somewhere in me, and I go out to strange places to somehow get closer to the other world.

I rolled through empty dirt tracks by the railroad areas, and began my trip by walking up some narrow stairs, and finding a whole abandoned train carriage up there. As you can imagine, it was completely covered in graffiti that I could not make any sense of it. I picked up my ever-faithful red marker from the inside pocket of my jacket, and wrote: "Hello to dreamers, steppenwolves, chaotics, juveniles, waifs and strays, for who else would be here?". It sounds really trite, but I only wrote this because I know how thrilled I would have been to find something along those lines written in that or a similar places.
My mind then enveloped in thoughts, and me wondering where to go next, I suddenly catch sight of a raspberry bush full of nice, big and red raspberries. And I love raspberries. Suddenly all the thoughts are gone, and I hurry to the bush to find all the good raspberries I can, and eat them. After the initial surprise and the pleasure of the first few raspberries, I began to laugh at myself inside. There I was, the real intellectual philosopher, the seeker in search for another world, and at the first sight of a raspberry bush, I abandon everything for the very simple pleasure of eating the berries. If anyone had asked me before this what I found most important, raspberries or the search for another world, I would also have laughed, but this time because I would have found the question silly.
My thoughts were led back to a conversation I had with a friend of mine just two days ago about goals in life. We categorised life goals within Freud's three parts of the mind. The id, the ego and the super-ego. It seems that most people are split between these parts. Where they can be very decided in one part of the mind, they can be equally decided in the other two, but the three decisions may come across each other and create a conflict in even a very decisive mind. In my case, my super-ego has never been in any doubt about what it really wants. To find something higher, to reach the infinite, through art, through writing, or simply through the magic of philosophical reasoning. But my id wants to have sex, eat raspberries, ride rollercoasters, get drunk, play computer games...
I have always consider the super-ego superior to the others, always seen the other two as ways to tempting goals that would only lead me astray from the deep quest that my super-ego always want to carry out. But this incident at the raspberry bush showed me that perhaps I shouldn't be so sure what's most important. Why, after all, should any goals in life set because of any of the three parts, be more important than any other? At that time, my id won, and I still feel ashamed of it, but didn't I enjoy myself eating those raspberries? Didn't I feel great in the process of searching out the raspberries, reaching for them, stretching my hands to get the best ones at the back, and didn't they taste great? I still feel ashamed inside, but when I look upon this logically, I don't see why I should feel ashamed. At that time, the goals of my id were most important to me, at other times they are not. Is it not always best to do that which is more important to you?

I left the raspberry bush, but only because there were no more good raspberries within reach.
By the motorway, there is a forest, and I rode through that for some time, along the motorway, away from my city. I saw nobody at all. Some hundred meters off the beginning of the motorway, I crawled through the foliage, and up to the side of the motorway. Then I stood there between the humid forest with tall-growing grass and humming colourful insects among the diverse green trees, and the punctual, stale grey motorway with cars and trucks roaring by my ears. I knew this was a great place to read, and took out "The Book of Disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa, and read three entries. As usually, this book touched me, and made me see so much more in life than before, despite the hopeless depressiveness of the narrator in the story.

The foliage by a motorway is a place where nobody usually goes, and as I love to do everything that is unusual, I loved this. But next time I do it, it will not be unusual for me anymore, and so it will be that much harder for me to do something I consider valuable. When I turned around, I discovered how much the state of my being depended on which way I looked. When I looked into the forest, I saw simple beauty, and my mind felt simple peace. The pleasure of simple beauty is nothing but genuine and modest happiness, a momentary satiation of any spiritual needs and longings. But apart from being that, immensely beautiful images can also be carried with you in your head and raise your spirits at other times, when perhaps you feel dragged down by something trivial. The romantic in me was sparked. The romantic that wants to make everything beautiful, and to dwell and the spiritual sleep the this kind of beauty brings forth, and then to live and die in such a sleep. If I looked out into the distance where the highway cars silently flowed over the hills and became smaller and smaller, their surroundings greater and greater. Fields and forests statically resting in another time, framed by a deep bright clouded sky that told the tale of adventure, magic, love and angels. The split between the land and the sky was what made the picture beautiful as a whole.
I felt the need to leave, to be somewhere else, something else, to be an explorer. The sky and the wind of the distance now surged right into my body, giving it their lightness and spontanity, and I rejoiced in the dream of flying away to achieve everything that is not mine at the moment. This thrill was sparked by my thoughts only, but it was similar to what you feel just at the moment when you dive out of the clouds in an airplane and see the magnificent Earth just below your feet. I felt, stronger than ever, all the dreams that are the only reason why I can keep living this way, so separated from normal ways of life, ignoring the supposedly frightening fact that I never achieve anything. These dreams prevent me from achieving anything, and at the same time they prevent me from despairing over not achieving anything. From one point of view they hold me paralyzed and prevent me from living a real life. From another point of view, they keep me always feeling agitated and feeling that there is a purpose of living. But I know, only so deep inside that it changes nothing, that none of my dreams can ever be true. The hope and the beauty of these sparkling delusions just remain stronger than all the conviction.
To the third side I could just look across the highway, behind it a field, and then housing. In the distance, the suburban areas of the city lay scattered around, beating a steady pulse. The cars tore by my eyes, their drivers with expressionless faces like ghosts, only focused on getting from one place to the other. Now my mood sank with the pointlessness of this, and I kept thinking that these people might as well go the other way, or not go at all, and ultimately their lives would be equally unimportant, just in a slightly different way. Of course in the heads of the drivers it wouldn't seem like that, it is only my very deeply resting lack of intent for normal, bourgeois life that causes that I would feel this unimportance and pointlessness if my perception was given the thoughts and senses of those drivers.
But my life is always entangled in the lives of other people one by one, and of "everyone else" as a whole. I felt disheartened.
Then I turned and looked the other way down the motorway, towards where it ended. The further I looked, the more familiar it became, and in the light of the slowly setting sun, the vision of my home became tempting. It was like a warm fireplace on a snow cold, but immensely beautiful full moon evening. Trivial thoughts began to knock on my mind. How nice it could be to sleep, to play some computer games, to have something to eat, lie on a bed... The thoughts knocked on my head like rams, and in the end, the magic of this moment was shattered. I knew I should feel depressed, but I was happy because as I stood there, I was inbetween. There was nowhere for the depression to settle, because I was between four directions, like a die that hasn't been rolled. And by its contradiction to the activity of everything around me, my inactivity became an activity in itself. Then the thoughts of comfort kicked in, I suddenly felt uneasy, and went back to my bike and left.

How are we supposed to ever control the mood of such a mechanism as our mind, when it flusters so brutally when I simply turn around? How can we even try to understand?

As I left, I knew I had something to write down. My head was full of thoughts about what had just happened, but I knew I couldn't write it down before I got home. My mind had created a diamond of ice, and it melted as I rolled back from my trip. What you have read is the watery result of this former diamond, short of dozens of subtle little ideas that are forever lost because they couldn't be written.