SKY ABOVE CLOUDS OMNIBUS (+ a taste of Reykjavik)

The title phrase comes from my favorite Georgia O'Keefe series (browse here) and does a beautiful job summing up one of my favorite sights. I hate flying, but I love being up high, especially above the clouds. Only recently, when someone asked about my cloud tattoos, did I realize that my affection for the feeling probably has a lot to do with growing up under the Seattle cloud dome. I still delight in discovering that thick and impenetrable as the cloud cover may appear, on the other side of it the sky is still blue and the sun is still shining. It's as if we really do live inside one of those snow globes.

I fly too much, but I never get tired of the views. This particular trip was like an American West highlight reel: flying into San Francisco, out of Denver, in and out of the Pacific Northwest. But the extraordinary part of the trip was the last leg through the north: Canada, the North Atlantic, Greenland, and Iceland. The scenery was otherworldly and spectacular, and it saturated me with enough mountain views to last for at least a few months.

Here are some of my favorite sky/sea/land + wing shots from the trip, followed by some glimpses of Reykjavik from my cruelly short layover.

Near Denver. "Did you get any mountains in that shot?" my seatmate asked me, "otherwise it looks just like Kansas." Well, yes.

Here are a few, clawing up suddenly from flat earth.

Views of Harbor Island, West Seattle, Puget Sound, and the dim silhouette of the Olympic Mountains. Still beautiful.

Alpine lakes in the Cascades.

The Canadian Rockies, looking eerie and ferocious.

More peaks. It was around here that I saw another commercial jet shoot past us going in the opposite direction. It made my heart race to see another plane sharing our altitude and going incredibly fast.

The sun was faster than us, but only barely. We chased the sunset coming and going for hours.

Approaching Greenland.

One enormous ice skating arena.

Greenlandic peaks and glacial melt.

Close-up of glacial melt. As awful as it is it was spectacular to see. 

Ocean and heavens.

Now with clouds.

Engaging landing gear and wing flaps (not the technical term).

Flying over scattered farmhouses and black volcanic soil on the coast of Iceland

Downtown Reykjavik, a city only slightly larger than Odense, but with a slightly more impressive harbor.

Cute and cold. I'm sold.

Those last two shots were courtesy of the panoramic view at Hallgrimskirkja, a church reportedly designed to mimic the basalt lava flows responsible for much of Iceland's landscape.

I thought it was rather grand, especially with the statue of Leif Eriksson presiding over the entrance.

Given that Eriksson was supposedly the first European to land in North America I was disappointed that his stare was not directed due East. Instead he was looking in the general direction of Greenland, perhaps lamenting his son Thorgils' failure to ingratiate himself to the natives.

Not a bad view though, especially with all those cheery colors.

Just down the street I found 12 Tonar, a music shop recommended by my wonderful friend Elisha. I suspect the place is at least 50% responsible for Reykjavik's thriving music scene. While they sell a whole range of music they clearly focus on promoting local artists. The friendly owner encouraged me to sit for a spell and offered a complimentary (and not half bad) espresso.

Several of the CD's (yes, they still exist) I took into the listening room were on 12 Tonar's own label. I used about half of the krona I had allotted myself to take a few home (Samaris and Low Roar, in case you're curious).

 

The old city is charmingly and eminently walkable. Behind this older building (with characteristic aluminum siding) you can see much newer high-rise condos.

 

A bookstore window. Unfortunately because it was a Sunday most of the shops were closed.

 

Disturbing cat candles. Like I wasn't going to notice those.

 

Yep, still wearing the hat.

I just thought this name was totally metal.

 

A vintage shop with resident cat. Like I wasn't going to go in there.

By the time I arrived home in Denmark the sun was setting. See you next time mountains. Stay cool. Oh, and GET YOURSELF ONE OF THOSE ICELANDIC LAYOVERS PEOPLE! I can't wait to go back.

KIERKEGAARD FOR KINDERGARTNERS

A few weeks ago in Copenhagen I found myself with an empty afternoon and scurried over to the National Art Museum for tea, a nap, and some high culture. I know the collection well enough now (bless you free museums) to drop in and visit a few favorite rooms, but this time I was drawn to a new temporary exhibit called Freedom!

I recognized the piece just outside the entrance, as the work of Korean-American artist Nam June Paik, whose fantastic television sculpture Electronic Superhighway is a highlight of the Smithsonian's American Art collection. This work was delightfully entitled Søren Kierkegaard Robot.     

The floor beneath the umbrella-wielding robot prompted the viewer to ask "what is freedom? what is the opposite of freedom?"

 

A provocative question to be sure, but more engaging than I had expected from the venerable Statens Museum. Hunting down an exhibition booklet I discovered that Freedom!, inspired by the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, was in fact designed for children. The booklet, "for grown-ups" provided philosophical prompts to share with little Mette and Jakob, including, in this case "Can robots think? Can they cry? Can they be responsible for their actions? Does a robot always do what it is asked -- and what about the rest of us?"

Just inside the exhibition was a room of swings bolted to the floor. I stood bemused as several rounds of children ran gleefully up the stairs and climbed atop the wooden platforms. Expressions of happy anticipation gave way in an instant to confusion and disappointment. A swing that didn't swing? What kind of sick joke was this?

Adjacent to the swings was a more disturbing piece: a graceful goldfish in a modern household blender.

Marco Evaristti, Helen, 2001

The booklet provided keywords for talking about the artwork, including power, prison, zoo, rights, responsibilities, and smoothies. It also gave a primer on Denmark's most famous philosopher:

According to Kierkegaard freedom, choices, anxiety, and responsibility are all interlinked. Responsibilities can be such a burden that you do not act at all. Are you responsible for the death of the fish if you just stand by and watch while another person kills it?

As an aside, the booklet also informed readers that the goldfish on display was one of many: each had a one-day shift after which it was returned to a larger tank in the museum workshop. This detail made me laugh embarrassingly loudly and also seemed to sum up something broader about the Danish mentality: life is full of darkness and difficulties, but no power on earth can deny you your vacation days.  

Near the blender was one of 400 pieces of a full-scale copy of the Statue of Liberty created and divided by Vietnamese-born Danish artist Danh Vo.

Danh Vo, We the People, 2012

According to the booklet, "The work will never be assembled, thereby challenging the notion of the stability and monumental qualities of this vast symbol of freedom." Perfect for an elementary school field trip, don't you think? 

What could possess a person to put together an exhibition for children inspired by Kierkegaard? I'm a mopey sonofabitch sometimes, but even I think proclaiming "My sorrow is my castle" is overkill. More broadly, in what kind of society could such an exhibit have resonance? The same one, apparently, that produces these chocolates.

I imagine this is what Danish director Lars von Trier would bring as a gift were you to invite him over for dinner. I saw von Trier's controversial epic Nymphomaniac when it came out a few months ago, and remember remarking afterwards to my Danish companion that the most American thing about me is probably my desire for a happy ending (if you know absolutely anything about von Trier's oeuvre this is not a spoiler).

I thought the movie excellent, but also deeply unsettling. I enjoyed the philosophical and existential provocations the film proffered, but after 5+ hours of self-destructive hedonism, heartbreak, brutality, and approximately 35 close-up shots of penises, a little comfort and closure didn't seem like to much to ask for.

But if Danish youngsters are encouraged to talk about censorship of the arts during wartime (another piece from Freedom!) and whether we really can exercise free choice in our lives I expect they would disapprove of the kind of neat and tidy happy endings American children grow up with.

At the Community College through which I escaped my last year of high school I remember when a classmate well-read on critical theory summed up the thesis of Fromm's Escape from Freedom: the idea that some societies crave dictators because they are afraid to be burdened with the responsibilities of individual choice. Compelling, but surely heresy! My philosophical training to that point had consisted primarily of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation: my high school teacher for a comparative world religions course regularly used the show to introduce the fundamental dilemmas humanity faces. I still have love for TNG, but as far as the 'big questions' go it is a slow-pitched softball compared to the direct punch in the face of a goldfish in a blender.

The Danes are famously open-minded and tolerant, and that can make them seem rather mild, even unresponsive (making excitable me feel like an psychotic mime in their company). One of my colleagues here recently noted that as smart and mature as our students clearly are, they seem somehow more innocent and less jaded than their American counterparts. That seems to contradict the reality of a society that encourages children to watch as a genetically superfluous young giraffe is carved up for tiger snacks, but I think it's all of a piece. My American students are raised with happy endings, but grow up to a reality of student loans, a shrinking middle-class, and never-ending war; my Danish students are exposed at young ages to 'adult' themes and unresolvable questions, but grow up to free education, five weeks of holidays, and the cushions of generous unemployment benefits and pensions. That's glossing over quite a bit of course -- leave it to an American to oversimplify and overstate the case.

Freedom! runs through August 3rd 2014 at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. If existential philosophy doesn't appeal I can also recommend their Danish landscapes, works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, and the three-sided foosball table in the atrium anteroom.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP LAKRID

A few weeks ago I gave my methods students a lecture on fieldwork and the senses. I focused primarily on how sensory experience is culturally constructed, i.e., how tasting can be seen as an extension of touching, how hearing can be more reliable than sight in mapping out one's location, and how the Western privileging of sight has colored the way research is carried out and ethnographies are written. I encouraged them to spend at least some time during their fifth-semester fieldwork attending to all of the ways their senses were engaged and constantly gathering information.

This, of course, got me thinking about my own sacred duty as a lazy migrant-ethnographer. Sure I've told you about ethnic homogeneity, fjords, and modestrømpebukser, but have I put any effort into conveying the rich sensual texture of Danish life? Have I even paid it much attention myself? Not really.

Well, there's a bakery I pass most days on my commute that sometimes exudes wonderful fragrances, and a yeasty goodness of another kind when the Albani brewery is cooking up a fresh batch. There is the merry discordance of singing drunkards passing underneath my window most weekend evenings, and the low hum of sleepy small town traffic, untroubled by horns or blasting stereos. There are the wonderful creature comforts produced by the national fetishization of cozy-ness: the plush slippers, soft lap blankets, and abundance of pillows and scarves, as well as the sensation of riding against a hard wind on my two-wheeled steed. Mostly though, the experiences are so familiar that I don't notice them. Rain? Check. Seagulls squawking overhead? Check. Salmon? That too. As far as I can tell, there aren't many things those early Scandinavian settlers would have missed upon relocating to the Pacific Northwest, unless, that is, they were as obsessed with licorice as their contemporaries. 

Licorice. Lakrid. It's fucking everywhere. I feel hounded, harassed, by its ubiquity. Only occasionally do I apprehend it directly through my senses, but the frequency with which it presents itself as an option, and the unlikely places it does so, makes me feel as if I taste it a dozen times a day.

At the grocery store across from my house (as well as at the one another a block away), there is an aisle-long pick-a-mix of gummy candies, perhaps half of which involve licorice.

Nearby is the aisle of bagged licorice candies -- this is only half of the selection.

How can there be so many different kinds of licorice? Isn't licorice just that? Oh no no no. There is salty licorice:

Fiery licorice (this particular flavor also comes in lollipop and booze forms):

And so many more.

You've probably seen these little pocket packs at Ikea. I quite enjoy the "dark humour" and "LOL" flavors. There is also a selection of these at the cash register, just in case you discover to your horror that you forgot to put "pineapple licorice" on your shopping list. Eugh. Do you see what this does to me? I could put down my computer and be eating pineapple licorice within 5 minutes. It's like being haunted by an herb.
[Ed: it is actually a root].

Licorice in tea? Okay, that's not so crazy. But with mint? I'm horrified and curious.

Every Danish chocolate brand has at least one licorice variety. The combination distresses me. Yesterday a friend from Eastern Europe told me she's lived here two years and never been much into the stuff but just a week ago something snapped and now she can't get enough. This also distresses me.

And yet, for some reason, I approve of licorice ice cream. I don't make the rules, I merely experience them through my senses.

These are like the grown-up version of the bags of licorice candy -- suitable for display on your desk or coffee table. From left to right: chili licorice, cute (?) licorice, salt licorice, and lemon licorice.

Licorice salt. For no food item must be allowed to escape this tyranny. 

Not even cheese. The horror.

And of course a meat rub, "perfect for game and beef". Just like the "Red Vines Roast" that grandma used to make.

Two Danish sugar obsessions in one shiny tube: licorice-flavored marzipan.

For the licorice-flavored alcohol traditionalist you can't go wrong with "Fish Face" (slogan "With that real fresh taste!"). The youngsters appear to enjoy vodka flavored with apple & licorice, menthol & licorice, and salt & licorice, while at least one intellectual of my acquaintance swears that the pomegranate & licorice flavor is the best of the bunch.

Not just licorice beer, but chili licorice beer. 

You can also buy licorice in powder form, useful for cake-dusting, freebasing, and a passable substitute for talcum powder.

And of course you'll need to have it on hand for making homemade licorice-roasted almonds.

 
I'M PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Why couldn't it have been cardamom instead?