Likn: the website

i often go and visit the my friends, Auður and Goggi, in Norðurmýri and drink some coffee. the cat stays in the bathroom or hides under a chair when i invade his home. Now Auður has taken upon herself to design a website to our band, which her boyfriend playes bass in. I'm quite happy with it.
It's at
http://nemar.lhi.is/~hallvardura/
we put it up in english and icelandic.

bubbi morthens

i went to see the film about bubbi morthens, blindsker. i should write this in icelandic, cause none of you probably know who he is, who arent from this godforsaken country. bubbi morthens is a specially icelandic figure, in that way that i don't know anyone similar abroad. he emerged in the beginning of the eighties and has since been hailed the king of icelandic pop music. he emerged as a folk troubadour, mainly writing about the life of the icelandic working class people. but at the same time he came into view when the punk wave had finally dawned upon this island. that fit well with his heavy alcohol and drug abuse, although bubbi was never really a punk. he was more of a rebel sex symbol. In the eighties he lived only for cocaine and the most extreme promiscuity i have ever heard of. bubbi told this story where he would sleep with a girl and then dump her for her sister the same evening. he didnt bother to mention who she was being dumped for. by the late eighties the fun was wearing thin. bubbi found a new girlfriend, and signed up for drug therapy, and tried to clean up his act, although this did not include ditching cannabis, which bubbi admits to having smoked every day for 18 years. somehow he survived. in the film we get to see a different bubbi, who pronounces life to be a miracle. a sobered family father. and that is what he sings about today. as well as promoting boxing. the best thing about this film is how jekyll and hyde the whole thing seems. from eager self destructive behaviour of his youth, to this christian family father of today. fuck, maybe that's what we had seen had jim morrison lived! maybe the most similar figure to bubbi abroad could be johnny cash. he was kind of too christian for a while, but he could still deliver the tortured rebellious wail of his last records.

mental masturbation pt.2

i have been studying up to the point of a stupifying amount. the only thing besides studying i have done lately is to watch futurama and invader zim. i love johnen vasques. he's insanely good! i notice that i wont find it as easy to watch simpsons after my futurama binge. it's just so much deeper in every way. it has everything simpsons has, but its just a thousand times better. i like the way its commentary is focused on on the everyday questions of existence. and then there is the dilemmas. fry's position for example. he has a crush on leila. but leila, who is desparetely lonely, thinks he's too childish. fry tried being with amy, but got tired after a week. so it's straight out of an existentialist novel, but at the same time it covers the breadth of the soap opera of daily existence.
on friday is our gig on the iceland airwaves. its in this place called bar 11 on the second floor. we are playing along with a troubador and another band called Ókind. you fuckers who are not in reykjavik have an excuse for not coming. i have been trying to get a free ticket for the rest of the festival, as we don't get paid, and the custom is the bands get paid with wristbands. last year i got two, now i get none. oh well. something here is rotten. you are not going to pay me, and i get no wristband? i am lucky if i am allowed to come in. they get hundred bands to play for free, and then they pay a few foreign bands. there is a lot of stuff i'd like to see on this festival. much more then last year for example. for tet for example. then there is a kerrang night on saturday. but then i am playing on café culture with the bulgarian folk band. there might even be some gigs on sunday, for those who like to go to concerts in their hangovers. but i don't have money to pay for it. i am spending my last gig money on the parenting course, due in the end of the month. i am looking forward. then i just have to buy an apartment, a decent car, cat and dog, and get a job delivering pizza's. don't forget the daily dose of tanning cream. i'd get so icelandic people wouldn't recognize me anymore.

the forgotten

well, i havent been to the movies on a monday for a while. but binni had free tickets through his work. he works at the húsasmiðjan selling people wallpaper and stuff. we even got free pop corn. this movie is very kind of other dimension b movie kind of stuff, but is was nicer for it. it started with this hysterical mother who has lost her son but nobody believes he ever existed. its a nice plot in a way. nothing is stronger then the mothers love. but before the film they played húsasmiðjans new advertisement campaign! it featured a very nice, respectable woman, who is explaining how she renovated her bathroom. they have 15 of these advertisements, they all end with the saying húsasmiðjan - no problem! and then they have the same jazzy chord, played on a hammond. they always have the same hammond lounge music underneath. its pure brainwash. we should cover it, come to think of that. anyway, i am more proud of being binni's friend after having seen this advertisements. it's a very important job to help people buy things.
i was thinking about how i have no friend, and i saw ishmael writing in his weblog about this too. but now i know that i have at least one friend, because i get to go to the cinema for free! i wonder is this a grown up thing for guys, to have no friends. i mean, there's maybe not so much of just meeting and going to get some coffee or something. everything is more focused about doing stuff. but we kind of have our own thing now.
i'm trying to find amore positive outlook on life. as up until now everything has been focused into the shadows. who the fuck am i, anyway? we never take ourselves into the account, everything is always about others. but there is this animal living inside me, i have to talk to it. i try to draw conclusions with my head, but my head does not always know what my gut is feeling. i do not always know what i feel. i know what i think. the animal knows, so i have to try and listen. ofcourse anxieties play a part too. anxieties can stop you from drawing conclusions. you overreact, there is nothing you can show but anger. fear leads to anger. i am a very closed individual in many ways. i show anger but little more. nobody can help you unless you let them. well well. therepists have a hard time with people like me, its difficult to cut through. i don't know if they can help at all. i am a sick man, but at the same time there is always today. i don't know if there is much more. i spend most of my time in the past. i worry about the future. i cannot change the past, i don't know anything about the future. but now there is work to be done.

coffee houses, sleep, skool, and some other stuff

i have decided to try stop going to these places. the cup of coffee costs 350 kr. these days, even though the prices aren't going up, they still up the prices on a cup of coffee. that is, while i practically never buy records or books, i still don't hesitate on spending this amount on coffee, on daily basis. i don't even hesitate on spending 600 kr. for a glass of beer. you that have never been here might not realize the prices they have here. well, so one cup of coffee everyday, is like 50000 a year. my annual amount of money is like ten times that, so 1/10th of my earnings on coffee seems a bit...weird.
i have been diagnosed now with situational depression. it means i'm depressed because of situations and not vice versa. its a bit of a relief, because i was beginning to wonder. but in that case drugs can't help you, i mean antidepressants. they would just put you to sleep.
i have been a sleepyhead lately. that is, i have to go to skool but these days i only wake up every other day. i don't know why. i couldnt walk, so i tried to run. so i'm approaching some kind of lock out, where i only study. i have been, as bella would say, "procrastinating".

crash course

today i went to a really interesting lecture. i am on a car course, and today there wasnt the usual stuff on it, so we were sent to the insurance company. we went too Vís, which a huge business building and to a real conferance room. there, some guy started taking pictures of the group, i don't know why. but the lecturist was this nice small guy with a shrill voice. he told us we were going to get some scary propaganda. and he was right. over the next one and a half hour we were given the most mind numbing injection of violence i've seen, and it made the rest of my life seem like a picnic on the countryside. they started with showing us some wrecked cars, a guy had killed 4 friends of his, when he was fooling around at 100 m p/hour. there was a small bus which was wrapped around a tree. there was a small car which had been crushed by a truck. and so on. there were endless examples. pure emotional violence. then they ended with interviews with the families of victims. that was really well done, and you really believed the people they were talking to. those victims were more examples were it wasnt really there fault. anyway, i don't really feel like driving at the moment;). i'll just take the test and then see.

recording

recording started today. we haven't been playing together for a while. playing with people is like sex only better. we will be recording now until the new year. but we have one gig on the iceland airwaves festival, on thursday the 21st. it's in 11, a tiny rock bar. it's even on the second floor, which is even tinier. it's quite fluffy, come to think of it. last year, i played there with other guys, before this band came into a full form. then the police came because of the noise, and stopped the concert. that was after the second band. there must be people living above that place. there are some nice acts on the festival, like four tet, which i really want to see.
today i started my driving course. i lost my driving licence because i forgot to renew it. (i only had one year to do that). now there have been 9 years since, so it's time to let the dream come to life! i haven't started driving yet though, but you should really look out when i start. i'll try to limit myself to hours when there is not a lot of traffic.

good times#2

well i had a pretty good time tonight. me and the guys from my band went to see this show which is based on studmenn, the icelandic national pop band. theyve been playing since the 70's. it was mostly their early music. our drummer was playing in it, as he has to pay the rent. it was at this fancy place called broadway and the audience were mostly middle aged, respecteble sort. people from companies and stuff like that. they have the whole staff over for the show. some actors and singers made a cabaret around these songs. only absolute nonsense, but it wasnt so far between songs. broadway also has the most expensive bar in iceland i think a small beer would cost 800 kr. certainly a different environment from usually.
i went to the bar afterwards and was sober. it has an interesting david attenbourogh kind of feel to it, watching drunk people. people behave erraticaly, generally look more vicious.

medulla

i'd like to write a bit about bjorks new album. when i heard she was doing an a cappella thing i didnt know excactly what to expect. (then she called me and asked me to come for a test for her new video. i didn't make it to the video, but egill s went on my behalf.) so i have been listening to it and it's actually pretty amazing. this is easily the rawest bjork album since post. the thing is that lately her albums have been getting more electronic and introverted, which is fine. but when i went to her concert in berlin last summer i noticed that the music was much more aggressive in concert. and that was mainly music from the vespertine album. then she said she was going back to a punkier sound for the next album. the thing is also with these songs, and the other versions i've heard of them, that with todays technology and all that, it doesnt really matter if there are voices underneath or only voices.

love, death, misery, happiness, 5 ounces of blood, 500 kg of regret, 50 liters of guilt

what the fuck. what is is, and outside of that there is nothing. we can never know the difference.

am i easily manipulated?

am i easily manipulated?
i tire of this question maybe, because there may be truth in that i am. i am a child of peaceful although disastrous circumstaces. the dodo bird died because of his innocent behaviour. it reminds me of what they said about jimi hendrix in a documentary i saw about him the other day. they talked about his innocent quality which worked to his disadvantage. if you get what i am hinting at, this is not a survival trait. i had a friend a few years ago, i say had, because we used to be much closer. we would make films together, and travel and stuff. it was quite confusing because after a certain amount of time i never knew what was me and what was him. its like if you live with people or travel with them you lose your borders and get invaded by this alien landscape. i can say the same thing about my ex girlfriend. we used to live together, and thinking back to our relationship and whatever we did, i cannot say who caused what. was she manipulating me or i her? i do not know. all i know now is something horrible happened, but the trail of thought is lost. and how i became what i was, and then became the exact opposite instead of that.
my friend, i thought he would have grown as a human being, now that he's been away two years, but i find that he's just grown backwards. an even more closed man then he was, he drinks alot. he is frozen as a human being, not dealing with his own problems, instead launches attacks on the surroundings. a defence mechanism.
the people that manipulate us/we manipulate are often the ones closest to us, so how could we know the difference?
(i'm trying to learn to say no, thats the lesson i have to learn)
(i'm trying to learn to listen to myself instead of other people always)

we used to think we were elitists. we judged the society as borguese, and in order not to become that, we thought we had to do the opposite always. i was alone then, i had not found my place in this society, as i have done now. anyway, this attitude proved eventually self destructive. we didnt want the regular house and dog package, and instead judged ourselves to isolation. i suppose it can be said about all societies up to a point, but in iceland everything is very one-dimensional. there are onely two types of persons, with and against the common norm. i say common norm, becuase i consider myself normal as well. everybody wants to be the same. and in this sameness, there is the bliss. its a very vain society. we just sweep our problems under the carpet, and keep busy, so that everything is perfect on the surface. so if you disagree, your going to have alot of work to do. you must keep vigilant every moment. and i guess i just overdid it.
it's extremely ironic. the dagger i thought was my indipendance turned against me in the end.
it's hard to spent a period of few months here without everybody expecting you to have 2 kids and a dog and the whole package. now i'm going to be part of it, but i still i'm doing everything wrong.
the problem with growing up is, that it happens too late. its hard to even think about how naive i've been.
it doesnt seem to be possible to exclude yourself from the whole without excluding a part of your self as well. i mean that the problem with those who live on the verge is that we forget kindness. the hippies thought of themselves as an entirely new kind of human being, and failed. it's jsut too much to live up to.

7 months

i am pregnant. i am 7 months pregnant. i am just coming to realize the absurdity of this situation. it's not like we men carry the child inside us, so theres someone in the other side of town who is carrying a baby which is 50% me. i do not have a girlfriend. i have had girlfriends although not for several years now. i have had real relationships. but this one is something else, although i must add we get along quite well. it was a night in april, that i went to a bingo evening in my school. they have social evenings there you know. and my friend had come there because of the choir she is in. well, we met there. we have known each other quite long now and we even tried to have a relationship, it just didnt stick. no hard feelings. these things happen. i just can't come to realize it. it's too heavy. the coming of a human being itno this world is a supernatural thing, something we cannot quite understand.