What I talk about when I talk about literature.

Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid and an adult would read aloud to you? Do you remember how it felt as if you were in a completely different world, each word spoken, each word you heard, formed an image, not in front of you, but around you; you were immersed in the story, you lived in another world.

To me it was torture whenever the adult stopped reading. “Enough for now.” It was never enough. Luckily, I fairly quickly could read on my own. Hiding beneath the covers with a flashlight when the adults had said: Go to sleep now. No more reading. But I needed just another chapter, and another. Never enough.

It really hasn’t changed much. Well, except no one tells me to go to sleep now. I’m aware of the consequences on my own, though, watching the clock ticking forward, knowing another day is approaching hastily, but I need just another chapter.

That feeling – that’s what I talk about when I talk about literature: the being immersed in another world, being swallowed whole, losing consciousness in the “real” world and living for a moment, a few hours, in another.

In my master thesis I wrote about how objects of art, paintings, books, sculptures, interact with the consciousness of people and how this meeting between art and consciousness has the power to change a person. Using the theories of Mikel Dufrenne and Jacques Rancière I showed how Leonard Cohen’s songs, for example, can change the (political) world.

The story of the song is echoed in the simple music, the simple set-up, which points the audience’s attention to the images. This combination of the song and the attention of the audience create the aesthetic object that leads to affect. A broken world unfolds and feelings of fear, anger, distrust, and inevitability reveal themselves. The audience retreats from the meeting with the song and its expression, and these feelings remain with a possibility to change how the audience perceives the world. The song points to these wrongs in the world. It points to how the world is driven by greed and lust, and how it is difficult to keep one’s balance in such a chaos.

The song takes on the shape of an appeal to people. The speaker of the song is trying to choose between life and death, he sees a broken world, people driven by lust and greed, and how these people pass this on to their children along with myths of enmity and need for fight. By way of the images, Cohen shows how human beings are small compared to the universe, yet they have the power to change their world. And this is exactly what the song can do by way of affect and dissensus. The audience is left with the feelings of these horrors happening in the world, and they retract to their world to look upon it with a different perspective.

In the song “Anthem,” we come upon a slightly different tactic in Cohen’s art. As usual, he depicts how the world is broken and at war, but instead of opposing this obvious wrong, he shows how this cyclic state will never change. This is a part of the human conditioning, there will always be conflicts, there will always be fights and hurt in the world. As opposed to “Democracy” and “Stories of the Street,” the song “Anthem” offers a solution. The solution lies in love, in turning towards love, which, as Cohen predicts, every human heart will do eventually. However, they might not do this voluntarily, but as refugees. In my analysis of “Anthem,” I show how this line is very important. It creates a rupture, which according to Rancière is essential to create affect and dissensus.

The song “Anthem” is a perfect example of how Cohen uses the concept of love to create affect. It shows how love, used both as a positive and as a negative, is an emotion that moves everybody. The song also presents Cohen’s idea on the highest form of spiritual love as a goal and an ending point for everything. This is where you transcend the world and the human condition.

In the song, Cohen both embraces and pushes away the world. He cannot be a part of it anymore but at the same time, he says the “killers in high places” will hear from him. Although he knows it will never change, he will not let it happen without speaking up about it.

The song shows how art can make a different. It shows how it creates affect in the audience and possibly changes how they perceive the world. The song becomes political due to the rupture, according to Rancière. The rupture creates affect and moves the audience. When the audience is moved, they might see how the police order keeps certain things invisible and how they are excluded from governing and power.

By showing the many forms of love both in “Anthem” and other songs, Cohen points to what is normally invisible to those excluded. He points to the lack of equality and freedom, to how people are victims of poverty, crime, violence, etc. He also points to the idea of spiritual love as a solution, not to save the world, but to transcend the human condition.

“Anthem” as well as the other songs is heavy with imagery and the intense poetic language that is characteristic for Cohen. It is clearly crafted to create affect, to play on emotions, build up a world in the imagination of the reader/listener and leave them changed. There is great intensity in the images and words, they come together as images rather than language, and they show possible worlds, as Dufrenne says. Whereas “Democracy” and “Stories of the Street” seem to leave the audience in a bleak state, “Anthem” offers a hope. The imperfections of the world, the flaws of human kind become their hope. Through the failures, light enters the mind, and this is where you can overcome the world.

“And that’s how I want to end it. The summer’s almost gone. The winter’s tuning up. Yeah, the summer’s gone, but a lot goes on forever”[1]

From language to imagination, from affect to dissensus, and from dissensus to a possible change of perception, poetry turns to politics. With the theories of Mikel Dufrenne and Jacques Rancière, I have analyzed Cohen’s songs to show how the carefully crafted poetry by way of the audience’s imagination can influence how we look upon the organization of the sensible: who are allowed to speak, what is visible and what is not, and how can we change how the sensible is distributed in our world by way of true politics.

 

And this is what I talk about when I talk about literature. The power of the written word, the power of the worlds created in our imagination, the emotion that can be transferred from a book to a reader, the intensity of a few lines of a poem, the way you can read something, look up and feel like another person. This is power. This is perfection!

From Narnia to Harry Potter to Tolkien to Ib Michael to Tolstoy to Umberto to Satanic Verses and Kite Runners. I have wandered through the World of Books, the Universe of Stories, not from one end to the other, but around and around, one corner to the other, changing, learning. We learn when we read, it’s not just about the entertainment, it’s about how we for a moment in time can be someone else, can feel differently, can see through another person’s eyes. Be it good or bad, smart or dumb, big or small, reading brings perspective, perspective makes you a better person, as does empathy, which is another great by-product of reading.

Don’t just sit there. Go read a book.

 

 

My rock and starlight

The other day I mentioned one of my favorite writers, the great Richard Bach. In my time, I have come across a few life-changing books; the first one I remember clearly is Narnia, then Mio, min mio, The Never-Ending Story, The Outsiders, Lord of the Rings… and  Illusions. I’m sure there are more, lots more, but these are the ones coming into mind as I write this.  I firmly believe that most of my personality, most of my thoughts, my ideals and views on the world have been shaped and set by these stories. Of course, I believe everything is stories, but that’s a matter for another post sometime…

Today, I write about Richard Bach. In the years after first reading Illusions,  I referred to him as The Master, but I don’t anymore, knowing he wouldn’t like it. I also know that we are all masters, if we want to be so. And I guess that is the most important message from him to the world: We are all masters.

I have met many different people, some who knew and loved this message, some who just didn’t get it, some who shrugged at it, some who understood, but couldn’t live it, some who found it ridiculous. Some find it silly, some too much of a burden. Yet, whatever you think, whatever you feel about this – we are all masters of our own life. None can live it, none can change it, none can make a difference – only you.

bluefeather12

If you have come this far and you’re still thinking Richard Who? – then read this. It only gives you the outer shell, of course, and what’s important here is the message.

And what is the message, then? Well, in short, Richard tells us that this world; time, space, bodies, the beginning and end of life, is an illusion. It is a story, which we play out for fun (yes, fun!), and it’s no more real than watching a movie in the theater. This means we are all but actors on a stage, partaking in these stories, but it also means that we’re free to change our stories as we please as we go along. And this is where being a master comes in. Because we’re only playing out stories, we’re also free to change the stories: If you don’t like what you see, then change it.

And how? Well, this is where the grain of a sesame seed comes in.

If you have imagination as a grain of sesame seed, all things are possible to you.

Richard Bach – Illusions

All it takes is imagination. Not belief, not faith, not prayers, not suffering, not self-punishment or abstaining – just imagination. In the world he offers, there are no Gods, no heaven or hell, no rules, no bidding or revengeful overlords – there is only your free will and whatever your imagination can conjure up. You see why many have found this man to be dangerous? How would this world be if everyone realized this is true?

He answered that once … His guess is: happy. I agree.

As you can see from my list of life-changing books, I have always been a fan of magic and fantasy. When I first read Illusions, I must have been 11 or 12, my focus point was the magic: The hovering tools, swimming in the ground, walking through walls; this was important to me. This author was telling me this could be done. I remember checking with my dad: Is he saying this can really be done? I also remember my dad saying: Yes. And it’s true. My dad has always been awesome

kodi-wizard

Reading the book again later in life, something else stood out: The message that you can change your life as you please. If you can imagine it, you can do it. And who gets to decide what’s real? This was the time I lost all trust in so-called authorities, and I have never regained that.

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.”
Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingston Seagull

A courageous seagull named Jonathan changed the world when it was born. Illusions has always been my favorite of Richard’s works, but I know a lot of people favorite Jonathan. Jonathan definitely changed Richard’s life and the life of thousands, maybe millions, of people. How so? Well, it offered a new way of life, a new way of thinking and seeing the world. Instead of being a victim, suffering circumstances, bowing down to destiny and general opinion, it offered free flight and free choices.

How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingston Seagull

It may leave you somewhat shaken, realizing this for the first time. It also leaves you responsible for everything … Seeing this as true, you’ll no longer be able to point your finger at the world for blame, you alone hold the key. Not everybody cares to be responsible like this. Some people like to blame others, blame circumstance, blame destiny. Some people enjoy the role of a victim, the suffering and complaining, and of course, they are absolutely free to enjoy this.

For me, shaking off the burdens of destiny and circumstance has been absolutely joyful. Empowering. Magical. I, and I alone, make things happen. I, and I alone, create my world. Now, this is magic, this is walking through walls and hovering tools, this is life.

I’m still practicing loops and free falls in this. I believe it is true. I have embraced magic and imagination, and I have managed quite some tricks as regards attracting things and people into my life. But most important of all, I have embraced this:

None of it was making the lady on the phone any calmer. But she broke suddenly and said simply, “How do you know all these things that you say? How do you know what you say is true?”

“I don’t know they’re true,” he said. “I believe them because it’s fun to believe them.”

Richard Bach – Illusions

Up until today, Richard has quite an extensive bibliography. I have read everything on it. Books on flying airplanes, books on love, books about ferret adventures, books on travels and life. Together, these book sum up everything in life from high ideals, adventures, learning and living to everyday humdrum. They tell a collected story about a life dedicated to this message.

chocolaterootbeerfloat_n_368_600

On this blog, I have often mentioned perfection. To me, this message is perfection. It holds everything, and it sets you free. There’s no book of rules, no wisdom to acquire, no levels to gain: It’s all Here and Now. It’s what you are. A perfect idea; endless and everlasting. Free. Perfection.

 

Oh, of course, everything on this blog may be wrong.

All this light …

Just the other day I finished reading Anthony Doerr’s “All the light we cannot see.” This is one of those rare books that incorporate everything and forms perfection. It is beautifully written, almost hauntingly so, it has a great story, it touches upon the concepts of humanity, philosophy, love, what makes humans human – and what turns them evil … In all, this goes on the perfection shelf, and it has left me changed.

As I have mentioned before, this is what great literature does. It changes you and it stays with you forever. Even in the maelstroms of my very busy life, part of me is still sitting silently with Marie-Laure on the secret beach feeling the water slip back and forth over my bare feet, touching the world she will never see. Part of me still cries for the loss of the world, for the cruelty and the people pushed by fate to live in fear and longing.

Anthony Doerr writes in a voice that melts into your very soul and stays with you forever. In the blink of an eye, he’s become one of my favorite authors. His other books are now lined up for me to read, and I suspect they’ll be just as beautiful.

Another rare gem of perfection, an addictive Sea of Flames, this work reminds you of the humanity of history, how it wasn’t merely historic facts but real people who lived through this chaos and cruelty in our world, and not really so long ago. Where would you be in this, you ask yourself in the midst of this story. Wouldn’t you, too, try to hang on to your part of the world, having a hard time seeing it all from above. It is so easy, too easy, to see this once removed several decades from its whirlwind of events, but being in the middle of it, chaos consumes you.

Back to the literature, the art of it. This is what it does. It engulfs you and becomes so much more than printed words and a story. It moves you, touches you, makes you think and feel, and it changes your tiny cocoon of a world here and now. It moves from print to emotion to thought to world-changer. This is the life of literature.

I know there are people out there criticizing Anthony Doerr for normalizing and aesthetizising the Second World War with this book. I believe they are wrong. There is nothing normalized or beautified in this book. Quite the opposite. The horrors, the animalism and barbarism stand out clearly, it shocks, appalls and leaves you cold. With the underlying beauty and love that follow Werner, Jutta, Marie-Laure and the others, the horrors of the war itself, the killings, the torture and cold hate stands out even more clearly. And this is what fiction does compared to faction! Reading a list of facts on the war would never move you like Anthony Doerr’s story does, and this exactly is the power of aesthetics. Yes, his writing portrays Werner as a gentle soul despite the fact that he is trained as one of Hitler’s boys, and yes, he fights for the German side, but this is the point of it all! The people who fought, the boys who joined and found it glorious, how would they have been able to see it all decades removed and from above for a bigger picture? They didn’t have the time, perspective and history we have today. They wouldn’t have had the means to judge. This exactly makes it all the more realistic, the beauty enhancing the horror of it all – being right in the middle of this.

In conclusion, I’m adding this book to my shelf of perfection and I warmly recommend it to anyone who enjoys beautiful and moving literature. Now back to the maelstrom …

all-the-light-we-cannot-see-1a34300f

Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. His books and stories have been best-sellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country.

***

“We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people.”

I’ve been a little late in discovering the great Haruki Murakami. Despite this lack of timeliness, I have become a big fan of his; devouring book after book from his back catalogue. During the past year, I have read a ton of his works, and I am loving every single title.

Yesterday, I finished The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

And when I put down my Kindle (as it was downloading the next Murakami title,) I wondered what it is about this genius that makes his book so satisfying to me. Somehow, he creates perfection, but how?

He is a master with words, creating music with every sentence, he paints the most vivid images, you can feel everything he describes, you lose yourself in the story, you walk with him, eat with him, sleep, laugh, cry, yell, despair and triumph with him, he does what every author aspire to do: He creates a livable world from cover to cover.

“In Haida’s brain there must have been a kind of high-speed circuit built to match the pace of his thoughts, requiring him to occasionally engage his gears, to let his mind race for fixed periods of time. If he didn’t—if he kept on running in low gear to keep pace with Tsukuru’s reduced speed—Haida’s mental infrastructure would overheat and start to malfunction. Or at least, Tsukuru got that impression.”

What astounds me is that he is a bestseller like the less good authors, the pop market authors, who spit out one title after the other to a jubilant audience who doesn’t care too much about titles being well-written/well-plotted/well-done/well … good. So how can it be that this extremely talented author, a master, can enter the bestseller world without compromising the quality of his writing?

He isn’t really a fantasy author, the fantasy world being a world of a huge audience and some extremely talented bestselling authors (and some less good ones.) No, he is on the broad and very diverse fiction market, and he is a bestseller.

One of a kind, indeed. He has that special literary x-factor, which I am still trying to pinpoint.

Yes, he always write in the same settings, he always writes about jazz, about classical music, about cooking, whiskey, loneliness, women, about Japan (obviously,) which make some people call him a hack. However, a hack often doesn’t have much to say, and Murakami always has a lot to say; between the lines, underneath the sentences, between the chapters, hiding cover to cover, there’s a lot being said. His stories are lined with emotion, themes, philosophy and truth. They are deep and insightful and they always change you and your life a little.

This is the highest praise I can ever give an author. That he or she changes your life with their work. It might just be a story about a man doing or not doing something in his life, overcoming some obstacles and succeeding or failing, and then it goes on, but the story changes you a bit as you read it.

Haruki Murakami does something with his writing. With every word, he sends out a message to his readers, unconsciously, underneath it all, he tells something about being a human being in this world. And how precious it is. And how rare. In an age of disconnection, loneliness, boundaries and estrangement, here comes this author writing about how it feels to be human. He is creating a bond, an understanding, making life more bearable even when writing tragedy.

“Because I have no sense of self. I have no personality, no brilliant color. I have nothing to offer. That’s always been my problem. I feel like an empty vessel. I have a shape, I guess, as a container, but there’s nothing inside. I just can’t see myself as the right person for her. I think that the more time passes, and the more she knows about me, the more disappointed Sara will be, and the more she’ll choose to distance herself from me.”

I’m a fan, of course, there should be no doubt about this by now. Not everyone likes Murakami. Many veer back when an author becomes too popular. There’s strange pride in hating an author everyone likes, and pride in loving an author everyone hates. I’ll get back to that another day. Again, this thing about being a talented bestseller …

“Our lives are like a complex musical score. Filled with all sorts of cryptic writing, sixteenth and thirty-second notes and other strange signs. It’s next to impossible to correctly interpret these, and even if you could, and could then transpose them into the correct sounds, there’s no guarantee that people would correctly understand, or appreciate, the meaning therein. No guarantee it would make people happy. Why must the workings of people’s lives be so convoluted?”

No matter how many words I add to this, I’ll never be able to describe my love for Murakami’s work. For perfection. My words won’t be able to encompass what it is he does with his writing. I know some out there will understand exactly what I mean, and some will disagree. Murakami is in my perfection category. Another perfectly whole and wonderful perfection bubble.

Oh, please don’t burst it.

(Image  and top quote from Wikipedia. All other quotes are from The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage)

Passion

Passion.

Now there’s a word full of meanings. I like to think I have a lot of passion in me. Passion for literature, passion for music, passion for ideas and concepts that are meaningful to me. When I truly take something on, it turns to passion. But in order for me to become passionate about something, it needs to be whole. Now, how is something whole? Something turns whole when it has everything in itself. When it is perfection.

This might still be hard to grasp because this is my own definition, something I feel, something that feels logical to me.

Using yesterdays post about Leonard Cohen for an example: Leonard Cohen, to me, is whole. The concept Leonard Cohen is whole. I can relate to everything about him and his music, nothing sticks out. His music is brilliant, his lyrics are pure poetry, they are meaningful, his ideas on life relate to mine, he has no offensive opinions (in accordance with mine) and he is über cool. I.e.: the concept Leonard Cohen is whole.

This idea on wholeness can make things a little difficult for me. If there’s a song I like, the beat, the bass, the rhythm, it can be ruined for me if the lyrics are wrong. Being wrong would be that they convey an offensive idea, that they are vulgar, or just dumb. If this happens, I can’t listen to it anymore. The same goes for books. I might love the plot idea, but if the writing is wrong, I can’t read it – and the other way around. It might also be that I find out the author stands for something offensive to me. It ruins the whole.

This idea that it needs to be whole isn’t making my life any easier. In order to become really passionate about something, it needs the wholeness. There are a few things I can truly be passionate about, one, as mentioned, is Leonard Cohen. It doesn’t mean I can’t like something, I might like a book although the author did/was or is something I don’t appreciate. But it stays at level: Like.

Passion.

Passion makes the world go around. It turns on that fire inside, it engulfs you, spins you, makes your heart beat like a drum, it takes over everything and in those moments of perfection, you truly live.

Yet passion is a dangerous business when it is based on wholeness. If you discover that splinter, that flaw, it all explodes around you – only ruins left behind. You look around you and you see the gray shards and lifeless images of a former passion and it leaves you feeling hurt and raw as if something was stolen from you.

So why build up such demands, castles made of glass and thin porcelain, knowing they are so easily brought down? Why not base passion on something less? Something not demanding absolute perfection?

It just doesn’t work that way.

Passion is perfection – perfection is passion. Black or white. No middle ground.

This demand for perfection is a passion for me.