24.1.2024
As some of you may know, it was a hard year for me in London. In general, I think post Brexit UK was really dysfunctional, culturally confused, and just a mess. Politically, I found it very hard to accept the conditions under which the British society had decided to operate. I met a few wonderful people, we shared a lovely evening at my apartment on West End Lane when I threw the farewell party, just next to Abbey Road, where we danced and spoke till the summer night fell.
After having spent August till October between Berlin and Denmark fully engaged with The Man Without Qualities, I found myself finally having some space to reflect on my time in London, something which was rather fruitful. As I’ve been moving continually since the mid 10’s, almost once a year, I haven’t really had a moment to actually allocate my memories and spend time with some of the thoughts I hadn’t had resources to care for.
The end of the 10’s was a notoriously uncomfortable period for me, which was why I left Scandinavia for good and relocated to Prague. Finding myself now, after yet a new city and a new handful of promises and wonders, I could finally reflect on the early 2020’s when I was in Prague and Berlin, which was really a period of isolation and a time I have very little recollection of. I wrote the script for an abandoned novel called SUM TOTAL and then War Novel back then. Or, War Novel was actually conceived in Berlin same year 2020. Writing completely absorbed my life, but of course there was also a recording session in Denmark in January 2020 just a few days after I had moved out of Gothenburg. After that session, which just lasted a few days, I went straight back to Prague where I was very unhappy. It was a rather peculiar happiness because it was unhappy. I read my way through my library which was a very rewarding thing to do. I read Kant’s entire oeuvre in just six months. It was such a remarkable time, that I ironically recall very little from. Only the script and Kant.
However, in Berlin I managed to finalise the script and really dwell deeply in war literature and theory, in Clausewitz’ writing which is so incredibly Kantian, and then of course discovering just a marvellous writer, who I thought to be the first philosopher of the 21st century, Manabrata Guha. An excellent writer, I cannot recommend him enough.
The publisher Gyldendal and I started working, I think, just when I had moved to Paris in 2021. I might be wrong with the dates. I can’t keep trace of my biography anymore.
Now, when I finally had a moment after October, I went back to the novel again and worked on it, which was incredibly demanding as I hadn’t existed in the Danish language for so many years. It was really demanding because there were no spontaneous resources in my vocabulary anymore. It was really a slow burn. I sent the script back again just before January. Let’s see. Four years of interesting work with them. I think they’re a great publishing house.
Anyway, having returned to Paris, what will happen within the next few weeks is that I’ll enter the studio again. The demos I tracked in November really had a strong sense of London in them. The antagonisms and anxiety of the British society and my experiences there, really informed my work.
I’ve really been looking forward to that, entering the studio. The next few months will only be about that. I can’t wait to share the results with you and hopefully a few snippets from the process.
Oh, and if you’re in London, my good friend David Ferrando Giraut opens a new solo show at Chemist Gallery out in South East. If it wasn’t for Fashion Week in Paris, I’d definitely been there for the private view tomorrow.