REASONS

My best friend sends me an email telling me that he was invited to lecture in Norway. “Norway will never let go, will it?” he asked, knowing the answer in advance, at least where I'm concerned. But then I have a way of influencing the people close to me, so Norway has also become special to him. I took him to Norway 9 years ago, and he still keeps talking about it, even though this is the first time he returns. Five hours later, my car flew swiftly on the road, green lights or red lights all the same, to find myself in the company of The Oslo String Quartet. I took a sit in the front row, and praised my luck that although arriving in the last minute, I still found all the seats right under the players' noses unoccupied. Well, this is Jyllinge, after all, and thank God for it. The people in the country have a way of keeping themselves in the background, which, especially at concerts, suits me excellently. The string quartet! Ahhh! Sitting right there, up front, and close up, how sublime! It's not only the breathing into the instruments that you can hear, and which gets to resonate even more than otherwise, but you also get to see the sweat coming down the necks of the performers. The drops of bodily water were so intensely dispersed that I got some on my Max Azria pants. "I breath Norwegian air," I told myself, and it's enough to make me utterly ecstatic. It enhances the autumn smell in Olden which I'll be breathing in October. Thank God. While looking at the crooked cross, and listening mainly to Schumann, I pledged with myself to make a real move for the presidency of the Schubert Society which has arranged the concert, rather to my dissatisfaction—WTF, get some Schubert on the program, for Christ's sake—and then show my satisfaction at the enforced realization that I was right to move to Roskilde in the first place. Three years ago, I said to myself, why the fuck Roskilde, when it hit me. For three reasons: Bach was here, Schubert was here, and someone else I liked was here, but now I can't remember. And yet, reasons are reasons enough. It maybe that everything passes, my memory included, but everything is not always everything. At least that I remember.