I covered this festival as a photographer for the Grapevine magazine holding little expectations of what it would bring. Sónar felt like the Airwaves festival but without the queues, walking, fries, friends and crowds. It also took place after 7pm so no daytime gigs while you ate your fries at the Laundry whilst trying to glimpse the band playing through the bar's cabinet. There were more DJs, more dancing, but not as much of that as I'd expect from an electronic music festival, and it featured some of the bands you'd hope to catch at Airwaves.

What is electronic music these days anyhow? In the late 80s when it was on the rise in the USA (totally behind the times) the cornucopia of classifications we have today did not exist. No cosmic disco, euro disco, speedcore, trancecore, goa trance hard bag, ghetto tech, dubstep, trip hop, or any of the multitudinous other experimental classifications which now exist. It was ALL experimental and all electronic. But classification is what we humans do. Modern music is so often a hybrid what isn't electronic music these days aside from music like Brahms? Even the Kronos Quartet got mixed up in electronica to our musical content. The more 'electronic' the better in my opinion. The most awe inspiring acts were a mixture of the two. Visit the grapevine.is for reviews. 

You are welcome to give me some feedback. With or without digital delay.

photo by Romi Schmitz taken at Arctic Henge, Raufarhöfn, Iceland

Like Stonehenge in southern England, Arctic Henge acts as a kind of huge sundial, capturing sunlight and casting shadows. It has four aligned six-metre-high gates with a 10-metre central column. When completed it will be 52 metres in diameter. It is still being built from locally quarried basalt rock on an outcrop of land in north-east Iceland, overlooking the remote village of Raufarhöfn – the corner of the mainland closest to the Arctic Circle. 

There are other postcodes which you will have never heard of, and even if you live in Reykjavík, you will have never travelled to. For example Breiðholt 111. I knew about this neighbourhood because a friend grew up there. She once took me there and we walked around the area she grew up in. The "nice" part of Breiðholt. People refer to it as the ghetto of Reykjavík. 

Yesterday I sat down with a local artist and he showed me photographs which revealed a side of that neighbourhood and Iceland I had never seen. Poverty, ill health, drug use, violence, isolation, things you probably do not associate with Iceland. Except perhaps isolation. Even though I've heard these things exist here, I had never really crossed paths with them, and I did not truly associate them with Iceland either.

The mainstream media has painted a very broad pretty picture as have the airlines and the tourist board. Instagram does a pretty good job of whitewashing as well. That is not to say there are not nice neighbourhoods and good things about Iceland. There are. However, there is a lot wrong here too, things which need improving, corruption which needs rectifying, neglected people and areas which need investment and support.

The influx of money into the country does not necessarily mean better lives for those who are lost or impoverished. Not without insistence. With all the media and information in the world, it is more important than ever to realise that whatever you see is likely to only be the tip of the iceberg...and the nice part of the neighbourhood. This is why independent art and journalism and those content providers without purely capitalist agendas need to be identified and supported. Pay the artists. They are the canaries in the coal mine. No artists means gas for everyone else.

That very same day, on the very same path, walked a different person who wrote this...

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]]>Reykjavík 107, 101 Missing 1Gabrielle MotolaWed, 19 Apr 2017 12:29:46 +0000https://www.gabriellemotola.com/blog/2017/4/on-writing-an-equal-difference547b6ff3e4b0913376775ed2:547b8908e4b0780d55c27bd3:58f7552a197aea4e201a5811I have written about my observations and internal life in journals since I was a teenager and take great pleasure in drafting any kind of text, this piece included. But I began writing for other people’s eyes only a couple of years ago. Over the course of writing An Equal Difference, I figured out what I needed to work at my best. I learned to listen to what I needed to keep myself focused and enjoy the process.I have written about my observations and internal life in journals since I was a teenager and take great pleasure in drafting any kind of text, this piece included. But I began writing for other people’s eyes only a couple of years ago. Over the course of writing An Equal Difference, I figured out what I needed to work at my best. I learned to listen to what I needed to keep myself focused and enjoy the process.

This is my first book and it weighs in at 20,000 words and 165 photographs. I am originally a photographer but with this project there was too much to say for pictures alone to convey the story. Words were necessary. Like many before me, Iceland has played a hand in turning me into a writer. Icelandic culture is rooted in storytelling.

Of the many events leading up to my maiden voyage to the country in the summer of 2013, there was one distinct moment that called me to Iceland. I was standing on Charlotte Road in Shoreditch in September 2008, having coffee with some colleagues, when the guys from the Financial Timescame shuffling up the street. They arrived looking distressed and told us that Lehman Brothers had just crashed. I later read in the papers that Iceland wanted to feminise its banking system. Icelanders were analysing the hyper-masculine behaviours that had led to the financial crash and discussing what could be done to prevent a recurrence. They were not blaming men or women. I thought this was wise and wanted to find out more about the Icelandic mindset. So in 2013 I made the first of more than a dozen trips to Reykjavík to speak to and photograph members of Icelandic society.

I didn’t decide to write a book until well into the second year of a project that took three to complete. It grew out of a need to stop repeating conversations with not only the people I was photographing, but with everyone I came into contact with in my daily life. I wanted to put what I was experiencing into a physical format that could be shared. In a sense the book wrote itself before I even sat down at my desk, although the process of pulling it out of the alphabet soup of my mind still proved challenging.

Southern Iceland where I wrote An Equal Difference

I gave myself nine months to complete the final photography and do the lion’s share of the writing. Last October I rented a quiet summer house in southern Iceland. I sat down to write every day, sometimes at 6 a.m., sometimes at 10 a.m. Some days I preferred to exercise in the morning and begin writing in the afternoon. Sometimes I worked late at night, if inspiration came. When I pulled late-night sessions, I used a program called Flux to dim my computer screen and give it an amber hue, which wakes the brain less than the native bluish light. 

I wrote every day for at least four consecutive days at a time, then took a day or two off to recharge. Time off was as essential to the process as writing. The length of time I spent writing depended on my goals and my energy. I am not a machine, and my energy levels I vary from day to day. The secret lay in being aware of my capabilities and not driving myself into the ground out of a sense of duty or panic. On days when I had more mental energy, I pushed myself, sometimes ten to fourteen hours; on the days I did not, I took it easy and soon regained force.

Early on I bought an ergonomic stand for my laptop which helped my posture tremendously. I wrote most of the book at home but I also spent time in cafés, restaurants, libraries, benches, planes, busses and even cars. Most of us move from our teens to our twenties into middle age without much consideration for our bodies. We take for granted our youth and expect our limber frame to follow us to our death. Follow it does, but only by dragging it if you neglect it.

Every hour or so I made a conscious effort to get out of my chair and stretch. I drank plenty of water. I ate healthy food. I drank alcohol in moderation or abstained for periods. When I found myself blocked – something I experience as frustration – I went to my backyard and jumped on the eight-foot trampoline until I was physically exhausted. Trampolines are ubiquitous in Iceland. I also kept up a near-daily regimen of exercise, mostly swimming and, in winter, cross-country skiing. This helped to relax my mind, restore focus and allow me to begin writing again with refreshed perspective.  

I wrote what I could and then I left it. I read what I wrote and rewrote it. I rewrote that. I teased it out into a massive beehive hairdo of words, thousands more than the target, then I shaved it back into a crew cut. My editor, Robert Doran, helped me enormously with this and taught me a lot about economy of language.

By April of 2016 I had 60,000 words written and probably a lot more in scrap notes. Then I tossed it all and began fresh. This was scary, but it felt right. I referred back to that material when I needed to, but for the most part I wrote from memory. In the week prior to the two weeks spent editing the book with Robert, I broke the writing into distinct essays. With Robert’s input I rewrote what became the final manuscript. During that period I worked for fourteen days without a day off. It wasn’t ideal – it was just what the situation required. Although it was tough, I got through it, and best of all I wrote what I meant to say.

Writing something I feel passionate about and putting it out there feels like giving a gift to someone and being excited by the prospect that they will love it. I wrote this book out of a need to say things and hear them said. I wrote it for those who think our world can be better, our media can be more responsible, our leaders can be less corrupt, our children can be better cared for, our families better supported and most of all we can better accept ourselves and each other as equals, by which I mean we can have equal respect for one another. I especially wrote this book for those who don’t think this is possible.

Kirkjubæjarklaustur Motocross Enduro Race

I have learned to be kind to myself and accept that I have a unique make up and that we don’t all flourish under the same conditions. I can not thrive on a nine-to-five schedule, though I am grateful to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that today we have an eight-hour work day, down significantly from what it once was. I need version 3.0. I know I require variety and consistency, health and balance to function well. Above all else I need regular sleep, and when I am stressed and under pressure, I need to avoid stimulants and depressants of any kind. Including sugar! A crystal-clear mind emerges from that approach and it is the best mind I have to write with. An unbalanced or intoxicated mind spills more mess than sense onto the page, and then I have to work twice as hard to clean it up. I don’t know how Hemingway did it. But then again what worked for Hemingway is what worked for for him. Trampolines work for me.

An Equal Difference published by Restless Machinery is out now and available worldwide on www.anequaldifference.com  ∆ ISBN 9780995485600  ∆ ©2016  G.S. Motola all rights reserved.

Three years ago I took my first dip in a geothermally heated Icelandic pool; Sundhöllin if I remember correctly. It was winter. I walked on snow and ice and lived to tell the tale. I even survived the cubicle-free changing rooms. American by birth, I had spent the previous thirteen years living in Britain. I arrived in Iceland terribly body conscious. The cultures make us so. It’s not something naturally occuring, because naturally we’re all naked. It is possible to change at any point in your life. If you want to.

As I left the pool’s changing room shrouded in my towel, bathing suit clutched between the fold, to my horror I gradually realised that there were no private shower cubicles. Only a group space which was already quite full of naked, soapy women. I was aware that we had to shower with the complimentary soap without our bathing suits. I saw the signs and read them and felt a bit queasy as I did. I was going to have to rub my private parts with my soapy hands and rinse them in front of other human beings, with whom I was not intimately acquainted.

I froze for a moment in the intersection of shower room and dry room attempting to hatch a plan. I watched people fold their towels and place them in metal racks before entering the showers. Without their towels. Without their suits. Without shame. I surrendered and dropped my towel off in its metal cubbyhole and headed for the hot water.

I’d like to erect a sign over the cashier window of every Icelandic pool: “Welcome to our pool. Please leave your shame here” because in Iceland there is none. Not around basic nudity at least. They don’t even get our sitcom jokes because they are mercifully free from the mentality which finds anything funny or shaming about being naked in front of one another. However something altogether different happens when sex is involved. I hear Icelanders require large quantities of alcohol for comfort. I suppose they are not alone there.

Anyhow, I digress. As a reaction to the aquatic aspect of Icelandic life and culture and based on my experiences as a frequent swimmer in both British and American pools I wrote an article. Originally published in the Grapevine Magazine in 2014, it captures the period of time when I realised it was awesome to be shamelessly naked and even better to be clean before getting into what is essentially a large bath with lots of other people. I’ve updated the article but kept in the classic parts which are as classic things tend to be, timeless.

Published First Grapevine.is December 20, 2014

Today we’re going to swim at the London Fields Lido: a 50 metre outdoor heated swimming pool in Hackney, London. “Do we have to shower naked at this one or can we get in it dirty, like pigs?” asks my mother.  My mother is a native New Yorker born on the island of Manhattan.  I am American by birth but British by naturalisation (I’ve lived in the UK for nearly half my life). We just returned to London from a week in Reykjavík, making that my eighth week this year. We swam nearly every day and the first time I felt compelled to explain ahead of time that you must shower, naked, with soap, before you're allowed anywhere near an Icelandic swimming pool.  My mother looked unsurprisingly, a little worried.

What is the deterrent to showering naked before getting into a pool, to being naked in the company of others for that matter? Of the same sex? The only times the Americans or British are ever really naked in front of other people for an extended period of time is during sex or at the doctors and neither is always absolutely comfortable. For Americans there is a built-in cultural self-consciousness that borders on shame. Like our language, we get it from the British. Icelandic friends have recounted their bemusement at an episode of ‘Friends’ where Joey walks out into the living room naked and everyone violently recoils shouting for him to go put some clothes on. This doesn’t translate to Icelandic.

In the Icelandic locker rooms, and I can only speak for the women’s, one can usually recongise the Americans (and the British for that matter) by the towels they wear to walk to the showers. As if our modesty protected until the showers, will be preserved in them.  I can understand though. My first time in an Icelandic swimming pool I was acutely aware of my shyness. Feeling uncomfortable but being adaptive, I pretended to be invisible and got on with it, without a towel. However by this time around, being a regular swimmer in Iceland, I am over the nudity. I confirmed this over the summer when I ran into a woman I met at Kiki bar in the pool showers. She had texted me at some point at 5 AM one morning, but I never texted her back. That’s potentially embarrassing enough with clothes on. However, we had a full discourse about what happened and why, all the while she was shampooing her hair and washing her breasts.

The London Lido has for all the people that frequent this pool, five outdoor showers with inadequately timed ‘on’ cycles operated by pushbuttons, and three indoor showers in the women’s changing room. I suspect the same amount in the men’s. That’s eleven showers for an entire facility the size of the Laugardalslaug outdoor pool. The day we went, the only five outdoor showers were out of service due to maintenance.  “When you think about it people are not clean when they go into pools. I go under there (the pool showers back in America) with a little trickle of water to get wet so they don’t tell me to shower, and I don’t use soap. It’s healthy that people are made to wash their assholes and their genitals and under their arms. (Also their feet and heads). It shows a societal value. It shows that society values cleanliness.”  my mom remarked. On sunny days at the Lido the water is clouded with sunscreen, sweat, and whatever else. 

There are so many advantages to Icelandic pools and I’ve not even started on the geothermal angle. Given adequate time to observe, reflect and compare the American and British pool systems with the Icelandic ones, aside from cleanliness, the lack of ‘modesty’ cubicles means that we see each other’s bodies. Real bodies. Not airbrushed bodies. Ones of all shapes and sizes with folds, zits and cellulite, varicose veins, beautiful and bizarre, you name it. I exclaimed to myself the first time I was in an Icelandic locker room ‘oh so that’s what other women look like.’ What a relief.

published first in the Grapevine Magazine, Reykjaviík, Iceland

Image adapted from Lucas Cranach the Elder’s “Adam and Eve” 

It began at the Chicago mall where they filmed Weird Science. I spotted this hot pink skateboard with green grab rails and a huge black tail guard. I placed it it on the carpeted floor and stepped on it. I went one way, the board went the other. My nine-year-old self thought, “Skateboarding is impossible.” Too late, I was hooked.

The next year I moved to South Florida. The first boy I ever kissed took me under his skate-or-die wing after we decided, or rather he decided, we should just be friends. We removed those pesky rails and the tail guard. After some tutelage and lot of practice I was ready for a real board. I got a Vision Ken Park Mini. It had a proper sloping tail, with a more streamlined shape, a nose, lighter wheels, faster bearings, and better trucks. It was black with blue swirls and some kind of claw-like creature on the underside. Slowly my friends and I became a crew. We ventured out in search of the better curb, the faster rail, seven days a week, every day after school and all weekend. I don’t think I did anything else for the duration of middle school.

I was always the only girl. I tried to teach my girlfriends to skate but it was either too hard or they were not really interested. They were definitely interested in the boys though. I found myself simultaneously inside two totally separate worlds, both of which I understood comfortably even though they did not understand each other quite as easily. I was relating to boys from a different perspective than my girlfriends, and relating to my girlfriends in a different way than most of my boyfriends could. It was a position of privilege and intrigue. I recall walking into a class one day to hand a note to the teacher. Two younger boys at the back of the class started whispering “That’s her, that’s the girl who skates.”

Each new encounter with a group of skater boys resulted in the same ritual. They watched me with skepticism, boards stood on tails, hats on shaggy heads, eyes askance. I had to prove myself above all the other boys even though I was more skilled than some. The alternative was to give into the nerves, bail on a trick, and face ridicule. Rather than land a trick and smile scathingly at them I would meet their gaze and sense their excitement and genuine respect. I would smile. We would connect. Of course there was the occasional dickhead but my friends backed me up. Those boys never saw another girl skateboard. I loved blowing their minds almost as much as I loved skating.

Though I don’t skate anymore, I still love skateboarding and stop to watch whenever it crosses my path. Even though I’m a photographer it’s one of the things I haven’t felt drawn to photograph. Skateboarders are a popular subject among photographers, but the pleasure for me comes from watching them in motion. I’ve never wanted to freeze them in time to examine them fractionally.

Last November I was in Iceland to shoot a portrait project about women. Iceland is known for gender equality, and the country routinely ranks among the best places in the world to be a woman. A week into my stay I was walking down Laugavegur Street with a partially prolapsed disc in my back. This happened to be my first day before shooting and I’d been to the chiropractor twice already. I remember thinking to myself “thank god” I have a bunch of tiny Olympus OMDs and not giant Canon 5Ds to lug around.

Three boys on skateboards whizzed by and stopped ahead. I plodded on and caught up with them. They must’ve be about 10 years old. I saw one trying to ollie and struggling. As I passed I called out “It’s hard! It took me a month to learn to ollie.”

“You skated?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes when I was about your age.”

We all chatted for a bit about finding skate parks and losing contests. I asked them if they knew about Mozart the composer. Yes of course they did. But did they know Mozart never won any prizes (ever) or that Charlie Chaplin finished third place in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest. They were all skeptical and delighted to learn that even the greats aren’t always recognised for their talent (and in Chaplin’s case not even for himself). Then one of the boys who recently finished fourth in a skate contest fist bumped his chest and said, “It’s truly an honour to meet a girl who skated.” They zoomed off to the skate park trying to ollie everything in their path. As I continued to my next shoot, I remembered what it felt like to play with boys as a child. Not as the only girl, not as one of the boys, but as a respected peer.

Originally written for Ladybits on Medium as part of their "Only Woman in the Room" collection. 

I own two motorbikes in London, one for looks, the other for speed and comfort. Neither of these bikes or any of the thousands of miles I’ve ridden on them adequately prepared me for what I was about to experience when I went off-roading in Iceland for the first time. My motocross sensi for the day was Jói who is an accomplished postural therapist and has also been motor-cross and enduro biking since his early teens. From the kitchen, I felt rather than heard the rumble of his black Ford Explorer truck turn into my street. As fantasised, it was a flatbed towing two large bikes and a smaller one. Small as it was, a 250 is powerful enough to mess you up if things go wrong. We went to pick up his friend Árni, filled up the truck and the petrol can, got a hotdog or two and some drinks.  I think I have eaten more hotdogs here in Iceland in a month than Fenway Park season ticket holders have in a year.

We arrived at our final destination, about 30 minutes East of Reykjavik on Highway One, which was a flat dirt plain surrounded by mountains with a single trailer structure containing a changing room and some toilets. Several dirt tracks and practice courses surrounded it. As if I wasn't feeling out of my depth already, cue Gunnar Nelson the MMA and BJJ fighter riding up to say hello.

Off roading requires a serious amount of gear which made my usual road gear seem like a nightgown. The kneepads came first. Four straps long and deadly, you could crack someone's pelvis with them. Or rather, prevent a steel rod from entering your leg on one ride as Jói's pads had done.  Then came the trousers, shirt, breast and back plates, another shirt, armoured jacket, helmet, goggles, and gloves. The boots are like downhill ski boots on steroids which made me look like a storm trooper. I wondered how was I going to use my toe to shift gears in these? The helmet, though my size, was so tight that I could feel my cheeks puckering through the gap in my molars. I'm told it's supposed to be like that. And you get surprisingly used to the discomfort after a while.

I'm getting a good back sweat on from the fear. But forward and onward.

Jói fuelled the bikes and checked them over. He set me up on my bike. After what seemed to be ten minutes he handed it over to me. Almost as soon as I touched it, it stalled. Sitting down and trying to bring my booted leg up to my chest to kick the starter for the first time gave me a cramp under my ribs. I worked on my technique. It started at last. He directed me to the beginner's track to get the hang of the bike. Round and round I went surprised at just how bad a driver I was. Turns were impossible at any respectable speed, I had no clue what I was doing with the gears as I had no feeling in my foot, and the slipping and sliding of the back tire was freaking me out.

After a few more turns around the track, I got better at dealing with the slip and slide and relaxed some. Just as I returned the bike to stand it up and rest for a bit, Jói and Árni returned from their (bigger) practice track. They were getting ready to hit some other track nearby. A lot of the day's conversation was in Icelandic.  Good practice for me but bad for surprises.

Árni motioned to me to follow him in the opposite direction and we set off around the corner...and into the valley. We rode up a gravel path laden with coarse rocks and larger rocks tenuously embedded in unstable gravel. Inquisitively, I asked 'So if I see a big rock in my way I avoid it right? I don't try to ride over it?"

"Avoid the big rocks." Jói said, deadpan. Of course he then completely contradicted himself. I followed Árni, suppressing a rising panic. The adrenaline was nice though, as was the scenery. After we hit a particularly colourful patch of larger rocks, mixed with sliding gravel on an incline, I stalled the bike. Getting it started on an incline was no easy task and I became exhausted from the effort. I was challenged by the repetitive pumping at the kick starter for one, and two, finding neutral with my stormtrooper boots was about as precise as playing the game 'Operation' with a hammer. I finally got the bike started and tried to make an ascent up the chunky gravel path.

My fear was foe and after 20 meters or so I slipped and slammed onto my left side.  I tried to stop the bike from getting scratched up as it belonged to Jói´s son. It wasn't a bad fall but bad enough to stop me there. We stored the bike in a ditch and Jói took me on the back of his bike the rest of the way down. Atta atta atta atta  as we bounced down the mountain.  "So this is how it ends!" I thought. But he is a master of this machine and after I stopped panicking I realised how smooth the ride was in comparison to mine. Relaxing is one of the keys to getting the hang of riding off road. Not looking down is the other key.

We arrived in this expansive valley, scooped out like a fluted punchbowl between mountains, made up of lava rocks, coarse stones and boulders. There, a track had been dragged out in the base of the bowl. Jói and the guys got to work. First in the undulating dirt and gravel path. Then the rocks.

While in the valley, instead of riding, I photographed, and was relieved to do something I was familiar with. For a moment I forgot about the return journey. I was going to have to pick up that bike and ride it back down that hill and around the mountain or push it walking. And I was not going to push it walking. We arrived at the bike and Jói brought it onto the path. I got myself in position on the alternative path facing downhill. I saw Jói waiting for me on the other side and as I came down he motioned "YOU GO GIRL" with his fist. Then I stalled. Great. After kicking it to hell it started and promptly stalled again. Jói came over and firmly stated something like "What are you doing looking down? You know where first gear is! Why are you looking at your foot? It's there! Always!” He then repeated Árni's advice about looking ahead on the path and not down at the 'rocks of death' beneath. This serious directive which went straight to my muscles; and they obeyed.

It was only then that I had my first glimpse of the joy of the off-road world and as it opened up to me, I drove home in first, then second, third, feeling the slight shifting of the ground underneath me evening out into a gentle purring path of soft terrain. The shocks of the bike felt more and more like I was sitting on a Lazy Boy sofa. I began to trust the machine, look ahead and enjoy.

The best way to see the countryside is on a motorcycle. Better yet on an off-road one. Take a Land Rover if you require a shielded sense of safety, horses if you love animals, or walk if you love to take it slow. But if you ride motorcycles you know what I'm talking about.

You can contact Arctic Rider for tours and more information on riding on http://www.arcticrider.is or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/arctic.rider

A literary thanks to @valurgunn 

Whilst in the crowd photographing at Sónar Festival in February I noticed a group of young kids in the front row pressed up against the barriers. They were in a gang of three, topped with woolly hats, beaming a fierce individuality through their wide open eyes. Their personalities struck me from the looks on their faces, as clearly as grumpy, happy and bashful. I'm sorry to compare them to dwarves, at 5'3" (that's 160cm Iceland) I get plenty of short jokes, so I know how it feels. But if the shoe fits Cinderella...

Who are these kids?

Gradually and then all at once, as memories tend to surface, I remembered them from the previous summer. I was at the Secret Solstice in the pit photographing Emmsjé Gauti.

Emmsjé Gauti on stage at Secret Solstice 2014

When I turned to photograph the crowd there they were! My first thought was 'do their parents know where they are'? Then, 'who are their parents'? They must be the coolest parents on earth.

I wonder if they will be the future face of music, one day facing us from a stage as we cram against the barriers to scream, shout and dance to their music.  I count five kids between the two pictures. That's band size enough.  But, Iceland. Do you know where your children are? It would be okay if they were here. Surely. And then I think, wait, this is Iceland. Who's that row of girls behind them?

Last Seen: Sónar Reykjavik 2015

I thought it would be a good idea to have Icelandic bands (or members) take visiting bands out for a meal or something Icelandic and whatever came out came out of it. Without an agenda it would surely be good or nothing.

Alison MacNeil (kimono) also cited them so we joined forces.

Keep in mind that Airwaves is not just a music festival. It’s an endurance sport. And everyone is ‘competing’ across different events. Alison wins across the mean of events as far as I know. She went to bed long after I had, having played a fucking great show, danced more, and consumed far, far more than I ever could. Despite this her perky message came across at 11:30 am “Hey! Wasabi!? It’s at Sea baron right? What time?”

I came from the pool and dropped my friends Emma and Byron off for a coffee at Stofan and drove to get Jófríður. We arrived at the Sea Baron on time, as did Bo Ningen. They are Japanese after all, and it would be very rude to show up late. 

Wikipedia describes Bo Ningen as a “four-piece acid punk band, consisting of Taigen Kawabe (bass/ vocals), Yuki Tsujii (guitar), Kohhei Matsuda (guitar) and Monchan Monna (drums). They come from Gumma, Tajimi, Nishinomiya, and Tokyo.”

They arrived with their tour manager Rachel, and Taigen’s partner. 

This was Taigen last night:

We ordered mostly lobster soup, some fish kebabs, a vegetarian pate, and got seated at a table upstairs. I never even knew that existed! The world is full of marvels if you get up in the morning. It was not as picturesque as downstairs, but much more comfortable for lunch for eleven. Well, ten. Alison didn’t eat. She turned up late and got one of their free coffees. Nothing else. A piece of bread. I have been there. Haven’t you? She was silent but observant at the table. Qualities I have yet to master together but admire. The only thing she said to me the entire time was "I've never heard a Fender Cyclone sound like a cyclone." That is Alison as I've come to know her. Silent yet succinct and memorable.

As we settled in, it wasn’t difficult to get past that ‘this is an interview’ vibe, because it wasn’t really. It was lunch. And it turned out we had a lot in common. If I had done the most basic research on them before this meeting, I would have ruined the genuine surprise. 

The first thing we established sitting down was that Bo Ningen all live in London. Hackney to be more specific. A five-minute walk from my recently vacated flat. I lived there for eight years and we share a love of Palm II, the green grocers off the high street. It carries Einstök beer among many others. I asked Bo Ningen if they knew Tonkotsu or Off Broadway. A ramen noodle restaurant and a cocktail bar which Emma and Byron own respectively. Of course they did. They have eaten at Tonk more than once. Funny, because after seeing their show last night Emma was like “I must get them over for a show at Tonk!” assuming that they lived in Japan.

We talked about touring and living in and out of different places at a quickened pace. Though they live in London, they haven’t lived much in London lately, as they’ve been on the road. It turns out that Bo Ningen have a tour manager in common with Jófríður. Jófríður also worked with her when Pascal Pinon went to Japan. Sometimes you have to travel far to find good people who have been around the corner all along. 

We talked about photographs and how self conscious they can make us feel, especially when we photographers ask musicians to do the same thing over and over again without having done the most basic research on what has been done before. Erm. So. You guys have great hair. I bet that’s been done to death? Yes. We won’t go there. We didn’t. I forgot the cameras for lunch, I actually covered them with my scarf, more for my benefit than theirs. Something happens to me when I see a camera. Like a Magpie with shiny things. 

We talked about the similarities and differences in Japan, the USA, UK, Iceland, and the Nordics. In Japan it is very hard for a woman to work a job and then have a baby and then go back to that job. The support system isn’t in place like it is here in Iceland and culturally it is “very old fashioned,” as Yuki put it. 

I think that’s a great phrase for it. Because it suggests it needs changing without discounting or disrespecting it. They were surprised to learn about Iceland’s generous maternity and paternity leave, and Jófríður was surprised to hear about the USA’s two weeks unpaid gesture of a paternity leave. 

They all related the feeling of safety they experience here in Iceland to that of Japan, which is also a society where people mostly follow the rules and are polite. Rules? The good rules. Like don’t be a dick and steal people’s stuff or violate theirperson. You know?  Polite? Okay Icelanders don’t say sorry when they bump into you, but I’d give up the million sorries I hear a day in London if I could go clubbing and hang my coat up without fear of it being taken. 

They all agreed that though Japan feels safe, Iceland feels safer. Taigen use to take the train to school alone when he was six or seven, which is not at all uncommon for children in Japan. He would go alone but meet up with his friends and stuff, like in Harry Potter.

It’s not like Iceland is some kind of utopia. I know terrible shit happens here. As we walked along Laugavegur at 3am last night, Emma remarked on how extremely wasted everyone was. She was impressed at the level of commitment. I asked her if she had seen a fist fight in person before. She answered, “Mate I’m from Donnie” (Doncaster). It’s surprising how undramatic the blows are though. Not like in the movies. The momentum resembles a fist into a side of beef, which is actually how they make (foley) the sound into movies for fist fight scenes. 

London is definitely not like Iceland or Japan, nor is New York City for that matter. The why behind this is multifaceted and complex and we turned to our soup in silence. I am always grateful for the ease I feel here when I shoot like a flaming NASA space capsule out of NYC or London. I can relax. I can go to a club and put down my bag or hang up my coat and mostly, nothing bad happens. I hope this doesn’t change as more foreigners visit. It’s important that Iceland maintain those boundaries of culture if they can. 

At this point I’m not surprised Alison had to go. It’s not like she doesn’t love talking about this stuff. She just very badly needed to go back to bed, as do I which I will after I finish this day. Bo Ningen were delightful. And on stage they are that and so much more. Beautiful, horrific, fearsome, intense, all consuming. They connect and destroy and rebuild and slow down and do it over. Their show was like a ride that I want to go on again.

Gig half selfie

And their company is something I look forward to if we manage to connect in London. But they should definitely come back to Iceland. I mean they didn’t even get to swim in a pool or have ice cream! Crime! They completely devoured the gorgeous food at Sea Baron though and we all enjoyed it immensely. 

I think Jófríður went off down the road with them after to the flea market. We went to Valdís for ice cream. 

And now, I will go home. Which is here for the next six months or so.

Lunch was provided by Sægreifinn. We really love Sægreifinn. Thank you, Sægreifinn.  

I returned to Miami University with over 30 rolls of film back to Miami and enrolled in my first ever photography course. It was my sophomore year. I was actually a motion pictures student and we regularly shot 8 and 16mm film. But I wanted to explore beyond what the school offered for cinematography. As soon as I stepped into that dark room, and I mean the black room where you load film on to spools to be developed, I was hooked. No eyesight needed. Everything was touch and feel. The next revelation was that red darkroom you see in films. But what you can't know unless you have been in one is the smell; chemical pungency, somehow intoxicating. That was it. I was completely addicted. I loved the mesh of the complementary experiences. Out in the world, noise, sound, colour, motion. In the dark room, silence, stillness, touch and feel. Motion pictures required a huge team to create and at 18 I wasn't ready to or equipped to take that on.  So photography stuck even though commercially I spent ten years as a motion pictures editor and consultant. Avid, Final Cut, Premiere and the like.

Cut to now. It's been four years since I began using digital and many of my favourite cameras sit on the shelf. A Hasselblad, Leica, Voigtlanders, Nikons, and Mamiya's.  A friend (who is nothing short of a genius) got me into the Panasonic GF1 when it came out. I was skeptical but this was a way of working without the lab bill. I used it mostly to snap and not yet for commercial jobs. Don't get me wrong. I consider some of my best work to be my snaps.

After about a year or so Olympus launched the OM-D EM-5 and I bought one at that year's Focusing on Imaging show (now called The Photography Show). My GF1 got the shelf and was replaced by the EM-5 and the newer EM-1. I also have a Nikon D700 which I used for a while and still love the optical clarity of, but the weight and image quality is totally beaten and matched respectively by the OM-Ds. Sometimes I take the Nikon on jobs 'just in case'. I almost never use it. Old prejudices die hard.

I shoot a lot more live music now than I use to and I use the OM-Ds for this. I prefer the EM-1 for it's superior image quality in high ISOs but the EM-5 does a good job too. I usually shoot with two bodies and two lenses which have been primes up till now. Imminently I will get Olympus's 12-40mm 2.8 and the 40-150mm 2.8 which are said to be zooms as good as primes.

For 'Women of Iceland' I took three OM-D bodies with me and three lenses. I was able to work quickly and silently as I photographed and talked to the women I interviewed. Not being formally trained in the art of interview has its advantages and eventually I started recording my shoots. We are working on a book which will be ready for publication later this year. The exhibition of that work which is on until mid-June 2015 displays many of those images which are blown up to A1 without a problem. The image resolution holds beautifully.

Cameras are tools and though the conversation around them is important, it is elementary. What you do with them once you have them - that is the story I am most interested in.

Originally published in the Grapevine.is July 24, 2015

My first memory of a Dunkin’ Donuts (aka DnD) involved banking, Iceland. Yes, banking.  

Almost every Saturday, my father would drive me and sometimes my siblings, to his bank in whatever city we happened to live in at the time, to do business. The bank people would have laid out in generous American fashion, pots of coffee, juice, creamer, and milk, none of which was of any interest to me. What got me out of pyjamas and away from my Saturday morning cartoons was the promise of basket upon basket of DnD munchkins also generously laid out, wide open and ripe for the picking.

MUNCHKIN LAND
That’s right, munchkins1. According to DnD corp-lore, munchkins are itty bitty donuts made out of the donut ‘holes’ other donut manufacturers so carelessly and foolishly disregarded. But not DnD. They saved their little donut souls, deep fried them, and rolled them in white powdered sugar2, sometimes cramming them with a squirt of jam.

Liberated by the ‘g’wan have another honey’ look on the cashiers faces, I stuffed mine with more and more munchkins. They were tiny. But vicious.

I remember how the dry donut shell puckered and deflated under the eager chomp of my soft palate, that if you were to slo-mo my mouth devouring one you would see the sugar spray out and slide down my chin like a powdery sugar avalanche.

Here is an informative National Geographic Video featuring the manufacture of donuts and munchkins (referred to here as donut bites…because the presenter is British):

VIOLATION BY CREAM
By the time my father completed his banking transactions and we got in the car,  I was high enough from the sugar rush to be rendered mute, pressed up against the cool of the window, salivating like a Saint Bernard. Silence pervaded the car, less the ambient noise, unless the instance arrived that on the way home, I would spot an actual DnD shop out the window, squeal with delight and plead my case for another treat. My dad also had a soft spot for donuts, and me, and sometimes we would go and get the larger deal. He always had a french cruller, and I, the same sugary powdered donut but upscaled, stuffed, and violated to all-fuckery with a vanilla creme filling.

My stomach always hurt after one of those, but oh what a marvellous journey to pain it was. 

MY CULINARY UPBRINGING
I grew up across the eastern part of the United States (and parts of Canada) in a household that was essentially two parts Turkish, one part Romanian, one part German, yet all American. Throughout my childhood, we were exposed to a range of foods, and my mother had a solid rule: “You have to taste – if you don’t like it, you can spit it out.”

My father was particularly fond of Chinese food. He sought to find the best restaurant in each new city to take us to. Admittedly I never tried the chicken feet. But neither did he. We ate well at home most of the time and I learned to cook at an early age, and practiced a lot and mostly ate good food. Except for my senior year in High School, when I ate so many McDonald’s tasty- crappy-meals that I had to let my prom dress out a size and buy a new bra two sizes up.

THE DONUT GAUNTLET
Consider that a child’s palate is almost never worldly enough to judge the difference between good sugar and cheap run of the mill sugar. It doesn’t matter at that age what sugar you get. Sugar is sugar. And some “children”3, with under-developed palettes, are over thirty years old.

These days I have to walk the DnD gauntlet whenever I am in NYC or Boston. This is difficult because you’ll find a shop about every 150 metres. The few times I caved in with relish, I was truly sick to my stomach. Still, I sometimes break out in a lip sweat and pace back and forth in front of their windows. Sometimes I go inside and stare at their racks, then walk out empty handed. But so far this year I have passed no less than 100 DnD shops and not had one…okay I had ONE munchkin by the Bedford train in Brooklyn late one night. And it was a dry deflated withered pip of a donut hole whose only saving grace was the lick of wet jam barley crammed inside it. I felt a bit queasy afterwards too.

LOWEST PEG
I write this now from a hillside in Umbria sweating like a full scale donut in 190°C (375F) soya oil. Here, thumbing articles on my phone, I have learned that Iceland is about to receive its first ever Dunkin’ Donuts. F*ck I say.

Fuck.

Not because I hate their politics, their policies, the corporate machine, or hate anything for that matter. Or think that the Icelanders could manufacture coffee and donuts better for the same price and should. By the way, it’s not exactly difficult to make donuts better than the folks at DnD do. They are actually considered the lowest peg of donuts in America by now. Love donuts? Get a load ofthese donuts in LA and these ones in London.  Be inspired. Why not open up a competitive donut shop in Breiðholt with low overheads? Give us somewhere else to go for a sweet fix in a blizzard.

NOT SNOBS JUST BETTER
I’ve made the decision that if I am going to pay with a stomach ache or an ounce of bulge on my gut, I’ll do it with some decent above average sugar. Fatten me up and clog my arteries with a firm Italian Tiramisu or the best Carrot Cake Babalú has to offer. Or, also available in Iceland, those chocolate eclairs from Kaffi Vest (from a bakery not far away), they’ll do. They are all superior to a DnD donut, hole in all.

And as for coffee? Ok I can understand the attraction to coffee in 20oz cups on drip. It is harder to come by in Reykjavik than a finely pressed espresso or latte at Reykjavik Roasters. But DnD coffee? It’s like having your caffeine fix from a paper bag in an alleyway. Sure I like it like I like a filthy super sized meal. Once in a while, but not every day. My university Alma mater keeps coming to mind: “We’re not snobs. We’re just better.” The universal question of taste divides us, not only on donuts. But that is another article.

HERE TO STAY
Whether you are worried about this American invasion or plan to to be first in the queue for your fried four hundred calorie treat, DnD has hatched its plan to conquer smoky bay. It’s only here to stay if your taste is on par with their formulaic determination of the status quo mass manufactured donut.

10-11, an over-priced shop, good for buying nothing in unless you desperately need it at 1am, is bringing the DnD franchise to Iceland (the CEO of 10-11 is Árni Pétur Jónsson). They are betting that you want it Iceland. And even if not you, your swarming tourists, especially DnD deprived Brazilians, want it. You already have a taste for it. I’m willing to bet that you want it. And I fear that you do. Because traditionally, as I understand it, you boil the life out of the lesser fish reaped from the sea (because you export 70-80% of the top shelf stuff – thank you very much – and the rest goes to restaurants) along with potatoes, mash it, and serve it with ketchup. Hot dog (though superior in Iceland), hamburger, pizza and kebab shops populate any area crowded enough to have a built-in toilet.

Your palate is right down the cheap American dark and dirty alleyway. I bet you wouldn’t know good sugar from brown sugar if it smacked you in the face, and you don’t care. God save you.

JUST CRAP
As for my future dessert choices I hope I can continue to aim high hit for hit. DnD I don’t hate you. You are an institution and I still drink your never ending coffee on long American road trips. Thankfully there are toilets every ten miles or so (that’s roughly 16km) and I don’t feel the desperation to shit on any flammable moss covered areas or graves.4 DnD, I remember the joy and entertainment you brought me as a child. And the close brush with Type II diabetes. I don’t deny that you still bring joy to some. You’re just crap. And my palate demands much better than that.

On a footnote; of the three main aims of DnD’s philanthropy, two have to do with eating. Spot the irony, win a prize.

1 Mason Reese pictured as a child and as an adult in the banner above, was a wildly successful child advertising actor who Dunkin’ Donuts used to promote their munchkins. Here he is in that commercial as a child, and here he is, a man about town, in this unusual NYU student film, partly funded by Stephen Spielberg according to the director, and I think featuring Rebecca Gayheart. Is that her in the limo?  Here is Mason crying, scroll down for the video.

2 Titanium Dioxide has been used to make DnD’s powdered donuts appear whiter and brighter in the donuts made in the USA. I’m sure I ate more than a few dozen of those in my lifetime. DnD announced this past March that they would be removing this ingredient from donuts in the USA. According to the Guardian the UK is not affected as this ingredient is not used in donuts there. And why not?  What about the donuts in Iceland? I wonder why it needed to be there in the first place? There is some debate about the ingredient’s harmfulness but I’d like to err on the side of caution. Be aware of what you’re stuffing your face with.

3 No children were harmed in the creation of this article. I love some children. But most of them have palettes like a melted styrofoam cup. Marginally impressionable, limited, not fully formed until adulthood, and then possibly never formed if not exposed to a range of experiences.

4The entire tourist-in-Iceland roadside fire and grave relief situation is disgusting, shameful, and anyone who needs to go to the loo on the road in Iceland in the absence of a purpose built toilet should do it in those ziploc bags provided in abundance by airports across the world, already intended for liquids. Do it, zip it, and dispose of it in the nearest garbage/rubbish bin. We may have too many tourists per toilet to go around the island, but until we build more toilets or limit the number of tourists allowed in, bag it, hold it, or both. You animals.

EDDIE IZZARD STOPS OVER IN ICELAND

First published in the Grapevine.is

Saturday night Eddie Izzard took the Harpa Eldborg stage in a flash of winning combinations. Suave and camp; girl and boy; suit and heels; chaos and control. Along with his disarmingly magnificent blend of gender ‘bendosity’ and his sense of the bizarre, was his righteous sense of humor. He genuinely seems to care whether we become better, wiser, healthier, more open, and more tolerant human beings. This combination minus the makeup recalls the comic genius of Bill Hicks. What I loved most about Bill’s work aside from his tenacious wit, was his gigantic heart. Without knowing him personally I could tell without a doubt and so could you, that he also cared about making our world better. George Orwell said that “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Bill aimed his psychedelically squeegeed, comic machine gun at the liars, the unjust and the asinine and let it rip.

With glory, no guns, and dressed to kill in a suit of measure, Izzard grinned a flash of red lipstick and comported a manicure of luminous red gloss to match. If you were able to and looked closely, you’ll have seen that he wore a European Union flag on the nail of his left ring finger and the Union Jack on his right. If you don’t already know, Eddie is running for Mayor of London in 2020. Sound like anyone you know? The other point this description will alert you to if you’re not already acquainted, is the fact that Izzard is transgender or a transvestite if you like. If you must categorise, and I know it does seem that a critical mass of us must, then you can use these terms to describe him. What is the difference? Look it up on Wikipedia. Izzard sarcastically cited Wikipedia as the source for some of the information presented in his show and I thought it only natural to follow suit in this article.

Pink and blue all over

Transgenderism or gender fluidity is something I emphatically support in comedy and in life. Essentially Izzard sashays in and out of his preferred state of dress and expression dependent on his whim, all of which is independent of his sexual orientation. If you must know, he likes women which means he is heterosexual. What an incongruence for a man wearing women’s clothes, right? Wrong. He is not dressing ‘up’ in drag, this is just how he dresses. As he fairly pointed out, the prejudice towards women wearing men’s clothes is not as reviled. Why is this? Careful. It’s not good. This reason carries a sneaky backhand and reflects how society devalues women and expects of men and I don’t think either is any better. But nonetheless I am grateful for Izzard’s talent and bravery in conquering his own fears and coming forward as he does. It is wholly attractive. His bravery and visibility paves the way for others to follow suit. I believe slowly over the course of time things will change and minds will open. Kind of like Madonna in the ‘90s with her mutually exclusive suits and female love affairs though it does all seem a blur now.

I wish we could agree right now that the polarised gender construct we’ve created over millennia and consensually persist with presently, is an antiquated fiction, a limitation of what it means to be human. Don’t you ever wonder why the colour pink is for girls and blue is for boys? Prior to the 1940’s it was the opposite way around (if it mattered at all). Pink was closely related to red which was seen as a ‘firey manly colour’. Whatever. Here is a really old painting of a holy man in a pink robe, a young boy in a pink dress and the Virgin Mary in blue. Don’t you find this all a bit ridiculous? Why do we have the need to separate and assign so absolutely? We should all be able to pick what pleases us without assumption and inference based on what genitals we have and not be judged harshly for doing so. Rather I think we should be celebrated.

Force Majeure

The tour’s title, ‘Force Majeure’ is French for a "superior force” (as cited by Wikipedia). It is a common clause in contracts that essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, or an event described by the legal term act of God (such as hurricane, flooding, earthquake, volcanic eruption, etc.). ‘Force Majeure’ is a fitting name for the show structurally speaking.  It ingeniously references the contextual definition throughout and meanders around the many ways we are the same, connected, but are also different and have further differentiated ourselves throughout time with respect to religion, politics, language, and nationality. We follow Eddie's crazy train of thought round and round and forward and back and forward again and then back to something that was said at the beginning (reincorporation). It is brought to you in that ‘etch-a-sketch’ style that he does so brilliantly. Here is a good example: 

Flashback to London

This is not my first rodeo. One of the gifts Britain had waiting for me when I moved there from NYC in 2000, aside from fry ups, was the comedy of Eddie Izzard who at the time was rising to tremendous heights. I finally saw him live at the O2 arena in 2009 after a period spent away from the limelight. As a friend and I waited for his appearance in the 20,000 seater stadium, we became engrossed with the large screens over the stage rotating, among other things, a promotional reel for a documentary called 'Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story'. Keen, I watched it through to the very credit end and saw the film was screening at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square that Friday. As soon as I got home that night I jumped online and booked six tickets to see the film. It never occurred to me that this might be a difficult thing to do and it wasn’t.

Friday night my friends and I sat ensconced in the tiny theatre and watched the film transfixed. It referenced Eddie's days working as an escapologist in Covent Garden. One average day he became stuck in his chains and could not escape. A friend had to come down to the square with spare keys to release him. This changed 'everything' about the way he thought, and it became one of the turning points in his life and career. What is the difference between escaping and failing to escape if you already know how to do it? Believe is a wonderful film to watch if you like Eddie Izzard. It is also a wonderful film to watch if you do not. It is relevant to humans, fans or not. Especially those with any singular ambition in life.

The credits roll and we all stand up, and proceed to get dressed when the announcer booms "Please welcome Mr. Eddie Izzard and the director of the film Sarah Townshend!!"  We sit back down. This was a screening room built for maybe 50 people. We’d seen him not five days ago at the O2, built for 20,0000. “Did you know this was going to happen?” asks a friend. They finish their short stroll down the aisle and proceed to conduct a Q&A just for us lucky people. I had no idea. I hadn’t read the fine print at all. Afterwards I had a look and the website clearly stated that there would be a Q&A after the screening. I’ve never been so glad that most people don’t read the fine print. This was the first time I was made aware of Eddie's plans to enter into politics. He seemed to still be mulling over his decision back then. If he ran for Mayor who would fill his comedy shoes, we asked? And wasn't comedy a better platform to influence change than politics? Crawl inside the belly of the beast and it changes you, usually. Not the other way around. Jón Gnarr might know something about this.

Spontaneous Scripting

Excited about the possibility of a mind like Eddie's expanding the horizons of politics with his lateral thoughts and dress sense, I have to be careful not to get too carried away with blind enthusiasm. Ever since he announced his political intentions, I’m no longer just watching a comedian perform a show. In addition to being carried on a journey where I spend most of it laughing my ass off, I’m watching a person who wants to run for and influence social policy from the inside out. Is a comic still a comic if he is a politician and vice versa? The category police short-circuit.

Tonight,  bearing this in mind, I was most interested to witness how he addressed an Icelandic audience given his personal position on gender in light of Iceland’s. None of his material was reworked or regionalised to fit or inform an Icelandic audience. Aside from a joke about Icelandic language there didn’t seem to be any custom material at all but then I forget, Eddie seldom does two things when he is on stage.

Number one: customising shows. You will know this isn’t something he does especially if you followed the preposterous allegations brought upon him by BBC Watchdog back in 2000. Read about it here.

The second is improvising.  Eddie is a master of many things but as far as his comedy shows go he has instead mastered the ability to create an illusion that the material you are hearing is both spontaneous and unscripted. As Stewart Lee has said “Performers like Eddie Izzard are very good at making it feel spontaneous by giving the impression that things have just occurred to him.” The very fact that he is able to create spontaneity from script inspires a trust and willingness in his audience to follow him, or try to, on what ever quirky turn he takes you on without worry. He has a map. We won’t get lost in an accident. This may have its drawbacks. The accident, born in the manger of improvisation, gives birth to a different kind of genius.

All the same the show must go on

Eddie made a point of notifying us that we would watch the exact same show he delivered in the other countries he toured. He told us that this was in fact his 27th country on the tour and that this material which we were about to experience had been played to laughter in many cities across these countries such as Moscow, LA, Johannesburg, Berlin, London, Toronto. Same material, same laughter. The humanistic message conveyed was that across the world we are all essentially the same. Or at least some of us. ‘People like us’ he repeated on more than one occasion. I wondered what he meant by ‘people like us’? Maybe he meant those people ‘like us’ who go to his show. Was it wise people? Open people? I believe open minded was the main intention but I felt uncomfortable with the language. If listened to out of context it could border on fascistic speech. The message was humanistic sure, but substitute a different message coming to ‘people like us’ and we have a different kind of show.

People evolve

In his show, Eddie had some very good ideas for how we should be evolving as people. Please feel free to visit his website and read in his own words a bit about his early beginnings. Aside from his delightful ability to articulate thought at a serious clip and with hysterical comedic timing, Eddie, like Bill who would have been his contemporary if there was a God, seems to genuinely care (insider show reference not an atheistic proclamation). That or he does a wonderful job giving us the impression he does. I choose to believe he does care about humankind, about being better, wiser, more open, more tolerant. He indicates this by taking on tremendous tasks which unfailing demonstrate that we can go beyond what we think we can do, what we’re told we can do: run forty three marathons in fifty one days, learn enough French to perform his comedy show in French, then move over to German for fun. Russian and Arabic are next.

Marathons aside, humour is seriously one of the most challenging things to create successfully in a foreign language because it involves understanding how that culture thinks. Failing our ability to psychically project our thoughts and feelings to each other, we have among some other physical systems, language. It’s like Windows X.0 - primitive and imperfect despite billions of units of investment and thousands of years of development (not so many years in Microsoft’s case).  Language works well enough for simple transactions like ‘One hotdog with everything on it.’ But try to explain religion or existentialism or One Direction in a native language to another native speaker and we can only hope for the best.

Learning a foreign language is not simply mapping words to words to perform functions when asking “Where is the bus station?” It’s realising that there is no English translation for “dugleg” and yes that was the sound of sarcasm. All of this is partially responsible for why it is so satisfying to watch and listen to Eddie change accents like the clothing he wears, regardless of his accuracy. It’s close enough and sometimes funnier when he misses accidentally on purpose. Clothing like accents influence the presuppositions we hold of a person and colour how we interpret them in view of our own national landscape.

Saturday school

That night I learned a great deal about religion and yet did not. The ‘Force Majeure’ tour references religion which requires belief yet Eddie's belief is not contained within a religious context. Could belief just be belief? Sure so long as I don’t force you to believe what he or I believes and you don’t force anyone else to believe what you believe. Belief must be free to be belief. Else it is subjugation, among other clever English nouns. But this was a comedy show not a study class and after all weren’t the facts sourced from Wikipedia? Regardless I was made aware of a few historical people, Martin Luther for example, in a manner which exposed some of the ways religion prostrates our differences and has given way to tragic folly after folly as a result of its insistence.  Intrigued I wanted to know more about that history and ultimately how it shaped our culture. Isn’t captivation a part of the learning cycle which education constantly struggles with? It made me wonder if comedy should be integrated into the learning process in schools. Creative thinking is needed in our leadership and it is exactly the kind of strategy the artistic mind serves well.

Satan and Santa Claus

However, I still don’t know why Eddie decided last minute to stop in Iceland. Perhaps Icelandair offered him a free stopover in exchange for a selfie by The Harpa? I was hoping it was because he was incredibly aware of Iceland’s history with gender equality or that he was having a secret meeting with former Reykjavik Mayor and eternal comedian Jón Gnarr. When asked about Jón at the Q&A after the show Eddie appeared to know nothing of how his mayorship went in Reykjavik. I hoped he was playing ignorant but I didn’t believe it was the case. Jón did very well in that he hired people around him who knew what they were doing in policy and process and formed the mast sail of the ship leading all forward with inspiration, wisdom, and creative thinking. I wonder if they’ve ever met? For dinner? At a pride march? They should. At one point early on in my time in Reykjavik I started to wonder if they were the same person. Just like the myth of Satan and Santa Claus they have so many things in common yet are never seen together. 

They both:

1) dress in ‘female’ clothing
2) identify as straight or are in partnerships with women
3) are comedians
4) are actors
5) are involved (or will be) in politics
6) they both think creative thinking and new ideas are the way forward for society.

 I suppose you need a good sense of humour to survive politics as Jón will attest to.

Nipples are Free

I wasn’t overwhelmed with confidence in Eddie's ability to improvise political wisdom when a young woman asked what he thought about the ‘free the nipple’ campaign. Practically, the movement aims to desexualise women’s breasts and argues the legal right of women to bare their breasts in public. Breasts are shown and sold in media so why shouldn’t women be legally allowed bare them? Especially in the context of their original purpose, which nursed so many of these lawmakers who outlaw it.  In Iceland the movement kicked off in support of a seventeen year old student who bared her nipples online and was outrageously shamed for doing so. I emphatically agree with the outpouring of support but what I mostly remember from the campaign are quizzical images of nipples half-freed, hiding behind the bras and shirts of confinement. Please start by reading here and here if you want to know more. Here too.

Yes, so nipples. I was saying that Eddie appeared to know nothing of #freethenipple. That’s not what concerned me and it wasn’t like didn’t offer anything intelligent to say on the subject. He did entertain us with an anecdote about a plane full of brassieres crashing in the jungle. A tribe found them and the women started to wear the bras. A once non sexualised breast became sexualised when shrouded in cotton and elastic. Izzard also brought up the fact that until twelve weeks old all foetuses are female and the testes form out of the ovaries and the penis forms out of the clitoris. “It’s all the fucking same yet we are obsessed with the differences.” He understood the purpose of the campaign was the de-sexualisation of women's bodies. What arched my eyebrow was how he phrased his response when asked about what he thought of Icelandic women’s bare-nippled contribution to the campaign. In a collegiate tone, which barely disguised sexist voyeurism, he half joked ‘Yeah fine go for it, if women are up for it then yeah.” This got a big laugh. It was difficult to hear any women’s laughter over all the men.

Who knows what he really thought. Maybe he thought it was great and powerful. Maybe he thought the women were fools for giving a free peep show in this sadly sexist climate. Maybe he was simply going for a jocular laugh, and coming from a comedian I wouldn't pay much attention to it. I’d simply shrug it off into the large pile of unenlightened sexist jokes. However a future political candidate belongs in another pile.

Enfin (that’s French for ‘finally’)

Eddie explained ego very well in his show and its necessity in doing what he does on stage. I have no doubt in his ability to think creatively, inspire, or make myself and a lot of other people laugh till we’re bent in two and I respect the power of laughter. Even though I have my doubts, I choose to believe his ego will make way in 2020 London for the kind of humility needed to gain wisdom where there is ignorance and become an honourable leader. I wonder about his plans for London and what he thinks it needs to to become a wiser, healthier, more open and tolerant version of itself. During the show he made reference to the speech given by President Abraham Lincoln during his first inaugural address.

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

I certainly hope so too.

Extra Credit:

Bill Hicks http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/comedy/8959372/Bill-Hicks-quotes-10-of-the-best.html

Death Start Lego Style https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5iEK-IEzw

Stewart Lee - Identity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4-S8n8-9RU

Townshend and Izzard Q&A Believe Pt1  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWBLsCfFurU

Sarah Townshend on Filmmaking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAQikxvS-3U

Eddie Izzard's Marathons http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/tears-are-never-far-from-ruining-the-makeup-of-eddie-izzard-2162947.html

Jón Gnarr http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/15/jon-gnarr-comedian-mayor-iceland

Orri Finn Design—Orri Finnbogason and Helga Gvuðrún Friðriksdóttir

Originally published by the Grapevine.is

The couple behind Orri Finn Design—Orri Finnbogason and Helga Gvuðrún Friðriksdóttir—have a different, yet complementary, training in the art of design, jewellery and business. Helga has had a passion for jewellery since she was a child, often making her own. Despite lacking in formal training, Helga found a job with a jewellery designer, eventually working with the company’s marketing director, and as project manager. Orri trained as a goldsmith and a diamond setter in New York. More on that later.

Straight edges, skeleton keys

A glance at the pair’s Pinterest boards reveals that they are drawn to images of Native Americans: textural sepia images of heritage and objects and people from another world. Their work darkly echoes the Old West, or perhaps the Southwest, of the United States without being overly coloured in cloying corals and blues. Their current family of anchors, scarabs and braids will be joined this year by a new set of pieces inspired by the tools of the common worker.

While fixing up a house in the Westfjords, they came across a pair of antique hair cutting scissors. The simplistic yet elegant design got them thinking. Helga’s mother was a haircutter for a period of time, the scissors a tool of her trade. Included in the collection are straight edges, as well as hair scissors, skeleton keys, fountain pen nibs, and axes. For a quick minute they thought of sticking to murder weapons but decided that they didn’t want to put that kind of negative energy out into the universe. So they went with constructive objects of métier, even if they have the potential power to destroy. The wearer gets to decide the ultimate function.

Why not sail on?

Every piece, once cast, waits to be transformed into worn objects, a process they were in the middle of on the morning of my visit. Much of what I saw laid before me was silver, partially oxidised and rubbed clean, to give a blackness that acts as dimensional shading; gold; and more polished chains of equal interest and varying proportion. We chatted as they polished and assembled pieces from their new collection with a fluidity and mutual respect that begets synergy.

We talked about the feelings that come with creating something new and, by default, the previously new work becoming “old.” The question arises: has enough honourable attention been given to their previous works? The ambition to release one’s creations at a pace that’s absorbed gradually and thoroughly is understandable. But, as long as the winds of inspiration carry you forward, why not sail on? Besides, I come to realize that I, perpetually disinterested in jewellery, would greedily wear all their creations all at once. To my surprise and slight horror, I have begun a mental inventory.

Run the jewels...

The pair’s new workshop is located on that street leading up to the big church on the hill. The one with an impossibly long name that, ironically, is most frequented by tourists who cannot pronounce it. The workshop is charming and perfectly formed, complete with a dual hot plate for both work liquid, and copious amounts of coffee brewed in a moka pot. Even the walls carry an aesthetic that complements their work. For Orri and Helga, DesignMarch is an event where they have a chance to create beyond the wearable, incorporating elements like sculpture or dance, or creating pieces out of their work. This inspires them to stretch the boundaries of their creative powers.

Helga and Orri both spent time living in New York City, but they didn’t meet there. Helga’s purpose in town was tutoring the daughter of an Icelandic musician. Orri arrived to the city on a break of sorts, and did not expect to move there. In Iceland, he had found that it was next to impossible to gain the kind of apprenticeship he sought—the only way he could study something to do with metal work was enlisting in a shipbuilding course. Thus, upon arriving in New York, he jumped on the chance to apprentice with a diamond setter, earning his apprenticeship by first spending a period of time as a diamond runner. Quid pro quo, my son.

As a diamond runner, he was responsible for transporting tremendously valuable goods from point A to point B. He explained that diamond trade was often under a lot of time constraints to move pieces around once stones are set, and there wasn’t always time to arrange for an armoured car, complete with armed guards. Thus, a young man with a backpack, a pair of strong legs, a sense of adventure and no idea of the danger he’s putting himself into did nicely enough. Sure, there were instructions, like “never take the same route” and “never take the backpack off, even when you’re sitting on a train.” Still, equipping a young man with a backpack full of extremely valuable goods normally shielded by reinforced steel and armed guards seems like a huge gamble. Especially in New York City in the 1990s.

It happens

Orri eventually learned to be a diamond setter, an extremely valuable skill that has taken him far in his work. But the jewellery market began to decline and the stress of working in that way which is American left him with little reason to stay in the Big Apple. Back to Reykjavík he went. And met Helga.

It was one of those stories where you both think you’ve seen everyone in the bar and met everyone in the town, especially in one as small as Reykjavík can often feel. And then one day, it happens. This person walks into your life with the same interests and inspires you. They both worked for the same jeweller for a while. When they met, Helga was wearing more than the causal amount of jewellery. Orri laid eyes on her and thought, “Now, that’s the girl for me!”

They appear to have the kind of working relationship I both admire and covet.

The morning we spent together, Helga and Orri worked with cast objects to create what will eventually become some of the final pieces, arranging and assembling them with chains and jewels, the components and exact order of which was coming together before my eyes. Together they invent designs and assemble them in the way a band might work on the creation and refinement of songs. Once decided upon, Orri will join the pieces together or set stones as required, Helga also assembles the chains and pieces at some stages. In addition to the design work Helga spearheads communications for the business, essential for any business’s survival. They are a team in the best sense of the word.

Your thing

Let it be known that Orri Finn Design makes unisex jewellery which I was interested to learn of and is probably one of the reasons I find the aesthetic so attractive. However, much of the time this carries less merit in the land of the bejewelled than one would think. People, a lot of people, want to be told that jewellery is indeed classified as “acceptable” for men or women when buying it. “Are you sure this is okay for a guy?” a concerned girlfriend might ask before buying, say, a delicate gold braided ring for her boyfriend. The boxes people still wish to fit into are surprisingly persistent, even in Reykjavík, with all its gender equality.

I admired a draped chain mask on a the face of a mannequin bust and thought it would look fantastically elegant on a man. Okay, not your thing? Zebra Katz wore it in a music video he shot here, it’s apparently totally his thing.

Their stuff is fast becoming totally my thing.

---

Verkfæri. Open throughout DesignMarch at their studio, Skólavörðustígur 17a.

Official customs site with information http://www.postur.is/en/parcels/from-abroad/

I should probably begin by explaining the title to those of you who were born before the culture it came from. It's a reference to a slogan used by MTV in the 80s. If you love American culture you'd be considered a philistine not to look this up. Until today I felt like I was living (temporarily) in the most liberal modernised human country in the world. The rules seemed fair and were made out of a few of my favourite things like common sense, decency, and intelligence. They were administered by people of equal merit. I was impressed. Then I had a run in with Icelandic customs law. Olympus, a company I am an Ambassador for, sent me some equipment to try out. Despite following rules expressly given to me by local knowledge to label the shipments as for 'demonstration purposes only' and 'not for resale' and 'no commercial value' the goods were held by customs until a tariff of 78,000ISK was paid. 

After quite a lot of talking on the phone to various intelligent friendly people, and several emails henceforth, I managed to get the tariff lowered by 18k and a temporary levy placed on the goods which meant I can get the money refunded once I exited the country. What, you guys don't take a cheque? Escrow? Faberge eggs? You see a credit card billing cycle is normally something like 30 days but this incident falls in the middle of mine, so I will be forced to pay this amount off before then or be charged interest. My only other option was to put it on my debit card and be charged 2.5% plus £1 and not have access to that money for a month. For all I can see this is at best a hostage situation to prevent the goods from staying in the country and selling at a lower price, at worst it is a song and dance. Please note that everyone in this experience was delightful to deal with. 

I arrive at DHL to recover the goods and pay the tariff but the amounts on the invoices haven't been changed to reflect the new 'low' price of 60000ISK. My ride waits patiently for me as yet another nice human being helps to remedy this paperwork scramble. About 10 minutes later I am charging my English credit card, I am handed an E14 form in Icelandic (thankfully I have made friends with some locals for translation) and told that I can recuperate these funds at the airport when I leave Iceland. In a month. Bring the items for serial number verification please, thank you. I feel this pedantry concerning the importation of goods, large and small, to local or to foreigner, generate with every taxed kroner, a hostile feeling which feeds back into society. 

These rules, and many more like them abroad, set up by our governments and businesses to regulate trade and labour alike, pave the way not only for more hostility and stress in a society but goad the very criminal behaviour in unruly citizens governments go to great lengths to prevent. I'm certain there are a lot of other effects which we could research, pull into focus groups, and draw out on graph paper and pie charts. But why should we? Most of us inherently sense the limitations to a restrictive system like this. Considering the government collected just over 6 billion ISK in 2014 on international trade, I wonder how much it costs to enforce this process, and really, how is it benefiting society given the restrictions and their impact on people? Because if it is then I can work the logic. But if it isn't, shouldn't it be criminal? I mull this over as I consider what life would be like living in Iceland full time; taking the bus to Elko in the blizzard to buy a television, to wile away winter's edge because I can't simply order one on Amazon and have it delivered.

Freyja Haraldsdóttir, MP and Disabled Rights Activist Outside Parliament, Reykjavik Iceland

Freyja Haroldsdóttir and I met in a cafe near parliament in Reykjavík for an interview and portrait session in November 2013. Freyja is Iceland’s first disabled MP’s and is working towards better care, support, and equality for the disabled.

The idea for the “Women of Iceland” series was sparked by an article in the news about Iceland’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. Icelanders were quoted as saying that a more ‘feminine’ approach to finance was needed and a series of high-profile women were put in senior positions in the financial services industry to clean up the mess.

It turns out that this attitude to gender is not limited to a response to this one issue but pervades the whole of Icelandic culture and has done for some time. Every year the World Economic Forum publishes a list of the most gender equal countries in the world based on various metrics including wealth, social position, and employment patterns. Iceland has ranked number one six years running. The UK and the USA aren’t even in the top ten.

Curious, I began researching Icelandic women’s stories which resonated with me.  To date I have interviewed and photographed over 50 women, all of them successful in fields ranging from arts to politics, from education to entrepreneurship.

To be clear, it’s not that there is no gender gap in Iceland at all: men are still paid more on average than women in the same positions, there are still cultural stereotypes about the role that men and women should play in the family; but it is striking to see what is possible when you have a generous and gender neutral paternity/maternity leave policy – and when you have an affordable child care system in place.

Through portraiture and candid interviews interwoven with written observations, the project examines how a progressive society can change the way we think about and engage in the process of education, business, psychology, science, art, music, language, and child development. These areas and more are explored from the perspective of women who are beneficiaries of a feminised society.

Through the publication of this project it is hoped that the ideas presented and the perspectives shared by these women will inspire the reader to make improvements to their interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships – and, by extension, will encourage the creation of positive policy changes to our social systems, affecting the way we live, work, and raise our children. 

The Taylor Wessing Prize is on view in the Porter Gallery in the National Portrait Gallery from 13 November 2014 – 22 Feb 2015
Admission £3 Supported by Taylor Wessing

Emilie Nicolas takes the stage at Harpa's Norðurljós

The Knife performs at Harpa's Silfurberg

I write this from the Flybus the morning after the end of Airwaves 2014. Sublime’s “What I Got” blares out of the driver’s tin radio as we wind our way through the alien landscape back to Keflavik Airport.  I didn’t finish Airwaves off as planned with Zebra Katz’s midnight show at Húrra for a couple of reasons.  1) I had to get up for this morning flight to London to go straight to the premiere of the Hunger Games tonight and then opening of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize tomorrow (which I have a photograph in) and then come straight back to Iceland to teach a course in photography on Thursday. That is some extreme jet-setting excitement and I want to actually be awake for it.  2) The lines at Húrra this year were horrendous and though I have a press/photo pass which lets me jump the queues, my friends had regular passes and could not join me. Thought it may be a close call, friends are more important than music. I’m pretty sure that Airwaves 2014 was at least as incredible if not more than last year. I can’t really say. I only cut my coloured cuffs off my wrists eight hours ago and it’s still all a blur. Over 200 bands played and I managed to catch more than 30 of them. Here is a preview; some of the images I managed to grab off my camera while I was going from venue to venue.

One of the most unique and likeable features of Airwaves is that it takes place in Reykjavík and I mean IN. You can go about your daily life and see gigs, gigs, gigs. Have some food and look! A gig. A drink? Coffee? Yup a gig. Almost every bar, cafe, shop with a window, movie theatre and even elder care homes are alive with live music for 5 days. And that’s just the off-venue stuff. Then there’s the official venue spots like the Harpa, Reykjaviík Art Museum, Gammla Bíó, and Gaukurinn… I could go on but this bus docks at Keflavik in ten minutes and I’ve not shown you any photos yet. Okay. Here it goes in no particular order.

I will definitely be coming back to Airwaves 2015. I recommend that you don’t come. The lines man the lines! I don’t want them getting any longer.

For you hardcore tech fans, these are all in-camera JPEGS shot on an Olympus OMD EM-1 transferred to my iPhone using Olympus Imageshare (except for the first two which were edited in Photoshop and Snapseed)

Here are a few tracks. Hit any of them.  Never heard of them? I bet you’ll be surprised how good they are.