Heresy

V: The Jante "Wall" and the Art of Song

Are we being what we are when we’re in here?

Or what we wish we were?

Or maybe what we could be, if we were braver…

I wish I knew.

Time spent among some of my oldest friends in this game - many of which come from cultures subtly different than the one I grew up in - has brought this into my mind.

And now I think about the word ‘friend’, and if I am. Or if I’m the token female, the catalyst for a bit of extra humour, one that was ‘the girl’ ? Beyond that, do I exist in the lives and minds of those whom I have always professed to care so much about?

Someone who met me once, not long ago said, “You are exactly who you are in the game.”

I didn’t take that as a compliment or criticism; I accepted it as truth. One of the small slivers of benefit in no longer being sixteen is hopefully, with time, you start to see who you really are. And at least in this one small way – flawed or otherwise – I can say I know I am that person, in the game, or out of it.

But..after some time I started to realise that it’s a statement that cannot be made about many of the people I’ve met in this environment. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I represent a minority. Whether that’s the nature of the internet, of MMPORGS, of a particular age group, or sex or even culture, I cannot possibly say. Perhaps it’s a mix of all of them.

And perhaps its this – just now seeing that I am NOT like others in this way – that has led to some painful encounters, some unfortunate surprises. I take for granted that others know their own minds as well as I’ve come to know my own. I assume and trust that the statements people make are made with a sense of personal responsibility…..especially as I am – or was, or could have been, or god-knows-what…a friend.

A friend.

Is it possible to be this even? Especially when people are not always able to even be friends to themselves? So often people aren’t really looking at the other person, but only their own enjoyment of them.

Am I, guys? What am I?

I think about this.

I wonder if anyone knows.

Once, last year, I learned about something called the Jante Law. For a time, I thought it only applied to Norwegians as that’s how I learned of it. I realise now that’s simply not true. And well-meaning desires to instill some healthy degree of socialist equanimity seems, in truth, to have manifested as a sort of ‘you are worthless as an individual’ mentality among people whom I care about a great deal. I’ve seen how it can brutalise the self-esteem of people before they’re old enough to understand its true intent. I’ve run into so many people from Scandinavian cultures that in some subtle way seem scarred by this thinking, this idea that you are nothing except a part of the whole, that you are not special, that you are not sacred.

Well…its bullshit. You are. All of us are.

Don’t you see how thinking otherwise is so damn wrong?

The Jante Law, or the Jante Wall as for some reason today I want to call it, is like the hand over the singing mouth of a soul. Everyone of us has a unique voice inside of us, longing to be known or understood or heard. But when you are told that it simply isn’t true – or worse yet, it doesn’t matter – well goddamnit, its just plain wrong.

And so, their song muted, people walk this earth as ghosts with the same names, afraid and depressed, twisted up in themselves to the point that they seem to have even lost track of themselves sometimes. It hurts to watch it, to not be able to change it, to feel like I’m fighting it every step of the way in the people I care about.

And yet, someone who means a great deal to me, who comes from such a culture, sent me a message not long ago that flies in the face of this anti-individualist mindset.

It actually caused me to stop, and read it closely, and consider it, for its purity of meaning, and the uncanny timing of its sending.

I realised it was a fairly well-known quote, but to whom no individual person could be given credit; searching on it simply revealed it was ‘anonymous’. It went, in all its idealistic, sweet glory, something like this:

“Love is finding the song in a person’s heart, and singing it back to them, when they have forgotten.”

So many times, it felt like I saw the pieces of people’s songs, and maybe in doing that, they felt known a moment. Perhaps in this safe internet world, it made them sing louder, but in real life, as we so ironically call it – its not so simple.

People starve for warmth and acceptance, to be known, to be heard. To be understood, but to be all this without asking for it, without having the words for it. “Accept me, because I’m having a fucking hard time doing so and I don't even know how to ask.”

Its hard to receive the acceptance of someone else, when you can’t find it for yourself.

This is the song I hear sometimes, unintentionally sung by those I care about the most.

I have also learned that wounded people rarely ask you about yours, and in truth I never thought about whether or not I had one. I was always trying to find someone else's. I doubt that its even complete, because when you let people touch your life, the song is inevitably altered, even if only a small bit.

"I don't even know if I have one."

"We all do."

So, with an hour of sleep and a very tired mind, and a somewhat battered up heart, I went looking for it.

Is it too personal?

Hehe…..well of course it is. Come on, you guys know me by now. Why should I fear posting here? What have I to lose?

Nothing. The things I give away, I always gave freely.

There is a price for that, I understand, but I want to pay it.

So here, in an Amsterdam airport, on my pathetic amount of sleep and enough coffee to drown the Lusitania, I wrote the verses of a song that I do not expect anyone to hear.

In my song, one note chimes out softly, a simple soundtrack over a molten October sunset. I still remember this place, in my mind, high among the mountains of Big Bend, watching the Rio Grande wind lazily around me, far below. A thunderstorm rolled in the far distance, blackening the otherwise crimson sky and casting a surreal rainbow on the mesas, still partially illuminated by a clear, dying sun.

Yes, it was as beautiful as it sounded.

A slight breeze blew across the hill I was sitting on, alone, taking in the silence of this place, and the colours around me. I loved being in these places alone, so large and empty that you felt for a moment that you were the only person on Earth. Unlike a lot of people, I like that feeling, that ultimate silence where you almost stop existing. Alone is good sometimes, but there’s avoiding-the-world alone, and then there’s facing alone head-on and finding peace with it, and yourself. Know the difference – because that’s an important bit.

And yet, despite the intense peace of isolation I felt in that moment, I remembered thinking that if I only once had in my life a person who could sit here with the same degree of understanding, and see what I saw, see its permanence, and yet its fragility, and feel that perfect breeze on their skin just as I did, and sit in silence together – but as individuals - then I would know that at least for one moment in my life, I was truly known.

A lot of time has passed since that day. I’m not sure I any longer expect anyone to know this song.

But yet, relentlessly and sometimes painfully, mine plays on.

In my song, its 3am in a city, and steam still rises from a coffee cup in my hand. “I don’t smoke”, she says, “well, not really, anyway, it’s a mood thing, it’s a moment thing.” And she usually drinks tea, and she keeps buying expensive shoes she’s too afraid to wear. But just sometimes, they are essential props for a scene that cries out to be played. And I’m not the only one. I wink at my fellow actor, and he winks back. Sometimes the players write the play, and that..is perfectly fine. Sometimes the stories we know we’re living are actually the truest ones, but they’re also the hardest to write.

In my song, there burns a single candle, which reveals an exhausted, sleeping woman in a bed made of whispers. She’s cradled in the arms of some faceless man, who is as as warm, as complicated and as silent as she is. She’s silent, because words weren’t what she really needed..she used them because that’s what everyone else did, because it was her only way. She had a complex mind, but the simple heart of an animal. The man understood that. And because he did, she finally could stop talking and rest. She was never any good at it anyway, and really, neither was he. Truths could be felt, or sung, or embraced, but they could not be spoken, not in a way that did anything worth having any justice. He kisses her shoulder, because he doesn’t use words either. She stirs, and smiles in her sleep.

In my song, the computer sits silently, the springboard of imagination, the trap. The lover, the master, the slave, waiting for her. What technology giveth the soul, it can taketh away. She knows. She logs in anyway because sometimes the world isn’t big enough, sometimes there has to be more world, where dragons are slayed and wars are fought and she gets to be the thing she never really was – a child. And with her, the other children in this electronic kindergarten, these men, fragmented and brilliant, that she loves too much, perhaps, and too easily, for their own fragility, for their own flaws, for their own determined imaginations. After all, she knows – as they do - that you are never too old to be a dragonslayer, a lady’s man, an assassin, a master, a fabled warrior, a blood knight, a shaman, or a queen. It is the lie told by the world, that we outgrow these dreams. We don’t. Most of us just forget to have them after awhile.

I think that’s all I can say, as I don’t know the rest of my song, but I think that’s probably normal. I think we write them as we live, but sing them only when we’re living. And when it falls totally silent? Then this is when we’ve stumbled, we’ve forgotten, or we’ve become lost within the fray.

Life’s short. Find your song, guys.

Then don't be afraid to sing the hell out of it.

I thank you for listening to a little of mine.

Kristin

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"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it." - Mae West
Fireflower's Words of Wisdom: http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ompilation.jpg