Oslo
Yesterday I was at the National Gallery looking at the paintings and I wondered if creativity stemmed from bad weather, sitting inside on a rainy day letting your mind go free… I just had an hour to kill, the museum was close by, and I walked into the halls and I was brought back to college, memories flowed through my brain, of art history courses and black moods and I was inspired in ways I rarely am in Los Angeles where the weather is nearly perfect and life is easy. Does great art come from a hard life?
Actually, I heard today that life in Norway is pretty easy, that members of the populace are agitating for a six hour workday, and it’s all because of the oil, which was discovered in 1971 and turned Norway from the poor relation Scandinavian nation into one of the richest countries in the world. Taxes are still high, fifty percent if you make a top income, but there’s free health care and little crime and everybody’s about lifestyle, it’s the anti-America, where we’re all working like rats in a cage.
But as you know, the price of oil has caved, and the kroner has lost 40% of its value versus the dollar, prices are still expensive for Americans, but Norway now has to think about its future. Sweden has tech. Finland is a bastion of art and architecture. What comes for Norway next? Could it be music?
I spent the morning at Music Norway, where they’re investing in bands playing in the U.S., U.K. and Germany. They want to spread the word. All I know is it comes down to a hit song.
And speaking of songs, no one’s bitching about streaming in Norway, physical is dead, MP3s have waned, they’re living in the new reality and the conversations are completely different than in America. How can you get people to stream a track, how can you infect playlists, how can you advertise on Google and Facebook and… Those playing the home game believe the major labels are incompetent nincompoops, but that’s an out of date viewpoint, it’s the majors who are making the breakthroughs today, because they want to make money.
So I left L.A. in a heat wave that had my landlady talking about end times. Living in California has become weird. There’s no water and constant conflagrations and it’s never been this bad before. Hell, it’s supposed to heat up again this weekend…
But in Oslo it’s cold and rainy. Like I said, it reminded me of the east coast, growing up in Connecticut, college in Vermont. And in the midst of a downpour Jerry took me to the Kon-Tiki museum.
That was a head-turner. They had Kon-Tiki and the Ra, the boats/rafts used to sail across the Pacific and the Atlantic, and they were both bigger than you thought they were but still so small. Who would take such a risk? A Norwegian, they’ve got a history of exploring.
Even more fascinating was the museum next door, which contained the Fram, a boat which went to the North Pole and South Pole and back again. Jerry knew every detail of Nansen and Amundsen, the explorers, we didn’t even study them in school, but the Norwegians are proud of their heritage. I was stimulated by the information, I could live in a museum.
And yesterday I went to the Spotify office. No, I don’t make any money from the company, I’m not a scumbag, getting paid to hype crap, but their playlist-maker reached out and I decided to go to lunch (pressed duck, excellent!) But before that we hung out in the office. Where an ad salesman brought up a webpage for the Norwegian sovereign fund, check it out:
It’s kind of like that billboard on Santa Monica Boulevard, you know the one, it shows the number of people who’ve died from smoking this year. Only in this case, you’re seeing the value of a fund that owns a huge chunk of Spotify and is the social security for Norwegian citizens.
Then I heard about this city on the fjord, on the west coast of the country, that was in danger of disappearing from a tsunami. They made a movie about it, “The Wave.” You see there’s a crack in the mountain, and when the rock finally lets loose and falls into the sea the population has to run like hell up the hill to survive. I wonder if they’ll play the Pink Floyd instrumental when it transpires. Gives you some perspective, when your life is in danger from nature.
And did you know Spotify bans its playlist makers from talking to labels? Furthermore, Axel, my lunch date, is famous for his playlist Morning Coffee, when people find out he constructed it they’re impressed, they love it. I don’t know if in the future we’ll pick our tracks or employ playlists, this is just one more thing that needs to be figured out on the forefront of streaming. No one knows exactly what the future holds. We live in a pop-dominated world, you may say otherwise but the label bigwigs told me that’s what dominates, not that you need to hear it from them, just look at the chart, pop’s squeezing out the marginal genres. But will a new sound come along and wipe the slate clean, get us all listening to something new, as the Beatles once did?
That’s the power of the individual. One person can change the world.
Today I had a long conversation with Terje Hakonsen. Now THAT’S a rock star!
You may know him as the guy who refused to participate in the Olympics. You know, the world’s best snowboarder who would have cleaned up in ’98 in Nagano but refused to go.
He was mad that the International Olympic Committee co-opted his sport, imposing its rules and eviscerating snowboarding’s culture.
That’s what we’re looking for, independent thinkers who can say no, who can go against the flow.
Terje is still going against the flow. He’s trying to push snowboarding into new territory. By changing the halfpipe, adding new features, bringing back the quarter pipe, riding a snowskate, which is a snowboard with no bindings. This lanky dude in a ball cap is what the rock stars used to be like. Living free from the office. Following his dream. Going out on the hill for the joy of it, you remember joy, right? We haven’t had that in music for a very long time.
Living in a country of five million you can’t just thump your chest and say how great you are, you have to divine context, see your place in the world, choose your entry point and execute. Which is one of the reasons America is falling behind, we’re so self-congratulatory we refuse to see our flaws. USA! USA! But if you’re not lifting up the carpet, if you’re not checking rulers and watching the parking meters, you’re falling behind. We used to look up to musicians as leaders. Now they’re just business people, who are a lot poorer than the techies, we wish they would realize their power is in their art, that money gets you far, but art will get you farther.
I didn’t come to Oslo to learn all this.
But I did.
P.S. Thor Heyerdahl set fire to his raft Tigris to protest war in East Africa. Are you willing to sacrifice your mission for a higher purpose?
P.P.S. Experts said Kon-Tiki wouldn’t last, that the ropes would break under the strain long before land was reached. Turns out the ropes wore grooves into the wood and the raft survived. I’m not telling you to go on a death mission, but if you’re not willing to challenge conventional wisdom, if you always defer to “experts,” don’t expect to experience any breakthroughs.
P.P.P.S. The Fram had a piano. Music goes everywhere.
P.P.P.P.S. Oslo has Uber. And everybody seems to have an iPhone, without a case. Once upon a time Norway had one TV station and one hour of rock music on the radio a week, up until the eighties, in fact. But then the oil came and everything changed. America is a wealthy nation, but not enough of the money trickles down to the underclass. We’re like a team with all captains. And it’s hard to win with so few people on the field.
P.P.P.P.P.S. They tell me it doesn’t really get that cold, and the days aren’t really that short. But they live here, this is their homeland. Everybody comes from somewhere and it’s hard to break ties and most return to what’s comfortable. And I want to live in L.A. But getting out of one’s comfort zone, experiencing new places, is so stimulating and educational, and he who gives up learning is dying. What kind of crazy world do we live in where Norwegians are better informed than Americans? One in which the internet has flattened the globe, where information is at the fingertips of everyone. Be curious. Question authority. Don’t put your hopes in false gods. Look for truth, don’t be dazzled by image. You’re an individual, you matter. What you do influences others. Embrace life. Feel free to consume, but the rewards go to those who create.
