6/26 JP

Visby, on the island of Gotland, was at its peak in the Viking Age, and even now, when it's a trade city in decline, a pronounced medieval atmosphere still lingers over its ruins. The "Ringmuren", or "ring wall", is a defensive wall that circles around the town's entire perimeter. It was built in the Middle Ages, and you can still see it today, its form unchanged by the passage of the months and years. I've been taking up my pen and writing, in a hotel room there in Visby. Almedalen Park, in the center of the city, is overrun with flowers this time of year, and if you have a seat on one of the worked wooden benches, birds will stroll by right in front of you. In the distance, the town church's bell rings out. What else... The ocean is very beautiful. I've come quite some distance. The time before I set out on my travels feels somehow long-ago and nostalgic.

Today I'm not writing any tiresome little thing about the nature of creating art, etc etc. This is my own personal song. Even I had "pride" once; if others spoke poorly of my work, I would get angry in proportion to how poorly it was spoken of. I figured that no matter how harshly I was denied, all I had to do was make something that was enough to prove them wrong. Every night, clutching my pen and writing by moonlight, I thought only of proving that I was above them. I hated them so much I could have killed them. Like hell was I going to lie down and just let them win - that naive rebellious spirit was like my gasoline. I understood well the saying "rage is the greatest driver of creativity".

It was sometime last summer, I think. One evening, for the first time in a long while, I took my guitar to the roundabout in front of the train station and sang there. A street performance, you know. Having quit the part-time job I'd had for so long, I was in a period where I was writing songs only by force of habit. There weren't many people passing by there. A vibrant red-orange glow smoldered in the shopping arcade across the way. Students and workers, young men and women, and senior citizens passing by would pause, and then, having lost interest, move on again. This cycle repeated as a matter of course, unchanging.

It happened after I had finished adjusting my tuning between songs. Suddenly, when I looked up, a middle aged man was standing there, looking my way. I glanced down and adjusted my grip on my guitar. I started playing the next song, and for a few minutes, he silently listened. When the accompaniment was nearing its end, he seemed to lose interest and turned back the way he had been going. This was all he had to say.

"Pretty boring song." What do you think I thought, when I heard that?

I don't care.

I didn't care, Elma. I stopped performing that moment, and started making my way home from my place across from that shopping arcade. To this day, I still can't forget the twilight I saw back then, that was so like the night.