Ulysses and Suburb Vomit

Excerpt from a colleague's obituary six years back (translated): "He was from XXX. The city must have been dear to him, since he ridiculed it continuously."
Those words came back to my mind after I yesterday did a five-hour walking tour by myself in Dublin. Wandered from place to place having only a map and a camera in my hand.
The route in the map was from Ulysses (written by James Joyce). Showing the places where protagonist Leopold Bloom and other characters wandered during that one day novel takes place.
Time has changed. Bloom's house in Eccles Street was demolished to accommodate Mater Hospital. As was the Cabman's shelter, which apparently had been replaced by AIB trading centre. I couldn't find all the places with the plaques that were supposed to be there. But apparently what still exist from 109 years back are the pubs, though with different names. Ruggy O'Donohoe's pub is now International Bar and Barney Kiernan's pub The Capel.
I saw the shady letters 'Finn's Hotel' still in the wall of the old hotel in Nassau Street where Joyce's future wife Nora Barnacle worked as a chambermaid and whom he met first time romantically on that exact day Ulysses takes place on June 16th, 1904.
I also tried to find the place in the corner of Dawson Street and Molesworth Street where Bloom helped a blind man across the street. While I was standing there, a horse carriage passed by. As if I had suddenly jumped 109 years back in time.
It was a nice eye-opening day for me after having lived in Dublin region for over seven years. Seeing the history and today. After reading some pieces from Wikipedia I'd like to jump in the time machine, just to see what Joyce's and Barnacle's first date on that June 16th, 1904 was like. Did it really have that magic to base a full massive novel on that exact date.
And what the city was like. Were people happy? Happier than now? Did they feel like Dubliners now do? Were they then proud of their hometown, then much smaller than it is now?
And was the city comfortable to go for a walk. Spend time. Live. Did it have enough character to really base a novel on. Trying to depict it as Joyce did so people like me would be wandering around it hundred years later.
I'm not sure what Joyce's relationship with Dublin, Dalkey, Dun Laoghaire and other places nearby was. He lived most of his adult life abroad. Was there a reason to depict Dublin again and again deep inside his mind? As well as with other artists, who depict their hometowns.
I started thinking about books I've read, films I've seen, music I've listened to. All the stories in them that have something to do with processing some place. Maybe romanticizing it. Or barking at it. Processing the events, even traumas that happened there. The past. Nostalgic or the opposite. Events and memories that formed these people.
I've been dealing with the same issues through writing. Gathering ideas and memories from past times, mixing it with fiction. I recently noticed a Finnish novel written by Anu Juvonen, who is few years younger than me. The book is titled Lähiöoksennus, translated Suburb Vomit. Events take place in Kannelmäki suburb in Helsinki. Only seven minutes' train trip away from where I grew up in Vantaa.
I read a newspaper story about her memories about the times she wrote about. There were lots of similarities to my memories from that era in a similar suburb. Supposedly million children growing up in that era have the same touching surface. I could feel the angst. See the pictures in my mind. Need to ridicule those certain madnesses in the middle of concrete building blocks.
I admit: I do have a love/hate relationship with my childhood and younghood suburb. I mention it with certain pride or happiness when Formula One drivers coming from there succeed. I share the new videos when progressive metal band Amorphis does something new and interesting. Still, I mock the suburb, especially its past, whenever I have a chance. I joke about Japanese tourists trying desperately to find Mika Häkkinen Square only to realize this has actually happened.
I'm thinking, will the place ever have any aspect that would mean anything to anyone else who hasn't grown up there? I suppose novels like Ulysses and Lähiöoksennus in their own ways immortalize these places. Especially for those who know the places. And through writing and reading to someone else, who can jump in the shoes of a person, who actually lived and experienced it. The time and place then.
Even to the point when they start understanding why someone ridicules the home place instead of maybe trying to forget or live with it.

The 27 Club and Friend Andy

In my younger years I had a friend. Let's call him "Andy". He was a short, quiet boy, who would sit in the school classes drawing heavy metal band logos or rock lyrics to his notebooks. He was often in his own world. Thinking. Being creative. Composing stories in his mind. Trying to put them into words. Whether they were lyrics for a band a mutual friend of ours had, or for the short stories he wrote.
Andy was extremely talented. His English skills were superb for a boy growing up in a Finnish suburb. He went abroad later on as an exchange student. Ended up getting best grades in his creative writing class in the school he attended. I often waited when Andy would get published. It was to be only a matter of time. So I thought.
I remember a moment around Easter 1999. Having a dinner with a friend couple in a restaurant in the city centre of Helsinki. Suddenly the other friend of mine breaking the news. Andy had been found dead in his apartment. Andy had turned 27 the month before. He had apparently had a seizure or something. Nothing suspicious.
I often think what Andy could have become. A husband or a father to someone. A talented, published writer. I wonder what kind of stories he could've ended up bringing to this world. In many ways, Andy was ahead of his time. He was often talking about the kinds of streams in literature or popular culture that only became known or popular years or decades later.
I remembered Andy as I came across a story about a Finnish band Hanoi Rocks. I was in sixth grade in school when the band made a wonderful album Two Steps from the Move. It was to be the first step to their massive international success. Finally there could be something coming out of Finland. Surely there had been some wonderful bands, but for some reason they never made it across the big pond, not even to the other parts of Europe. Hanoi Rocks had the chance.
Then came the December 9th, 1984. Redondo Beach, California. Two friends jumped in the car to get some more booze to their party. They were intoxicated, the driver speeding. These men were Razzle, the English drummer of Hanoi Rocks, and Vince Neil, the singer for Mötley Crüe. The car driven by Neil crashed into another car. Razzle was taken to South Bay ER, but was declared dead on arrival.
Pretty soon Hanoi Rocks split. Over the years they've reformed and split again. Still for me the golden age was just before and during the tragic times in 1984. I wonder what they could've become as a band.
Hanoi Rocks has had an unusually strong impact on later glam-rock wave. They inspired bands such as Guns N' Roses. Some very well-known rockers still honor Hanoi Rocks as their big inspiration.
Somehow I feel Hanoi Rocks died as a band with Razzle. Every time I hear songs like Don't You Ever Leave Me or the one dedicated to Razzle, Million Miles Away,  I think of what waste accidents and addictions cause in this world. I wonder it in the context to my own life. Thinking it as a parent of a kid, who is getting closer to the puberty. How I should raise my child so he wouldn't end up mixing himself with substances. Even cigarettes.
We've had our talks. Discussing how my son never got to see his grandpa, my dad, who died of lung cancer at 52. How these rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and others never got to make more powerful music as they did already during their short careers.
Why take the risk? There is nothing fancy to be on the verge of death at 27. Additionally, life can be full of surprises. Interrupting life anyway. Causing sorrow.
There will never be replacements for people who pass away. There will never be dreams that came true. And as me and my friends remember: there will never be new Andy.

Cheap Journey Down Memory Lane

I sometimes have this habit of spending time browsing Youtube and Wikipedia at the same time. Often listening to the songs from the 80's, when I grew up.
It's a nostalgic journey to my memories. Remembering the first week of March in 1986, when I was in seventh grade in school and we got our first cable/satellite TV with Sky Channel, Music Box and the local cable channel showing a wide range of oldie TV series such as Kojak, TJ Hooker, The Fall Guy...
The music brings back the memories of those moments in pictures, even scents. Sometimes it's even possible to remember the feeling of warm or cold air on the skin as it was back then.
I could easily spend several hours going through this music-information combination. When finding a good song, I might search the lyrics and if there's a story behind it available, I'll read it from Wikipedia or elsewhere. Sometimes I bump into stories I never even understood existed when I was a teenager.
Some of them are part of a dialogue between real people. Not necessarily the person performing the song, but the songwriters. The singer is just a megaphone for all that felt heartache, pain, hatred or other unprocessed feelings.
I never knew that Feargal Sharkey was one of those megaphones with his two consecutive hits A Good Heart and You Little Thief.
The first one was written by then only 19-year old Maria McKee about her relationship with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench. The second one was written as an answer or a payback by Tench about his relationship with McKee.
Sharkey ended up placing the songs next to each other on his debut album. It would be interesting to know how much commercial thinking this all had. Or was it done purely out of opportunity. Natural way, of course.
I don't mind. The songs are memorable. And the story, now after over quarter of a century, is still alive. For me freshly. Even when it doesn't have that mystery in it anymore.
As still has You're So Vain by Carly Simon, released in the end of 1972, my year of birth. According to Wikipedia, the song is a critical profile of a self-absorbed lover saying: "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." The subject's identity has long been the matter of speculation, suspects including a wide variety of celebrities from Warren Beatty to David Bowie, from James Taylor to David Geffen.

Artists are artists. They get their material from everywhere. It might be nabbed from real events, from own, friends' or neighbours' lives. The content might have been grabbed from imagination, stolen from the bum passing by, or from the vegetable salesman they've known for years. Or the real life events with some small piece of news from the newspaper. Sources of inspiration are endless.

For whatever it is; music, literature, movies, somehow all these speculations might boost the sales, or at least interest towards the song or the person behind it.

I'm just wondering what kind of feelings does it boost in the mind of a person who created that actual piece. Relief of having let it all out by writing or composing? Relief of telling all the world about the reality behind the scenes before? Feeling of vengeance? Feeling of love finally let out in public? Feeling of being an artist and getting attention? Feeling of being able to touch someone's heart? Someone, unknown, out there?
Feargal, Maria, Benmont... I don't care. But you got me. Even over quarter of a century later. Sometimes the pain in heart brings great results.
Feelings. Nothing more than feelings. But also nothing less.