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 As was the Cabman's shelter, which apparently had been replaced by AIB trading centre.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.

Nordic Crime Fiction Wave Could Grab Finland

When I started writing fiction, it wasn't a sure fact that I'd start writing crime novels. I surely had an interest in that genre, but there were more. So far my published works have included two crime novels, literary short stories circulating around the themes of love, death, sorrow and life altogether, and imaginative and somehow gentle stories dealing with serious issues for children.

But I have to admit: I do have a strong interest in researching and writing about crime, diving into existential or slightly philosophical questions of life and death. As one of my true literary influences, Matti Yrjänä Joensuu once said in an interview, after his harsh experiences apparently in his childhood and then as a police investigator in Helsinki Police Arson Unit: "It doesn't really make you a humorist."

I don't know if I'm lucky, but writing about serious and melancholic issues don't wipe away my need to use and create humorous situations. Maybe more in the future.

It still doesn't come as a surprise that after being a passionate researcher of these dark themes, some of the feedback I used to get from my synopsis or writings from writing professionals were: "Why do all these have to include a murder?"

I've heard that same story from other people writing crime novels. The twists of plot always often ending up using a homicide. It's just a matter if the story has more to it. Other subplots including different themes. Subplots about personal matters of the protagonists. Depicting the era. Social commentary. Or pure criticism towards the society and the system of the country. Often shown especially in Nordic crime novels.

For me, in addition to certain Finnish writers, Swedes are the greatest. Wife-husband writer duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote together ten Beck novels in 1965-75. They are all of excellent quality. The fourth one in the series, The Laughing Policeman, being my definite favourite. Especially through the crime investigation plot, which is very intelligent, still realistic. All Beck novels starting from the first, Roseanna, ending up to the last one Terrorists, depict the changes in Swedish welfare society through crime.

As has done later on Henning Mankell. I've read Wallander novels written by Mankell and value them very high in the ranks. I still see Rolf Lassgård as Kurt Wallander, the first one of three actors playing Wallander in TV series, the first two Swedish, the last one English. The two other actors have been Krister Henriksson and Kenneth Branagh.

One of my favourite crime-themed novels, which comes close to The Laughing Policeman in plot intelligence is Hour of the Wolf (originally Carambole) by Håkan Nesser. The intelligence in the police work, the point of view through murderer's eyes are just about bull's eye when trying to find rewarding reading.

Most of these have quite laconic narrative even when sometimes fast-paced. They don't play much with language as Matti Yrjänä Joensuu does. His Harjunpää series is not only about how to solve a crime, but why the crime was committed. As Swedes do, his novels go deeper in the society, flaws of the justice and political system and how certain, not always bad people, ended up committing the crime. They are often victims of injustice in life themselves. Even fragile to the end.

Joensuu has that certain sing in the language which often is lacking from regular crime novels. Something that with its depth breaks the borders to other genres and general literary fiction. In his lifetime, Joensuu (1948-2011) managed to create his own believable world of melancholy, realistic life and people often surrounded by sadness, bitterness, despair, unfairness, lack of love. Wrapping it all up in a unique touching way. While there is a lot of misery and pessimism in his books, Harjunpää novels are the ones I often go back to when wanting to read the packages that have it all. The humane touch.

I haven't found many writings of this kind that wouldn't be categorized in or out of the crime literature genre. Even though crime is committed in certain novels, it doesn't have to mean it should be categorized in crime novels.

I recently saw Purge (Puhdistus) by awarded Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen categorized in crime fiction in certain Irish book shops. I'm not sure is this intentional to bring the sales up. Or was it more difficult to categorize the book here, since the knowledge of the novel winning the prestigious Finlandia Prize and the book's strong connections to the past of nearby Estonia don't mean that much here.

Or was it intentional to label it as Nordic Noir? Nordic crime novels are doing commercially very well also outside the Nordic countries. The works of Sjöwall-Wahlöö couple sold somewhat ten million copies even in their earlier times, mostly in Eastern Europe. Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser, Norwegian Jo Nesbø and the late Swedish Stieg Larsson have widened the success to the other parts of the world by selling tens of millions of copies.

Especially Sweden has produced more and more internationally successful crime writers such as Liza Marklund, Jan Guillou, Camilla Läckberg, Arne Dahl, Johan Theorin, Åke Edwardson, Anna Jansson, Åsa Larsson, Leif G.W. Persson, Karin Alvtegen, Inger Frimansson, Jens Lapidus, Mari Jungstedt, Norway bringing Anne Holt, Karin Fossum, Kjell Ola Dahl, Denmark Leif Davidsen  and Iceland Arnaldur Indriðason. There would be many great ones coming from Finland as well. Some, such as Leena Lehtolainen, Reijo Mäki and thrillerist Ilkka Remes are doing well in German-speaking world.

Opening the markets also in English-speaking region hasn't yet been done properly by Finns, but interesting writers such as Antti Tuomainen, whose acclaimed and awarded novel The Healer has recently been published in English, have the chance.
And I'm sure there would still be more writers, whose works haven't yet been translated to English, but would be worth reading.

For Those Not With Us Anymore

When I was young, some sad news came time to time about guys my age. People I knew or had known. In the same neighbourhoods and suburbs where we grew up. Sometimes I wondered what it was about that age. Guys. Sudden growth in mortality rate.
Some of those memories come back as I remember my youth. In flashbacks. I don't know if it's about getting to this age certain things from the past start coming up. Maybe it has something do with my work, which is often about trying to remember significant things. Even own personal history. The interest in trying to map my own past. Places. As they were then. Maybe to be partially used as a fictional setting.
Unfortunately, sometimes the memories come through with sorrow.
The last sad news came yesterday. An old acquaintance my age. We went to the confirmation camp together at the age 15. Heart attack.
A young man. Still. There are no judges giving votes who will be dropped next.
When I look back certain lives could've been predicted early. How vulnerable some were. The friend from the sports team, who had moved away. His death notice was in the newspaper when he was 15. No others were involved in this gun-related incident.
Others where in an accident caused later on by a young man, also from that same sports team. Who had decided to drive his car against another car. Head-on collision. He wasn't the only fatality.
Some stories were sad in different ways. Because of just one impulsive decision. To go grab a burger some kilometers away after a successful sports tournament. Later at night after a little partying. The big tree by the road was the last guard. The headstone of that young man is in the same cemetery where my Dad is buried.
There are slowing down lives as we have lived, have become adults, hopefully gotten smarter, found the peace. Some didn't have that understanding or hope. Or the will to understand.
How fast some of them were living their lives. As if it would run away, if you don't try to catch it as much as possible immediately right there. In that moment. With both hands.
And the ones you could tell didn't appreciate life. Many of them haven't been here anymore in years. You could tell it already very early.
As many experiences can tell, we don't know what's around the corner. Which day or the second will be the last one.
I have no clue if I will live to be 100. Will I have the same destiny as this young man had some weeks ago when he moved from here to eternity.
Still, a bit shocked I've stopped. On Monday I'll phone to reserve an appointment for a proper health check up. We're only here once.

Processing real life events, and reverse drama

I'm often very interested in stories, which have a connection to real life. I couldn't care less for C-level drama or true movie channels showing the lead Based on a true story. But if certain pieces of fiction in books, movies, TV or even theatre have some kind of believable, not-so-sugary and ambitiously processed connection to real events,  you might have reached me. Even more interesting it is, if the piece is based on someone's original psychological processing of a life situation.
Some months ago, I went to Gaiety Theater in Dublin to see Steel Magnolias (Mischa Barton was in it). I hadn't yet seen the 1988 film starring Julia Roberts, Shirley MacLaine etc. But after browsing theater show lists and Wikipedia, I bumped into the background story of it. Originally written as a play in early 1980s by Robert Harling.
I read that Robert had written the play to process his sorrow after the death of his younger sister Susan Harling Robinson, a diabetic.
As it is summarized in Wikipedia:
As her best friend and closest sibling, Harling found it very difficult to cope with her death. He was advised by many of his friends to write about his feelings as a coping method. It began as a short story and evolved into a full length play as Harling didn't feel that a short story adequately conveyed the complexity of the relationships and the emotions that existed within the characters. Harling felt it important to include the way the characters utilized humor and lighthearted conversations to assist them in coping with the seriousness of the underlying situations.
I had to see how it had come alive. Especially as a drama-comedy. I know people processing sad things might end up using extremely dark, even macabre humour. But somehow I had a feeling that this would be different. Lighthearted, having heart, with a bit of haunting voice towards the end. I knew how it would end even when I didn't.
I was pleased. I would've ended the story in a same way. It brought different kind of after taste. Sense of having had laughs, but also a little sadness. As if I had lost a friend.
Steel Magnolias made me think how much information we have about the play or a movie beforehand makes the watching experience different. We get this presumption when knowing the background story.
When seeing the awarded documentary film Senna, the whole watching is more intense as you know how the story will end. How the main character, Ayrton Senna himself, is nearing his death. How those small decisions made about certain safety measures by the race officials are now seen.
Sometimes this drama is reverse. Made in an innovative way. The conclusion is shown first, then certain developments leading to it only afterwards.
One decision made years ago was made in the popular TV series ER. Doctor Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) was written out of the series by developing him a brain cancer. Only after his death was announced, the full following episode dealt with Mark's last times before his death. As he did peaceful rollerblading in Hawaii, his condition getting worse, him dying later on in the episode. The whole intensity to that overly peaceful episode came from the knowledge of nearing death.
TV, theater, movies, books. They don't always need to be utterly intense with ever-continuing action sequences.
There are great ways to create interesting, different kind of drama with simple, but bit unusual decisions.

Where were you when...?

I remember exactly when I heard that two planes had hit the Twin Towers. I remember where I was when I heard US president Ronald Reagan had been shot, as well as Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
I remember late September night in 1994. I was studying in a small college outside Turku in Southwestern Finland. Hearing heavy helicopters going over the dorm towards the sea middle of the night. The next morning news told by my college room mate. He had heard from the radio that a ferry had sunk at the sea. I didn't believe it then and I still hear about it. Nowadays as a joke.
The ship was named MS Estonia. 852 people went down in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. That explained the helicopters.
Immortalized the  memory of us students gathering in the college lobby stunned silent watching the morning TV news. Looking at those shocking TV pictures from the sea. And recovered people being brought from the sea to Turku University Hospital just 20+ kilometers away. To that same hospital where my son would one day be born. Personal history in context of a larger historical picture.
September 11th, 2001 was probably one of the strangest days in my life. I was working as an Editor-in-chief in a local newspaper in Southwestern Finland. In that morning my boss collected me from my home. Me, him and our caricaturist drove to Helsinki. Spent nearly an hour strolling around the city center of Helsinki before moving on to Government Palace by the Senate Square, Prime Minister's office. We were there to hand him the caricaturist's newest book. I was there to take pictures, to write an interview of Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen. How he felt about political satire in books and on television. He had been depicted in one weekly TV satire as a caricature character.
Some hours later me and the caricaturist stayed in Helsinki as the boss left back. We met a colleague. Spent some time. Suddenly the colleague's mobile phone started beeping messages from news agencies. After the second message about the second plane hitting the tower we had to find a TV somewhere. Ended up in a lobby of a city center hotel where people were gathering together. Apparently security level had been raised also in Helsinki since the police cars were going around.
In the evening I took a bus back to Turku. Spent the time on the phone discussing with different people how the world wouldn't be the same after that day.
I remember that day. Those moments. Getting the messages. The feeling. I cannot imagine how the world changed to those people who were really involved in those events some way or living nearby where they happened.
Few days ago, my son started remembering similar events in his life. The big news. Where he had been when he had heard about Osama Bin Laden being killed among other events. It had apparently been at home, through morning news on TV.
The next generation might have different events staying in their minds. But I have a feeling the echo will be the same, no matter if the news will eventually be splashed on their face through social media or through an iPod. Real life story is a story no matter which way you get it.

Did it touch you?

Art is powerful. Even so powerful that when it really hits the nerve and heart of a person digesting it, you can almost hear an explosion. When a work of art has dug through all the way. Found its meaning. When artist's intention in creating experiences, bringing up emotions or just pure joy, has been successful.

When I was studying Finnish literature in University of Turku, we had to read massive book packages for quite a few exams: Finnish literature, world literature, special genres...

For one exam with 2-4 credits, we easily had to read 30-40 books: novels, collections of poetry, plays, theory... I remember reading three plays and half of a thick novel overnight. Some of them really hit certain nerves: Jeppe of the Hill by Ludvig Holberg the laughter nerve, To Steal Her Love by Matti Yrjänä Joensuu the heart.

When I was reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I couldn't stop after having read fifty pages. I was totally sucked into that magical psychological narrative Dostoyevsky had created. I could almost see the streets and backyards of Saint Petersburg through the eyes of Raskolnikov.

Therefore it wasn't a surprise to hear a story about some student in the past trying to find all those books to be read. Missing one, Crime and Punishment, and the only question in the exam being from that book. Failing the exam. Given a second chance to read the book, having the re-exam only one day later. Reading it overnight. Being psychologically totally sucked into this nearly disturbing content. Passing the exam this way probably left an unforgettable experience.

Sometimes some pieces of art don't hit you at all. It's like trying to pair with someone. Maybe it just wasn't the right time. Then. Maybe another time is better.

In 1993-1994 there was a big buzz about Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours Trilogy: Blue, White, Red. In the first round, the middle part, White, found me the best. I found the first part Blue fine, but nothing spectacular, even though it was visually stunning.

In August 1995 my dad died. Some months later I went to see Blue again in a film matinee in my student city Turku. This time the grief, Juliette Binoche torturing her knuckles by tearing them against a stone wall, really hit me. My own life experiences had brought me to assimilate to the widow character.

When a movie character falls in love, we may or may not understand what he or she is going through. When we find connections to our own emotions and experiences, we have a better possibility to understand what the one creating the piece has meant.

If the personal surface doesn't exist, but the piece has still managed to find you, the creator has succeeded even better. Making someone assimilate to a very different person in a very different world isn't an easy task. But as Dostoyevsky managed with Raskolnikov, we know it is possible.

Overcoming reader's block

I'm a mood reader. Recently having several phases of reader's block. I don't know how I'd cure it. Fully at least. One treatment is to go back to those old books that I've once categorized as highly content, personally inspirational, touching, meaningful, entertaining.
I don't know if they have much in common. Some of them have well-thought plots, off the beaten path language often with that poetic "sing", which tells about the atmosphere, humanity, writer's desire to write, finding in a natural way the inner vulnerability of the individual in place. The no-super hero human being whose skin you can crawl into.
Often my favourite tone is somehow melancholic, maybe having slight quiet sadness, still not necessarily having the story ending unhappily. I love ambitiously written survival stories. Or the ones that end up with the protagonist having inner peace, some kind of harmony.
The most important books for me have a strong touch and taste of life. Some of the books that have brought back my trust in the power of literature have been from my country of origin, Finland: The Home of the Dark Butterflies (Tummien perhosten koti) by Leena Lander, To Steal Her Love (Harjunpää ja rakkauden nälkä) by recently deceased Matti (Yrjänä) Joensuu,  Two Cities (Kaksi kaupunkia) by Harri Sirola,  Train to San Pellegrino (Juna San Pellegrinoon) by Jukka Pakkanen.
I've had similar feelings when reading certain works from authors like Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Kahlil Gibran. And watching movies, which add more to it with the whole atmosphere: pictures and well-selected soundtracks.
If I went to list the films that have had the same affect on me, I'd have to mention two of my favourite Italian films: Cinema Paradiso directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and Mediterraneo (by Gabriele Salvatores).
Some of the more rough ones would include Seven Pounds (by Gabriele Muccino), Dead Mans Shoes by Shane Meadows, Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, Four Friends by Arthur Penn and City of Hope by John Sayles among others.
I sometimes go back to read the full books or certain pages that have that strong emotional affect on me.
The first chapters of Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. The pages where the big brother dies when jumping from the window to escape the fire with the little brother on his back. To save him (true brother Lionheart). Meeting again after passing to the other side, Nangijala.
It's not about that moment only. Some of the highlights in literature live in my mind again and again. But I want to find new, earthshaking reading experiences. That would make me read the whole pile of books of some amazing author new to me.
I don't know why I recently haven't found anything totally touching and new. I've browsed piles of books I've taken from the library shelves trying to make a connection to some new, touching, intelligent authors who have "that something" in the story, language and tone. Apart from some excerpts from Paul Auster and Tobias Wolff, and some new names to me such as Haruki Murakami, I haven't found anything that would have blown me away. Therefore I seem to go back to the old ones, to browse those Raymond Carver prose poems that have touched me so deeply all these years.
But I want new ones. Probably with YOUR help. If something moved you or blew you away, let me know.

Testing the e-book revolution

It's been an interesting year.

Last year, around September, I started diving into the world of e-publishing by following what an American author Vincent Zandri, one of the very successful authors in the e-markets, had achieved. Some months later I wrote a story about him and the e-book markets in the big world for a newspaper in Finland.

After having browsed some sites for weeks, I realized I suddenly had a big light bulb flashing over my head. I figured out, why wouldn't I do the same thing. I had had two novels published in the past years, was working on new ones, editing old ones. I had recently finished a short story collection, which I had already partially translated from Finnish to English.

So I translated the rest of the book in only a period of 1,5 weeks, wrote three new stories directly in English to replace the ones I dismissed at this point. Sent the package to my wonderful editor Alisa. After the editing rounds were finished, cover designed, author pictures taken, the e-formatting done, the e-book was uploaded into distributors' meat grinders and sites. It was similar to those holy moments years before. Receiving the package with 12 or 20 author's copies of those just printed novels. Magical feeling of touching the book. Seeing it there. Finally. After all that creative work.

But this time it was different. Books were not waiting in the storage room of some warehouse, hoping someone would order them to their bookshops. Within minutes the e-book was for sale on distributor's website, soon also on Amazon US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain... Then within weeks through other e-retailers such as Diesel, Kobo, Sony, Apple, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith...

In addition to jumping the language fence, it was to be a nice test to see how e-markets would go.

Little did I know where this would bring me. I still don't. The whole market is expanding and bringing new dimensions to it as months and years go by. E-book has a long run.

Somehow I feel it's little uncontrollable, but can bring many chances. There are free giveaways, contests, hooks authors are throwing out to get new readers.
The numbers of books available are enormous. But markets are more open than ever before. You can reach a person in the backlands of Australia in seconds, if they just have internet connection available. There is no need for thinking  if the editions will run out or if the book ordered via mail will arrive in a week, three weeks or ever. Or is it available anywhere anymore at all.

Earlier this week I noticed news about renowned author Margaret Atwood joining Wattpad with some of her texts. I followed Atwood's path and joined Wattpad and added the title story from my short story collection My Hometown Named Love to be read there for free. It can be read HERE. (Remember to vote!) If you liked the story or wish to read more, you will find the rest of the book with its other 19 stories as an e-version on sale HERE.

Life is stranger than fiction

One of my favourite films, Magnolia, (directed by one of the those directors whose films I always want to see as soon as they are released, Paul Thomas Anderson) starts with three stories full of coincidences. Each ending with a haunting narrator voice saying: "And I would like to think this was all only a matter of chance."
Sometimes I feel the same way. It could be said that some of life's strange events could be used as a material for creative work. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
***
In the turn of August, 1991, me and a friend of mine were on InterRail around Europe for three weeks. At one point we took a night train and bought tickets to the sleeping cart. There must have been four other people we didn't know in the same cabin. In the morning, when the train was getting closer to the final station in Holland, one of the people pointed outdoors, showing buildings near the tracks. There were five high blocks of flats, all different colours. "There are lots of students living in them", the man said.
Almost two years passed. I graduated and started my mandatory military service. Towards the end of my service I saw a notice in the newspaper about this new international business studies program. Half would be in Finland, half in Holland. I applied and was accepted.
Already the first semester was in Holland. After arriving in Holland, we were taken to our accommodation from school. And guess what? My room was in one of those colourful buildings. The same ones the man in the train had pointed over two years before.
***
My dad died in August 1995 of cancer, after a battle that had lasted two years and nine months, somewhat thousand nights. In the weeks he was getting close to death, a slow song named Tuhat yötä hit the Finnish charts. The song title translated to English would mean Thousand Nights. Telling a story about someone being awake for someone for thousand nights. That's how I felt then. The song hit the number 1 spot two weeks after dad's death.
When me and my sister were going through dad's younghood belongings our grandmother had given us after he had passed, we found some short stories dad had written as a young man, around age 20. Some had been published in a regional newspaper in the region he grew up. One of the stories mentioned a character dying on the last Sunday of August. Dad died on the last Sunday of August.
***
World is small. Only seven billion people in it. Around 5,4 billion in the early 1990's when my sister traveled to Australia to meet some relatives and travel around. She traveled to Ayers Rock in Central Australia. One evening she spent time with fellow travelers, started talking to this German girl. After hearing my sister was from Helsinki, the girl mentioned she had a pen pal there. Told what her name was. My sister said, one of her best friends had the same name. The girl picked up her address book and showed the girl's address. The pen pal and the best friend were the same person.

And I would like to think this was all only a matter of chance.
Or was it?
This cannot be "one of those things..."
Or maybe it was.
Strange things happen all the time.

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.

Theatre of Shame (and Joy)

I should be ashamed. I've lived in Ireland for over six years and the times I've been to theatre here can be counted with the fingers of one hand. Considering that in some phases of life I went to see just about everything available, I should be tied to a chair in a theatre.
I grew up in Martinlaakso in Vantaa, Finland, often known as the childhood suburb of famous formula one drivers Mika Häkkinen and Mika Salo. Helsinki city centre was only a twenty-minute train ride away.
The suburb I grew up in was one of those fast-built complexes reflecting the fast urbanization of the 1960's and 70's. It wasn't exactly the worst place to live in, but not the best one either. The earlier childhood still had its memorable moments.
In the end of 70's life was not about what we had. It had content. Some kind of feeling of togetherness. Therefore it wasn't a surprise that my very dispersed home city put some money into providing free or near free cultural events.
At one point they started handing out free theatre tickets for children. The stage was in the school auditorium. The school I would once enter when I'd be thirteen, and would walk out of with my white graduation cap on when I'd be nineteen.
To get those free theatre tickets, people had to queue outside the local swimming hall early in the week. If I remember right, it was on Monday evenings. My mother was there every Monday. And I mean EVERY Monday. I really should be thankful for her now that I realize how valuable those Saturday plays were for me. Me and my friends must have seen a big bunch of plays for children. One I remember well was When the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town.
Even though my parents were cultured and always cheering me and my sister up to read good books and replace nonsense TV series by watching critically acclaimed films, seeing the great plays on stage was something magical for a kid growing up in a concrete suburb. It was such a good experience that I must have told my friends about it. Soon some of the slightly rougher boys ended up going to the theatre with me. With the tickets collected by my mother.
The second theatre phase I entered, was when I was working as a journalist in my twenties in Turku region in Southwestern Finland. I used to get free tickets so we'd write reviews of the plays. At one point, I must have seen just about all the plays in the nearby areas.
There are some very good professional theatres in Turku. The official ones that have their monthly paid staff, having also their summer theatres in beautiful surroundings of this former capital city by the Aura river.
I was quite young then. Maybe therefore I found the smaller, younger, professional, semi-professional or amateur theatres more tempting. Their plays were often more out of mainstream. The people working on stage and behind the scenes were hungry. Really willing to put themselves fully into making great, meaningful and innovative, fully entertaining theatre. In addition, they really seemed to have all the fun doing this.
During those years, among all other plays, I got to see Patrick Marber's Closer on stage at TeatteriSusi five years before it was made into the big screen with Jude Law, Julia Roberts and one of my favourite actresses, Natalie Portman. I saw Death and the Maiden (written by Ariel Dorfman) first time on stage in Uusikaupunki, directed by an old (young) college mate and friend of mine Toni Enholm. I still remember the gruesome, but natural faces Toni had managed to get out of his main actors and the actress on stage. Haunting in a positive way. I saw a new version of Dracula with an amazingly haunting music composed in Turku, just for this play.
I saw Shallow Grave, also known as a movie as well as Death and the Maiden, adapted to stage. It was adapted by a team named Jorma-ryhmä (Jorma Group). Always innovative, not using the fanciest stages, but often old warehouses or factories as their premises.
I can still remember the play going on. Them using strobe lights and slow motion of actors to picture an unreal dream-like event. Simple, but well-working trick. I remember the characters talking about packing the body into a car trunk. Then opening the side door of the stage, pulling the "body" into a real car trunk and driving away. With a real car.
Somehow it brought the whole fictitious story to reality. To the point where theatre can be larger than life even with just small innovations connected to real life.
But also giving life to people who would manage to find the meaning of content of what theatre can give at its best. Imagination. Escapism. Even changing slightly the life of a frustrated boy growing up in the grey concrete suburb.

Treasure Box of Stories

Exactly hundred years ago, a well-known ship Titanic was about to sink. On the deck before the ship sank, was a Finnish-born couple in their thirties and their Finnish friend, aged 17. The husband of the couple was a reverend named William (originally Wilhelm) Lahtinen, the woman his wife Anna. Their friend was their relative named Lyyli Silvén. She was with them to emigrate to United States. The couple had been living there before. Their destination was Minneapolis in Minnesota.
As we all now know, there were not enough life boats on the ship. Anna was given one of the last seats in life boat number 16. But in the last minute, she decided to stay with her husband. They had lost their little daughter to tuberculosis only some weeks before. Anna gave her place in the life boat to Lyyli. As the last glimpse of their friends, Lyyli saw Anna being nervous on the deck as William was smoking his cigar calmly. She never saw them again.

Lyyli and the others, including Lyyli's friend Anna Siukkonen, in life boat 16, were rescued to Carpathia, brought to Jewish 'Welcome Home' in New York in address 225 East 13th Street.
We don't know much about Lyyli's later times, though she was in letter contact with some relatives in Finland. She married a man named Otto Mailanen, apparently also of Finnish origin. She lived her life and died in Berkeley, California in 1974, 62 years after the sinking disaster. She was 79 years old. 

The connection to this blog is that Lyyli was my late grandmother's cousin. My maternal grandmother was thirteen years younger than Lyyli. My grandmother died in 1973. I was then only six months old.
I heard about this Titanic story only in the late 1990's when living in Turku, Finland. It was natural for me to start digging information from the website archives at the time. I ended up going through some of the Migration Institute archives which, by coincidence, were located only a short distance away, also in Turku.

At that time I wondered what kind of subconscious interest I had had of Titanic all the years before. When I was in second grade in school in early 1980's, I remember having written a story about Titanic. If there were coloring books, which had Titanic in them, I immediately bought them.

Surely Titanic drew interest to just about anyone. During my studies in Turku, I was working as a security guard. I remember seeing the crowds coming out of the cinema when the film Titanic was just out. One of the local, worn-out street bums known to me, walked out of the cinema telling he had gone to see the film. The whole story had to have some tragic magic in it.
It's now hundred years from the disaster. There are no survivors left. But the story continues. It's a treasure box for opening old and new stories. What happened to the people inside. To the ones who survived. To the people who were connected to the people who had experienced the night. This network could go on forever.
In this blog, I'll be bringing up hopefully interesting stories, comments and observations of life and its more or less quirky events. They may not be as monumental as the story of Titanic was, but some might have a big meaning to just one person somewhere.
Hoping you'll enjoy the journey. Hopefully there aren't that many icebergs on the way.

Markus