The Pessimism and Occasional Optimism of Juvenile Adulthood

In the dying days of my year studying abroad, I had vowed that I would write something coherent, almost meaningful. It would attempt to reflect my experiences, drawing together the anecdotes of what became my everyday life. Yet for months I felt I couldn't, trapped between the fine details that together felt too abstract and disconnected, and the gently fading clarity I held towards the details even as they slowly pulled together. This isn't novel, merely the process of memory twisting and evolving as my brain continually tries to adapt towards the world around me.  But I also noticed my own passivity that seemed to impact my thinking, removing myself from the life I was leading. In messages and in conversation, I would increasingly draw on phrases that distanced my role as an actor in my own biopic. Life was 'accelerating away', 'happening too quickly', even drawing on lyrical references in 'happening to me whilst I was busy making other plans'. For rea...

This is a self-indulgent article.  Many months ago, I escaped from the monotony of both studying and pretending to study, embarking on a long voyage to the Skuleskogen National Park on Sweden's Bothnian coast. It was a solo adventure, made possible by an unusually high tolerance for complicated transport arrangements, and a sense of general lunacy. Despite the 900km round trip's panicked conclusion which may one day warrant its own entry in a Bill Bryson-esque travelogue, it was ultimately a success, a day detached from civilisation. The initial plan to devote a whole post to the trip was scuppered by deep exhaustion that lingered in subsequent days. My memories of the day now are no longer as precise as I want them to be. I can trace the emotions - ideas of how I thought I felt - but not the details that define what once felt important. The slightly uncomfortable truth is that the more I think about that day out, the more reckless I think I was. But in seeking spontaneous esca...

Last week marked eighty years since the sentencing of Otto and Elise Hampel to death. Their lives were almost unremarkable except for their persistent acts of defiance against the Nazi regime - motivated by the initial, intense grief of family bereavement. Yet their efforts over a two year period brought minimal effect beyond their own eventual demise, their 'defamatory' postcard distribution often reaching only as far as the offices of the Berlin police and later the Gestapo. But after the war, their case file eventually made its way to Hans Fallada who, in his final weeks, adapted their resistance into  Every Man Dies Alone , later published in Britain as  Alone in Berlin . Fallada's quest, accomplished in only 24 days, was to offer meaning to these futile resistance tactics, a legacy for these well-intentioned if otherwise forgettable citizens. It is a legacy which survives neither in revolution or popular consciousness, but in Gestapo archives and fictional dramatisatio...

Following his death towards the tail-end of last year, I delved into some of the solo work of krautrock pioneer Manuel Göttsching. An architect of electronic 'kosmiche' music, I was drawn to his E2-E4 album, a minimalist, hour-long composition that layered and sequented electronic instrumentation over itself, creating a sparse yet pulsating sound, one that has inspired this piece of writing. Thoughts on the past few months have at times also felt sparse. Inspiration of how best to articulate my sentiments have often only arrived on semi-drunken bike rides home from the mania of certain parties. There, the thoughts of increasing sobriety that stuck to my evermore fractious mind required frenzied vocal repetition in the biting Swedish air before they could be frantically noted down on my phone. Inspired by  E2-E4's charming lack of direction, here sits an attempt to bring these thoughts together, to try and capture a degree of sentiment before the whirl of a new Swedish seme...