Speed of Life E-Book

Michael Strunge

• Herausgeber: Nordisk Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 60

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Michael Strunge was one of the key protagonists of the Danish 1980s poetry scene. Speed of Life was the first of 11 collections of poetry he published in a brief career, before ending his life aged 27. 

Leseprobe

Published by Nordisk Books, 2021

www.nordiskbooks.com

© Michael Strunge & Borgen, Copenhagen 1978.

Published by agreement with Gyldendal Group Agency

This English translation copyright © Paul Russell Garrett, 2021

Foreword translated by Duncan J. Lewis

This translation has been published with the financial support of the Danish Arts Foundation

Cover design © Nordisk Books

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781838074265

eBook ISBN 9781838074272

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Just give it time, time is a healer.

Time can stand still, especially in life’s hardest moments. It can feel as if pain makes all the time in the world stand still while it slowly infiltrates our minds. The happiest, most delightful moments fly by in an instant. The irony of life is that the things we wish for our whole lives are over in a second, whilst those that weigh us down seem to last a lifetime.

The days have filled you with hours

of raging boredom

Parents have filled you

with tame security and revolting demands

Teachers have filled your brain

with repetitive facts

Employers have filled your face

with refusals of your self confidence

Newspapers have filled your soul

with fear of the future

And you are now fully eighteen

and have filled yourself with booze and noise.

REBEL, Michael Strunge (translated by Duncan J. Lewis)

Michael Strunge’s words still ring true. The world gives birth all the time to more of us who cannot find a foothold, who feel they are outsiders and who still want to shout and scream, but who have lost their voice. But that voice has sounded. Strunge is still standing and both screaming and speaking for the misfits, the depressed, the rebels, the quiet and the raucous. Strunge’s voice strikes a chord with a loneliness and impotence that most of us can recognise somewhere inside ourselves. He speaks not least for the young who carry the weight of previous generations’ waste and idleness; a system which standardises your way of living and rations your time from the second you are born to the moment you depart. We are born, educated, work, save up (fall in love, maybe), have children, retire, die.

The words of the young carry no weight, no one listens. Their cries are ridiculed and explained away with hormones and inexperience. Swept aside with a comment about the young being no more than hopeless romantics and that dissatisfaction is a phase.

Their elders know best, but they have forgotten how it feels to be young. They have accepted the system’s reality and rules and make sure that they continue to maintain the reality by which they themselves have been moulded. But young people dare to dream and see that world with fresh eyes until the standardised life beats it out of them and extinguishes that youthful rebellion.

Strunge’s final cry was a shout in competition with the wind, but he still burns brightly today and when he took his own life, it became a manifestation of his eternal youth and eternal criticism of societal norms.

Michael Strunge beat a path for raw and unrefined self-expression. He started a movement which still creates ripples in the water and which has been a breeding ground for the fermentation of unique voices ever since. It has inspired many to walk their own road and to abandon, or, at least, comment on, oppressive regimes, because Strunge specifically never wrote to please others. On the contrary: he wrote without compromise and had in mind debate and the desire to change something.

Strunge could be understood sufficiently simply that anyone can grasp a clear dissatisfaction with the triviality in which one has perhaps allowed oneself to become enwrapped – 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. The weekend. Up again, to do it all again. He put words to many of the things we each fight with; whether it is an active or a passive fight, it’s still a fight. Strunge put words to the minefield that the human psyche can be – how difficult it is to get time to make sense and how difficult and unreasonable life is, if it doesn’t suit you.

We are now, as individuals, facing many of the problems that existed in the 1980s. A meaningless and emptiness which can be hard to put into words. It can be difficult to justify complaining when we, as Danish citizens, live in a welfare society with the state as a safety net.

We, in Rigmor, have inherited a language. A way to verbalise the things we have to battle with, through Michael Strunge’s written words. When we decided in the beginning to set music to his poetry, we had no idea that it would be so defining for us as a band. It has shaped the sound, the aesthetic expression and our way of considering the world. Michael Strunge has brought us together as a band and given us a collective voice.

Time can fly, and it can stand completely still. Our lives can feel heavy and tired, or weightless and easy. Michael Strunge died in 1986 and in 2018 we in Rigmor adapted parts of his texts and found meaning in his expression. There lives in Strunge’s poetry an eternal youth rebellion that we hope to be able to carry on.

Victor Sousa / RIGMOR

www.instagram.com/rigmormusik/

Livets hastighed

Knuser uret

med mine tanker

- jeg lever kun

med livets hastighed

Skifter hurtigt

til ny forklædning

- jeg behøver forandringer

med livets hastighed

Danner kontrast

behøver ingen camouflage

- død og træt af

ikke at være mig selv

Skifter farve

anarkistisk kamæleon

- kaster masken

ændrer leveform

Mit sind

gror ud af mit hoved

- skiftede sind

efter at have været død

Endelig

det lader til at jeg ved nu

- at jeg ikke har

et uforgængeligt selv

Hvem ved

ved hvad ens selv er lig?

- jeg er ligeglad

skaber selv mit selv

Skifter fart

jeg har brug for fartskift

- jeg ændrer mit liv

før det ændrer mig

Speed of life

Shatter the clock

with my thoughts

– I only live

at the speed of life

Quickly don

a new disguise

– I need changes

at the speed of life

Form a contrast

no camouflage required

– sick and tired

of not being myself

Change colour

anarchist chameleon

– drop the mask

change my way of life

My mind

grows out of my head

– changed my mind

after being dead

Finally

it seems I now know

– I don’t have

an imperishable self

Who knows

knows one’s true self?

– I don’t care

create my own self

Change pace

I need a change of pace

– change my life

before it changes me

Tid og rum

Vi vidste at tiden ikke eksisterer

kun bevægelsen

og derfor stivnede vi i kysset