Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

All credit to NRK. Other than Denmark, Norway was the only country in the seventies to import more programmes from Great Britain than from the United States. Not much is known about Jonas Wergeland’s political views, beyond his adherence to an obdurate Outside Left line, but it is safe to say that he regarded the Americanisation of Europe with something resembling serious concern. It was one thing to be dependent on the United States where matters of security policy were concerned, quite another to be reliant on the US when it came to making sense of the world. There was, for some years, an ongoing debate as to whether America should be allowed to deploy missiles in Norway, but what everyone forgot was that it had already deployed something far more important there: its television programmes. So when Jonas Wergeland elected to go to England to gain inspiration for television projects — and not to America, as so many other people in Norwegian broadcasting did — this was as much a conscious decision as choosing a European film-maker as role model.

Nothing but the best would do. London was, for Jonas Wergeland, what Rome had been for Henrik Ibsen. He found a new aim in life, a standard to live up to. He had his eyes opened to true excellence — a crucial lesson for someone from a country where every mediocre variety-show crooner was hailed as the new Caruso. Jonas also formed a firm belief — one to which he would hold even when many, later, would call him naive: the belief that television could have a democratising effect, that at certain happy moments television could actually rouse people, encourage them to think big. In short, it was in London, through the studies he conducted in a hotel room in the early eighties, that Jonas Wergeland became convinced that it paid to go for quality, even in a commercial context, and that quality did not necessarily preclude entertainment.

So it was no great achievement to simply lie on a bed and watch TV for a whole month at a stretch, jotting down the odd note now and again, more or less sketching out an idea; in fact it was a pleasure. Jonas felt sure that he could train himself to be a TV wizard merely by lying back and moving nothing but his fingertips. People today often complain that they get up from the television with a feeling of emptiness. When Jonas Wergeland got up off that bed in London after staring at the screen for four solid weeks, he did so as a cultivated man. He did not even feel bad about the fact that he had not visited any of the countless museums and galleries around his hotel as he had planned.

The fact is, you see, that Jonas was a bit of an art lover. As a small boy he had often attended exhibitions with his maternal grandmother. Not only did he love looking at the pictures, he delighted just as much in the things Jørgine was liable to say about them, comments which made passers-by turn their heads and stare, dumbfounded, at the elderly lady with the cigar stump wedged in the corner of her mouth. He particularly remembered their wanderings through the National Gallery, best of all their visits to the red room where the light streamed down over magnificent canvases by the so-called National Romantics — not least among them Johann Christian Dahl. Granny could spend half an hour just gazing at the massive painting from Stalheim in Sogn, telling Jonas about how it was painted and what it depicted, and look at those teeny-weeny figures on the road and the goats in the foreground and oh, isn’t that sweet, that horse there has a foal, d’you see? As a grown man, whenever Jonas came across that picture in one of its countless reproductions it was not only his grandmother he thought of — J.C. Dahl’s painting also brought with it another, even stronger memory, one bound up with the Byrds’ exquisitely wistful, biblically-inspired song ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’.

Jonas remembered seeing Leonard’s back as he walked off towards the antique sculptures, disappearing into the maze of grubby plaster copies, while Jonas himself followed the sound of the strings and soon found himself in the gallery containing the masterpieces of the National Romantic period, among them ‘From Stalheim’. But he did not look at Dahl’s painting, commanding though it was; he looked at her, Sarah B., he stared at her, at her face, her lips, the fingers moving with virtuoso precision over the violin’s finger board. She must have sensed his gaze because she turned, sent him a startled glance, then her lips flashed him a quick smile. He could not take his eyes off her, the lovely blue dress, her chignoned hair, her throat, her hands, but most of all her fingers. It was there, in those first few seconds that everything happened; this was the high point, not what would occur in the weeks thereafter. Because he knew how it would go. She would note his interest and when they had finished playing she would come over to him and say: ‘I didn’t know you were into paintings, are you into music too?’ And he would know that this was an invitation, an opening, a fork in the road.

With his eyes riveted on her he listened to the music, heard how the orchestra threw itself into the lively second movement, a waltz, and he knew that he would not speak to her in the schoolyard on Monday, but that they would look at one another differently during break, and that he would walk up to her on Friday, just before they went home and ask if she would like to go to the Film Club with him the following day. And she would say that she would call him. He stood in the National Gallery, in the shadow of J.C. Dahl’s painting from Stalheim, one of the icons of his childhood, listening to a rousing waltz — so infectious that he almost felt like taking a twirl around the floor — and foresaw that he would go crazy, waiting for Sarah to call.

Jonas would have the house to himself that Saturday and he would spend the whole day waiting. The waiting would drive him round the bend, and he would realise that he was in love, so much in love that he had to think of something, which is to say: without being aware of it he would think of something, a ploy which would convince her that he was special, that he appreciated music, and not just any old music. When the phone rang he needed to have something really unusual playing on the stereo in the background, so she could hear that he liked this music, which in turn would persuade her that he was the boy for her.

He would know exactly what to play. The reason Jonas knew about Rickenbacker guitars was that, for reasons only his body understood, he had chosen The Byrds as his favourite group. And if there was one thing which epitomised the sound of this — sadly, and undeservedly, somewhat forgotten — American group, it was a twelve-string Rickenbacker. So Jonas would get out all of his Byrds’ records and have a good think, because it was, of course, absolutely vital that he pick the right song; and after long and agonising consideration he would finally decide upon bass player Chris Hillman’s simple, but catchy ‘Have You Seen Her Face’ from the consistently excellent album Younger Than Yesterday . In choosing this track he would in fact be saying: See, you caught my eye! See, I’m an outsider too, I don’t play the same crap as everybody else!

Jonas stood in the red room in the National Gallery and observed how the light fell on Sarah’s chignoned hair, how her fingers danced over the violin strings, and he thought of that Saturday when he would start to play the carefully selected Byrds’ track. And he would play it again and again because she could call at any minute; he would commence playing it at nine in the morning, and by the time ten o’clock came, still with no phone call from her, he would have played it almost twenty times. He would know that it was crazy, sheer stupidity, and yet at the same time not know it, he would continue to ensure that the strains of ‘Have You Seen Her Face’ filled the living room, again and again, with him caterwauling along to it, adding his own frantic tones to the harmonies; he could not stop playing it, because she had to hear that he was listening, just by chance really, to this song when she called; in other words: that he had the most discriminating taste in music and definitely merited her keen interest. Eleven o’clock would come and go and the same Byrds’ track would be sounding from the stereo for something like the fiftieth time — and then, just as he was contemplating giving up, or had decided to play ‘Have You Seen Her Face’ just one last time, more as a dirge this time, she would call, and even then, at this moment of triumph, he would not be able to help thinking, far at the back of his mind, that the fulfilment of this most heartfelt wish also came as something of a letdown. And without any indication that she could hear a tune distinguished by the sound of a twelve-string Rickenbacker playing loudly, remarkably loudly, in the background, Sarah would arrange to meet him outside the Saga cinema later that day, but still he would be positive that she had been in two minds right up to the second when he picked up the phone, that it was only because he had been playing that song that she had consented to go out with him.