Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

The bass drum. The snare.

And then the bass.

BOM-BOM-BOM bombombombombombombombombombom-BOM

BOM-BOM-BOM-bombombombombombombombombombom-BOM

It was only then I looked at Jan Vidar again. His face was contorted into a kind of grimace as he strained to say something without using his voice.

Too fast! Too fast!

And Øyvind slowed down. I tried to follow suit, but it was confusing because both the bass and Jan Vidar’s guitar kept going at the same tempo, and when I changed my mind and followed them they suddenly slowed down, and I was the only one left playing at breakneck speed. Amidst this chaos I noticed the wind blowing through Jan Vidar’s hair, and that some of the kids were standing in front of us with their hands over their ears. The next moment we had reached the first chorus and were more or less in synch. Then a man in tan slacks, a blue-and-white striped shirt and a yellow summer blazer came marching across the tarmac. It was the shopping center manager. He was heading straight for us. Twenty meters away he waved both arms as if trying to stop a ship. He kept waving. We continued to play, but as he stopped right in front of us, still gesticulating, there was no longer any doubt that he was addressing us, and we stopped.

“What the hell do you think you are doing!” he said.

“We were asked to play here,” Jan Vidar answered.

“Are you out of your tiny minds! This is a shopping center. It’s Saturday. People want to shop and have a good time. They don’t want to listen to that goddawful racket.”

“Shall we turn it down a bit?” Jan Vidar asked. “We can easily do that.”

“Not just a bit,” he said.

A crowd had gathered around us now. Maybe fifteen, sixteen people, including the kids. Not bad.

Jan Vidar craned around and lowered the volume on the amplifier. Played a chord and sent the shop owner an inquiring look.

“Is that okay?” he asked.

“Lower!” said the manager.

Jan Vidar lowered the volume a bit more, struck a chord.

“Is that alright then?” he asked. “We’re not a dance band, you know,” he added.

“Right,” said the manager. “Try that, or even lower.”

Jan Vidar made another adjustment. He seemed to be fiddling with the knob, but I saw he was only feigning.

“There we are,” he said.

Jan Henrik and I also adjusted our volume.

“Let’s start again,” Jan Vidar said.

And we started again. I counted in my head.

ONE TWO THREE — ONE TWO THREE FOUR — ONE TWO THREE — ONE TWO.

The manager was walking back towards the main entrance to the shopping center. I watched him as we played. When we got to the part where we were interrupted he stopped and turned. Looked at us. Turned back, took a few steps toward the shops, turned again. Suddenly he came toward us, once again gesticulating furiously. Jan Vidar didn’t see him, he had his eyes closed. Jan Henrik, however, did and raised an eyebrow.

“No, no, no,” the manager yelled, stopping in front of us.

“It’s no good,” he said. “Sorry, you’ll have to pack it in.”

“What?” objected Jan Vidar. “Why? Twenty-five minutes you said.”

“It’s no good,” he said, lowering his head and waving his hand in front of it.

“Sorry, guys.”

“Why?” Jan Vidar repeated.

“I can’t listen to that,” he said. “You don’t even sing! Come on. You’ll get your money. Here you are.”

He took an envelope from his inside pocket and held it out to Jan Vidar.

“Here you are,” he said. “Thanks for pitching up. But that wasn’t what I had in mind. No hard feelings, okay?”

Jan Vidar grabbed the envelope. He turned away from the manager, pulled the plug from the amplifier, switched it off, lifted the guitar over his head, went to his guitar case, opened it and replaced the guitar. People around us were smiling.

“Come on,” Jan Vidar said. “We’re going home.”

After that the status of the band was shrouded in doubt; we practiced a few times but our hearts weren’t in it, then Øyvind said he couldn’t make the next session, and the time after that there was no drum set, and the time after that I had soccer practice. . Meanwhile Jan Vidar and I saw less of each other since we went to different schools, and some weeks later he mumbled about having met someone in another class he jammed with, so when I played now it was mostly to pass the time.

I sang “Ground Control to Major Tom,” strummed the two minor chords I liked so much and thought about the two bags of beer lying in the forest.

When Yngve had been home for Christmas he had brought a book of Bowie songs. I had copied them into an exercise book which I now pulled out, complete with chords, lyrics and notes. Then I put “Hunky Dory” on the record player, track four, “Life on Mars?” and began to play along, softly so that I could hear the words and the other instruments. It sent a shiver down my spine. It was a fantastic song and as I followed the chord sequence on the guitar it was as if the song was opening itself up to me, as if I were inside it, and not outside, which was how it felt when I only listened. If I were to open a song and enter it unaided I would need several days because I couldn’t hear which chords were being played, I had to grope my way painstakingly forward, and even if I found some chords which sounded similar I was never sure they were really the same ones. I put down my pen, listened with intense concentration, picked up the pen, strummed a chord. Hmmm. . Put down the pen, listened once again, played the same chord, was it that one? Or perhaps this one? Not to mention all the other guitar techniques that went on in the course of a song. It was hopeless. While Yngve, for example, only had to listen to a song once and then he could play it to perfection after a couple of stabs. I had known other people like him, they seemed to have the gift, music was not distinct from thinking, or it had nothing to do with thinking, it lived its own life inside them. When they played, they played, they didn’t mechanically repeat some pattern they had taught themselves, and the freedom in that, which was what music was actually about, was beyond me. The same was true of drawing. Drawing conferred no status, but I liked it all the same and spent quite some time doing it when I was alone in my room. If I had a specific model, such as a cartoon character, I could make a tolerable attempt, but if I didn’t copy and just sketched freehand the result was never any good. Here too I had seen people who had the gift, perhaps Tone in my class for one, who with minimal effort could draw whatever she wanted, the tree in the grounds outside the window, the car parked beyond it, the teacher standing in front of the board. When we had to choose optional subjects I wanted to take Form and Color, but since I knew how things stood, that the other students knew how to draw, had the gift, I decided against it. Instead I chose cinematography. The thought of this could sometimes weigh me down because I wanted so much to be someone. I wanted so much to be special.

I got up, placed the guitar on its stand, switched off the amplifier and went downstairs where Mom was ironing. The circles of light around the lamps above the door, and on the barn walls outside, were almost completely covered with snow.

“What weather!” I said.

“You can say that again,” she said.

As I walked into the kitchen I remembered a snowplow had recently driven past. Perhaps it would be a good idea to clear the ridge of snow.

I turned to Mom.

“I think I’ll go and shovel some snow before they come,” I said.

“Fine,” she said. “Can you light the torches while you’re at it? They’re in the garage, in a bag hanging on the the wall.”