finland final thoughts (two weeks ago)

So I have been back from Finland for basically a day (more like 22 hours) now and have spent a Friday in a limbo state which films can sometimes represent so well, you know, delayed responses, standing outside myself, sitting there not saying or really doing or thinking anything for a long time. Jetlag is possibly worse than you think it is because you don't entirely realise what state you're in while you're in it. I note that two weeks ago I was enduring airport hell waiting for a flight and I said that was a first world problem and so is this so... fine. I am not even totally complaining. What's the point? It just is.

Perry is two years old today, and like me he's been awake since 2am and he is now acting like it's time to get into the day but the joke's on him because it's actually time to go back to bed for a few hours. We have been out for a walk and he's also had two weetbix, which is certainly a food I've never given him before but maybe they gave it to him at the Pet's Hotel? Or maybe at Doggy day care. They are good for dogs I gather. 

So I bored Laura, when I was actually able to talk, with my boring thoughts about various Finnish things, because of course it's not just the experience of being there, it's a culture and a language that fascinates me and the difficulties inherent in engaging with it also fascinates me. I have to say that there is something special about looking through Finnish records or books or even some other things that remind me of trying to come to grips with the world as a child or teenager. So much to remember and interpret. This is not special to Finnish things, it's just any culture where there's a huge amount of internal connections that don't necessary have a context ready to hand. 

OK I said 'final thoughts' above but I will probably have others, if I do I'll let you know. 

just a few more wednesday things (two weeks ago)

This is one of those second hand markets where things are in numbered sections and people take them to the front counter and say I got this from stall 28. You know what I'm trying to say. Anyway, today it wasn't very good but sometimes it might be I suppose. 

Some buildings are being demolished. I was wondering whether the watering was an asbestos remedy. 

I'm sorry to be missing this event, looks good. 

I wanted to visit the Oulu branch of Levykauppa Äx, which is a record store chain and moderately OK as far as I can tell, but it was closed, must have been recent as its ceiling is still there.* 

But ill wind... I went to another shop, called Aseman Divari, which promotes itself as a bookshop but it has a lot of records and even a record player. I got some things from there. I met this lovely dog. But also most interestingly...

the woman who owned (I think with her husband, who wasn't there) the shop really put me on the spot about what my interest was in Finland and Finnish culture, and what's so good about Finland and why do I care about this small country? Great questions I tried to answer. She was all like she'd understand if I was married to a Finn and felt compelled to get involved but if that's not it how do things like this start, etc? I couldn't really get to a proper answer and instead just said things like, there must be other people who feel like I do, it's a very beautiful country and a fascinating culture etc. I enjoyed the discussion and she really had a point. 

*Later I discovered it had moved a few blocks away.

finland trip (two weeks ago)

 

Perry is skittish obviously because he knows something's up. I am feeling a bit skittish too. But I am sure it will be fine, at least for me. I just get to go to my favourite country on Earth and swan around a bit looking at interesting things, and did I tell you the absurdity that, as it is a work trip and I am responsible for things like buying my own food, I get up to $300 tax deductible food a day?! It's an expensive country but crikey... that's madness. 

finland trip - two weeks ago

13 August, I'm getting ready to go to another conference, this one in Finland, in Oulu actually, a city I do really love, and the conference sounds like it'll be very interesting, so I am not entirely against the whole enterprise, though I do feel that it has turned out to be a bit inconvenient in many ways, work wise and money wise. But I will cope. 

There are a few beings who will have to manage without me for a while and some of them will understand, and some of them will just have to suck it up because I can't explain it to them. That bothers me quite a bit but I know ultimately it will be OK... ultimately. 

the man who died = mies joka kuoli

Mies joka kuoli aka The Man Who Died is a comedy-drama starring Jussi Vatanen who is also in Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) which I saw a couple of weeks ago. I didn't recognise him until I looked him up on IMDB so I guess he's good at acting. 

Before I say anything about the show itself I want to say that watching things on SBS catchup or whatever it's called is not easy. Sometimes they just don't load, sometimes you get the episode you want to watch and the audio of another episode. Sometimes while it's playing it gives you the little yellow circle that tells you it's trying to load. 

After a while you come to appreciate it's more trouble than it's worth to do anything but just keep watching it (or stop watching it altogether) because you can't pause it or stop it or anything really. 

So the deal here is that the protagonist, Jaakko, is the owner of a mushroom company who has been told by his doctor that he has a few weeks to live, as he has somehow had a large amount of toxin introduced to his system that has contributed to extensive organ damage. There is a bunch of comedy hoods running a rival company in a surreal kind of way and Jaakko keeps comedy-killing them. I am about half way through. Laura watched the first episode with me and was not adequately engaged, which I completely understand, but I think it has gotten better. That said...

The fantasy sequences kind of get on my wick - Japanese stereotypes, obvious dream sequences etc. 

The town where the show is set, Hanima, looks really cool in the show and it really does have this wild spiderweb at the centre. 

I'll be annoyed if at the ending it turns out the doctor was part of a conspiracy to make him think that he was dying when he actually wasn't dying.

Spoilers below the next picture:

A few hours later: Well, he did actually die, to my surprise. I guess the doctor was in some sense a furphy, because Sixth Sense-like he was always acting alone and even in one case in a rather strange, undoctorlike place, so it was quite plausible that he might be a fake of some sort. But ultimately apparently that was not the situation. The actual 'murder' was a peculiar situation that was semi-flagged early on and might have been obvious - if only because we never really saw the person in question again, until right at the end. 

The whole weird Finland thing for the forest was just a given. I think in the final analysis it was a satisfying show. 

trip to europe (a month ago)

Sometimes when I upload a bunch of images they upload in the reverse order, I have no idea why. But this is how we ended our day in Jyskävylä, by playing this game, which has a special name in Finland which I can't remember offhand but which means 'swaying tower', and which Laura knows as Jenga. I'd never played it, or at least I don't remember doing so. I was so tired by the end of this day (in fact, I am virtually comatose at the end of every day) that it was a special effort on her part I think to make me stay awake long enough to not be in danger of waking up at 4am (which I do most days anyway). 

The activities room at the craft museum. We didn't do any activities. 

I just enjoyed someone's way of signing the guest book, that's all. Maybe when Nanna Känninen is accused of a crime and says but I was in Jyväskylä and I can prove it, I signed the guest book at the craft museum, and they say well that page has been torn out so there is no proof, this picture can be proof. 

This is earlier in the day, of course, in Tampere, a big intersection and a weird rocket or ventilation tower or something. 

Waterfront property. 

Laura looked up this story. The first air fatality in Finland I think. A Swedish noble donated a plane and be careful of Swedish nobles bearing gifts is all I can say. 

We are too scared to walk on the ice. 

Closed amusement park, unless you're a bird in which case you find your amusement where you can. 

Tampere is full of amazing apparently unpolluting industry just sitting around in-between the apartments and the shops, I love it. 

Goodbye Tampere until next time. 

litku klemetti

This is the Litku Klemetti album coming out next month. It's called Asiatonta oleskelua which means 'Unauthorised stay'

I must have written about Litku Klemetti here at some point but I find that my 2022 interest in contemporary indie Finnish pop music has kind of grown me a new portion of brain (possibly it is a tumour) where the meagre information I have been able to glean about various artists and releases have been piling up unprocessed like detritus on the forest floor except that does kind of get processed, by microorganisms. Well, Litku Klemetti has/have become something of a key interest in the last few months and I am going to try and explain why.

Firstly, the has/have - I noticed while filing away a couple of Litku Klemetti albums (between King Snake Roost and Kolla Kestäa) that I was missing one. I found it under L. So clearly I have had different ideas at different times. Apparently Sanna Klemetti adopted the nickname Litku (which means 'slop' or something like that) at some point and started a band called Litku Klemetti and Tuntematon Numero, and made a couple of albums with that name, then became just Litku Klemetti a few albums ago. So of course it would be entirely legit to file the records under L or K really. I have presently settled on K. I mean I have Alice Cooper (the band) and Alice Cooper (the man) albums both filed under C. What I will do if I ever get any Litku Klemetti and Tuntematon Numero albums? Great question, thanks, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Those albums are presently extremely hard to get so I don't have that problem right now. I mean my Neil Young and Crazy Horse albums are filed under Y not N, so maybe nothing will change. 

I don't know why those earlier albums are hard to find except perhaps that Litku Klemetti has kind of 'taken off' but also it might have something to do with the fact that she/they seem to have changed labels for the new album (depicted above) and maybe that's the reason why the earlier records are listed on the Luova records website but most of them are not presently available. 

So I have three Litku Klemetti albums: Taika Tapahtuu ('Magic Happens'), from 2018; Ding Ding Dong (going to assume that title is more or less self-explanatory though who really knows), from 2019 and Kukkia Muovipussissa ('Flowers in a Plastic Bag') from 2021. Wikipedia tells me (there is, amazingly, an English language Litku Klemetti wikipedia page) that Sanna Klemetti grew up in the far west of Finland (in Kuhmo, which must be a tiny town because the whole province of that name has less than 8000 people in it) listening to prog rock albums she borrowed from the library. I have no idea what her records prior to Taika Tapahtuu sound like (will probably find out eventually, they're all on spotify) but that record does have a distinct prog feeling to it, in a Keith Emerson way. But Ding Ding Dong is much more pop and Kukkia Muovipussissa is very eurodisco or perhaps just discodisco in style. They are all really good. 

I was amazed to see when looking through pictures from my Finnish trip in late 2019 that I came across a cassette of Ding Ding Dong in that branch of Levykauppa Äx in Oulu near the railway station and was sufficiently struck by its aesthetic to photograph it (but not to buy it). 

Instead what I did buy was the first Hello People album and made this humorous photograph with it in my hotel bed. 

Anyway, back to LK. The next step is to figure out what the songs are about. This is dangerous as I might decide I don't want to like them anymore because they're about terrible things. Intriguing. 

This leads to another thing that really interests me.  What's the politics in Finland (population five and a half million) of making records only in Finnish? I mean, I come from a sparsely populated country, but 5.5 million is about half a million more people than live in the city I live in, and substantially less (by a million) than the amount of people in this state. I'm not saying that's per se important I'm just intrigued about the way that writing/singing/performing in your own language must on the one hand limit your audience in world terms while possibly also boosting your audience in the sense that, firstly, it's surely nice to hear things expressed in your own language, and secondly, along the lines of that advertising banner that used to (and may still) be on the side of that building at the western end of the Eastern Freeway: 'Buy Australian - if we don't, who will?'. I have previously mentioned in writing about my other major Finnish preoccupation Pintandwefall that they sing in English, very well, but do not appear to have tried to capitalise on this at all - i.e. all their records are released only in Finland and they have played only a handful of shows outside Finland, and none in English-speaking territories as far as I know. 

So I don't get it but my foot really hurts so I'm going to stop writing now. 

pintandwefall

I'm listening to the Pintandewefall album I got in the mail the other day, as per earlier post. This is exactly the kind of band I enjoy, in almost all ways (ok, so sometimes the videos go a teensy bit goth, that's all I'm bothered about, but I can change). When I first came across them (and I don't remember how I did, though they did release this album on Svart which is a label I've bought a few things from - except - it releases a lot of dodgy grindcore or whatever it's called, I don't even know what it's called, I'm sure it's totally superior in the genre but it's not a genre I like or understand, it also puts out a lot of terrific punk and prog reissues, I mean, it's a superior label) I somehow had the weird idea that they were a band of men with a somewhat pixieish 'girl' (woman) singer, and there was something about that vibe that bothered me, but all I can say about that strange impression is that I must just not have been paying attention at all, because they are actually a band of all women. I gather they all write songs and all sing (?) and they have absurd stage names (see above) and they all play in other bands as well and solo projects. I wonder if they also have day jobs. I can see this being the beginning of something big. I mean it could be. They just put out another album in February, I've already ordered it, I have a feeling I'm going to collect the set. 

All their albums have the word 'baby' in the title. I love the cover of this one which is called Wow! What Was That, Baby? 

This is the new album:

What can I say, I'm a finnophile. 

Don't worry, I won't play their records when you come over (much).

any day now/ ensilumi

This is a really fine movie about asylum seekers in Finland which is apparently based on the writer-director's own experience. However even without the pervading tension/fear that dominates the film (the family is waiting to hear if its request for asylum will be granted) it would still be a very impressive coming-of-age story. The actor who plays Ramin, the young boy at the centre of the film, is Aran-Sina Keshvari and he is excellent, but the whole cast is tremendous. I saw this about a week before Helene and I was trying to place Laura Birn, who's the star of that film, and finally I got it - she has a small part in this as Ramin's teacher. 

It's called Ensilumi in Finnish which means 'first snow', to my mind a better title than Any Day Now which puts focus on the family's wait for news of their status, rather than on their experiences in a new environment, though I am also intrigued by what is not mentioned in this film: not once is there an explanation of where they have come from or on what grounds they are seeking asylum, etc. That's actually fine, but does it make us as an audience start to regard them as 'everyfamily' or does it make us wonder why even more? 

Note the first quote on the poster above which translates rather rattily via google translate as 'life-affirming First Snow is a star bead that radiates the warmth and light of the heart of domestic film autumn.' Of course what caught my eye was the word 'helmi' which I had not realised was not merely a name (the middle bit of 'Wilhelmina', which is why I chose Helmi as the best Finnish woman's name for a beloved cat) but also the Finnish word for 'bead' (or more commonly I think 'pearl'). 'Tähden' means 'at', 'for', or 'for the sake of', which is fine, but believe it or not 'tähden helmi' means 'star bead', which only leads me to wonder what the helmi a 'star bead' is. But it's 'all good'.

fuck finland

I have absolutely no idea what any of this means.

In November I guess last year in probably my second last or last night in Stockholm I purchased a diary (in Swedish, just for the exoticness, but it was a nice diary) and spent some me-time mapping out the dates my rent was due and the dates my pay was due, etc etc nothing that interesting just looking to the year ahead and a few things that I knew were coming. Hilariously, I found that diary again today while cleaning up, and of course it has virtually nothing in it because I had virtually no appointments or goals. But then I thought, well look I did enjoy the idea of a Swedish diary but damn it how much would I love the idea of a Finnish diary? And maybe even the diary itself. So I went looking online and once again, well, I don't know how much this happens with other languages, but seriously, the Anglosphere is so Anglocentric that the idea that you'd even want to buy something as utilitarian as a diary in another language is unbelievable to (for instance) eBay. Try looking for a diary in the Finnish language, and you get all kinds of books about the Finnish language for English speakers, and then a whole lot of diaries about Finnish Lapphunds, and then a whole lot of diaries with a particular 'finish' (presumably 30 December LOL). Now, of course you can get to websites for Finnish bookshops ('bookshop'+'Helsinki') but then you run into the problem that they cannot conceive that someone outside a few (non-English-speaking) European countries would be interested in a diary in the Finnish language, and to be honest I can kind of understand why that's an odd idea but you know some people are into licking other people's anuses, I'm into Finnish things. 

There is a kind of Finnish eBay, I forget what it's called but all transactions are conducted in Finnish. I do actually want to buy at least one Finnish-language history book, for a book I'm writing - I mean look, I have a book in Portuguese for the same project and for which I google-translated four or five pages, it wasn't hell. But there is just no understanding that someone might want to partake of these things. I am reminded of a time during the year when I was very desirous of obtaining a 100th anniversary t-shirt for a Helsinki suburb I love as advertised on their facebook page but no chance - the person selling them was very certain I had to show up in person to get one. 

I mean I'll live, but it is kind of weird. Surely there are other affluent Australians who enjoy random arcana. Someone should be brokering this shit.