Logjammin

Speaking of trophy wives and nihilists, I’ve spent the past two days in Oslo shopping like it’s the end of the world. Today alone I went to three different H&Ms, that bastion of Scandinavian clothing design. Three stores in one day might sound like a lot of walking but let me assure you it was not that far. If Urban Outfitters and Starbucks mated and gave birth to a Swedish baby, it would be H&M — they have cheap and awesome modern retro 80s-style clothes, and there’s literally one on every corner.

Ladies, just for you, here’s the spring fashion report from Norway — nautical, nautical, nautical. I’ve been saying for the past three years that thanks to the war we’d start seeing a surge in military-inspired clothing — things like jackets with epaulets, uniform-style dresses in drab green and khaki and a return of camo-print everything, and I guess I was pretty close because every single store here is selling sailor-inspired clothing.

Yesterday after CLH got back to the hotel I dragged him to the National Gallery to gawk at art. The gallery was hosting an exhibition by artist Tacita Dean that featured films of found objects, such as a decaying yacht hull and this infamous Bubble House. Dean has taken found art to the next level — one display that totally blew my mind was her interpretation of the story of the Girl Stowaway, in which Dean combined found photos of the girl, the ship she stowed away on in stages of later disrepair, film planning scenes, a David Bowie record and even an old and a recent newspaper article about the girl and the exhibit. Fascinating stuff.

I saw some pretty great art at the National Gallery, even stuff I typically don’t get into, like a painting titled “Communion is Prison” or something else I don’t remember. Nonetheless, it was so incredibly realistic that I got up close, putting my face within two or three inches of the canvas and marveling aloud for five minutes to CLH about the realism of the prisoner’s fingernails and the shadows on his shoes. It was so realistic it looked like a photograph and I couldn’t wrap my tiny little brain around that caliber of artistic talent.

I saw several heart-crushing works by the most famous Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch. There is nothing quite the same as seeing a famous painting in real life. So much is communicated to you when you stand there in front of it and see the vitality of the colors and the size, big or small, which adds much to my personal interpretation of a piece of art. Take, for example, “Puberty”, which in real life made me feel extremely uncomfortable. At first it looks like the dark shadow on the wall belongs to the girl, but the more I stood there and looked at it, the more I felt a sense of foreboding, just like the girl, and I began to realize that the shadow is something less innocent, something to be afraid of, and it just really freakin’ creeped me out.

And then there was “The Scream,” the reason for our trip to the National Gallery in the first place. Seeing the whole image, with the blood-red background and the two nondescript figures on the bridge — this painting scares the holy hell out of me, mostly because it hits so close to home. This Wikipedia article on “The Scream” has all the information you’d ever want to know about what is now my second-favorite painting (second only to Magritte’s “The Empire of Light” which you can see in real life at the Menil Museum in Houston), including the fact that the red sky the painting depicts is actually the explosion of Krakatoa. There’s also a photo of one of the versions of the painting being stolen.

I have had some pretty major struggles with anxiety in my life, and although I’m doing pretty well now I am at a point where I really miss my family, but it’s not that easy to call them up and tell them that. I haven’t spoken to my Mom since November, and while most of the time I feel like I’m doing the right thing — creating space in our relationship to help her mend and to mend myself — occasionally I’ll have these dreams where something really horrible happens to her and I never get to see her again and then I wake up and spend the rest of the day in a dark cloud of depression and worry and sadness. I often wonder if I’m a horrible person because I can’t just get over the mistakes she’s made and move on for the sake of my family and my sick grandparents. While on this trip I finished reading “The Red Tent” which is all about motherhood and the life-sustaining relationships women have with one another and it’s made me unusually sad because I have never had that sort of relationship with any woman, much less my own mother.

All these thoughts have been building up inside me on this trip for what seems like no reason really and so yesterday as I was standing in front of “The Scream” and thinking about how the painting represents the buildup and final explosive release of mountainous anxiety, I just stood there and thought to myself, Tell me about it, dude. I know.