ICELAND

Clean might describe the lines of Iceland, at least the uplands and mountains, the rock profiles and serene treelessness and moss carpet valleys. Lower by the sea a circumnabulation of the Island reveals the mystery of water appearing and disappearing at will, flowing from rock and gorge and waterfall (…foss) with the rage of unfettered freedom tossing up the spirit of mist Norse Gods forged into the landscape from their earthy furnace below. Of the twisting rage of wild water and stupendous sound roaring from cataracts, the softening effect of mist- the mystifying shapeshifting essence of evenescence, the wabi sabi summation of form and emptiness and Tao of light energy issuing upwards as a ghostdancer- is most memorably the character of place. Everywhere signs of geothermal volatility escape the earth in belches, shape cinder cones like minarets across the wet desert, and settle into hot spring nirvanas worthy of exploring as they pour heat out of hearth earth. And everywhere ghosts and everywhere light and everywhere water pouring straight from rock into thin air. 

A holy ring of an island tourists flock from around the world to for expressions of purity and unpretentious grace.

Food and lodging are expensive, particularly Rekyavijk, but rental cars (at least in fall) are cheap. And the best parts of Iceland- as in life- are free. I can’t tell you what I think about Icelanders. Much of the hotel work is done by foreigners- spaniards and croatians os forth. What Icelanders themselves work at is a mystery but I hear they work hard. Maybe its a shame. Maybe it takes two trips to know them. If its your first trip- as it was ours- you will spend most of your time looking past people anyway to the artwork that is the water and weather and fire carved island. 

Iceland is art a unique physical presence fluent in the tongues of the planet.

And rain! Don’t forget rain gear! It rained really hard on the slick two lane road from Rekyavijk to Tingellvir. Tourist buses bore down on Kat and I and it was nerve-wracking in the misty half light. The “Ting” is where local tribes gathered to sort out jurisdictional issues and set law for the loose confederacy of island tribes. A quarter mile down a rock formation that felt like (and was) a basalt rampart thrust out of the earth for the very purpose of manifesting and celebrating co-evolution between rock gods and skin clad vikings, sat the law rock. It’s where the elected Minister of Laws recited one third of the entire orally kept code every year. And where new laws were proposed and debated. Of all the dramatic places in Iceland they came to the place at the north end of Lake Pingellvir, in the mist, with no beginning or end, wrought with the wildness of a heathen scream.

A black wall of solid basalt honestly as spiritually startling as the obelisk from Kubrick’s space odyssey. Out of it a hydro cannon of muscular stream, crushed between palisades crying for revolution. Further further down, splashed over rocks and pooled the stream slacks- tailing salmon spar and mate in the gloom.

And didjaknow the Ting sits atop the exact spot the North American Plate plunges beneath the Eurasian Plate causing all sorts of havoc and magic. The exact spot. Fire and water and earth forging organic law where the tribes heard a steady voice of justice issue from the source…

We improvised a hot bath and beer at the end of our tour of the Golden Triangle (Ting/Guysur/Gulfoss). There was a recommendation for thermal baths at Laugavern (from Rekyavijk before any of the featured stops on the maps of the golden Triangle tour) in our lousy guidebook. But about this it was right. We saved it for last. It’s so fun slowly rolling along rainy side roads reading a map and actually finding a place. Suddenly you’re there at the nordic modernesque spa with mist hissing from from pools, the building sleek concrete and glass and vertical wood cladding blonde and attractive and craftsmanly trimless. Once inside we snooped for clues about protocol. Were the baths free? Was it for town people only? Did they rent towels? Would they tolerate Kat in her underwear? No. No. Yes. Yes. We slipped into the big pool which shortly filled with yakking American college girls on one side and a bachelor’s party of large Icelanders all well endowed with saggy man boobs. Quite a scene. The boob men were like Vikings the first to exit the pool and cold plunge in the lake beside the spa. Kat and I went next and fuck was it cold! Sobering and refreshing and cleansing too. 

We kissed many times as we always do but cleaner being so close to the north pole.

We drove out the snout of the Sneffelsness Peninsula northwest of Rekyavijk, aiming for Anarstrapi. Another rainy day with a clearing long enough to share a picnic lunch along a coastal strip at the toe of significant foothills. Ducks and shadowily across the lowlands highlighting finally, the farmstead which, as all farmsteads in Iceland, and a red pitched roof over cream walls. But the uplands look like Hawaii with dramatic folds in the newish mountains erupting steeply from the altiplano. Less green more red desert though with scars of basaltic ebony. And this was the second time we noted magic mesas and promontories launch tongues of rivers over cliffs and wildly down sets of falls where they’d disappear before spurting straight from broken rock further down. Arnarstapi’s way way out. After a rainy night it cleared and we walked the high bank trail over the crashing North Atlantic. Like everything it was magical with side trails and caves and mossy elf clefts and crazy patterned veins of frozen formerly molten rock. 

Look at the pictures, you’ll see. But only being there does it justice.

Kat and I drove miles- even after the coast hike and the glacier hike- to find a hole in the wall hot springs. I thought we would run out of gas. Kat didn’t think so. We both thought we were crazy but pressed on. We were crazy. We got there at sunset with rain mounting a campaign and daggers in the breeze. There were six cars there and I thought we should leave. The springs are so small only three people can fit in at a time. Kat has more patience than me and we hung in for a turn. A good idea! Not even the sulfury rotten egg smell could mask the healing heat and meaning of that mineral jackpot. God it was a shot to the soul and salve to the body. Our bath was quick because people were waiting. But we went back in the morning- our last in Iceland. We thought about going to the Blue Lagoon, the famous mass bath by the airport. But we decided for our little …. Hraun instead. 

It was even better the second time with enough time and freespace and wild wind to smuggle stateside in our tumbleweed hearts.

Denmark

DENMARK

What you’d expect from a watery place beside the sea: low clouds, chill autumn winds, a spit of rain from nowhere, clouds hiding behind parapets and mermaids and windmills and light filled cafes. Fun to fall in line in the bike lane in love with all the dapper Danes whizzing from Paper Island to King Christien’s castle with all those dopey portraits of the hero king in preposterous poses. And that nose!!!!

And yet he was wise and brave and clearly loved his people. There is no cookie cutter- only effort.

There’s a small forest on Paper Island tagged with wishes from around the world. Yoko Ono sponsored it and participants wrote what they hoped for on a tag with a little string attached for fastening to tree limbs. The personal inscriptions hung like leaves from the tiny alders outside the Paper Island food court and fluttered in the wind. Some were rain damaged but the effect was not dampened. (Quickly, about the food court: it will sadly be vacated December 12th to be razed then sleekly updated. The people should demand it be preserved! The old hangar or warehouse or whatever it is, grew as fungus on a tree trunk a motley colony of food booths inscribed with small is beautiful owner/operator spirit. One guy selling small batch beer out of a hand hewn storefront yakked at Kat and me about building a raft and sailing down the Mississippi over a period of six months. Thirsty people cued behind us but he rambled on with his story untroubled by the rigors of commerce. But about the Yoko Ono notes to the universe: inspiring to read epigrams summoning goodwill for peace, faith in the power of love, fellowship with humanity, and oneness with the planet. Not all is rotten in Denmark after all. 

Now spread the word on the wind and the rain that falls on all flawed heads. Tell ‘em peace ate you every inch.

Wednesday when we checked into Hotel Denmark I spied a jazz poster in the lobby advertising a trio. An international trio. There was as short bio for each member. The drummer was named Victor Jones. I spotted him, sport coat off, tuning his drums in the small room off the hotel lobby which was a mini (if you could believe it) version of Demitiou’s in Seattle: just a few seats and booths- boutiquey? maybe- but quaint and slightly eccentric, as a jazz club should be. He walked into hotel reception where I was sipping a free happy hour wine. He asked for one too- white wine- which seemed weird to me. I was just sitting and he was just sipping and so I asked “Are you playing tonight?”. I already knew. He kinda looked down his nose and answered blasé as a jazzer when not drumming. In time I threw in some jazzy bon-a-fides from the Icons Among Us films I directed and he took note. Kat joined me and she’s good at dragging stories out of people and she kept priming him and he loosened leaning back again stretching and crossing his long legs. He was from Newark, lived in Copenhagen, last lived in NYC, married three times, his true love marriage to a sane Danish girl we soon met, Anne. She was the practical one and they spread their love around the room like a a rose and turpentine perfume. Turns out he liked us and we made a plan to crash his late night gig the next night- a gig different from the Hotel gig. See, he got hired to drum for “The Stones Project”- the love child of mastermind sax player, Tim Ries, who played sax with the Stones alongside Karl Denson, band leader of Tiny Universe, and Greyboy Allstars. The idea behind the project was to jazz up Stones tunes and take ‘em to the people. In clumsy hands this could have been corny but Ries lives in real time committed to the gods of spontaneous ideation in progress we call jazz. Following form with content he picks up players on the fly wherever he plays. Usually plays in cities where Stones play the day after shows and sometimes the day after the day after. In Copenhagen they played three nights at the grand old museum across from the slick Denmark Hotel. The show started late, after the trio, Victor included, finished at the Hotel. The museum gig was the hottest ticket in town- no shit. We first heard about it at the Stones show from a couple who told us their relationship story in a nutshell. He was on the run from Boston and sailing around the globe looking for a third chance at life and she was grieving for a failed marriage when they met on a romantic island in the Mediterranean and fell for love. Or was it the Azores? Anway they told Kat and I about the museum gig and the scramble for tickets. At the time, of course, everyone thought the Stones might show up and get jiggy with the claves hidden in their hooks. And of course they didn’t- though Victor thought Charlie Watts would show right up to showtime. But that’s ahead…

Next night, when we’d talked about seeing Victor and his trio and maybe the Stones Project afterward, I was loopy tired. Jet lag, the enervation and emotional discoveries the epiphanies and pratfalls of travel all take their toll. It’s hard to sleep. It’s high life and you sometimes sleepwalk through with wonder, wondering if a nap might play better. Sometimes you do too without even knowing it- nap. I nappped a bit watching Victor and his Danish pianist and excellent French bassist (a madman who contorted his face while playing frantically up the screechy short end of his strings. Wow, could he hold a crowd). They played with spirit but I was pooped and dreamt my way through. I sat in back with Kat so Victor couldn’t seen us and at the end when he made his way through the crowd he came over and gave me a big handshake and said, “My cousin!”. He was totally warm and absolutely cool. Then he pulled me in and said, “I’m going to freshen up for 7 minutes. Meet me right here. I’ll bring up a pair of cymbals and you can carry them in. I checked this all out last night…”. In 7 minutes he was incredibly there. Three minutes later he waved aside the gatekeepers at the museum entrance, brushing an arm of introduction at me and Kat, his other arm hooked through his tux jacket slung insouciantly over his shoulder. He said “These guys are with me…”, never stopping never looking back. He was regal and funny and the gatekeepers knew the con and basked in it. We bought three beers and walked through the green room nodding to everyone, including Tim Ries, who smiled as he would all night as the most gracious groovester who ever grooved. He and the band including joyous Victor and the jazzy Stones tunes swung and cried and broke free of the originals with sometimes subtle sometimes startling vitality and rattling velocity. But that is another story. I wanted to tell you about Victor

who loved life and drummed emphatically and smuggled us through customs because we cared about art and cared about him and each agreed to play the paradiddle strangers play- when open hearted- together differently.