Robin Speaking

More or less in order of appearance. You see, thing is - to those of my followers who don’t have me as a friend on facebook - for the past two months I’ve been traveling around Europe by my 19-year-old self. I will write more on that later, because it’s been an amazing trip, and what kind of blogger would I be, if I didn’t at least write a thing or two about the trip?

For now, though, I’m gonna leave you with this. My trip has been amazing, I’ve learned stuff about myself, about other people, other countries and even a lot about my own country. I feel like I’ve grown at least a bit within the past two months, but I owe it all to all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. Because traveling alone, you’re never really alone. You always have people around you. So I want to thank every person whose path I’ve crossed in the past two months.

So, thank you, Hannes, Sari, Andrew, Samal, Daniel, Gyða, Adam, Robert, the Canadian guy whose name I will never be able to spell, the Italian guy and his friend, Grace, Gabriel, Marco, the bachelor who celebrated his bachelor party in Edinburgh, all his friends, Martin, Lena, the old man in Glasgow who ran with me, so I could catch my bus, Basel, Max, Madeline, (if that’s even how it’s spelled) Sylvain, Laurane and her parents, Nikko, Daisy, Thomas, that guy whose name I can’t spell, Willem, the other Martin, the entire staff of the Flying Pig Beach Hostel, the other Daniel and lastly, Aron, if that’s even how it’s spelled. I don’t know.

Most likely, I’ve even managed to forget someone who deserves a mention, sorry about that. There are many others, people I’ve met in the passing, people who have impressed me briefly, and some people deserve way more than just a mention here. But for now, this is all I have to say. I’ll have more, but for now - thank you, all of you, for making sure that I never felt alone, not once, in these past two months, while I was off on my own to see the world. Thank you for taking me into your homes, some of you, thank you for taking time out of your lives to show a kid from Denmark around, to make him feel welcomed. Thank you for teaching me, thank you for making me feel connected to the world. Thank you all.

Everything went by us in a flash in an amazing high that clouded our minds, made us euphoric, made us forget time and place. Speeding down victory lane at 200 MPH, we forgot our mortality and conquered the world.

And it was awesome. Brief, sure, but awesome as fuck.

Then the mist cleared, and we realized that we had a long way to trek down from the mountain we had just climbed, and that there was no way to do that at 200 MPH. We had to slow down to safely make it all the way back down to rock bottom, where we can be found scraping rocks, eagerly awaiting the day when we’ll climb our next big mountain, partly fearing, partly hoping - small part believing - that it will be even greater than the last. Because the challenge may seem discouraging at first, but we know this now. We know that the view from the top of a mountain is worth every drop of sweat spent on the trek.

We live for those views, those euphoric flashes of victory.

We live to conquer the world, even if it means scraping rocks and dragging your exhausted soul along the gray concrete of routine and monotony for a while. Our victories may be momentary, but so are our defeats. And our victories are worth it.

For the first time in my life, I’ve discovered that growing up doesn’t have two flying fucks to do with drinking coffee. And for probably the first time in all the time I’ve had this blog, am I going to get straight to the point. I actually already did. Not that that’s gonna stop me from elaborating it just a little bit more.

My last post was about me being afraid of growing up too fast and too gray. In a sense, I still am. I mean, I don’t want to end up boring and gray, but why on Earth I ever imagined that to happen automatically as you grow up, I can’t figure out for the life of me. I know myself to a fairly reasonable extent, and I’m confident that I will maintain some kind of immortality of the child’s imagination. If anything, the mere fact that I hope for it counts for something - doesn’t it? What I mean to say is, I’m not particularly scared as such that I’ll end up too gray and with no memory of being young and having the world surrender at your feet. I sure as fuck don’t want it to happen, but I’m not too scared of it, you know?

But that’s only the beginning of an epiphany, isn’t it? It’s only a lock to a key, so to speak. It’s kind of like only getting the first switch triggered in Lt. Surge’s Gym. (Sorry, if you’ve never played Pokémon, that one went woosh right past you) 

The second trigger is of course something along the lines of “but Robin, if you’ve come to realize what growing up does not mean… What the hell does it mean?” And I cannot believe how simple this is. It can only be one thing, right?

Responsibility.

This is probably just me growing up, after all. And maybe it isn’t half bad. I probably do need to man the fuck up and take responsibility for my own actions and for my own life. I probably do need to direct this shit myself, to steer everything in the direction I want it to go. Because no one else is going to do it for me.

It’s not me against the world, it’s just me against myself. 

I’ve got a legitimate job, I follow sports (if only vaguely and half-ass interested), I drink coffee, I read newspapers, I’m in a serious relationship, I check my three different bank accounts from my computer at home, staring into my 32” LCD screen which is connected to my cable connection, my computer and my Xbox.

At only 18, going on 19 years old, I’m starting to grow up way faster than I ever intended. I’m searching my soul for every childish aspect to add to the plus side that is that I’m not entirely grown up, that I haven’t lost every aspect of the immortality of a child’s imagination. I still love playing Pokémon, I love listening to, creating, playing music, but above all, I think, I love to - simplest put - create.

I’ve actually pondered this for a while. One of the most important things in my life is music - the ability to create images, worlds and emotions through sound. It’s… Terrifying. And I mean that in the good-way-“terrifying”. Another example I noticed is that most of the video games that got my attention were games where you had some kind of ability to create. If nothing else, at least the ability to create your own story. Minecraft had me at hello. I also enjoy drawing. I’m no Da Vinci, but I enjoy scribbling images straight from my mind.

What I’m getting at is that, whether I like it or not, I’m probably growing up, which probably isn’t half bad. I just hope I manage to keep that creative spirit alive, so I’ll at least still hold some aspect of the child’s mind within me.

I guess I’m just afraid to grow up too fast and too gray.

A good six or seven years back, I bought my first electric guitar. White body, white pickguard, three single coil pickups, bright wooden neck of whatever material (it even has a usb port, which is kinda weird, but all fun and games) and of the unknownest of unknown brands - Behringer.

Sure, it wasn’t a Fender or a Gibson or whatever else I’d liked, but goddammit, if I don’t still love it to this day. Not because it by any means is a particularly good guitar, because - well - it isn’t, really. But I’ve had it for a long time, and boy, does that show. I’ve scratched “PUNK” with a key on the lower part of its body, it’s got scratches from sometime years ago, when I was hurrying to some gig, and I didn’t have a gigbag, and I dropped it on the concrete. There’s an old AC/DC sticker on it, which I have to admit has probably been sitting there for an unhealthily long time, I think it might have grown to become symbiont with the guitar itself.

My electric guitar is far from perfect. It’s got scratches and bruises, but that’s only half the imperfections. I’m far from a perfect musician. I don’t practice enough, I’m no more fancy than bluesy rock solos and simple riffs - but it all adds to the point I’m getting at. However much perfection I lack, and however much perfection my guitar lacks, I still manage to throw myself out of this world, when I rock this basement teenage area to the best of my ability. That is, along with my imperfect amplifier and imperfect distortion pedal.

What I’m trying to say is that perfection is overrated. Hell, I’d even say perfection is a sick and absurd ideal. Imperfections, scratches, errors, they all add to the - what’s the popular term - spice of life?

I’m out. 

Coming to terms with what you believe in is not something you sit down and decide you’re gonna do over the course of fifteen minutes or even an afternoon. To firmly believe in something is to see it as the only possibility. It’s not something you choose as such. You don’t just randomly decide that now you believe in something. Beliefs are more complex. And coming to terms with one is interesting. How do people come to terms with what to believe in? And what exactly do I mean by “believing in something”?

Well, simplest put, obviously, believing in something is to believe in the existence of something. According to my favorite website, when looking up definitions, ninjawords.com, a belief is defined as a - and I quote - mental acceptance of a claim as truth regardless of supporting empirical evidence.

Now, of course, you can fool yourself into simply “choosing” a belief. But a true mental acceptance of a universal truth is - in my most modest opinion - a pretty darn huge thing. Which is why I’ve chosen to believe in the fact that I don’t have a goddamn clue. Sure, I think I have some ideas which are plausible at best. But what I know for sure is that I’m completely lost. Which is, of course, just another way of quoting Socrates, when he said “I know that I know nothing”. 

Like, if you care, scroll on, if you have no heart.

This showed up on my facebook news-feed the other day, accompanied by a picture of a starving African child from what we like to call “the third world”.

I’ll have to be frank. I got a little upset. What the flying fuck is me liking that picture going to do for that poor child? It’s sad, it really is, that people are starving and dying. There are a lot of cruel and unjust things going on in the world, but I can’t right them all by myself, and I’m especially not doing anything for anyone by liking a picture on facebook. But that’s okay, because that’s not the important part, right?

It’s not even about helping anymore, is it? It’s not even about caring for anybody. It’s about ourselves and our dirty, dirty conscience. We’re living easy, and we don’t like challenges too great. Still, we wouldn’t want to live with a bad conscience. We want to feel that we’ve helped someone, that we are making the world a better place. Even if we’re not. So, sharing a video or liking a picture becomes an easy way for us to clear that conscience, to make us feel like good people again.

It requires little sweat to browse around, surfing the grand interwebs, getting a little emotional and making a little uproar from behind your screen.

And I sympathize, I really do. It’s easy, and I’m not going to blame anyone for turning to apathy. But it’s sad. It’s even sadder than the pictures we share and like, because we care and because we are so good and kind-hearted. It’s sad that we don’t really want to help, we just want to feel good about ourselves. And the easier we can accomplish this, the better. I mean, why bother? 

This took me a while. Mostly because I want to forget the reality of it all. I want to keep out how close this is to life, how it reminds me of something I never really knew before. The frailty of life.

It’s not something you can prepare yourself for. I used to think I was so rational and had my mind made up in clear realization of how the world worked, how life worked. I used to think I was so goddamn wise. No, I really did. But in the end, the empty words and refrigerator magnets we so desperately repeat in unison, they finally make sense. At the end of the day, you truly and finally realize the gravity of it - that nothing really matters. It sears through your every vein, the pointlessness of everything. You feel the stupidity of existence in your very bones, and an infuriatingly depressing force keeps your soul at a distance, as you slowly realize what you’ve always preached.

And then it overwhelms you. The reality of it all hits you like a tidal wave, and when there is nothing left but tear-stained beaches, you feel evermore pointless in being.  At least that was my experience.

You know what, fuck this. 

This is all I’m going to write for tonight. Take care.

Being clever and not being stupid are two very different things, and of the two, my claim is that not being stupid is by far the most important. And what do I mean by that, exactly? Why, I’d gladly elaborate.

What I mean, when I say “not being stupid” and “being clever” may not be entirely clear, at least I discovered that the other day, when I brought this up in a conversation with a friend of mine. The way I see it, the stupidest a person can get, is to the point of self-deception. Not knowing what the square root of 36 is does not make you stupid, but firmly believing that you are the most beautiful and talented and blessed person in the entire world is. Not being stupid is having some kind of feeling of the moment, knowing yourself to some extent and, in general, being self-aware.

Being clever is an entirely different matter. Being clever refers to being brilliantly logical and rational in terms of problem-solving, and has nothing to do with one’s perception of oneself and any given situation in any given context. You can easily be clever as fuck and still be stupid beyond belief. At least, according to my definitions. And according to me, I’m always right, because I’m the most clever and intelligent and beautiful human being on this planet. Period.

“So I arrived at this party, and whaddaya know, there they were, black pigs all over the place acting all like we were the best of bros. Hell no, man, I mean what the fuck did they expect? Disgusting, man.”

Not being racist isn’t just saying that there will always be bad people, whatever the color. It’s understanding. Racism is ugly, but like largely anything else, understandable. In a sense. Racism is bound to some stupid, patriotic idea of a country staying “true” to its “values”. When people from a different country come knocking on our door, bringing with them new “values”, that scares the crap out of the patriots. What will happen to our country?!

The thing is, every country has to evolve, and patriotism and racism (not the exact same thing, sure, but very much related) will always hinder any country that tries to evolve. One could say that all these emotions can be traced right back to the biggest fear of them all - fear of the unknown, fear of what’s new. Fear of change.

The point is, if we want to move on, let go of your stupid patriotism and accept that all of this has got to go. The world needs change. Accept that.

So, to simplify - patriots and racists are blithering idiots.