We travelled for 10 days around Iceland. We and a lot of people. We at least saw the hyped event that Björk and Arca put together. Under an annoying thin drop rain. There were thousands of people who travelled there just for the proclaimed “once in a lifetime” event that will apparently happen next year in Egypt. Once in a lifetime eclipses are happening every year now. Before you astronomic people yell at me, it is just a joke. I know that these events may differ and Capitalism is the reason we pump them to take thousands of people across the globe ~checks notes~ Egypt or Morroco the next one. I won’t be there. Unless Arca makes a dj set again.
Iceland has been a mystic presence in my life since early young kid. Homogenic was released in 1998ish and I was a kid in Southern Brazil. And some way somehow some copies were in the local book and music shop. There was a personality awaken at that moment. With that, couple of years later there was the internet in my home. I discovered a lot of things. How cool Iceland was. More than half the young population on online forums that happened to be from there wanted to runaway from that rocky vulcanic sheepy paradise. It doesn’t matter in Iceland or South Brazil, we all wanted to escape.
We can connect that Homogenic was a bit the reason I became who I became. A petty left wing whinny adult that sees himself better than some masses (I know and I am working on it with my therapist. I promise. And yes the poor upper middle class white designer that lives in London at his late 30s is in therapy like the good millenial he is).
So for 10 days I drove three-thousand-something-kilometers along the 1 Hringvegur. We made it clock-wise, from Keflavik to Reykjavik to Stykkishólmur to Akureyri and so on until back to Reykjavik for the Echoalia festival.
It was incredible. aside all that went wrong. The capitalist side was way off-track with me using all the limit in my Mastercard. I came to a point where for both priced and priceless, I had no longer Mastercard. My wife iPhone decided to die for good, I lost my airPods, I was caught speeding at 123 km/h on a 90km/h road. Yeah, financially was a wreck that I will need a couple of months to put it back on track.
But the nature was there in its humbling magnificence and the memories were created. Iceland is the closest I came to God or the Divine or whatever Greater Being in my life. It is just so much bigger than you. Being there in the hiking paths, the mountains, the Geisers, the Glaciers just show how small you as a biological mass is.
Maybe one of the many reasons we organized ourselves in villages is the idea we have control over a point of it. Our village, our culture, our language. It is ours. Created by us. Something that we control. Because when you are alone among hills and rivers that are cold or hot, when you are at the bottom of a Volcano, boy do you feel insignificant.
On the other hand, please pay your parking. There’s a QR Code, there’s an app. There’s a weak yet always present 4G signal. When in Iceland I was constantly caught between these divine versus mundane battle. The mundane won. I could not sleep tight thinking on the card statement, on how I was in the middle of nowhere but still a slave to the clock because I pre-paid something that needed me to be there in some exact hour.
The only place where I really lost myself and became a kid that listened to Homogenic all over again was on the Fjaðrárgljúfur. A canyon where me and my wife connected on a deeper level, where we laughed and acted as 8 year-olds without fear of judgment. Where I pseudo-conquered my fear of heights. Where we took photos of genuine smiles. A place I will never forget, even if I come to suffer from some dementia in the future, I think that feeling is with we me forever as are all my tattoos.
Being free to be a kid that loved to climb rocks was the best moment I lived in a long time. And cheers to that.