I would very much like to know

When did identity become such a central concept? Specifically, I would like to know when the word came into common usage in sociological texts, but also when it achieved popular usage as well. The text than I'm reading from the '60s doesn't make use of the word, but I'm not sure if that is because it wasn't used then, or if the author didn't see it as useful to his text. The more recent book I'm reading uses the term identity regularly. The other question would be, was there discussion of a markedly similar to that which we now call identity, or is the concept of identity relatively new? And which contemporary definition of identity does a possible identity-like term match?

a non-comprehensive guide to drink

It's not that I like to get tanked. If fact, this became a particularly poignant issue for me precisely because when I drink it is because I enjoy the taste of a beer, wine, or whatever. Norway just doesn't have good beers available, and when they import, they are pretty much just importing the common stuff. You can find Heineken here, I think I've seen Pilsner Urquell. But if one is not a particular fan of pilsner, Norway is not the country to spend extensive time in. The British, though, are good for an ale, so when I came this time it was a particular goal of mine to pick up some good beers. I managed to find an independent wine shop by accident while I was walking by Holyrood Park, and I would recommend visiting either to anyone who visits Edinburgh. I picked up some really good Scottish ales to bring back to Norway, and I shared one with a friend this afternoon while we were trying to get through an obnoxious bit of project work. We were drinking Cairngorm's Trade Winds, but my collection features more from William's Brothers Brewing including a Heather Ale, A Gooseberry Lager, and the seaweed beer Kelpie. I have only had the Heather and the Trade Winds so far, but I drank both of them at near to room temperature and they had excellent flavor. Drool...

I should be using my time much better than this at the moment but

I'm enjoying the wi-fi in my Edinburgh hostel a bit much. I should be out exploring the city, right? Or getting the paper that's due before my return to Bø written. All the research is done, so it shouldn't take too long and then I can enjoy the rest of my time without anxiety. But instead I've been taking a break to catch up on some e-mails, rest my ankle, that I over stressed a bit, and look at some randomness. They made a video of part of the Urørt concert* at Kroa a few weeks, and I have a brief cameo with a couple of my friends while we are all doing nothing at about minute 1:30. For some reason, they only came by to film things when we had nothing to do.


*NRK, the national broadcasting company has a program of unsigned artists on one of their radio channels, and they have a competition among the bands that submit to this every year. The winning bands then get to go on tour, and this show was one of their stops. At least, I think that is how it works and I'm too lazy to double check at the moment.

Shoegazing

The show last night was billed as "Andrew Bird full band show", and after listening to things about SxSW I thought that “full band” might mean that the new guitarist, Jeremy Ylvisaker, might be along. But no. Full band meant Dosh. But Dosh does mean band. I was standing 6 to 8 feet away from Mr. Bird for the concert, and in a perfect position to see what both of them were doing and where Mr. Dosh was looking. The man has to pay a particular amount of attention to what Mr. Bird is doing at any moment. When Dosh is playing by himself he is completely concentrated on what he alone is doing. It doesn't seem that he particularly notes his audience and he doesn't have anyone else to match himself to. When he is playing with Mr. Bird, his is still entirely focused on the music, but then he's watching Bird's shoes, literally, timing his own samples to those of the leader. Bird seems to remain almost entirely internally focused, but being to the side of the stage and very close rather than in the audience center, it was hard to tell if he was actually looking into the crowd or out over their heads.

Another note, one could really tell what had been in the line up for a while, and what was newly added with the new album. Bird forgot his lyrics to Heretics and probably cut the song short and had seemed to repeat a chorus of Armchair Apocrypha until he remembered where he was in the song. However, he is so charming that his audience cheers him enthusiastically even when he's very obviously screwed up. That is charisma. But while Bird is trying to remember his lyrics Mr. Dosh is not just matching his drumming to the front man, but his various samples recorded as the song began. Mr. Bird is brilliant, but Mr. Dosh is truly amazing.

Also, while I would have loved to buy the new album, and even would have paid up to $5 over the store price, I couldn't see my way clear to paying over twice the American charge. I was... shocked. I was shocked to see a CD selling for £15.

bedre under tvang

I should not have had a cup of coffee this afternoon. I've been having this outrageously early bedtime working for me recently that involves me getting up early and doing things. Today, for example, I cleaned. Not just the vacuuming that I did last time, but actually finding space on my desk and a few things that I had lost there. This doesn't always mean that I am subsequently especially effective at going on things I really need to do. I would argue though, I really did need a new alarm clock playlist.* Okay, maybe I've been waking up on my own before the alarm goes off. I still hear and Adam Arcuragi is really starting to grate my nerves. Nice enough, but I don't think I've changed my playlist for a couple months now. You can only hear the same songs every morning for so long. And it takes time to make a really good playlist.

So now I can't sleep. But, it was offered. A nice dinner with friends, sharing some music, a cup of coffee. What could the harm be? Only that the caffeine would combine with my natural anxiety over, well, nearly everything. I'm not really freaking out over anything. I just can't sleep. So instead I'm thinking about how much I have to get done, how much I miss friends back home, and how much I'm going to miss everything here in a couple months. It doesn't help that I've been realizing that the last show I work at Kroa might be the Transistor show on Saturday. There are other shows I'd rather see as my last job than metal.

On top of this, another friend forced me to use my Norwegian today because it won't be that much longer before I'm going back to the states, rarely to speak Norwegian again. This is undoubtedly good for me. She's right for one thing, and most of my friends are English majors, hence they tend to like speaking English with me. I'm educational. What's more, despite some gaffs now and then, and using English grammar with Norwegian words sometimes, I don't do that bad in my second language. And I'm better under a little pressure. To be perfectly clear about this, it isn't that I am better at getting the pronunciation and grammar correct when the stakes are higher, it's that I tend to rebel against speaking Norwegian a lot of the time. Everyone here can speak English, most of them pretty well or nearly excellent.** However, in the few instances when friends refuse to speak to me in English, I get there. Another happy point, I seem to be getting better at reading comprehension as well. I'll admit though, this might just be because we are getting into increasingly contemporary writing in my Norwegian literature class. There is a big difference between trying to read from Kristin Lavransdatter and Uke 43.

So after lots of tossing and turning, a practice run at packing to cross back over the ocean, a short essay on language laziness, and some music surfing... once more into the breach! Sleep, you shall be mine.


*Oh my beloved iPod and computer speakers, they are the best alarm I've ever had.
**I think this is one of the reasons that I get so annoyed every time a lecturer apologizes for his or her English. Seriously, it's fine, and we could be getting on with the educational part already.
***I can't think of an aesthetically pleasing place to put this, but practice packing seems to indicate a very smooth return. Granted, I'm not taking all of my clothes home with me, and some of the things I brought from the states are toiletry consumables (not to be confused with ingestables), but I'm suspicious of this. I might have to do a new practice packing project where I don't just pack most things and guess on some others, because everything is fitting into my duffle and a backpack with room to spare right now.

springtime fantasies

It's gotten warm here, and the past few days have been the sort of sunny days that seduce one to think of what summer might be like, and in my case, where I might be.* With the whole idea that I am graduating (barring any crazy events) this semester, well, that's all a little unclear. It's been my plan to go back to Madison for the summer, sleep on friends couches or find some cheap sublet, and see if I can find a job to earn some moving cash with. This is presuming that the jokes about me finding a Norwegian husband and not going home don't pan out. I'd like to point out that these are not my jokes and have come from various Norwegian and American sources. Just for the record.

So even if I do go to Madison for the summer, I'm going to be trying to figure out where I'm going after that. I have no intention, at this point, of staying in Madison past August. Not that I don't love the city. I do. I'm just not sure I want to marry it. I mean, anything more than one last summer fling with the lakes and bike paths, it seems too much like a commitment. I'm not ready to give up my options in other hometowns. My best girl from back in Charlotte has suggested that we both move to NYC together, and I'm intrigued by the suggestion. I have connections there and maybe I could get a suggestion on where I could find a steady paycheck that would cover rent. But I still have a wild dream of checking out the west coast. The farthest west I've been is just over the great dividing river into Minneapolis. I'd like to see what my chances would be like in San Francisco. Google maps and I have been plotting a course across the country by car, stopping off at my far too distant from each other friends' new home cities. But if I've learned nothing else from my time abroad (and there are doubts about my language skills and methods of planning) it is that I can cross an ocean with a couple of duffels and have something like a home before long. Granted, my dorm came furnished, but I'd have to fight my mum's kitties to get my futon back anyway, so why not take a couple duffels across the country by plane and buy a new bed out west? Because I'd miss seeing those friends living in the diaspora and seeing all that land.


*This might also be why the housing managers decided to wax our hallways. This seems a little mad to me, as we are all still tracking the sand used to make walkways walkable inside on our sneakers and the floor wax stinks. However, my dorm mate and I discovered that our giant freeze - for storing the deer carcasses from our nonexistent hunting trips - is really pretty light when we moved it back out into the hall this evening.

Han lo av, ikke lå på meg

One of the guys that I work with has decided that he will only speak to me in Norwegian. He had the idea that this annoys me. When I asked him a question very early Sunday morning in English he answered in kind, realized that he was now speaking to me in English, but then continued to do so until we were finished taking everything down from the night's disco.* When I finally told him "på norsk" he was apparently somewhat surprised, and commented on it later during the nachspiel.

So that was the back story. Today, while I was talking to a friend about language I tried to say "han lo av meg da jeg fortalte han å snakke norsk" (he laughed at me when I told him to speak Norwegian). However, prepositions and proper pronunciation can be difficult sometimes and what I actually said was "han lå på meg..." (he lay on me...).


I had a rather difficult evening for speaking properly in Norwegian, so when I screwed up again during our singing class I said to her "han lå på meg" and we started laughing, she told the class about it, and our teacher gave me this Danish song:**

Bitte mette, bitte mette,
Får jeg ligge overpå, åh
Bitte mette, bitte mette,
Får jeg ligge overpå?

Ja det får du, ja det får du,
Du får ligge overpå, åh
Ja det får du, ja det får du,
Du får ligge overpå.


*I asked in English because I couldn't remember how to say, "Should I take the filters apart?" in Norwegian. It was probably about 0400 or 0430 and I think I should be excused from forgetting that "the filters" in Norwegian should be "filtrene."
**The words were already translated from Danish to Norwegian, and in English are roughly, "May I lay on top of you? Yes, you may do that."

looking for a word

Melancholy seems to have the long-term, low-level quality that is appropriate, while depression seems to cover more of the causes yet is too extreme. Despondent seems appropriate, but I just can find a word that means "in low spirits over an extended time period due to irrational anxiety."