Crossing

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Sesselja Björnsdóttir

I saw this photo on Sesselja's son Ari's Facebook wall (Ari is an excellent electronica musician - I've got a bunch of his music on my Soundcloud favorites list under Lotus Robot) and immediately connected with it. I felt there was something powerful about the bridge, and assumed it was just the overall symbolism that bridges hold in literature and such.*

But then Sesselja wrote to me that "this is the bridge over the river Ytri Emstruá, when you are hiking Laugavegurinn [video]. Because of the bridge people can hike this track." So this bridge is more than just an easier way to get across a small ravine: it's actually what makes this famous Icelandic hiking trail possible. I like that.

* "The important thing here is the symbolism: the bridge, and the enchanted world it brings to the poet’s mind. The very nature of a bridge dictates its symbolic use. It is a structure that joins two otherwise separate pieces of land, yet at the same time enhances their separateness. One can travel across it, from one land mass to another, but while on it the traveller is neither in one place nor the other. " From The Perilous Bridge, by Alby Stone.

Evening

A lovely blue winter sky (with the moon and a just-visible Jupiter below it) decorate the backyard of the internationally recognized Icelandic Nikita brand clothing store on Laugavegur. In winter, the store's owner, Heiða Birgisdóttir holds all-ages snowboarding competitions in this yard, and in the summertime the half-pipe in the left-hand corner of the picture lines with skaters big and small. Some amazing concerts have been held here as well, including Icelandic wonders GusGus and the very amazing Agent Fresco.

Ruin

Every city has it's eyesores. Unfortunately, this one is located on our main strip Laugavegur, for everyone to see over and over again. We've watched the puddle in the pit fill, freeze, thaw, snow over, thaw again and refreeze, etc. Aside from that being a comment on the fickle weather over here, that means this lot has lay bare for many months now. Many months. And this is not midtown Reykjavik's only unfinished architectural business...

Commentary aside, I find this scene attractive for its rawness, for exposing the inner workings of a city block like some kind of splayed open biology dissection specimen. I wonder about the soot stain on the white building at the back, and about the block-letter graffiti on the brick garage. I applaude the person who decided to paint the face of the low-lying storage building a deep red with green trim, even though it was almost completely hidden from view before the house that filled this hole was torn down. I love the colors that contrast shockingly with the rubble and I like that we can see down to the bedrock and feel assured that the heart of Reykjavik is built on solid rock. I won't miss this raw scene when it's gone, but while it's here we might as well try to appreciate it.

Day After

I suppose I can't let Reykjavik's annual Iceland Airwaves music festival weekend pass by without posting something about it. I only saw one act this year, at the Mál og Menning bookstore on Laugavegur this afternoon, and I don't even know who it was. Some swell female crooner and a couple of jazzy backup guys (Babar maybe?). The fesitval was sold out this year again and my father said yesterday that the main shooping street, Laugavegur, was swarming with foreign accents and people hauling music equipment around. That's the cool thing about this festival: Reykjavik becomes, for one weekend, a very international place, just like a tiny San Francisco or like a small slice of London, or New York. And this year the organizers tackled the overcrowded venue issue by holding free concerts all over town, like the one I witnessed at the bookstore today. They get a big plus for that!

This still life is one I happened across this morning, the day after the last big concert night of the festival. A broken beer bottle, a lighter, an empty cig box, stubs, a half-full ashtray and a copy of yesterday's Grapevine festival guide all grace the scene, a fine memorial to last night's downtown action.