Now this wasn’t really anything to beat the drums with in an exam or during a discussion, but that wasn’t what I, the king of approximation, was after. I was after enrichment. And what enriched me while reading Adorno, for example, lay not in what I read but in the perception of myself while I was reading. I was someone who read Adorno! And in this heavy, intricate, detailed, precise language whose aim was to elevate thought ever higher, and where every period was set like a mountaineer’s cleat, there was something else, this particular approach to the mood of reality, the shadow of these sentences that could evoke in me a vague desire to use the language with this particular mood on something real, on something living. Not on an argument, but on a lynx, for example, or on a blackbird or a cement mixer. For it was not the case that language cloaked reality in its moods, but vice versa, reality arose from them.
I didn’t articulate that for myself, it didn’t exist as in thought, barely even as inklings, more as a kind of hazy lure. I kept this entire side of me hidden from Yngve, first of all because he wasn’t interested, and didn’t believe in it either, he had taken Media Studies, and was in full agreement with the tenet of his subject that objective quality did not exist, that all judgments were relative, and that of course what was popular was just as good as what was not popular, but soon this difference, and whatever I held back, was charged with much more for me, it began to be about us as people, about the distance between Yngve and me actually being large, and I didn’t want that, I didn’t want that for anything in the world, and I systematically played it down. If I suffered a defeat, if I failed at something, if I had misunderstood something vital, I never hesitated to tell him, for anything that could drag me down in his eyes was good, while on those occasions I achieved something of significance, I often opted not to tell him.
In itself, this was perhaps not a serious matter, but when the consciousness of it reared its head, it became worse because I thought about it when we were together, and I no longer behaved in a natural, spontaneous manner, no longer chatted away as I had always done with him but started brooding, calculating, and reflecting. It was the same with Espen, except in reverse, I toned down the easygoing, entertainment-focused lifestyle. At the same time I had a girlfriend with whom I had never been in love, not really, which of course she must have known herself. We had been together for four years. So there I was, playing roles, pretending this and pretending that. And as if that were not enough, I was working at an institution for the mentally impaired as well, and not content with fawning on the other staff there, who were trained nurses, I was also joining them at their parties, which were held in the part of town that students shunned, the down-homey bars with pianists and singalongs, to tune into their opinions and attitudes and perceptions. The few I had of my own I repudiated or kept to myself. There was consequently something furtive and dubious about my character, nothing of the solid, pure traits which I encountered in some people during this period, people whom I therefore admired. Yngve was too close for me to be able to judge in this way, for thoughts, whatever good one can say about them, have a great weakness, namely, that they are dependent on a certain distance for effect. Everything inside that distance is subject to emotions. It was because of my emotions that I was starting to hold things back. He wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. My mother could, and I wasn’t bothered, my father and my friends could, and of course I could, I didn’t give a shit, but Yngve was not allowed to fail, he was not allowed to make a fool of himself, he was not allowed to show weakness. When, however, he did, and I was watching, shame-filled, the shame on his behalf still was not the crux; the crux was that he mustn’t notice, he mustn’t find out that I harbored such emotions, and the evasive looks in such circumstances, emerged to conceal feelings rather than show them, must have been conspicuous, albeit not easy to interpret. If he said something stupid or glib it did not change my attitude to him, I didn’t judge him differently for that reason, so what went on inside me was based exclusively on the possibility that he might believe I was ashamed of him.
Such as the time we were sitting in Garage late one night discussing the journal we had long been planning to launch. We were surrounded by people who could write and take photographs, who were all as au fait with the Liverpool team of the 1982–83 season as they were with the members of the Frankfurt school, with English groups as Norwegian writers, with German expressionist films as American TV series. Starting a news-oriented magazine that took this broad range of interests seriously — soccer, music, literature, film, philosophy, and art — had long seemed a good idea. That night we were with Ingar Myking, who was the editor of the student newspaper Studvest, and Hans Mjelva, who aside from singing in our band, had been Ingar’s predecessor. When Yngve started talking about the magazine I suddenly heard what he was saying with Ingar’s and Hans’s ears. It sounded flat and unsubtle, and I looked down at the table. Yngve glanced at me several times as he was speaking. Should I say what I was thinking, correct him, in other words? Or should I turn a blind eye, deny myself, and support what he was saying? Then Ingar and Hans would believe I stood where he did on this. I didn’t want that either. So I opted for a compromise and said nothing, in an attempt to let the silence affirm Yngve and the assessment of his opinions, which is what I assumed Ingar and Hans were doing.
I was often this cowardly, I didn’t want to upset anyone, and held back what I thought, but this time the circumstances were heightened both because it concerned Yngve, who I wanted to keep above me, where he belonged, and because there was some vanity involved, that is, listeners, and I couldn’t talk my way out of that.
Most of what Yngve and I did together was on his terms, and most of what I did alone, such as reading and writing, I kept to myself. But every now and then these two worlds met, it was inevitable, for Yngve was also keen on literature although he wasn’t interested in the same things as I was. When I had to interview the writer Kjartan Fløgstad for a student magazine, for example, Yngve suggested we do it together, and I agreed without a murmur. Fløgstad, with his mixture of down-to-earth talk and intellectualism, his theories about all things high and low, his undogmatic and independent, almost aristocratic, left-wing views, and, not least, his wordplay, was Yngve’s favorite author. Yngve was himself infamous for his wordplay and corny puns, and his core intellectual claim was the notion that a work of art’s value was created in the receiver, and not in itself, and that authentic artistic expression was just as much a question of form as inauthentic artistic expression. For me Fløgstad was the great Norwegian writer. The interview with him had been arranged by the tiny Nynorsk student newspaper TAL, for whom I had previously interviewed the poet Olav H. Hauge and the prose writer Karin Moe. I did the Hauge interview with Espen, and Ingve’s friend Asbjørn, who took the photos, so it was only natural for Yngve to be in on this one. The interview with Hauge had gone well, after a terrible start it must be said, because I hadn’t told him there would be three of us, so as our car swung into his drive he had been expecting one person and refused to let us into his house. They came in force, he said in the doorway in sculpted West Coast dialect, and I suddenly felt like a happy, frivolous, stupid, overeager, impulsive, red-cheeked Eastern Norwegian. Hauge was a permanent resident of the intellectual planet, he didn’t budge for anything, I was a tourist, and had brought my friends along to examine the phenomenon more closely. That was my feeling, and judging by his severe, almost hostile, expression, apparently also his. But, in the end, he said Well, you’d better come in, and lumbered into the living room ahead of us, where we put down our bags and photographic equipment. Asbjørn removed his camera and lifted it to the light, Espen and I took out our notes, Hauge sat on a bench by the wall inspecting the floor. Perhaps you could stand by that window, Asbjørn said, the light’s good there. Then we can take a few pictures. Hauge looked up at him, with his gray bangs hanging over his forehead. You’re not taking any goddamn pictures here, he said. All right, said Asbjørn. My apologies. He withdrew to the side and discreetly placed his camera in its bag. Espen was sitting beside me flicking through some notes and holding a pen in one hand. I knew him, and it was clear that it was hardly likely to be concentration that was impelling him to read them through now. An eternity passed without anyone saying anything. Espen looked at me. Then looked at Hauge. I have a question, he said. Would it be all right if I asked you? Hauge nodded, and pushed back his drooping curls with a movement that was surprisingly light and feminine compared with his otherwise masculine impassivity and silence. Espen started on his question, he read from his notepad, it was long and intricate and contained a brief analysis of a poem. When he had finished, Hauge said, without looking up, that he wasn’t going to talk about his poems.