Category: Photos

Hi.
This is my first The Moth-event;

I moved to New York City a month ago, to involve myself in the world of theatre. Theatre is what I do back home in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I’m from.
The story I’m going to tell you guys tonight is about a performance I directed, called “Rejected (full stop)”.
Actually, it was called “Afslag.”, but for the purpose of you lot, it was called “Rejected.”
On January 22^nd, 2023, I was sat at the box office of the historical landmark in the center of the city that I worked at at the time. My screen lit up, and I saw that the e-mail from the Danish National School of Performance Arts had finally arrived.
I had a bad feeling.
This was a few days after Miley Cyrus had released “Flowers”, so I waited until I was off from work, went outside and found the nearest flower stand. I figured – if this is the bad kind of e-mail, I’ll buy myself a bouqet and somehow feel better.
I opened the e-mail, and yes, correct, the we-regret-to-inform-you-email had arrived into my life FOR THE 12^TH TIME.
I bought lilies, cried a lot and got way too drunk, all according to plan.
I kept the flowers and later dried them in an atlas, somehow knowing they would come to mean something, anything, at some point. 5 months later I would open the book, dust them off and put them in the performance.

But before that happened, a few days after the fatal e-mail, I reached out to the professor of Stage Direction, asking for feedback.
He said, of course, Katinka.
We had a pretty good relationship at this time, because this was not the first feedback-session I was about to have with him.
A few days later I showed up at his office. I asked if I could please record the conversation, so I could focus on listening instead of taking notes.
He said yes.
I kept the memo, didn’t listen to it – I couldn’t bare it – and within the next couple of days, an idea slowly began to form in the back of my mind.
There is a venue in Copenhagen called Basement.
It’s dark, grimy, has concrete walls, is used for raves and underground concerts – and surprisingly, a lot of wrestling – and I knew that the rawness of this dungeon would be able to curate a certain atmosphere that occupied my mind.
And then I realized – not only my mind.
I happened to know quite a lot of people who had also suffered bad e-mails from that particular school. People who were also lowkey hating The Institution and wishing there was another way to make a living as an artist other than getting the paper from the goddamn only (!) official school in the country.
I knew these people because they were basically all of my friends.
And so, on June 22^nd , five months after the e-mail, the doors to Basement opened, and the audience were invited to walk down the steep metal staircase into what we called a “live museum of the different aspects of rejection”:
The grief. The frustration. The hope. The denial, the internalization, the power imbalance.
Seven actors and four choir singers occupied the space in different sections, all exploring different aspects of rejection, audio pieces played from the bathroom, collages of rejection letters were glued to the walls, and on another wall was a projection of video footage from my drunk January night of e-mail opening, a shadow in front of the projection; a shadow cast by a bouquet of dried lilies dangling from the ceiling.
The audience were free to explore as they pleased – going by one actor after another, rejecting them as they left them to go on to the next one.
Another actor targeting people who he had previously delegated gold stars to, based on the level of power in those people’s occupations, the actor asking them to rank the best and worst performances of the night.
And there, in the middle of the literal basement of misery, was a white, cloudy tent of calmness. Audiences would walk into the sanctuary, away from all the self destruction and anarchist rage going on outside, and they would sit on the floor by an audio piece.
They would put on the headphones.
And they would listen to a recording of the professor telling me why my application had just-not-been-good-enough.
As the performance ended, I followed the audience back up the stairs into the small courtyard that was bathed in the sun of the summer evening.
And I stretched out my arm and poked a man on his shoulder.
The professor turned around and looked at me.
And he told me,
that he loved the performance.
All this time I’d searched for a way to truly believe that I might not need The Institution.
That I might not need The Paper.
I’m not sure what did it; The representative of The Institution, or the fact that I had spent five months with beloved friends and created something truly special.

But the following fall,
for the first time in 8 years,
I did not re-apply.  

Thank you.

Duration: 5:25

yesterday, I walked on Columbus Avenue
it was different
I think it’s very much the trees for me
I walked to the place that’ll be my home in a month and a half
September 14^th I’ll be moving into Academic Guest House
on West 74^th
so I went there
and went up the steps
and looked inside, through the glass door, through the gates, someone approached me
immediately embarrassed but not overwhelmingly so, because I do actually have a reason to be there,
wonderful, isn’t it? To have a reason that’s easily articulated for being somewhere,

(not like that shit shot at border control, that was top ten embarrassingly incompetent moments for me, feeling the English word slip back into my throat, down my stomach and out through the bottom as pure, incoherent shit)

so she opened the door, her eyes asking me why I’m being such a creep,
I said “is this academic guest house?”
she blinked and answered in Danish
such a sweet person, I thought, immediately, and not only friendly but-
she knew who I was
like, she remembered my name
she knew I was one of the artists
she told me how she was almost certain I’d be given one of the small apartments because some of the other students have to stay indoors a lot to write massive phd’s, and they figured I’d be out and about
Goddamn right you are
I’ll be out and about
I’m able to afford this because of this beautiful, over the top quiet and aircon’d mansion,
is what I thought,
she called it “Frederiksberg” and laughed,

(If you know you know but if you don’t I’ll just let you know it’s the opposite of Brønshøj and Brønshøj is seemingly Bushwick;
not the Privet Drive-part of Brønshøj,
the main street with the scammy bike shops where the number on the bike frame doesn’t match with the one on the receipt)

I laughed and completely agreed
the back of my head going theme song from Hannah Montana season 1 through 4
Everyone tells me the same
literally two different worlds
how did I get this lucky? I thought as I left her, many thanks and I’ll be seeing you’s later,
as I checked the prices on the menu of the closest pizzeria,

(kept on walking,
romantic daydream vanishing as quickly as it’d arrived)

as I bought a turquoise shower-scrubby-thing in what’s about to be my local supermarket a lifetime from now,
as I looked at the street signs and almost stopped walking, realizing Sesame Street is an actual road right there to the left,
as I looked right and saw the Lincoln Center, feeling hopeful that I might have a reason to go there in a few months other than as an audience,
I went along Columbus Avenue as a resident-to-be, touristy-ly taking photos of restaurants I’m gonna wanna visit, tall mirror-like buildings that let the clouds continue their way across the blue sky, slightly deformed by square surfaces,
eyebrows raised at yet another Trump building,

(how many does he need in this city??)

finding my way down the stairway and swiping the metro card that doesn’t work even though I bought it only hours previously,
sweatily descending more stairs,
finding a seat in the wooden, divided benches that won’t allow neither overweight nor homeless people,
 trying not to cause a scene when fanning myself with the massive opening night-gift ages ago in South Carolina,
entering the cool metro,
opening the book I’ve been craving since I first read that she was writing a new one a year ago,
deciding to skip the two subway changes and walk the 15 minutes from Ralph instead,
exiting the train,
ascending the stairs,
assessing the geography of the place I thought would look more familiar to me,
finding my way towards the train track,
buying a gallon

(??? The second-largest plastic container)

of milk in a deli,
carrying everything;
book, milk, bag, fan, two different senses of home,
sweating while doing so
pressing the code to the door
climbing the stairs
reaching for the key I left under the mat in case I’d managed to get robbed during the day and lose the only other one,
finding refuge inside the airconditioned
home
of the last week of July
all of August
and the first two weeks of September