Category: Photos

1.

do I work better with or without music
do I work better with or without a busy schedule
do I work better with or without feeling blue

am I better with obstacles to beat
mountains to climb
am I better at ease, accepting what might come

am I best solo
or am I better as somebody’s someone?

am I at my best when I’m a girlfriend
or when I’m just a girl who sometimes loves this one other person very much
am I best on my own
knowing that the ones I love are far away but definitely there
or is it better when we’re all in a room, together, at the same table

is distance possibly the greatest way of loving?

many crushes and favourite songs ago I learned that the empty space of this one guy was way more meaningful to me than his actual company

is this still true?
is it horrible?
is it true though?

are things better when there are no conflicts?
when we all just agree that we love each other, oceans away,
no socks on the floor
or insecurities to devastate us

am I even a good aunt? When I keep forgetting to tell my sister that she can send videos on Signal and haven’t even sent her one myself?

Are they better off without me at the moment?
knowing I’ll return safely, probably,
at some point in the future
no one has time for all these people
honestly I did them a favour by removing myself from their equations for a while,
think of all those friends they haven’t seen in a while
that’ll be me now,
for a while,
I haven’t seen them in ages,
8 weeks,
and there’s no issue
it’s honestly never been this easy

is this what safety feels like? Or am I lonely or bored or self indulgent?
possibly all actually
at the same time
sitting at this desk
in this office I’ve been given on the upper west side
not really missing anyone
mostly wanting to go to chinatown tomorrow to stock up on frozen dumplings
knowing they’re all sleeping in beds across the globe
can love feel this indifferent?
can it still be love?
when it’s this much of a given?
at what point does it stop being love?
will it ever?
should I give them another call or is 5 months as much nothing to them as it is to me?
if love is everything, can it also then be nothing?

2

from afar
the one phrase I was certain I understood, deeply and profoundly and over the top dramatically,
but at some point, I think recently, it changed
Now it’s not longing for a love that will never happen,
not a one-way affection deemed to never return,
now it’s love happening abruptly, all at once, then not at all, from a great distance across the Atlantic perhaps
apparent in phone calls and messages and the distinctly familiar shape of the water tanks that made me think of them,
gone by the sound of the ambulance in passing,
ready to revisit at some undecided point in the future

thank you to all of you back home
thank you for loving me from afar
I promise I’m doing the same thing
I’ve got you on photos that I’ll be hanging on my new wall tomorrow
I’ve got you when I look out the window and thinking how I’ll explain the view to you when I return
I’ve got you when someone mentions Greenpoint and you’re the ones I want to talk about “girls” with and that one scene with the trash man (doctor) in the house with the fruit in the bowl
I’ve got you sporadically,
there will be days of podcasts of my favourite tv show and not a thread of you
there will be songs that we’ve listened to,
but this time I’ll only feel how much I love them,
blissfully self indulgent,
forgetting that you do as well,
then there will be weeks where you’ll keep appearing, the same childhood friend appearing in four different conversations during seven days, and I haven’t thought of her in years, how I’d wait for her at the top of the tiny hill every morning before we’d ride to school together,
tiny tall people on tiny teenage bikes,
I’ve got you when I imagine how ridiculously theatrical you’ll find me when I’ll be running around central park, latte in hand, feeling like a new york mom without anyone else to care for but myself,
I imagine you’ll laugh, be a tiny bit jealous, find it to be a little boring but probably, in the end, feel a slight sting of love towards me
that’s what I imagine but please correct my daydream when I return,
I love you and I can’t function without you in my life,
apparently that can be paused, though,
the physical aspect of it,
I am functioning to an a++ level at the moment and I haven’t seen you since July,
weeks and weeks of high quality functioning to say the least,
(or a least that’s how i feel as I’m writing this)
but it’s not that
it’s not
it’s really, really not that I can function without you in my life

it’s just that I don’t need you here, in this room, on the couch behind this desk, scrolling on your phone or sharing your thoughts of that article you just sent me,
I don’t need your body
I don’t need your company
I need your love and I need to know your bodies will be available when I return
so thank you for your availability
thank you for your invisible long distance love
I hope you feel it too,
I hope you’re planning how to tell me things
I hope you’ll keep calling me when you’re angry at somebody else
I hope you’ll not call me because you don’t need me for this either
I hope you’ll collect anecdotes and possibly send me one single meme when it fits too well to not,
I know you’re spending these months with all your others,
your other important ones,
the ones that make your everyday safe and fun and extravagant and I hope you’re not talking about me,
maybe you thought someone would mention me tonight because we’re all in the same friend group but then my name just never came up,
and on your bike ride home you might think,
huh,
and then the light turns green and you’ll keep on biking and that “huh” is the dearest flicker of love and I promise you I can feel it from here,
and I’ll “huh” you right back as I walk towards the C on 72^nd and Amsterdam
huh
huh
a precious group of people in the back of my mind,
that’s you,
and don’t mistake my silence for indifference
don’t mistake my affection for solitariness as having grown tired of you
you probably haven’t
you’re not even reading this
because you’ve got other things to do
and how great is this?
a paralell life and a pause in how we used to love each other,
now we’re doing it differently
from afar
from time to time
maybe 5 months is a blink to you and you thought you’d call but the time just passed and your whole life happened,
and how great is this?

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