#somehow i love couple who would always seem to talk with each other in capslock | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

folerdetdufoler · 5 years

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about a minute after i pulled away from my house on tuesday i realized i forgot my pink face paint but it was already too late to turn around. doing something like that would cause the dominoes of delays to topple and i wouldn’t actually make my flight. for that sacrifice i was rewarded smooth travel, but that meant my friday was a little less...fredag-y. alas.

i woke up for the sunrise again, and was rewarded with a mostly clear sky. the weather was turning out better than expected, which was good because i was planning on some walking today. the night before jenn invited me to ett bord for lunch, so that was my first scheduled event for the day, but i had some stops i wanted to make for personal, skam-related reasons.

after a leisurely breakfast i got dressed and applied sunscreen. then i messaged with nadège to figure out where to meet up on my way to nissen. i wanted to visit the national gallery, even though it was closed, as just a final nod to the museum that inspired rule of seven. we managed to message a firm meet up and then completely miss each other on the street, but we got our shit together eventually and made it to the museum. it was a little sad, if only because another tourist came up to us asking where the entrance was, and we had to break the news that the museum was closed at that location. granted, it was probably confusing seeing us taking pictures of the building as if it were still an active site, but still less confusing than the instructions i tried to give them about visiting the new museum in 2020 (uhhhh wtf kerry).

we moved on. we went to the school for no reason other than to step back into that world for a little bit, check up on the benches. we went to the KB for a drink, and then walked to the restaurant. i’m glossing over most of this because a lot of what was said during this time made me uncomfortable, and it all kind of built up over the next few hours until i snapped at lunch. i didn’t speak out or anything, i just capslocked on twitter once and then tried to tune everyone out. for some reason the restaurant was playing exclusively ed sheeran songs, so i just listened to that instead. i plucked heads and exoskeletons off of shrimp and drowned myself in lukewarm pop music.

the food was good. it was the first time i’d eaten shrimp like that. i don’t know what i was expecting, ordering “norwegian shrimp,” but that was exactly what it was and i shouldn’t have been so shocked. but in general i powered through.

after lunch i went back to the hotel to change before the park. i didn’t have my face paint but i was going to wear a skirt because it was robyn and apparently “one step up from the bare minimum” is my love language. i fell asleep at some point in my preparations, and woke up with my thumb still scrolling through instagram. then i was late, and missed seeing girl in red. but i found my girls as they migrated to the next stage, and was blessed with an absolutely electric performance from christine and the queens. it was another artist i’d never listened to before but i instantly regretted that; she blew us away with her energy and attitude and message, pumping out songs that your heart somehow already knew. it was a good mood-lifter, which i sorely needed after that afternoon.

okay well hold the phone because it’s been weeks since i started writing this post and i definitely lost my train of thought. after christine and the queens we went to get food. after we found a table to sit at, jenni, taru, and kati found us to do some hilarious candy trades. i was not aware of how valuable reese’s are overseas. but the point of mentioning this is that i was being wildly rude to these women because i was not sure who they were, and thus acted very cold. jenn had actually introduced me to jenni the day before and i simply did not connect her to the person i had chatted with online, someone i already knew. so i just compartmentalized them into “oh these are jenn’s friends” and kept myself out of their conversations. it’s kind of a generally rude thing to do, to shut myself off instead of trying to integrate with small talk, but here it was extra rude because i seemed to be ignoring the fact that we’d already “met.” gah! also i’m not sure when i finally connected the dots, but it was late enough to feel deep embarrassment about it and not really figure out how to apologize about it. so i didn’t. i think i tried to be more friendly when we met up the next day but knowing me i probably wasn’t. anyway, i apologize both for how i acted and for not acknowledging it/apologizing for it in person. i usually have a good reason for being rude, but this time it was just...insecurities? ugh.

okay so...the rest of the evening was just ROBYN. we tended to always gather around the same location, stage right, not too close but decently close because i fucking flew to oslo for this. and with every successive evening, the crowds were packed in tighter and more likely to dance. i was still trying to get used to the general lack of personal space but pretty early on i just gave up trying to stand my ground, letting people push past me and not worrying about who i was pushing in return. like, no one was going to win the fight for whatever little patch of grass you were standing on.

it was also an interesting experience as someone who is very aware of how much space she takes up in this world (too much!), being forced to acknowledge that constantly by the pressure of other people against my front and back. it didn’t help that i was wearing a backpack. but most of the time i can ignore that “bigness” by only being in spaces that allow me to fit with ample air around me. (the closest i get to other people these days is my airplane seat.) at a general admission concert though, that doesn’t exist. so i would sing and dance and think about weighing 237 pounds. i don’t know if it was necessarily a bad thing, just a new thing, and it was probably actually good to have that constant awareness, to shrink my comfort zone. i dunno. the real fight was me going back and forth thinking “i wish i took up less space” and “you deserve as much space as any other human being.”

clearly the problem with waiting a month to write a travel recap is that it actually becomes a therapy session about things that could’ve been figured out back in the states. so let’s really move on to robyn. leading up to the festival i’d been lazily following robyn’s tour, watching her play new york city twice and eating up every fan video of “dancing on my own,” where she let the crowd sing it for her simply because they were going to anyway. i was so excited to finally be part of that crowd, to hear the music like that, in my bones. and i did.

i tried to get my picture-taking out of the way at the beginning, because all i needed was one clear photo that could prove i was there. i don’t think i actually got it, but the important thing was i put my phone away and just enjoyed the music for most of her set. i had it ready to go when her two hits started, of course, but robyn, of all of the artists i’d seen, seemed most focused on creating an atmosphere for everyone to just be in. we had billowing curtains and sensual dancers that moved the air around us, which moved us too. we all were encased in lace with ribbons in our hair.

at some point i noticed a guy off to my right who was holding his plastic cup, the reusable one meant for the festival, and it was lit up. he had turned on his camera’s flashlight and was amplifying it through the bottom of the cup. i thought it was very clever and was impressed, wishing i could pause the concert to get enough space to retrieve my cup from my backpack and join him. i wanted to sway and hold up my lighter too.

i think i pointed it out to nadège in that pantomime way, just trying to direct her eyes away from the stage and hoping she’d figure the rest out on her own. she, of course, was already aware, because she then pointed out everyone else at the concert doing the same thing. i don’t know why i didn’t see it before, why i thought only this one guy was doing it, but the rest of the joint was lit up like a candlelight vigil. (looking back at the video i took during her bows, i’m realizing i simply didn’t see it because i’m too fucking short. i had to hold my phone up over my head to see the rest of the crowd beyond the border wall of shoulders around me.) she had the whole crowd at her feet, keeping watch, sending out electro-pop prayers.

i got what i came for. i got the rush of nostalgia for bånder, the single, freeing heartbeat of everyone dancing on their own, and the press of bodies to remind you you’re not actually alone. i was in oslo, the lights were blue, and i felt the pulse that’s been keeping me company ever since the clip dropped. as uncomfortable as my body might’ve been, my heart felt like it was where it belonged.

ugh that was some purple ass writing right there. and now i have to follow it up with “and then i walked back to the hotel.” because i did. i opened a new tab on my computer, and like it’s been doing for the past nearly-three years, it directed to the skam homepage. tap, tap, scroll, and then bånder was playing, chris was dancing, and isak and even were learning what electricity felt like with just a single point of eye contact.

then i was probably too buzzed to fall asleep for another couple of hours which is always a good life choice when you’re already severely sleep deprived. but when i did eventually nod off, i did so knowing that isak and even were on their way to falling in love, and an entire park had felt it too.

#kerryinoslo #rule of seven #i’m sure more stuff actually happened but i’ve been putting off writing for so long it’s now forgotten #it was a pretty emotional day #and i learned some things about myself

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