THE RAPID DESCENT was unexpected. It was an evening flight, and one could see the full moon shining through the gauzy clouds, which were rolled up in cottony layers across the expanse of the night time sky. There were plenty of stars in the sky, but these were distant, and looked more like holes in the fabric of a dark blanket. The plane had just reached cruising altitude when it began to descend. I was concerned. I didn’t know why we were landing, or where we were landing. But the descent was smooth. The plane’s pilots were still in control.
We landed at Kastrup. Jones was with me. His afrobeat group had a show there, and he was letting me listen to some new tunes through one end of a pair of headphones, while we rode the airport escalators. Jones then had to leave, but he forgot the headphones and his smartphone with me, so I was walking around listening to afrobeat music. I picked up the wrong bag from the luggage carousel, then returned it and got the right one. Mine was green, but the other bag had an orange logo on it. And then I was out in the morning sunshine of Copenhagen. There were Arabic fruit sellers in stations along the elevated railroad platform, selling bananas and oranges. Somewhere, a tiny radio was playing Basement Jaxx or Daft Punk.
I remembered then how at home I had once felt in that city, so long ago, and about how I once went to a club around Christmas and watched a teenage Danish girl with mermaid curly hair, who had obviously lied her way into the dance hall, get swirled around by some gruff executive from Maersk or Danske Bank while the DJ played Wham’s “Last Christmas.” In my mind, they were still dancing while George Michael sang. Love was in the air in Copenhagen, always.
I rode the train into Københavns Hovedbanegård, the central station, and disembarked, leaving my luggage downstairs. I didn’t know where to go next. Should I go to Christiania? Or to Christian’s Church to visit the tomb of Link Wray? Or maybe just head down the Strøget and get a cup of coffee somewhere? Some Danish girls went by on bikes and I could hear the bells of their bicycles ringing. It was an exuberant, holiday sound. The bells’ sound made me happy.
THEY OPENED UP a new restaurant on Oru Street, and put some nice apartments on the upper floors. The renovations were welcome and the food was good, if not even more overpriced than at the older competitor establishments. Nothing like dropping five euros for a cup of coffee to awaken one to his utter impoverishment. Also, the bathroom was in another house, so you would have to walk through the yard in a towel to take a shower, with all of the curious village ladies looking on. Vesta was there, of course, staring out the window and organizing a yoga retreat. Celeste was there too, sunning herself on the top deck. It was just like old times. At some point, Celeste asked me about how I became a fan of the Grateful Dead, and I told her about how the band’s name had seeped slowly into my awareness over time. I knew of the Deadheads, and their tie-dye shirts, and their profound philosophical locker room dissections of tunes like “Touch of Grey” or “Ripple.” The first album I ever bought though was 1968’s Anthem of the Sun. I recalled how I had gone into the record shop and pointed at the cassette on the wall. I was 15. Even the mandala-inspired covert art seemed like a first-class ticket to another dimension. There was more to life than this. “Listen to the drums on ‘Quadlibet for Tender Feet,'” I told Celeste and played her the tune. Celeste grasped her shawl like a Southern belle as if to say, ‘I do declare,’ and gave me a pitying look and said, “Oh you. You just love to talk about yourself.” “But I am not talking about myself this time,” I said. “We are talking about Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. We are talking about the Grateful Dead.”
THAT SUMMER I was cast in a film where I was set to play the father of a large family.
Filming would be at a warehouse in Tallinn, somewhere out by the airport and downwind of Lake Ülemiste. Koidu, my agent, got me the job. It didn’t pay especially well but she promised me that it might lead to steadier, more reliable work.
Though it was summer, much of the film would take place during winter. A traditional family Christmas dinner scene was planned, for example. Part of the role called on me to play Santa Claus too. I was expected to burst through the door with a big and bulky joulupukki outfit acquired during a summer sale at a Helsinki supermarket with a bag full of gifts for everyone. Fazer was sponsoring the production and Geisha chocolates would tumble out like gold coins. Playing the pater familias sure seemed like an easy gig but then everything went shit wrong.
To start, Koidu is an Estonian agent, which means she suffers from some mild communication impediments. She assumes beforehand that information is known and therefore believes there is no need to reiterate certain points, because telling me again what time I was expected on set would be, in her mind, a waste of time and energy. As such, I had no idea what time I was supposed to be there. I tried to reach out to Koidu that morning, but she was in an important meeting out at Noblessner, and didn’t respond. The timing of the filming was probably mentioned off-hand in some list. Everyone else had read every message, naturally, but me.
There was a second problem. I had lost my phone. It just disappeared from my fingers at the Sõõrikukohvik on Kentmanni Street. It was the strangest thing. I had just tapped out a message to Koidu, and then tried to scan the message list for more information, but found none. I sent a quick message to the director, but it went unread. He was understandably busy doing something else. A woman walked by and saw the day’s copy of Postimees spread before me and asked if I was done reading it. I said I was and handed her the newspaper and then, that was it. The phone was just gone. It wasn’t on the table, or under it. It wasn’t in my pocket, it wasn’t under my plate of widely-acclaimed and extra soft and sugary donuts. It was just gone, and I had this suspicion that I was already late. I ran out the door, got in my car, and drove off.
The rest of the cast was a group of twentysomething actresses from Nukuteater, one of whom was supposed to play my wife. Her name was Johanna and she had curly yellow-gold hair and a childlike look to her. Maybe they would need to age her face with AI, the same way that they de-aged Harrison Ford in the new Indiana Jones movie. We had met once to go over our lines. In the film, our marriage was on the rocks, but it was saved by the Christmas festivities. I had only seen the photos of the actresses who were set to play our daughters on social media. I imagined the whole production as a modern day version of Little Women, except with Estonians cast in all the main roles. Estonian Women? They were all on set at the right time, I was sure, but then I was upset by a third logistical issue: my car broke down near the Liivalaia Selver and I had to trudge the rest of the way to the set through a tropical July downpour.
By the time I reached the set, I was soaked and the door was locked. I could see Johanna through the glass. She was on the phone with someone and pacing. She came to the door and handed the phone over to me. “Koidu would like to speak with you,” was all she said. I held the phone up to my ear. “What’s going on?” “Where were you?” Koidu said. “They have been waiting for you for hours!” “I had some car trouble.” “So what! Couldn’t you have also taken a Bolt?” “I also had some phone trouble. Anyway I am here now. I am ready for my role.” There was a pause. “You’ve sabotaged your career again,” said Koidu. “There’s no role left for you anymore.” “What do you mean no role? I was supposed to play the father of the family. I even have my joulupukki costume!” “It doesn’t matter,” Koidu remarked. “They got some other guy to play the father. It’s not such a hard role to recast, you know. All of you guys are the same.”
I handed the phone back to Johanna who just stared at me. Then she disappeared behind the glass door again. I could see her walk across the set, talking to some man I didn’t know. He must have cracked a joke, because I saw Johanna laugh. I had never seen her laugh that way.
After that I walked alone for a while. It was a hot day and I decided to stop into a gas station. I skimmed through an issue of Kroonika. The cover story was about the exploits of middle-aged actor and his new 25-year-old love. I bought a bag of potato chips and a drink and stood reading about this new pair. They looked happy in the photos at least. I had to give them that.
I WANT TO TELL YOU about my friend Tomás del Real. Today is his 30th birthday and he will celebrate it here in Viljandi, Estonia, which is the small, spacious and at times inspiring Estonian town we both happen to live in.
Tomás also has a new album out called Principios de Declaración. It is inarguably his most achieved and most mature work as a songwriter to date. His first two records, Tomando Forma(2014) and Tiempo (2017) featured bands, but over his past few records, Sembrar de Nuevo (2020) and Huracán (2022) with the folk music group Don’t Chase the Lizard, has has become a devotee of the guitar and opted for a sparser, stripped back, minimalistic sound.
The 13 compositions on Principios de Declaración are therefore built on his voice and guitar, with some light additional instrumentation added to fill out the atmospherics. He claims it is the perfect midnight record, but it also has the sound of a new morning to it, or even a late-afternoon stroll. It is a beautiful work of art created in a beautiful place. The melodies are earnest, haunting, and they stay with you.
Tomás chalks up the changes in songcraft to living in a small northern town, where one feels a stirring kind of isolation. Viljandi does attract its share of musicians, poets, writers, artists, and other outside thinkers for this very reason. He arrived during the pandemic, leaving behind political uncertainty and upheaval in his native Chile, and seeking out something fresh and new. Like a lot of artists from the New World, he has found inspiration in the Old World. They call it reverse emigration.
“The way I communicate with people now is different,” Tomás says of how the Estonian environment changed him. “The pauses, the space, the connection with nature, every part of Estonian culture and what I have been living during these years has got into my songwriting.” It is no wonder then that the songs on his new album have titles like “Los Momentos”, “Silente,” “Pausar”, and, of course “Viljandi.”
Kerttu Kruusla, a Viljandi-associated photographer and visual artist also provided the memorable artwork for the record. “She is a close friend of mine, I trust her,” Tomás says. “I knew she was someone who would be emotionally involved during the process.”
Being in front of non-Spanish speaking audiences also allowed him to let his hair down, so to speak. He felt less pressured to deliver topical lyrics intended to wow and impress audiences. “I could be super honest with myself and not filter anything that I need to share in the shape of a song,” he says of this phenomenon. In the past he might have avoided some things, but in an international context, there is no need to avoid anything he feels. That, some might argue, is actually the perfect environment in which to create anything of significance.
You really have to appreciate the work ethic that Tomás del Real has. After putting out and touring Huracán last year with creative partner Lee Taul, one might have expected a pause or a vacation. Instead he came up with 13 new compositions which, honestly, rank among his best, or most developed songs. Some personal favorites on Principios de Declaración are the gorgeous “Canción de Huída” in which he trades vocals with Darla Eno, a British singer he met 10 years ago.
“We were both very young and we met somewhere in Scotland,” del Real says of the collaboration. “During that period, some of the Edinburgh folk people would do singing circles and singing sessions, where everybody would learn some folk songs and sing along. Everything in Europe seemed so new and exciting to me, so I was listening very carefully.”
The foundation of “Canción de Huída” is actually a verse that Eno shared with him from an old folk standard called “The Butcher Boy” (check out Irish legends The Clancy Brothers performing the same tune in 1965). He said the chorus was so “nostalgic and profound” that he had to remake it in his own way.
“I basically wrote a song around it so I could sing the song as well,” said del Real.
Eno isn’t the only collaborator on Principios de Declaración. He also partnered with Chilean musician Javier Barría, who duets with him on the song “Acantilado,” and the album was mastered by Chilean sound engineer Jorge Fortune in Chilean Patagonia.
A personal favorite song of mine on the record is “Las Campanas,” which means “the bells.” Tomás said this particular tune developed out of a sense of isolation and anxiety about the world during the pandemic. “I was in a very dark place, and even music wasn’t flowing,” he says of this time. To survive, he indulged in classic 1960s and 1970s folk singers, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, and Paul Simon among them.
“I just needed something to give me a little bit of light,” he says. The concept underlying the song is that no matter the pressures of the day, there will always be tomorrow, and the bells will once again ring.
And then there is “Los Momentos,” which is the sparse and hypnotic debut single from the album, and at the beginning of which one can hear del Real striking a match to start a fire.
“This was one of the last songs I wrote that made it to the album,” he says. “After processing all that happened, and the songs I wrote along the way, I was exhausted, and found myself sitting by the fire, contemplating what I had been through.”
Most of the songs on Principios de Declaración were written during the long and introspective Estonian winter, and so the imagery of fire as a cleansing phenomenon that does away with the past after a long journey is at the front of “Los Momentos.”
“You summon the fire to clean it all out, and finish the trip the same way, making the album a very cyclical trip in my opinion,” says del Real. The guitar lines in the tune helped to ground him after many adventures. “I just wanted to explore that feeling of being grounded and just being.”
There is also the album title. Tomás says that he decided to call his new record Principios de Declaración for a variety of reasons. He sees it as a sort of personal constitution, one that communicates his principles, the fundamentals of what he wants to share with the world. “It reminds me of Blue by Joni Mitchell,” he says. “The way she says, ‘If I am going to do this as a living, then there will be no more disguises or costumes. This is it.'”
But the Spanish word principios can also means “beginnings” in this context. So these songs are merely the start of his declaration. That means, hopefully, there will be much more music to come.
AFTER SONJA STOLE my lost book of erotica, she continued her music studies, later becoming a rather impressive jazz singer and all around chanteuse. She gave concerts on the top of the tallest hotel in Tallinn, which is not that tall, but still pretty tall. From there, on summer evenings, one could feel the brisk winds of the north and stare off into a Matisse swirl of stars and purple orange sunset fused into a stellar blue stardust trail of Baltic melancholy. It was pretty, in other words, and she was beautiful. She played with a little Finnish trio. They were not as beautiful as blonde Sonja was, but they played beautifully. There was a drum solo.
I started attending the rooftop jazz concerts around the time I returned from America, where I had to visit family with Jane and her new lover Hans, the Dutch screenwriter. They got to stay in the guest bedroom while I was there, and, well, I had no place to sleep. To make matters worse, nobody could understand why this fact bothered me. “Why are you so moody? You again with your moods! You should go see a psychologist! You seem to have a lot of issues.” Hans and her shacked up in my parents house, and I went and slept in the guesthouse. Agnetha was there, with her young daughter, and I gave them my bed. I curled up to sleep beside them on the hard floor. It was uncomfortable and I went back to Europe after that.
That was how I stumbled upon Sonja and the hotel concerts. She was a good singer. Usually this kind of elevator jazz bores me, but hers was a more ambrosial blend. But jazz alone doesn’t pay the bills, does it. Sonja was also working as a waitress at the hotel bar. At breakfast, she brought me a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. In Islam, orange juice is a rich and promising symbol. If you are poor, you will become rich if you drink enough orange juice. If your heart is broken and you have suffered many hardships, your pain will be relieved by the tang of this tropical nectar. I don’t think Sonja knew this though. She just needed the money. Then she walked over to the elevator and took it back up to the roof for some rooftop jazz.
MISS MARITIME was seated at a desk in a silver dress. I saw her the day after I ran into Celeste. She was gentle, vivid, and memorable, like the slopes of the best childhood beaches. She was small. She was young and had blue eyes and brown hair. But at least Miss Maritime was still there.
The classroom was in the part of the school that used to house the theatre arts program. It was fall and there was lightning outside the windows. We had all been assigned group work and I had been placed on her team. She was apprehensive, but I guess it was all for the best.
Hours earlier there had been a jailbreak from the school. All of the students ran down the hallways. It had been sunny then and through the windows of the corridors you could see the dust in the light and smell the chalk. That chalky smell of an old school constructed in the 1930s. They tried to contain the uprising, but it was of no use. All of the students spilled into the streets. We went with them and by the ponds I saw a boy run into the Taylor House. He went inside and I could see there was a party going on there behind the door of Edwardian textured glass. By that time the weather had started to turn and a few of us went back to the school, Miss Maritime among us.
In previous incidents with her, various weird things had happened. Once, she had told me she needed to go to the Faroe Islands. Another time, she was being hoisted on a chair while well wishers wished her a happy birthday. This time she was seated across from me in a silver dress.
“Well, here we are again,” I said. We had to give a presentation about the Vikings. “Thank you,” Miss Maritime said, “for being on my team.”
IT WAS NAIVE of me to think that I could have ever replaced you. I tried so hard, for years, and failed spectacularly. I don’t even know why I started trying, or how many astrologers, witches, healers, tarot card readers, and other masters of the black arts I consulted, only to be led deeper into my own delusions. I did it for you, to free you of me, and to free myself of you. I saw it as a mutual liberation. That’s what you asked of me. In retrospect, it was wrong of me to wish for anything, one way or the other, and especially wrong to try to course correct and to play god. I had to learn the unfortunate lessons that all people must learn, that the more you tinker, the more you pry, the more you struggle against the web of time, the harder things become, the less natural they are, the worse off everyone in the end is. The only right path forward is the raw and honest one, I think. There isn’t any other legitimate way. I could find 15,000 substitutes, and they would all crumple in the end. I didn’t make it so. That’s how it is.
north! 