AFTER THE ESTONIAN WRITER Paavo Matsin sold the movie rights to his books Gogoli Disko and Kongo Tango to Christopher Nolan, he found himself flush with cash, and invested in an estate up the Emajõgi River which he christened “Kongo Disko” in homage to his novels.
This was an old manor house that had belonged to the de la Gardie family, which Matsin promptly fashioned into a genteel plantation, modeled on the Greek Revival architecture of the Old South. Wild, anything-goes parties were held there, and Matsin’s notoriety for anything lewd, vulgar, and unbecoming of a European Man of Letters was only enhanced. He also used his plum perch on the river’s edge to engage in export of cotton, molasses, tar, tobacco, and local folk instruments, such as the Hiiu Kannel, which he shipped to a merchant in Equatorial Guinea. There was also a whiskey distillery at Kongo Disko, another solid source of revenue for Matsin Enterprises. King Charles was said to be fond of Kongo Disko whiskey.
There was no road to Kongo Disko though, and the approach was a stony path through the swamps and forests that divided this backwoods outpost from the Tähtvere Spordipark and the Supilinna Tiik. To get there, I had to rent an all-terrain vehicle and roll through the high grasses, being careful not to get upsot by any of the felled tree branches or jagged rocks along the way. It was an eerie, witchy place, and there was moss on the trees. Yet the yard of Kongo Disko was full of partygoers when I arrived, and a group of enslaved laborers from Viljandi were planting the next season’s crop of cotton and tobacco. One could hear their mournful Viljandi slave songs from the fields, and Mr. Matsin descended the steps of the plantation with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He was wearing his black top hat and pince-nez spectacles.
“Welcome to Kongo Disko!” he said.
“Paavo!” I said.
The man winced. “I’m afraid not. I’m not Paavo. If you like, I can take you to see the real Paavo.”
“That’s why I’m here. But I have to say, I am really confused. I mean, you look just like him.”
“Yes, but there are subtle differences, subtle differences,” the man who looked like Matsin said. “See these glasses? The real Paavo doesn’t wear glasses like these. Come. We’ll find Paavo now. Care for a drink?”
“Yes.”
He poured me a glass of smoky Kongo Disko whiskey, and we went around one side of the plantation. A fiddle and banjo duo had just started to pluck out a tune, and from behind, I could see the enormous and unmistakable frame of Paavo Matsin. He was wearing suspenders and a plaid shirt and directing his Viljandi laborers as they loaded ceramic jugs of molasses into a donkey-drawn wagon that would take them down to the wooden river docks for export. The man was perspiring in the sun and looked up.
“Paavo!”
The man squinted at me, and then grinned to the first man who looked exactly like him, the one in the top hat. “But I’m not Paavo Matsin,” said the man in the suspenders. “You’re joking!”
“But you also look just like him.”
“Yes, but there are subtle differences, very subtle differences,” the man in the suspenders said. “For one, Paavo Matsin wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of suspenders.”
“I see.”
“He also does not own a plaid shirt.”
“I also see.”
“Do you want to meet the real Paavo though?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why I came here. We were supposed to talk about literature.”
“Very good. Take him to see the real Matsin then,” the man in the suspenders said to the man in the top hat. He nodded and took another sip of his whiskey. The man in the suspenders uncorked a bottle of molasses. “Before you go, you just have to try it,” he said. I took a swig of the strong, sweet stuff. The man in the suspenders grinned at me. “Oh, I told you it was good. Now you are really ready to see old Matsin!”
The man in the top hat led me back to the yard. From the corner of the property, I watched as a 1916 Model 34 Marmon automobile skidded and bounced over the fields and stones until it reached the edge of a tent, where a bar had been set out for the plantation’s many guests. The man in the top hat led me over to the side of the car. He plucked an umbrella from a bucket. The top hat man opened it in the hot sun and stood ready.
The door opened, and from its plush interior emerged the man I had been seeking all of this time. He looked just like the man with the top hat and the man with the suspenders. They all looked the same. There were only subtle differences between them. Subtle differences. The real Paavo Matsin drew a handkerchief from his front pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. He stared at me and squinted. When he recognized me, he nodded, but only just so.
“Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” he said. “If it ain’t the American writer.”
“I made it, Paavo.”
“Good. Come with me. Let’s have another drink.”
At the tent, Matsin informed the bartender to fix him a mint julep, toot sweet.
“But who were those two men who looked like you?”
The bartender slid Matsin his drink and he peered into it. He took a sip and stared at the lawn. “Simple. Those are my pseudonyms,” he said.
“Your pseudonyms?“
“Yeah, pseudonyms. Pen names. Alter egos. Look, Gogoli Disko was not authored by Paavo Matsin, was it? It’s credited to Paša Matšinov. He is the one in the top hat. Matšinov is my butler. Must Päike, ‘Black Sun,’ is credited to Friederich Reinhold Kreutzmatsin,” he went on. “He’s in charge of my export business. Pseudonyms are wonderful. They’ll do anything for you.”
“Kreutzmatsin,” I repeated, dumbfounded. “That man in the plaid shirt and suspenders.”
Matsin just chuckled. “You’re still such a young writer,” he said. “You need to stay at Kongo Disko. Hang out. Learn the tricks of the trade. I’ll school you in the art of dystopian magical realism.” Matsin snapped his fingers at the bartender, who stood ready to serve us both.
“Yes, boss?”
“Villem,” he said. “I want you to fix our writer here a dystopian magical realist mint julep.”
“Sure thing, boss. Anything you say, boss.”
The bartender mixed the drink and slid it across the bar to me. I looked into its murky contents and then took a sip. It was very minty. Paavo was chewing on a stalk of wheat, pondering. From the fields, I could hear the chants and songs of the poor Viljandi laborers. Their sweet lamentations echoed to the river with blues and soul, melancholy and torment.
My notes from this year’s Viljandi Folk Music Festival, held 27-30 July 2023 in Viljandi, Estonia
THURSDAY, YESTERDAY, was the first day. Festivals are difficult to cover, because you cannot be in every place at every time. Concerts or events overlap, and so you just cannot see everything. Of the concerts I saw yesterday, my favorite was Mari Kalkun’s performance, which happened at Kaevumägi, or the Well Hill, one of the festival’s primary stages.
I have probably either known or known of Mari Kalkun for more than a decade. She is a popular folk singer, and specializes in songs sung in the South Estonian Võro dialect or language.
I think what makes Mari special as a performer is her ability to sustain intensity over what can be atmospheric and amorphous compositions. She plays with all of the foreboding of purple rain clouds in the distance. She comes in and leaves like a thick white fog. There is sunshine sometimes too.
Many folk artists can provide nonstop, horn-blaring, bass-drum-pounding, action-packed intensity, while others are capable of crafting beautiful lullaby-like landscapes. Those landscapes though will soon lull you to sleep, just as that intensity will wear you down quickly.
Rare is the artist who can sustain such intensity wrapped up in lush and haunting melodies, and across an entire set list.
For this performance, Mari was joined by Australian bassist Nathan Riki Thomson, and most of the material was off her latest album Stoonia Lood, released on Real World Records this year.
They also performed later in the evening at the Folk 30 concert which celebrated three decades of the Viljandi Folk Music Festival.
OTHER THOUGHTS OF FOLK
One thing I notice every year when I attend this festival is the lack of American performers. I think it might be because American folk music is popular music. When an American says “folk,” he thinks probably immediately of Bob Dylan. But Bob Dylan isn’t hurting for gigs and it would be hard to entice Bob to come on down to Viljandi to sing to us. There is also this issue of the American folk blues tradition. Estonia has a blues festival too. Should American traditional acts perform there instead?
“Folk” in Viljandi is blended with something called etno or “ethno.” It’s very fusion, and in line with the general philosophy of the Viljandi Culture Academy to make the old new again, or to build off of Estonian and other folk traditions. So “Folk” is not exactly “folk” as an American might understand folk to be. The Estonians have taken the English word “folk” and changed the meaning slightly. The Estonian word is pärimus, which means something more like original or traditional. There are always different ways to translate English words into Estonian, but the meanings are not always exactly equivalent.
I like the size of this festival. It’s very cozy, and I am glad it has not become a Coachella, Glastonbury, Roskilde-like event. It’s a social gathering. Old friends get together. It is distinctly for the locals, and in that way, its reach is limited. Combining international artists with this Estonian content must be a challenge.
For example, the opening ceremony was entirely in the Estonian language, as it should be, but I found myself wondering how an outsider might see it. I am not arguing that there should be simultaneous translations or anything like that, but this is a niche festival. At the same time, people who have visited just for one festival have often returned for the unique vibe. It has that effect on visitors.
OF LEIK, ANDRE MAAKER, AND BUBBLES
Leik is a duo consisting of Kelly Veinberg and Elina Kasesalu who (mostly) sing and play violin, but also add viola and the special hiiu kannel.
I have seen Elina and Kelly a lot in Viljandi, and on trains to Viljandi, and from Viljandi, and also once in a shopping center in Tartu. And probably other places, toting their instruments.
Andre Maaker is a guitarist. I could call him a virtuoso, but he’s not really, and I could call him a guitar slinger, but really, he’s just a guitarist. He’s the kind of guy who sleeps next to his guitar, “just in case he gets a good idea.” He loves guitars, and based on the set they played yesterday at Käevumägi, he has a whole toy shop full of stringed instruments at home, such as the acoustic “world stick” he pulled out of nowhere, or the four-stringed tenor guitar. He filled out Leik’s sonics best with a 12-string acoustic, which has that lovely, dulcimer-like ring to it, and has always been used in folk music, as he noted to me afterward (yes, it has, and should be used more often).
According to Leik, the addition of Maaker has allowed them more room to focus on their vocals and instruments, as in the past, they often had to work to fill out the depth of the pieces. With that guitar, there’s just more sound.
Andre used to teach Kelly and Elina, and they asked him to partner on this project, which has seen them recently tour the islands. Much of their repertoire includes songs from Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, and Vormsi, as well as some self-penned compositions, and they carried them all well. There’s something wonderful about the blend of voice and strings here that continued to ring in memory for hours.
According to the musicians themselves, they were well received in the islands and were again yesterday.
This was probably the best concert I saw yesterday. It provided some sorely needed introspection during a festival that can get tiring quickly, with all the people, music, food, and conversations.
FRIDAY
Friday raised the question, is it possible to overdose on bagpipe music? According to radio journalist Arp Müller, who was diligently assembling his kit in the press room, it’s possible to overdose on anything.
Cätlin Mägi and the VKA bagpipers begged this question with their afternoon performance. At best, the bagpipe evoked misty landscapes and ancient moods. It has a kind of cleansing quality to it. At worst, it can sound like a flock of angry ducks. According to a German folk journalist (yes, they really exist), Estonian bagpipes are unique, as is the Estonian bagpipe tradition. He came all the way up from Scholzland to write about it.
He also noted that the Folk audience is unique, in that it is concentrated among younger people. In other countries, its an older person’s genre. Even the musicians of Trad.Attack!, Jalmar, Sandra, and the incredible percussionist Tubli, are in their mid-to-late 30s and considered old hands.
Trad.Attack! puts on a mobbed, flashy, wall-of-sound show. Unfortunately for an outsider, a lot of the runo song-based melodies are lost on someone who isn’t from here.
I will add here, that I did not witness one drunken brawl or act of violence yesterday. Folk does not invite the quasi-white nationalist biker crowd to brawl over grilled meat, beer, and heavy metal. They are somewhere else. One feels safer here.
The last concert I saw last night was Tintura, which is really one of the weirdest groups out there. They offered up a contrabass, violin, keyboards and electric guitar, turntables, and then, of course, a blazing saxophone solo. This was funk, folk, electronica, and wedding band fusion. Or as a friend put it, “kompott,” a jam.
PS. I am also proud to report that I survived an entire Irish folk music concert given by Flook yesterday, though I initially doubted in my fortitude. After a few numbers though, I actually started to like it. One might say that it’s an acquired taste.
SATURDAY
SATURDAY. Let me choose my words carefully. On Friday night, someone I know started drinking. On Saturday, he was still drinking. If you are reading this, you probably think you know this person, but the fact is, it applies to multiple people at this festival. They may still be out there drinking, somewhere.
Music. It is impossible to see all of the concerts. You must choose. Often, the choice is not yours. The line for the Kaisa Kuslapuu Trio was out the door. Supposedly, I missed a great concert, but I couldn’t attend it. Instead I saw Svjata Vatra and Rute Trochynskyi and also Julia Kozakova, which is a Romani act from Slovakia. You really have to appreciate Svjata Vatra (one of these photos is of the crowd at the concert). Ruslan is just so funky, and his daughter is brave and can sing. I told my daughter that next year we should perform just like Ruslan and Rute, but she was not amused.
Other interesting finds were Le Diable à Cinq, a furiously intense Quebecois band, and Rahu the Fool, from Latvia. I have this bias against Latvians from living here. It’s as if we ignore them, because they are so close, sort of the way that New Yorkers ignore the Quebecois. “Oh, right, them. They’re over there.” This group was fun. They even played “Mack the Knife.” People want to be entertained, you know. You can be the best accordionist in the world, but if you can’t entertain people, then so what. Latvians do seem a shade darker than Estonians, and about 1000 percent livelier. I think I had written once about a lost Roman legion that had settled the banks of the Daugava. This performance reminded me of that myth.
At some moment yesterday, I became overcome by exhaustion. I could barely walk, really, and just sort of stood against a tree reading the obits for Sinead O’Connor on my phone. I disappeared into the press office, where I ate most of the cherries and zoned out and dreamed of certain things. There were too many people, and there was too much going on. It’s enough to drive a man to drink.
VÄGILASED
So, this was Vägilased on Saturday night. The Estonian word “vägi” means something like “force,” “might,” or “energy.” Perhaps Vägilased could be called “the mighty ones.”
This is one of the old guard bands that used to play the festival many years ago but reunited for this year’s concert. It consists of Meelika Hainsoo on violin and vocals, Reigo Ahven on drums, Cätlin Mägi, who also sings and plays bagpipes and the jaw harp, Jan Viileberg on guitars, and Marti Tärn on bass. They were joined by Andre Maaker on guitars, Leik’s Kelly Veinberg and Elina Kasesalu on violins and vocals, and Francois Archango on percussion. They were also joined by graybearded Aapo Ilves playing a wolf (although my daughter said he looks like Jesus), Toomas Valk on karmoška, Kristjan Priks, an emcee named Päär Pärenson, and a whole school of percussionists.
This concert started at 21.30, and I was already tired. The long, flowing dresses of the performers reminded me of night gowns, so I came to think of the Vägilased concert as a sort of pajama party. Of course Meelika is a captivating singer (she is so soulful and sincere, commented Lauri Räpp), but I was also impressed by the outstanding bounce of the rhythm session. Whoever did the sound for the concert deserves credit. It was balanced, light, and funky.
Also, just when you thought this concert was over, it wasn’t. There was another song, and another. The concert ended with the vast audience holding hands and singing the chorus to one of the songs.
Like most Estonian folk acts, this one relies on traditional runo song structures as a foundational element, but there’s a subtle reggae influence to the way the compositions are performed. I was just very happy when it was all over, and the yellow moon was waxing watchfully in the sky, soon to reach its most potent and illimitable size and shape.
Apparently, this was a one-off concert, and there won’t be anymore Vägilased for some time to come. If you were there last night though, you were there. Easily one of the best concerts I have been to in recent years. There is an emotional depth here that is lacking in a lot of other groups. Vägilased make you feel things.
SUNDAY
Technically, Sunday began at the stroke of midnight, meaning that this photo taken of Untsakad performing was made around that time.
As a person without roots here, all of these indigenous rhythms are at times lost on me. As a friend recounted, once an Estonian hears them, something goes off in his brain, and he starts to dance. The Estonian can be anywhere, cutting the grass for example, but after hearing a few bars of an Untsakad song, he will go into a trance and start to dance a jig.
Sunday morning started off with sunshine, but halfway through the day, it began to rain and never stopped. I saw the Quebecois again, and the Slovakian act again. There was also some atonal folk music from the Middle East performed by a cat called El Khat.
I don’t really remember what else I did or saw, just a lot of truncated conversations. It seems like Folk is one big therapy session, where people confide in each other about their relationship problems, or seek out advice from others. Women advise bold gestures of love. The men in the know say you must remain aloof. “It drives them crazy. They will chase you for years!” I will only comment that it is interesting to have nearly every love interest you have had in a seven-year timespan confined into a small area patrolled by security and catered by mobile kebab vendors.
All of the bands are different. Some are more purist at heart. Julia Kozakova’s group made me feel as if I was at a traditional Roma wedding. Zetod are traditional fusion supreme, mixing in rock, funk and reggae, and basically everything else.
We should probably talk about Jalmar Vabarna too. Years ago, he was just this earnest folk music kid, but now, I can barely get near him because he has a little entourage of Seto bodyguards around him and wears sunglasses at almost all times. Well, not completely true, because the last time I saw him, he was handing out strawberries at a high school graduation in Setomaa. He is most himself on stage, I think. I have never seen him more natural, more happy, than on a rainy stage at midnight. When you see him perform, as he did closing out this year’s festival, you get the true Jalmar.
I HAVE HAD MANY FOLKS by now, and each one of them has been different. The first Viljandi Folk Music Festival I ever saw was more than a decade ago. That was the year that Zetod tried to integrate a DJ into their set. I remember how I sent my New York friends clips of these serious-looking young men in their funny white outfits with the DJ scratching his vinyls away. “This,” I had said, “is Estonian culture.”
There was also the Folk where my daughter ate about eight ice creams in one day, and I wound up holding her by the arm and leg and spinning her around because she was so high on sugar. That might have been the Folk where we went home early and fell asleep together, only to be awakened by Silver Sepp banging on the window at 4 AM, asking me to come out and party.
My house used to be a motel, you know, and friends of friends would wind up sleeping there. Once someone crawled up the ladder we had in the kitchen and slept up in the loft. I remember walking into the kitchen the next day, only to see his feet dangling over the edge in the harsh noon sunlight. It was as if a vampire was resting in my kitchen. Last year’s Folk has gone down in family lore as the Folk when daddy drank too much cognac on the last night and didn’t bring his daughters churros from the food vendor as had been agreed. For some reason, they always remind me of this. “Remember how you were drunk and we didn’t get churros?”
I suppose I have been a bad father.
For me, all of these festivals are just points in time that can be stitched or connected together. This year’s Folk was the 30th anniversary, but it’s the sum of all of those festivals that creates that sense of camaraderie and shared history. Those who revisit the festival develop a tapestry of relationships and experiences. There is also something so gentle, so special, so fragile about the little community that has developed around this festival. Year after year, you see the same faces returning to the Castle Ruins. The ones you loved, the ones you still love, the ones you will always love and, also, the ones who didn’t love you. There are the old loves, and the new loves, and some loves leave, and new ones arrive and restore love to your heart. Everyone who goes to the festivals has these kinds of stories. Within this tight-knit community, all kinds of things can happen between people, but it is at this gathering that differences are set aside.
The festival also abounds with weird instances and sights that, in hindsight, are difficult to recollect. I remember how last year, during the Trad.Attack! concert, I looked out across the oceans of heads to see one young woman staring at me from across the space of the Second Cherry Hill in the twilight. We had only met once, but there she was, staring at me and smiling. Her eyes were so full of something, maybe promise, but whatever they promised was never revealed. This year, she happened to pass me again, on maybe the same day, and during the same concert, and I took her hand for a second. It reminded me of a time when I was in India, and saw a monkey staring at me from the top of a temple. We just stood there, staring at each other through the humidity of the subcontinent, just like that girl watched me on the hill.
There are other odd situations. A man appeared the last night of the festival out of nowhere and invited me and a friend to see Voldemar Kuslap sing in Rakvere. Aapo Ilves stood by the cocktail truck looking like a cross between a werewolf and Jesus and talking about Trochynskyi. “He is our Ukrainian,” Aapo Ilves said, generously, “and you are our American.”
On Sunday night, during the Zetod concert, I saw two teenage girls performing ritualistic dances by the trash bins. When the music became more intense, they pretended as if they were wild animals. They went around in circles, pawing at the air, as if they were two bears fighting each other in the forests. I stood there beneath a tree with a certain businessman and his daughters and watched them. I wondered if anyone was paying attention to the bear fight.
There is also the exhaustion that sets in. You try to see everything and fail, and then you can’t even make sense of what is happening around you. Some brass band was playing by my house one morning, but I have no idea who they were. When I walked to the festival on Sunday morning, I encountered a man sprawled on a bench while clutching his guitar in his sleep. His glasses lay beside him. Nearby, another man was smoking and watching the scene with tired blue eyes and nodding, as if trying to reassure himself that it wasn’t all a dream. It’s such a small festival, you know. It’s a small festival, in a small town, in a small country, playing music that is, mostly, enjoyed by a small group of people. Some people I know put down the Folk community. They would prefer to listen to the blues in Haapsalu, or operas in Kuressaare.
It’s not their thing.
When you are inside of this world, it slowly takes you over. Things start to seem larger, even legendary. As a writer, I am quite guilty of blowing almost every experience I have had out of proportion. Yet I must relate to you, as sincerely and as truly as possible, just how overwhelming the festival is. On Saturday, I hid out in the press room, munching on cherries and staring at the bookshelves while others scurried in and out on their way to see the Québécois act Le Diable à Cinq. From the corner, I heard someone talking about an interview with Kanal 2. All the people and sounds faded to the blurry margins. Everything was out of focus for a while. “There’s only so much information the mind can process,” a friend remarked. “So many faces, so much music.” I had been obliterated by accordions, drums, and bagpipes.
In the evenings, the Ait filled up with strangers. People huddled in shadowy corners, discussing things. Young men with facial hair and glasses, girls with interesting tattoos. It was as if they were all waiting for a train. Then Andre Maaker came in and I tried to help him with his guitars, only to realize that I was so tired that I was incapable of forming coherent sentences. I walked home in the glow of a waxing moon, with a head full of music, and a heart full of good feelings. I had, in time, become a part of this world and it had become a part of me and would stay. It reminded me of lines penned by the great American poet E.E. Cummings back in 1952. “I fear no fate, for you are my fate,” he wrote. “I want no world, for beautiful you are my world. You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.” The morning after the folk festival, as I wrote this, I felt that I at last understood him.
THE APARTMENT was on the central square in an old pre-war building constructed during some period of authoritarian government. I got the keys from a friend who lives abroad. Her grandmother recently died and she said she would allow me to stay there while I was visiting the city. I just needed to know the number to open the front door, and the keys would be waiting for me in the mailbox. The flat was at the top of the first flight of stairs. The door was heavy, wooden. I worked both keys until the ancient lock turned and the door creaked open.
I went in.
The apartment was being renovated. All of the kitchen appliances had been unplugged from the walls. One of the rooms was completely being refinished and the workman’s ladder still stood in place. Two rooms were overflowing with stacks of old books. In the library, they still were ordered across the shelves. In a second room, they were stacked into seas of old boxes, one toppling over into another. The old woman had been religious and there was Christian imagery everywhere. There was also a tall, stained glass art nouveau lamp in the library. I paid almost no attention to this lamp as I spread my sheets out on the couch and went to sleep. When I woke up again, the lamp was shimmying back and forth and had grown a set of eyes.
The air was different too, thicker, as dense as water, and yet breathable. The art nouveau lamp was glowing and dancing and I stumbled past it to the corridor. The old woman’s cane was set against the wall in the corner, beside a silver crucifix. I felt up the side of the wall until I found the light switch and turned it on. With that first burst of electric light, the room became stationary, and the lamp returned to its usual form and shape. I noticed, as I walked back to the couch, that it was covered in a fine layer of dust. It must have all been my imagination.
The second time I woke up, the art nouveau lamp was glowing again and staring at me. It was brighter in the room again, and the air was even denser than before, like maple syrup. Books were removing themselves from the shelves and then reshelving themselves. An old wood spinning wheel in the corner was spitting out thread all by itself, as if run by some invisible hand. The light in the corridor was off again, but the room was so noisy and alive with flying books that I couldn’t even make my way across it. That’s when the woman fell out of the wall.
She was dressed in a cotton nightgown and was thin. Her hair was long and so blonde it was almost white. I couldn’t see her face because it was covered with her hair. She sat down beside me and was still, quiet. This, as I understood it, was Woman Number 2. She thus began to admonish me. “You have not been treating women well,” she said. “You have one in your heart and yet you entertain and use the others. It’s just not right!” She was clutching at a ball of white yarn and knitting away with a pair of soft, sun-browned hands. The room continued to pulse with light, and when I looked over at the art nouveau lamp, it winked at me and swayed.
Thereafter arrived Katla with two of her favorite girlfriends. They all went into the bathroom, where they disrobed. They were standing there under the spray of the shower and soaping up each other’s beautiful breasts. The women were younger than Katla, and one had very curly hair. After the lesbian shower, Katla dried off and put on some white clothes. She came into the room with the lamp, and I noticed that a small café had opened up in the corner. In fact, the entire side of the room had been replaced by the side of a street. Katla sat there with her blouse halfway open and ordered a coffee. A French waiter stepped quickly and brought it to her on a tray. Katla began to read through the morning’s newspaper in the August sunshine.
“But you have such beautiful eyes,” I told Katla. She only squinted at me over the paper. “Won’t you have me?” I implored her. “Please, tonight?” Katla only shook her head. “You have another woman in your heart now,” she said. “So go be with her.” “But I can’t be with her.” “She’s just your little saint now, isn’t she?” “You don’t even know who she is!” “I know everything already,” Katla said, sipping her coffee, “besides, I have no use for you anyway. You’re just a silly boy.”
I stepped away from her table at the café and was back in the room with the art nouveau lamp. The books were still flying off the shelves and landing again, like tiny birds in a park. The old gramophone in the corner began to spin, and a jazz song was playing through the dust. Woman Number 2 was now lying on the couch before me. She had pulled her ropey, yarny hair back from her strange blue eyes. I could see her face. She had pleasant features but almost look frightened. “Take me,” she whispered, as I crawled on top of her. “Take me, you bastard!”
When I woke up again, I noticed the dust on the lamp in the corner. Everything was back in its proper place. It had been a dream. Someone had turned off the light in the corridor though, and so I went to turn it back on. I was beginning to suspect the old woman’s apartment was haunted. Supposedly, it had once belonged to a pair of long-dead Lutheran deacons, and most of the religious art had belonged to them and not to her. Who were they, and what did they have to do with all of this? As I passed the lamp, it began to glow brilliantly and I saw its big eyes again. The room turned orange and the air was thick. The gramophone spun back to life and the lights began to flicker violently. I bolted for the door. It was ajar, and there were neighbors standing in the hall who had come to see what was up. They were in their pajamas.
Looking back, I saw Woman Number 2 sitting on the bed, waiting patiently for me in her nightgown. Katla was behind her, reading her newspaper at the boulevard café. She lifted her cup of coffee and the books began to fly off the shelves again. The works of Balzac, or that faded special commemorative volume about the ’84 Sarajevo Olympics. The books began to swarm in my direction as the door to the apartment shut. The lost old woman’s cane flew up from the corner and wedged itself in the door. I turned around and the jazz only played louder.
The orange light was so intense, I could no longer see.
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.
FOR A LONG TIME, I didn’t give the woman in the other apartment much attention. I would only see her in the corridors of the house on Väike-Patarei, or Little Battery Street, overlooking the bay and the gulf. The halls inside the house were poorly lit, with only a single blinking lightbulb surrounded by a worn meshed textile material that in some day and age was thought of as a lamp. The steps in the house were tiled, in a familiar pattern of light and dark. The place smelled of moisture and light rot, though pleasantly.
On a typical writing day, I would only hear the comings and goings of the woman. I would hear her shoes on the tiles, the sound of which would grow when she was coming, and retreat when she was leaving. I could hear her fumbling for her keys. She seemed to have many of them, and it took her time to grip the right one and slide it into the lock, turn it, and open the door. The door creaked open and then shut. The sound of the door closing did fill me with a sense of dread or alarm. There was an abruptness, a heaviness to the way that door shut.
I found out from the girl who worked at the pastry shop that the woman’s name was Sylvia. I had seen her just a few times in person. She had blonde hair, of course, and a fondness for wearing black or dark blue dresses. I usually regard other writers with a necessary caution. There are dark waters there. Two dark waters don’t make a particularly pacific ocean. I was intrigued though. I wondered what Sylvia was writing. The pastry girl said she was a novelist.
One day, there was a knock at the door. My own office was a mess. I had been sorting through notes and papers, and there were piles all over the floor. When I opened the door, Sylvia came through it. She kissed me immediately. I wish I could tell you what she looked like. I can tell you her skin was smooth and tanned, and I remember the fleshy pink of her lips, and the slope of her cheek and the aroma of her hair. She wore a tiny silver medallion around her neck that I later learned depicted Jeanne D’Arc. We somehow tumbled into the papers, and I apologized for how messy and unmanageable my life was. Sylvia didn’t care. She tugged up her dress, this time white and linen, and we were soon deeply connected. She was mumbling about her ex-husband James half the time. She told me that he had gone off salmon fishing. “He loves salmon more than me,” she said. “Don’t you see? James loves salmon fishing more than me!”
She was crying. Then she came.
Afterward, she smoothed out her dress. My hips ached and I was as deflated as an old party balloon. There were pages stuck to my back. Those notes from the trip to Mexico in ’00. I still hadn’t used them. Some of the pages were soaked. “I’m sorry for the mess,” I repeated. “Could you please stop apologizing,” Sylvia said. She kissed me again and stood up. “I have to go now,” Sylvia said. “I have a deadline today.” “I’m also on deadline,” I said. I was. After she had left, I positioned myself in front of the old typewriter. There I tapped out the following line.
“Theirs was a love of escapism, but sometimes a sweaty escapism is just what this sordid life of ours requires.”
ONE MORNING, I just got tired of it all and left the house and went out on the beach. Brynhild was there in her swimsuit, sunning her lonesome hourglass self, but with her head covered in one of those old-fashioned, big-brimmed hats, and her eyes covered with sunglasses, and her skin covered with cream, and her soul covered with unrequited love. She had given me everything, but I was always distracted. “It’s like you’re not even there,” she had said. I didn’t know how I felt about the thing. Sad, I suppose. There was just sadness. Gulfs, bays, and estuaries of the stuff. I told Brynhild that I had no time for her and that I had to go, and I left her behind too, sunning herself on that desolate beach. For a while I just walked on with the sun in my face like a hot blade, passing ice cream vendors with handfuls of chocolate and strawberry, sprawled tanned sunbathers, and little boys pushing copies of Le Monde. Finally, I arrived to the grand Krusenstern Villa and went inside. A meeting of the Baltic foreign ministers had convened and the hall was draped in the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian colors. The gloomy war criminal Russian foreign minister was there, though he looked sulky, droopy-faced, and mildly bored, as if he had been seated at the children’s table at a big Hollywood wedding. Linda was managing the catering. She’s involved in organizing almost everything in this town. She poured me a drink as soon as she saw me come in and tossed back her hair. We decided to go for a walk down the beach together and when we got tired we stretched out in the sands and I told her my story in all of its tawdry, inglorious detail. Linda is just a friend and she’s a lot older than me. Such had become my lot in life, to go from one woman to the next, like one of those pilgrims of constant sorrow they sing about in cowboy songs. “What all of this means,” said Linda looking at me with those blue eyes and tracing a finger across my chest, “is that all of your old relationships are ending now. When old relationships end, new ones begin. That’s what this all means.” My eyes followed her lips to her neck, and then down to her blouse and its white candy buttons that led beyond. It was as if she had the whole sun stuffed in her shirt, and I lost my patience with those buttons. I ripped them apart and soon was face deep in her topography. “There, there,” said Linda, “There, there.” “But what will the Baltic foreign ministers do without you?” I asked. “And the Russian foreign minister? He looked so grumpy today.” “There, there. There, there. The ministers are all having their coffee break now,” said Linda. “And after that, they will have chocolate cake.”
ALMOST EVERY MORNING, I have coffee with Mati in town. We have no set arrangement; we just happen to visit the same cafe when it opens. Mati likes to drink his coffee black and gets it refilled in his own half-broken mug. I typically have a cappuccino. We look quite different. He looks like an old painter, with his long beard. But we are growing more similar over time. We both make absurd jokes to the women behind the counter who smile but don’t understand us. I must admit that sometimes, most times, actually, I don’t understand Mati’s jokes. He tells me that I am incapable of understanding them though because I am not a native Estonian speaker.
“Your small Indo-European mind is incapable of understanding the deep nuances of Estonian,” Mati has said. He may be right. If my Indo-European mind is so different, how could I ever grasp the intelligence of the Baltic Finns?
These are the kinds of conversations you have in Estonia though. In the United States, I don’t recall having these kinds of conversations. What did we even talk about when I lived back in America? For starters, I never even thought of myself as being back in America. America was a vast, sprawling entity, consisting of different regional identities, each with its own history. One commonality in American thought though, is the idea that the United States is a kind of great social project. More than being a country, consisting of the people who live there, America is an idea, a concept, and the United States is supposed to be the greatest country to ever exist, or so I am told.
As such, a lot of American discourse revolves around how this greatest country disappoints, or has not yet lived up to its promise. This is why you have these strange far-right vigilante groups, like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who ransacked the Capitol when Trump lost the election. On the left side of the spectrum it’s the same. How can the greatest country in the world have once enslaved a sizable part of its population? Could it be that it is actually not so great? We are all living in an imaginary world, where a mythical America has been promised to us. When we gather together at cafes, people talk about how the country is going in the wrong way. And baseball. Nobody talks about the small minds of Indo-Europeans, or ancient Finnic beliefs.
Estonia instead is very tribal and that word rahvas, which gets translated as “people” or “nation” seems to have some greater meaning that I can’t fully intuit, given my own pathetic Indo-European roots. When someone says that a person is of different ethnicities, or nationalities, or peoples, for Estonians, it’s almost as if a cow and a pig got together and had a baby. A Norwegian? And a Greek? Got together? And had children? I don’t understand what the reason for the surprise is. Even in the town where I live, a new race of Estonian children has emerged, who are half Swedish, half Japanese, half Argentinian, half Ghanaian. As I have predicted, in the future, the most popular Estonian names will be Trochynskyi, Keränen, and Petrone.
Of course, to be an Estonian, they say all you have to do is know the Estonian language. Once you speak Estonian, you become one of them, in which case, I am well on my way to becoming a member of this superior race, the Estonians, the Finns, the Karelians and Veps. I find it funny that the word for language and tongue are the same: keel. Estonians might say that someone has “keel suus,” meaning they know the language. But in English, this would translate as the person has a tongue in their mouth. Mati keeps telling me over coffee, but you still don’t have the Estonian tongue in your mouth, “Sul pole veel eesti keel suus.” I tell Mati that I have had plenty of Estonian tongues in my mouth, just not my own tongue. This makes him laugh so hard that he nearly chokes on his drink and even has to wipe away a tear of joy.
“Oh, you Indo-Europeans,” says Mati, “with your stupid Indo-European jokes.”
