13 minute read
LOVE, BRÍET
THE BUS RIDE For the first time in what felt like a long time, I was free. No obligation to stay inside, to put the kids to bed, to return home before some vaguely appointed hour – for it was understood that I was working, and I could not be held accountable for that work coinciding with an evening associated with good spirit and debauchery: it was Culture Night, and I was a man of culture.
But as more and more people piled onto the bus, I found that my excitement was supplanted by a sense of ruefulness. I felt low. Put off. Disinterested. And the thought arose that “none of it meant anything without her.” To be clear, this ruefulness was not the product of some unprovoked shift in brain chemistry but derived from the music in my ears; Bríet, a composer, chiefly of love songs, had two years ago released an album dedicated to the emotion of love (Kveðja, Bríet), which was now playing in my headphones.
I had never listened to the album in its entirety and had not realised that all of it was dedicated, or so it seemed, to a single person, a single relationship – a single Daedalian feeling; for 36 minutes and 21 seconds, Bríet walks into that “subtlest maze of all” (i.e. love) and explores all the pathways and passages and high hedges and looming minotaurs, transporting the receptive listener alongside her – whose world then becomes the maze. And so it was that in spite of the fine weather and people and licence and anticipation, I felt incomplete. Destitute. Alone.
As the bus wound its way through the labyrinth of the city, I lost myself in that other maze and began to think my way through a recent epiphany, namely that music existed as an antithesis of stoicism: a philosophy availing itself of the insight that cognition is an integral component of emotion, and that by reframing strong and unwanted feelings, a person may succeed in mitigating them. By contrast, music – sitting at the opposite end of this peculiar spectrum – had the power to strengthen subdued but desired emotions.
And as I thought all of this, I began to feel that Bríet’s kind, for lack of a better word, must rank among humanity’s greatest benefactors. Moved by this feeling, I resolved to call my soon-to-be-wife and persuade her to accept her mother’s offer to babysit tonight. Because without her, none of it meant anything. LAILA’S DAUGHTER I first heard of Bríet in early 2017.
Her mother, who shared an office with me on Laugavegur, told me that her elder daughter was releasing her debut single. Gearing up for some polite insincerity, I smiled and feigned interest and, to my surprise – discovered that Laila’s daughter really could sing: that there was some there there.
In the coming months, I interviewed Bríet a handful of times; stood in the audience as she performed live; and watched, alongside the rest of the country, as she won over an increasingly larger audience. This brought awards and record deals and a burgeoning sense of local celebrity, but through it all, she seemed warm and personable and never quite so down to earth as when she sat cross-legged in her mother’s sweat lodge in East Iceland and serenaded all the sweaty, overworked souls that had gathered there in the steaming tent.
And then I met her again that morning, before my bus ride.
Bríet was scheduled to soundcheck at Culture Night’s “big stage” (the one sponsored by national broadcaster RÚV) in front of Arnarhóll hill at 12:30 PM. Magnús Jóhann, one of Iceland’s most ubiquitous young session players, was sitting at his keyboard on the far side of the stage and killing time as the sound crew lugged equipment and electrical cords.
“Yes, speaking of Bríet,” Magnús remarked, “I don’t know… wait, what time is it?” He glanced down at his phone. “Yes, our soundcheck began two minutes ago.”
Fifteen minutes later, Bríet arrived with her agent, Soffía, who explained that they had walked almost all the way from the University of Iceland because the streets were closed for the day’s celebrations. Bríet, relaxed and in good cheer, hugged her fellow musicians and sauntered onto the stage.
She began by expressing frustration that a requested “side stage” had yet to be erected. Turning to Soffía, she asked: “Is this the smallest stage in the world? Who’s trying to save money here?”
Last year, Bríet booked the Eldborg auditorium at the Harpa Concert Hall – one of the grandest stages in the country – and put on, according to those who attended, a series of the most spectacular shows in Icelandic music: rumour has it that she made almost no money from the concert, preferring to recycle any foreseeable profit back into the spectacle itself.
As preparations continued and various people buzzed
about the stage, Bríet – wearing jeans, thick-soled white sneakers, and a colourful sweater reminiscent of Biggie’s famous Coogi – leaned momentarily on her right leg, shifted her weight, and looked down at her feet. Her short, bleached curls protruded mane-like from beneath her bespoke black cap and her left hand dangled – like she was a hippie floating on a cloud of marijuana.
It was almost 1:30 PM by the time she actually started sound checking. I had taken my place at the bottom of the hill across from the stage and listened as she performed Fimm, a popular single from Kveðja, Bríet. Bystanders, their hair blowing in the cool wind, stopped to look on, some of them mistakenly believing that she was about to perform.
“I’d like a lot of reverb on the vocals. That’s like my input for you,” she said to the sound engineer across the stage.
I wondered if she had changed.
FÁLKAGATA Standing in a backyard on Fálkagata, I speculated which of the three doors led to Bríet’s apartment. I walked back and forth and tried peering through the windows – when the door
farthest from the street popped open, and a black-and-white collie came running toward the low picket fence. A man in a green Adidas hoodie followed suit.
“Does Bríet live here?” I asked, petting the collie on its head.
I knocked on Bríet’s door, and a voice called for me to “come inside.” The apartment was bohemian and snug, filled with flowers and knick-knacks, and an old blues record was spinning in the background. Rubin Pollock – guitarist of the Grammy-nominated band Kaleo and Bríet’s boyfriend – stood up from the sofa, introduced himself, and shook my hand. Bríet, who was sitting at the kitchen table getting her hair done, got up and gave me a hug. Her three colleagues – a makeup artist, a stylist, and a designer – said hello.
I told Bríet and Rubin that I had met their neighbour and that he had nothing but kind words, and they said that his name was Andri and that he was “great.” I suggested to Bríet a “quick chat now” before sitting down again somewhere more private next week. She replied that that “sounded fine” although it would be fun to talk now since so many of her trusted colleagues were there. “That way all of us could talk,” she explained.
“OK, I’m outta here,” Ísak, the make-up artist, declared from the sofa, as everyone laughed.
Whatever suspicion I had harboured that Bríet's humility had been compromised by her success was quickly dispelled. It occurred to me that any gap between Bríet-then and Bríet-now was not a matter of personal devolution in the direction of haughtiness or entitlement but rather the formation of two separate identities, disparate but seemingly non-overlapping: the person and the persona. This insight owed not only to Bríet’s warm demeanour but also to my own experience as a musician, where the disparity of an exaggerated stage persona, whose charms would linger before and after performances (while I was still drunk), would serve to underscore the inadequacies of my private self in more quotidian contexts – and cause me not a small amount of mental anguish.
Bríet still visits her mother’s sweat lodge in the east as often as possible, and Laila continues to employ the
same innocent subterfuge whenever her daughter’s there. Addressing the participants, Laila will say, “Now, I haven’t asked my daughter to sing,” and then, turning to Bríet, “but suppose you’d indulge us?”
I ask Bríet how her day began, and she redirects the question to Rubin.
“I prepared some oatmeal and tuna toast and made you eat,” he remarks.
“I have this tendency not to eat before shows,” Bríet explains, suggesting somehow the inequitable demands of women artists in music. “Which never fails to inspire this feeling of responsibility within Rubin; he wouldn’t let me leave the house without eating.”
The preparations for tonight’s big show have proved less than ideal. RÚV requested that Bríet close the evening by putting on a similar show as the one in Harpa, and Bríet agreed. But then that venerable institution’s organisers proceeded to veto all of her ideas. She had suggested, for example, beginning her performance with a theatrical entrance from the top of Arnarhóll: walking down through the throng of people while singing. But that, the organisers replied – though not in so many words – was “too much of a hassle.”
“They weren’t trying to find any solutions,” Bríet explains while sipping her tea. “So I’ve been a little annoyed going into it. When I showed up today, and they hadn’t erected the side stage, I was frustrated; I just struggle when I’m asked to do something and then no one’s prepared to do the work.”
“Has anything changed since the start of your career?”
“No, I wouldn’t say so,” Bríet remarks. “The crowd’s gotten bigger, and there are more people around me. I have more hands, more minds, more eyes, which is priceless – for there’s only so much you can do alone. But I, sort of, know more … what I want. And where I’m going. The path is always becoming clearer. I can do new things, bigger things …”
“So you have a clearer vision and the courage to pursue that vision?”
“Well…” Bríet pauses, before saying rather emphatically: “No: I’ve always had a clear vision and the courage to follow through, but what’s changed is that people have begun to take
me seriously.” She chuckles. “‘Yes, perhaps you do know what you’re doing,’” Bríet remarks, imitating the once-sceptical members of her industry.
“You’re still sober?”
“Yes, not a sip of alcohol to this day.”
Her mother’s sobriety has probably played a part, although Bríet clarifies that alcohol has never really appealed to her.
“All that interests me is that which serves to broaden my horizons – and I don’t think there are many things that can do that besides oneself. But I don’t know. I’m not saying ‘never,’ either, just that other things offer so much. Like going to sweat ceremonies – and being on stage. That’s probably my way of getting high.”
We talk music briefly before segueing into writing. At last year’s Iceland Music Awards, Bríet was chosen Best Lyricist. In a somewhat controversial moment, while accepting the award, she turned to the camera, put up a middle finger, and declared: “That’s for everyone who asked me ‘Who writes your lyrics?’”
“Do you read a lot?”
“My friend does – and she offers plenty of recommendations. I just read Where the Crawdads Sing. It’s so good. Every word is just perfect. I’m currently reading Sápufuglinn and The Power of Now. But I don’t read much. I like to talk. That’s how I write.”
Bríet keeps a diary and often allows her consciousness to stream through the typewriter. But there’s no fixed regimen. “It’s more when it comes to me,” she says. “Or when I have time. I usually don’t write a lot. Just a matter of jotting down emotions. And then when I’m in the studio, I’ll read it over and find some fragments that I like. I’ll discuss them with Pálmi, my producer, who’s very good at picking out good ideas.”
“Are you working on a new record?”
“Hmmmm… yes… well, I think so… just that – I don’t have anything to say.”
“What do you mean by that – that you don’t have anything to say?”
“There’s just no one overarching feeling. Which means that there’s no focus. I don’t have anything to say because I’m all over the place. It’s just this hodgepodge of songs. But I don’t know… we’ll have to wait and see…”
“So you’ve got songs?”
“No, not really. I’ve just been performing so much. Whenever I’m in the studio – I just fall asleep.”
“Does the thought of following Kveðja, Bríet strike you as overwhelming?”
“No, more that I’d like to write in English, but transitioning is hard. Because it’s hard to think in English when you’ve been thinking in Icelandic your whole life. My first songs were written in English, but everything is somehow a little less personal.”
“Because without her, none of it meant anything.”
THREADS Walking down Fálkagata, struggling against the wind, I button up my coat and make that phone call that I had resolved to make. Speaking sincerely and sentimentally – I successfully coax my fiancée into joining me downtown.
The evening is a whirling carousel of people and music and vivid impressions. When Bríet finally takes the stage at just past 10:00 PM, we stand midway up the hill on Arnarhóll, agreeing that her entrance would have been greatly improved if she had gotten her way: if she had been allowed to descend from the statue of the old Viking through that impressive throng, like a vast colony of ants, gathered there on the hill. The concert is enjoyable and wellreceived and befitting the moment – but nonetheless, we imagine, still a far cry from her show in Harpa.
As the show slowly winds down, we – not wanting to get caught in the crowd – leave for our car before the fireworks begin, and I’m left with the impression that the evening would have meant so much less had I not listened to Bríet’s album on the bus ride to town; engaging with some emotionally abortive podcast, I would have convinced myself that my fiancée’s reluctance to join me for a concert downtown was understandable and advisable and probably more conducive to my getting work done.
Life is a maze, filled with dead-ends and anxieties and quotidian worry, which dull the senses and distract from what’s important. But there are threads lying unnoticed among its passageways. Woven together by the great benefactors of mankind.
