Dispatches from David Gilmour in Iceland

gilliemot@net-venture.com 11:42 AM (10 minutes ago) to me So you put out my short piece on the last day in Faroes and arrival in Reykjavík. I had to use the other email, Apple, from lack of service. It worked OK, but that damned autofill is an auto-pain. It’s exasperating! Two days of wintry rain made tourists colorful in their ponchos and wool hats, staggering along with humped backpacks. Good luck to them in the winds and rain of the countryside. I am staying in a stopping-spot hostel for many adventurers, having brief engagements at breakfast, very good talks actually, not frivolous. Venturing forth, taking alternate roads in the city maze, I wended my way to the underground museum The Punk Museum, like the Louvre in Paris when you go, it said ”CLOSED TODAY.” This is strange since many more people have flooded Reykjavík from Europe’s holiday month, and now they don’t open. Typical counterintuitive punk, kicking against the pricks. It is the cheapest museum in town, set in an funky underground public restroom, down a narrow flight of stairs, garbage littering the way, a couple of posters on the slimed walls. Very seductive in an underground-toilet sort of way. The door was black and shut tight. I banged and kicked at the panels, yelled a few FUCKS! You know, an angry offloading. I thought I heard a scream from inside. Then I beat it to get a fix of an non-alcoholic beer, Viking brand, at a bar down by the government buildings, away from the tourist merch-marts. In the Bar and Grill I was told it was only groups today, but all I needed was a quick, refreshing beer, so the concierge let me sit at the bar on a stool. Finishing a coffee, two Aussies from Denmark, South West Australia, a town of 6000, spoke of leaving their Antarctic winter to vacation in the summer of Iceland, presently in a winter mode. It was 9 degrees Celsius. They felt at home immediately upon arrival. Unfortunately they had a car and Tammy, the wife of Steven, left to add some IsKrona to the parking meter. [N.B. Don’t rent a car in Iceland or the Faroes, if you want to see the life of the city. They are lands of walking haunts and buses are everywhere; free in the Faroes. Passing by, I see more people ganged around cars, looking stressed, discussing how to pay and wondering if they’ll find their car again. Hundreds of autos look alike and some have to find electric plugs, payment there too. Until recent years, Faroes did not permit rental cars.] Back to the Punk Museum, shit! it’s OPEN, a 65-year-old prune-wrinkle-faced man, sporting a luminescent green spiked Mohawk, let me in some swinging doors, that said No Public Shitters here. Inside a very narrow space I paid my fee, and shouted HELLO, YOU’RE FINALLY OPEN. He nodded. Perhaps he had to find a real public shitter. “No Pissing in the Cubicles” ordered a prominent sign; “Watch Your Head” and “Look for Punk History on the Ceilings,” another couple of pieces of advice. Immediately in the black, I banged my head against the first set of headphones dangling from a chain like a torture hook. Some rage was evident in the phones, but I passed on that to make room for other visitors to get in the tight corridor. A video screen screamed with a thrashing band, a bleeding chest of Sid Vicious on a stage of broken beer bottles and silver trash bags. Sex Pistols! Right, right, yer bloody well right! John Louden, the mastermind of the anarchic message, “Don’t you dare shit on me!” Otherwise a fair Rolling Stones narrative history of Icelandic Punk was written and pasted on the walls and ceiling, in 24pt. black Icelandic and below in 24pt. Red Arial. I followed the chronology and listened in on the dangling headphones to early bad Punk and as it proceeded to later years to more mature bad Punk, nothing as polished as Bjork’s screaming jazz riffs, nothing as rock-rhythmic as The Clash’s “London Calling,” or “I’m Lost in a Supermarket.” Eventually the time came for the smash hits of Sugarcubes with Bjork’s vocal artistry and dopey narcissisistic videos, all that writhing on the stage, licking cows udders or something resembling fingers in red rubber dishwashing gloves. The accumulative sound was deafening at times, and new visitors quickly fled past when they saw I was occupying the toilet cubicle, bent down in seated position, reading the lower history cards, room for one only, unless twirking or brushing together was kosher. Young blonde-haired kids with perfect faces, eyes the size of saucers, whisked through the ghost-train carriage, strobe lights blinking red and blue, a screaming, laughing skull with eyes a-popping on a skate board, RKL, Rich Kids on LSD, “Much Love Butter” (or Batter) and a blob of something next to Butter. NO WARS:NO POWERS, PONKSAFN ISLANDS (Punk Museum of Iceland), KILLEMBILLY ROCK N ROLL. SUBHUMANZ, FUCK THE PRETTIES, LOVE THE PRETTY UGLIES, NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS. After a half-hour of deafening mixes, I thought it best to let others into the cubicles, though many eschewed the history, for poster browsing and video watching. Bjork did signify, was profound and a generous contributor to and leader of the movement, joining various bands to give them a leg up through her influence and fame. Punk history in a defunct funky underground toilet dungeon, how can you go wrong? A tad anarchic, their ethics, but on the hole [sic] right on in a hard left wing ideology. To balance out the afternoon I visited a distinguished high art museum, The House of Collections. There I sat quietly gathering myself together, coming to my senses, watching a 15-minute video of two identical cod fish, silver sheen on their flanks, as still as a still life photograph against black velvet. After a minute one gyrated spasmodically, flexing its jaws, then, as if prompted, the second cod mimicked the gesture, finishing with jaw flexing. They were both out of water, almost out of life, except for a shimmer and an electric spasmodic flick of the tail and flex of the head and mouth. Two American visitors from Grant Woodsian Nebraska breezed through in front of me, they halted and looked left. “A live video in progress,” I advised. They turned to watch, no motion, they motioned onward with a wave, and then the fishes flexed again. They’d missed it. In the children’s creative rooms, since no one was on hand, I sat and created a cut out fish on the “Ocean” floor, and sketched an Ogre on the Folklore floor. (See images if I can send them.) Once again I was alone in an art museum, outside throngs of weather protected tourists packing the merch streets, but at least I was not lost in a supermarket, high on E. (How do you spell Ecstasy?) or Ketamine.—David On 2025-08-03 3:45 am, Koon Woon wrote: