(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[multi-artist] A treble-like and intense voice rattles in dry walls. The eyes of a group of cramped people are beginning to get used to the darkness in the basement of Tronsmo bookstore in Oslo. With the microphone in front of his mouth, Bård Torgersen stands and sways uneasily as he launches his new book The Last Beast: «The opening in the floor had a rusty ladder of iron attached to one wall. I considered turning (…) but I did not turn, I pulled myself together, forced myself down into the darkness… »it said in the excerpt from the book on the bookmark which also contained time and place for the reading. Then you had to sneak through a dark and cramped hallway where a sound clip of 50 Cent went in a loop while a movie clip was played. To finally arrive at a room where a bearded man with tousled gray hair was standing and shouting through a boomblaster.
- It hurt to write the book too, says the bearded man.
A practical upbringing
Musician, journalist, writer and teacher Bård Torgersen was punk in his younger days. If they didn't go camping, he and his friends made movies, staged theater or made music. From Rykkinn he and his friends traveled to Oslo where they won at Blitz until the public meeting they decided to pamper them because they had had a stripper in the stage show at a concert with the band Masters of Møh.
- We stripped ourselves and then, because we had invited the gay community as well, he corrects.
- The blitzers were super straight. They were supposed to be so free, but still lived under a lot of dogmatic rules. We would be excluded.
- You are a trained carpenter. Have you ever needed that education?
- Maybe so that I have gained a kind of craft discipline in relation to working. That was the dumbest thing I could train for. I did not want that. But maybe I was more practical. That's what Grandpa said, that it was wise to know something practical.
Contrary to Bård and his friends' beliefs, in the family it was seen as useless to do something creative. The father, who was a teacher, tried as a writer but eventually gave up. He became involved in politics, which led to many political discussions in the world. Eventually, 15-year-old Bård had a strong encounter with death when his father passed away and he was left with his grandfather, an atheist church servant.
- Grandpa was a stubborn guy. When he died, he insisted that the coffin should be in the altar ring and the priest on the floor at the funeral, ie the other way around.
To hell
- It was nice to finish, yes, he answers when we pick up the thread from the book launch at Tronsmo.
Bård Torgersen claims that he never had any intention of becoming a writer. Yet he has always written. In fanzines, free newspapers and daily press. He liked to stretch journalism towards fiction, and push the boundaries. Which led to a surplus of things that could not be used journalistically.
Author Nikolaj Frobenius asked to have a look, thought there was something about the texts and asked him to structure them. When he tried it, a whole new world opened up, and eventually Torgersen's first book Alt Skal Vekk was assumed.
- Now it has become what I enjoy working with the most. I knew I would write more after the first book. Would like to tackle more catastrophe scenarios, as there is a bit of in Alt Skal Vekk, with the bird flu lurking in the background.
- Why does it always go to hell in your books?
- I do not believe that something good always comes out of seeking out what is pleasant. Besides, I like the energy that arises when something is perceived as unpleasant, but that at the same time there is something that pushes you further. This is how my books are on a thematic, visual and rhythmic level. For example, the development in the story is unpleasant, but one will read on to see what happens. The language is quite condensed, but there is a lot of air and short paragraphs, says Torgersen.
He thinks the two books are completely different. Where the first book was about what happens to a person who seeks to be part of a collective, but who does not find it because it does not exist, The Last Beast is about someone who is part of a collective, but who feels caught by it. The title alludes to Torgersen's thoughts on what it would feel like to be the last of its kind.
- You strive to reach the top, to survive, but when you have reached the very last moment and you are completely alone, how does it feel then?
- How do you compare yourself with other minor and dark authors such as Matias Faldbakken and Lars Ramslie?
- I have not read them, and do not read much contemporary literature. Will not be locked by lying next to anything else that has been. I rather listen to music, all the time. Would rather be in dialogue with media that is not my own, answers the musician who is currently busy as a writer.
- One of the characters in the book is called 50 Cent. Why do you use such a clear popular cultural reference?
- I do not mind using a size that is much larger than me. You could call it parasitic and parasitic, but why not – I sampled James Brown to get people dancing?
Beat up
In addition to writing books, Torgersen is employed as a study leader at the copywriting line at Westerdals School Of Communication. His job is to supervise the text students, who go to what he calls "a school for horunger".
- We do not cultivate the idea of purity. At Westerdals, we see the text as something that can become something more. A tool in, for example, radio, television, the web, or film. We teach them to write strategically. You have to do that in order to survive today, he says and believes it is ideal to combine the work of writing with the setting he is in at school.
- In your journalistic work for Natt & Dag, you are known, among other things, for having another guy named Bård Torgersen beaten up. What happened?
- Yes, it was like a bad b-movie with a twin plot. Terribly awkward, he says of the article which gave the impression of being a guide to getting under the burqa on Muslims. When the article was published, some Muslim youths approached another person with the same name and knocked him unconscious.
- It was also a kind of printing of the magazines' guides to everything possible. I knew a number of second-generation Norwegian Muslims who said that it was acceptable and fun.
The reaction came largely on the basis of a Koranic quote from an excerpt from a Pakistani newspaper that illustrated the article. What was written there was not checked carefully enough.
- It was not a goal to step over someone's boundaries in the way that they felt it shook their basis of existence. There is nothing so sacred to me, and I am a little frightened that an utterance is met with such a reaction. But I do not dismiss the reaction.
Something is at stake
In addition to the Muslim case, he is also known for having written a portrait interview with a prison inmate as if he were a rock star, and explored begging life through two days on the streets. The experiences were published in Natt & Dag.
- What is it that drives you to all these experiments?
- For me who makes something, something must be at stake. The reason for this is that it creates energy that can be transferred to the recipient, so that the message feels important. In addition, I am curious about what happens, also with me, when you try out something that has an open outcome. I did not start writing to close things, and do not want the last answer. Or end up as the Last Beast, he glows and strives for a better answer.
-… I do not really know what I do, but I do not think there is anyone who really knows what they do, he says on the phone ten minutes after the interview is over, and draws parallels to the basement at Tronsmo.
- Then you do something with the expectation of what a book launch should be, and I could not know if it would work or not, if the people listened to what I said at all since it was so cramped and dark. But I hope they got something out of it.
