22 Pistepirkko played tonight at B72, one of the bars underneath the U6/ Guertelline (the Underground/Untergrund U-Bahn is quite aboveground there, and there are bars in the arches below the tracks). It was my first time at B72, and it was pretty nice, good crowd, though the Guertel can be a sketchy neighborhood. 22 Pistepirkko were so so Finnish; older than I thought, but I obviously wasn't thinking - they've been playing since the eighties. They play a kind of rock/blues which is made interesting by X's great crazy voice and synth effects - I think they've been going more electronic with their latest albums though I haven't listened to the newest one in full yet so I can't really say. They did their older songs too - Onion Soup, Coffee Girl, and others not about foodstuffs. They sing in English, the best kind - articulate, mired in a thick Finnish accent and with a wit so dry you just wonder what's being lost in translation. And their hair! so bad, so cool. In general they were like six year old boys stuck in six century old gnome bodies... ok, that doesn't explain anything, just believe me. And check out their music.
The whole show made me want to go back to Finland. Finland is a strange mixture of strangeness and familiarity - not in the sense of separate things being either strange or familiar, every country and culture is a mixture of the strange and the familiar, nothing human is entirely alien (or I haven't seen it yet, anyway. O the naivete of the young and their absolutes). Rather, when I was in Finland the things that make Finland unique, the things new and exotic and weird to me, also seemed familiar and comfortable and natural on a different level, a deeper level. Somehow, despite not learning the language, not spending much time there when I was small (a couple trips, not many), not having contact with Finns aside from my mother, who herself hasn't lived in Finland for thirty-five years, despite not generally thinking of myself as Finnish, aside from a token patriotism (matriotism?) for a country that I think is just plain cool, despite all this, Finland does resonate with me. It's on a level that's beyond (below? metaphor of vertical stratification of cognition, deep=murky, instinctual, from the gut, I guess) easy explanation and rationalization and understanding, and because of that, it annoys me, no, it baffles me, but it's also rich and comforting. When I travel with a Suomi passport I feel like an impostor - what right do I have? I can't even speak the language, though goodness knows I tried... - but yet then, like tonight, I realize that there is something deeper, perhaps more powerful, that does legitimize my being Finnish.
Come to think about it - my relationship with Austria is the exact opposite. I understand Austria on an intellectual level, I know the history, I've read the books, I've talked to the people. I can function, I get the jokes. But it's not mine, it's not my country, and it won't ever really be I don't think.
I wonder about other people's experiences with countries that they're related to, but not really 'of'. Not so much the experience of emigration and dual culturality, but the experience of "home"coming, the various kinds of connection and identification to be found with one's ... well, what is it? ancestral home? un/native country? Language is at an end and pomo punctuation takes over.
