13. Working on a dream

(Posted march 1,  2012 In Norwegian)

The days are slipping thru like dry sand between fingers. Its been a while since I picked up my pen for you.  I feel like I`m falling down from the wings of time. It all goes so fast. And yet, I have no track of the hours passing.  Great things are happening!! A good friend  with a big heart has begun to translate my blogletter from Norwegian to English. Imagine! Finally! Now you can read my letter elsewhere ... than in my head. And!!  The great lady of Sony Music said that she would  send my translated letters to someone who would be even closer to you - than her ...And ! I've got a name for a guy in Live Nation Norway, which I also already have pushed a bit. Maybe he can help. I hope:)

Tonight I`ve searched high and low, and I have put my light on every spot I can find that keeps even a small possibility of reaching you. My thought fell on the New York Times. Imagine getting our question ( will you come?) in a paper that reach thousands! One of them …..  must be you??? I think NOW we are talking! It can`t be more impossible to get the NY Times to write about our project, than to get you here ... so there was really no reason ... to hesitate … at all.  Now I have been vacuuming their webpage for mail addresses. I found many, and sent the whole bunch this little mail:  

Hi!

I write to you Americans in one of the biggest paper I know about “ over there”,  to see if you can help me to make people in Norway start dreaming big. And not only dream big. Think big! And find courage to BELIVE that each and every one of us has the opportunity to make a huge change in the world. Not only by dreaming, believing and thinking. But by acting. If there is anything you Americans are good at… its that. You tell us this all the time, by your music, by your films, by your books, and… by your actions. And I think we have something to learn over here about that.

40 kids (youths) in age 13-17 in a small country town in Nordby in Norway, want to give their country a wakeup call. Of the good kind! We have a project with a mission – to make Bruce Springsteen enter our stage and play a couple of songs on his guitar. It`s an impossible thought. But it is an possible action. It’s a very long story, and it has been on the road for 10 years. Now it has become a blog –that’s called: Dear Mr. Springsteen. It has readers all over the world, and just recently  it was translated in to English (I got some help with that, my written language as you can see, is not so good in other ways than… Norwegian. But this is not about being perfect. It`s about doing the right thing)

Here in Norway the local papers tells our story. But Bruce don`t read them. But I think he might read your paper. And if you Ny-times-people like our story.. maybe you will write about it. Maybe Bruce will find out. Maybe he will look us up.. And maybe.. he likes the story as well, and then… enter our stage 22.july 2012 (He is in Norway that day).  Because he is a dreamer. Because he believes in the same things as we do, that anything is possible if you go by heart- and we all pull the strings together. It`s a small worldJ

Ok – I give you the link to the blog. Start with 0, it’s the letter that lead to the blogging. And … then read the blog. Number by number. There are 12 chapters in Norwegian, but only 5 in English. It`s because it takes some time to translate it. But we are working on it!!  http://dear-mrspringsteen-english.blogspot.com/2012/02/0-very-first-letter-beginning-before.html

We have written a song about Bruce that we sing when the community comes together. It`s in Norwegian but one verse is in English. And that one goes like this:

There will come a day when a man comes along
He brings his guitar and he will sing his song
To the people of Nordby he will stand strong
Mr Springsteen`s the name and he`ll meet us at home.
And I know and you know that magic is near
when those who belive find their dreams flying there
In the steps we are taking
In the walls that we climb
In the songs of the people
that colors the sky

Links to Norwegian papers:
http://www.oblad.no/%C3%A5s/skal-lokke-springsteen-til-breivoll-1.6503241
http://www.oblad.no/underholdning/kanskje-kommer-springsteen-1.6762191

I do not expect you to respond. But I guess it was worth a try. Wish you all a very nice day!

Yours Sincerely

Rikke Soligard 40 years old and quite happy

Nordby, Norway - Across the sea

Their answer reached me in no time:

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Yepp! That’s it. Let's hope this is a turning corner. That’s all for now. I just wanted to give you a quick update. Don’t even think I’ve forgotten all about you.  I put my pen at rest and wrap my mind further into the backyards of  the night, looking for new horizons. It`s there to see. If you just bring your eyes to sight. I promise to write more soon. You see – the best .. still remains. Maybe …we'll meet in the pages of NY Times tomorrow.

Good night Bruce.

12. Lonesome traveller

(Posted february 26,  2012 In Norwegian)

We are out on the road again, Bruce, and I sometimes feel the ground bites my shoes. Am I doing the right thing? By sharing all this with you? Doubt is a sneaky bastard that can rip out the speed of the legs… to anyone and everyone – not just me. But. It`s also an important pit-stop to make. It is necessary to take a few meetings with Soligard herself along the trail, checking temperature and oil, look over the luggage. Am I missing something? Have I taken too much? I tend to dive into things before the fear for the fear itself, stops me. A bit head-over-heels.  Closing my eyes, while a big hope of a safe landing, screams out of my heart. 

I do feel that I have chosen correctly. But can we really ever know that the things we do, is right, by the moment we do them? Or is it later, when the past sends its floodlight… that we can weigh up ballast for right and wrong? I think it’s a bit like both. Something that may seem appropriate at the time, can be a disaster when the account is settled. At the same time, you have no other guidance here on the road than your own barometer. Connected to the body and mind it is the best compass you have. I have chosen to let it lead me in the most choice I've made throughout my life, for other peoples' Compass works very poorly in my landscape. So I stick to the way my needle is pointing, even if it sometimes goes the way the hen kicks. If it goes stright to hell – it will be MY decisions, my wrongs, that leads me there. I'm not going wild at others expense. So! I'll stay at my course, and when time is right: I will make up my own bill. There is no other way of life for me. I hope and believe this is so for you too.

When “Cover me” faded away over Breivoll, and made ripples in the sea… the party most definitely was over. I left the rock with renewed strength - the compass needle was strong in me. Away from the sisterhood, with rough terrain in sight. And there, in all the unknown things ... it was time to build a new life. High above the cornfields,  the Aschehoug hills, and crab fishing piers - grew a new life out of grief and ice. A red-painted house in the range of the sun, with birds stretching their wings on the roof.  Three floors, rose bushes, drying rack and a tiny garden. Bang Olufsen on the wall. Yes, my mama even gave music new package. There was plenty of room for mom, brother and me. Dad… His new life grew out of a concrete colossus of Tveita. It was hard to swallow - but even harder not to, and slowly started the journey toward reconciliation. My reconciliation of the facts of life.

I was a not easy to handle those days,  I know- but I finally reached out a hand. I would so dearly like to go back to all that we left behind, but it was completly gone. Forever. For always.  In the beginning, I wrote poems.  There was so much important things to say, but my voice did not have enough power to carry the message.

Teach me the song dear father
Bring it back to me again
Your words were so beautiful
But still …they faded away


Teach me to speak dear father
My words turn to stone
Our tears are kept inside
But soon they fall in rain

Teach me to love dear father
The way we  loved each other before
Those days the sun shone upon us
Those days we kept an open door.

(the words “fits” each other in Norwegain – but the meaning still remains)

I gave this poem to him. He grabbed it with both hands. He had tried for so long, but I put my teeth in it all. It was only when he offered me a golden island in the Mediterranean that I finally got to my senses, packed my bags and left with him. Holiday. Vacation. Get-away. Slowly, the closed-door set ajar, and slowly ... we got to know each other again. Everything was undoubtedly changed, but something was still unwavering constant. I was and would always be - my father's daughter.

The new my home quickly became just that. Home. It's amazing how quickly one can adapt. I had a bedroom with a balcony, pink curtains and a new bed for big dreams. Yet you were not conceived as a possible impossibility for me, but the brain bubbling over by other big and strange thoughts. My grief was eventually laid to rest, and my horizon stretched bigger. I looked at the world with an emerging understanding ... that it was completely NOT to understand. I knew the first sparks of passionate commitment. I was stunned by the injustice, poverty and all the mean actions that was served me through the TV screen. I took in all the misery of the world - it smashed into my satellite dish and filled it with darkness. I cried in my pink room for the black peoples struggle in South Africa. I wrote tasks in school about child abuse and Amnesty International. I was beside myself over the suffering of war and misery inflicted a large number of people. Measured against all of this, was MY pain, pale and small. Here I walked on top of the world and listed me as if I had the exclusive right to suffer. Until reality slammed into the dish with a bang. I could have thrown up by myself. And I was not far away doing it either.

But. To throw up ... have rarely led the world to change, so I picked up the only weapon I had in the house, a black marker of the hottest caliber, and went to battle. I wrote hard angry letters on my sack coat: Free Mandela. MANDELA FREE! But the sad thing is that I never, NEVER a moment, ifted my finger `n from the ink to release anyone. In particular, not Mandela. Nor others who sat trapped behind the Apartheid regime's sharp barbed wire. I showed my words to the powerless, and the bag ... was a poor whisper compared to the intent that was packed into it. I wished he was free, with all my heart, but could not do anything - and therefore did nothing.

But one thing I have, (not that it makes me a Mother Theresa) I stood up for some of those who had rougher times than me at school. I could take as little of shit and injustice there,  that I could take it through the TV screen. The only difference was that here, here, I could actually make a difference. It had a price like so much else, and I if I was out of the sisterhood before.. I surly was out of the sisterhood now. School time was an ambivalent period. The first couple of years, hung itself like a plumb line around my legs, and slackened the system that was supposed to develop my inner confidence. The compass pointed straight to the north, but the engine `n spluttered. I was always convinced that someone had lost me down in the wrong place-I could not seem to fit into anywhere. I was at times so lonely in all my chaos that the world at one point almost ceased to exist. I collapsed and cried in my pillow at night and during the day…, I went with a straight and defiant back while the sisters closed their tongues around swollen gossip. It grew like shit in the linoleum-hallways. A burning tenacious fog settled on the inside of my lungs, shattered ribs and glued itselves to each breath that I took. I walked my daily green mile with Mandela screaming out of my back. Inside me I was screaming: FREE Rikke.

Somehow I was stuck in my own captivity. My glowing desire to fit in, be liked and good enough ... with this strong conviction that I was damn good enough just as I was… made me as strong as I was weak. Just like I put a big zero over myself. And for a little while I did just that. I lost all the color and character I ever had, and became invisible. Went in with the ceiling and walls, asphalt and sky and was ... no one. Least of all – Rikke. The grindstones around my legs were so heavy that it was impossible to take me over to the plus-side. The fog in my loungs was so impermeable that even Mandela slipped from sight. But then Bruce, then something weird and wonderful happened. Something that changed everything. Forever! Once out there in my tenth school year I saw a glimpse what later has become you. Something, which my thoughts and heart went back to - 12 years later. It ripped of the grindstones and trigged this hole journey, and that my friend…. in many ways took me from zero to 100 on a nanosecond. I did not know the reach of it then – but I do indeed know today. And that's why Bruce, I lay all my doubts at rest. For if there is a thing in this world that I am sure of (except that you one day will arrive, and that we all one day will die), it is that the compass on the inside never fails. It is when you defy its course that things go wrong. I welcome my doubts, because it creates opportunities for reflection and contemplation - important elements that provide insight and development. I am not in the least doubt about where I`m going. The challenge is to find out how the heck ... I get there.

Well - that's enough for today. I have, after all, an entire night in front of me to find out these things. A weekend has again settled for its end, and the new week is flashing merrily behind tomorrow's curtain. Outside, the moon hangs with a smile over Nordby. Jupiter and Venus compete (as always) about who of them that shines the strongest. Alone individually - but together they form a wholeness that we all are part of. As little everything seems up in the big eternity. And how big everything can be… if you just give space… in all that’s small.

Good night Bruce Wherever you are!

Rikke

 

A pitstop-message about falling behind... no more

Dear Mr. Springsteen!

I`m so sorry, that my blog in English just is posted in 11. chapters. The Norwegian one is on 23. It might seem stupid since this letter is for you - and you don’t read Norwegian. You might think that if it`s so important for me to reach you - I should prioritize the english version. As I told you earlier (and you soon will see for yourself) - my English sucks. I put my heart in that I would get some help. And I really did!! This incredibly fine people did 11. chapters. It’s a big job when life is in a hurry all around you. It’s a really big job even if everything is silent.  I can`t expect them to do it all. I`m truly happy, and deeply moved that they volunteered for this in the first place- that kept me going, because I really felt that NOW it was possible to reach you. I can’t!!!!! Loose that thought.

Oh!! I really wish you could read Norwegian Bruce. It’s so much easier to find the right words that describe the motion in this project. But since you do not, and time has put on her fast-track- shoes, I have to jump in the water and start paddling. Because…. the story is not finished. In the Norwegian blog it’s only a few chapters left, and we start to reach the place... where everything has its beginning. BUT I still have to write them. And today it is 14 days for your impossible arrival. I have to reach it all before you put your footsteps on Gardemoen. The wind is blowing, and it’s like a noisy big train pushes the timeline closer. It’s nothing to think about any more. I can’t let it fall further behind. It’s time… to make this happen.

Give me a couple of days. And I. Willl be there.

Rikke