How far is the North

(Summer 2022)

It was one very hot, busy and stressful last month in Strasbourg during which I was trying to organize the move, showing my partner around in the workshop and finishing the last instruments I was working on. Again I was quitting something I loved doing, but which I couldn't continue as a daily obligation. Call me naive for my vision to make space in my life for all the activities I love, and then to pick them up in a rhythm which is healthy and in which I keep enjoying them. It's not really a choice. I simply don't function in monotone patterns on long-term.

Strasbourg is a good place to be in together with someone, to stroll along the channels when the air cools down in the evening and to eat out. I made one last instrument together with my partner, a special one that we would take to Norway with us. While I was packing things in boxes, my room mate brought a young cat to the flat who instantly decided to adopt all three of us, pushed open the door to my room and requested a space in our bed. It was a warm ending of a chapter of my life which had been cold and lonely for long periods. The moment I left the place that had been my little refuge of happiness, with the goodbye of my colleagues, felt as if I could not breathe. But I knew it was the right thing to do, to progress my issues, to remove the burden of responsibility from these great people, to, finally, become more independent. To see something new in life and to be with someone who loves me.

[the little prince :]

***

Spring, 13 years before. Southern Germany. I was not sure how it had happened but somehow I had passed my A-levels.

What do you do now, Sophie?

Make music, draw and write. Like before, but with more time. No?

Of course this was not a valid answer. That do is supposed to be an occupation. Everyone else had made some plan long ago. I hadn't. I was way too drained with fighting myself from day to day to manage to plan the future. Whenever I could muster some free brain space I would try to come up with something new for the music, drawings or writings. I needed to work hard if I ever wanted to become a professional and earn my living with it, right?

Find a place where I'm welcome. Where I don't need to justify anything, where I don't feel bad for eating and blocking a space. Where I can take the time I need to recharge, where I maybe can find people who like to have me around. This also would have been a good answer. But I had no idea how to get there.

I did not feel connected to my home place and had no interest to pick up some random activity in the area. I thought about going back to Berlin (my place of birth), but didn't find a study subject there I was really into. A study advice search showed me a bachelor course called "Music Technology". It sounded awesome for what I was doing and it was at a public university. There were just two problems. 1.) It was in Norway. 2.) It was in Norwegian.

It was the only thing I felt I really wanted to do. I had been dreaming about Norway for years. I was amazed by the beautiful landscapes of a place which wasn't stuffed full with people. It seemed so peaceful. Like a paradise, reserved to certain people who were lucky to be born there, or who had the money to spend at least their holidays there. It was not for me.

I kept the idea in my heart for a while, like a secret dream. Maybe I told one person at some point. Of course it was just that, a dream. I could not speak a word of that language and I didn't even know how to live in a flat alone in my home country. Before times of smartphones I could not imagine to find my way around. I needed to plan every route in advance and print it on a paper. I had never taken a plane, never made a travel on my own. These were things for rich people. But most of all, I needed to find something to do immediately so I would not keep occupying a room for one more year and eating my family's crops and bread, which I wasn't working for. I hadn't learned anything useful and I couldn't imagine spending my life in an office from now on. I was just a useless burden.

***

The day arrived when we finally left Strasbourg. It was another hot summer day. We boarded a train to Berlin with nothing more than the luggage we could carry. Equipped with a carton of slowly unfreezing Gazpacho and a package of nuts, I watched the countryside before the window change from the densely patched towns and villages of Southern Germany to the sparse settlements and brick wall houses of Eastern Germany. This time I would not come back to the South. It was a good feeling.

We reached the airport in Berlin and the impressions became so blurry that I became light-headed. Hours passed into the evening. Our plane was late. When we finally took off, night had fallen over Germany. It was just from the plane's window that I could see the last shimmer of dusk on the distant horizon, a gradient of dark blue and cream-colour. Below us was a dark space, occasionally broken by the fine nets of the lights of a town. I could see the dark, Baltic sea, then the towns at the Swedish coast. Then the patterns of light became sparse and stayed back behind. We were flying over the mountains of Norway.

***

After finishing school in Germany and two years of hopeless efforts to get a foot into society in one way or another, I found a place in Germany to study a bachelor course in audio production. There - at Darmstadt - I finally found some connection and purpose with my doings, though, with my poor confidence and permanent itch to stand out and to prove myself, I was a terrible person to have around. We did studio recording for music, environment sound recording, video sound, audio books, acoustics and a bit of audio programming. I gave up on student life after realizing that I kept boring myself to death when trying to hang out with people who were drinking, smoking weed or spending their evenings in stuffed clubs with bad music. But unrelated to university I found some nerd people to meet for Magic the Gathering and role playing games. Back then it was just a spontaneous idea to pick up a hobby, but with some distance I see what a precious experience it was to get involved in social activities which I enjoyed.

During the last part of my studies I joined a small company producing audio books in the neighbour town. I had my heart in this new activity at this moment, heading directly there after the lecture on most days, got too little sleep and neglected the study courses, but somehow managed to finish the degree. Then I moved closer to the office and, with a minimum pay that hardly covered my low living costs in my basement flat, kept working for the company for 3 years. But at last I ran into multiple issues with the situation. My health had turned bad with all the screen time and I had problems to keep up focus on the ever same, repeating tasks. I was craving time for my own ideas and projects instead of spending all my life energy on projects others had started half-heartedly, which needed to be washed down quickly. So I quit something I loved doing, but which was destroying me in these circumstances.

I moved to Stuttgart then and had a pretty underwhelming experience with the German unemployment system, work mindset and relationship life, moving me into a life crisis that was terrible to go through, but important to find back my own ideals and vision of life instead of exhausting myself in the hopeless rat race to meet the expectations of family, friends and society. Feeling that I, probably, had seen enough of Germany and should try to see life somewhere else before giving up, I moved to France to get into handpan making. With the handpans and workshop work I found a lot of what had been missing in my life. It was a happy time of learning, healing and finding new confidence, very off-grid of company life, very free and independent. Not free of problems, of course.

After a bit more than one year of putting all my energy into work and some weeks of Covid lockdown, I started to feel the grip of loneliness and lack of connection again. When the lockdown was lifted in summer, I took the occasion and followed a spontaneous intuition to escape my small chamber and to go on a travel alone. I took a long distance bus to Berlin, then continued (also by bus) to Sweden. It was a very inspiring time and an amazing experience, giving me the idea that also Norway - this fairyland I had been dreaming about in my teens, this place which had been painfully inaccessible - might really exist. I threw myself into learning the Norwegian language and reading about the culture, which, during the following months, proved to cheer me up when I was feeling down. From back home in Strasbourg I searched for Norwegians online to bother with my curiosity and was lucky to bump into an Oslo-based role playing group, confirming the existence of this place. They became friends for me and, after one year of online contact, I came to Oslo to see them.

After coming back to Strasbourg I ran into obscure health issues again. Somehow I had got stuck again, losing my energy with trying to keep up with daily things and not being able to address the problems.

In the increasing competition of market and globalisation, the tone in the workshop had become a drone of "make more instruments, work more, improve quality, come up with strategy to sell more". My colleagues were planning their instruments in batches, spending hours with the air hammer on metal to prepare several shells in row, kept inviting customers when they were stressed out already, spent their weekends working. Wrist pain, sleep troubles and tinnitus were not alarming signals, but normality. We're so free, aren't we grateful? Don't we do everything for the work we love?

I could not enter into that state of mind. I did not accept to sacrifice my health to the drone. Managing the tools required good energy and focus, but after 3 years I had troubles to focus on the same tasks for hours every day, wearing hearing protection, struggling with the cold on the terribly isolated workshop, mostly alone, no option to make (or buy) food. I felt like a burden to my colleagues who I owed so much to. At the same time the money I earned with the instruments was too little to build emergency savings or to improve my living situation (to lose less energy with daily things like train rides, shared flat troubles). But worst was that I could not reserve energy for the things I had neglected since I was working: finding friends in Strasbourg, sport, healthy food, music, nerd stuff. My social phobia issues had come back since I had fallen back into avoiding and withdrawing - and these issues kept me from getting involved with customers and becoming more independent. I knew that for others it was invisible, hard to understand that I had so little energy and such a bad concentration. It was hard to remind myself that they could not know, but I had been in the situation before and I needed to take that seriously. If I ever wanted to progress, to find a healthy balance and to make space in my life for my needs - I needed to break out of this vicious circle.

It was because of the work on the blog articles, thinking about my past, that I remembered the study course in Norway. Just out of curiosity, I read it up. It still existed. They offered a master course which was held in English. Two years of involving yourself with audio production again. In fairyland. Application period for internationals starting today.

I put the music from my Norwegian music paragon on my headphones and pondered the idea. Meanwhile I was fluent in English and even could understand some Norwegian already. I had learned to get along in France by myself (up to a point) and was not afraid to live abroad anymore. Things had changed a lot since back then. I did not really consider quitting Strasbourg and my work, but... god, how much would I love to be at that place. The fjord. The forests, lakes and colourful wooden houses. Where I could learn about the Norwegian people myself instead of keeping reading blog articles and talking to my phone. Where, many years ago, this music has been made, in hours of patient refinement. Where summer makes sense and winter is real. I wanted to know who these people are, teaching and learning audio production at the university. The idea that they didn't know about me and would start without me while I was continuing my struggles here in Strasbourg was upsetting. I wanted to see what life was like at this place, so much that every other place I could move to would leave me with this yearning in my heart.

***

I must have fallen into a slumber. When I opened my eyes again I could see a reflecting line under the shine of dusk that our plane was following all along. It was the fjord, dividing the land into dark and silver. At the coast there was the light pattern of a city again, widely spreading out. We were arriving. We did not know the area and we were not sure if we had a bed this night or not. We would need to figure things out. Many things.

[arriving at our new home at 3 am]

[looking towards Trondheim]

[exploring Trondheim]

***

Sophie