Sometimes we find MSN to be a bugging thing, and recently, I have been less reliant on it, and it has became a less bugging thing. I guess if you keep a distance from things, you will find it far more beautiful because of the distance, because it becomes more foreign, more exotic, more “interesting”. I suppose that’s the way with everything, except for a few things. A few things in life are just so beautiful that the closer you get to it, the more beautiful it gets. Such is a city like Helsinki. The closer I get to Helsinki, the more beautiful Helsinki got for me. It was love at first sight, boredom in the middle, and sweetness in the end. Like one of those candies I used to love so much, sour at first, then sweet till you’re bored with it, then the mellowed after taste that makes you want another one in your mouth. I want Helsinki in my mouth, again and again and again.
My MSN blinked “Moika!”. It was the happy glee of Johanna. From my aesthetic view for human kind, she is absolutely beautiful. Sometimes I just can’t get enough of her beauty, her passion, her insanity, her intensity. We are all characters of extreme, and that’s the most beautiful thing in the world, characters of extreme. I praise her extreme and eat it up like sugar. There was a student gig at Vanha that evening. I don’t know what Vanha is about and I certainly don’t know what’s special about student gigs. You see, I am not a person well acquintant with music, especially not with rock music. So far my realm had always been quite limited to the quiet sphere of Chinese traditional music (meditative, indeed). For the morning I had been quiet missing the beautiful instruments I had grown quite attached to in Taiwan, after witnessing a tiny performance by Korean students in the Finnish Literature Society downtown near the University. It was a great seminar on Shamanism in Korea, something very close to the Taoist activities in Taiwan which I had been secretly quite fond of (not quite in fashion for us to express that fondness and I had been far too frightened to go entirely against fashion).
Helsinki in May is like a city that never sleeps. Since Vappu I had rarely been home for anything other than sleeping. Since Vappu there’s been nothing on my mind other than the excitement of being out and around (well, since I have lived out of my parents’ home it’s been practically impossible to find me at any place called home). I marched out of Aleksanderia with Johanna half asleep. Can’t seem to wake up in day-time, not to a full awakefulness. My mind is always in its own dream world, with weird thoughts and ideas running in different undirected directions. The day was still young and bright, it’s already eight in the evening, but nonetheless, I can feel the sun biting at my forehead (my worst fear). So far, I had already gone from fairly pale to nicely toasted. It will take only under a week more of this sun before I turn quite browned, ready to be taken out of the oven (and then I’ll be in the Spanish sun, which will certainly leave me nicely over-cooked). Holding a large sandwich in my hand we strolled into Kulpula, the student house near the Political Science Department on Unioninkatu 37. Despite my hate for any artificial green color, I threw a bottle of greenish Mountain Dew into Johanna’s bag, that’s for the night, to keep me awake (already two large coffee, but sleep is still on the edge of invasion). There sitting outside in the undimming light was the group of philosophy students I’ve come to love. Just watch them talk with each other, talk with hands waving, voices rising, emotions running. It’s like watching poetry in display, full throttle. We sat on the edge of the breaking biking rails, and waited for the “GOD” Reima to introduce us to modern ticket shopping: delivered right into your face, if not forced. Each of us paid the 4 euro expected, cheap, since it’s still only a student thing. He was the main force behind the evening, the power driving Dilemma into a deeper Dilemma. We waited for the philosophers to gather their instruments (beers) together and then randomly transported the group towards Vanha at Mannerheimintie.
Vanha is the old student house now transformed into the performancing space for students of Helsinki University. Public spaces of this sort promote the artistic growth of a community much in need. It gives everyone the chance to express their imaginations and receive the audience every artist craves. I crave this kind of a space, though I do not yet consider myself qualifying as an artist. Where’s all the confidence from? Just the desire to be known for the beauty they create, perhaps. Do I also wish to be known? Or maybe I am just afraid of the criticisms and rejections. Why be afraid when all these can only help you progress further, become better and go higher? The performing space consists of a nicely closed stage with a common ground large enough for music maniacs to jump and dance about. The acoustics of the room might not be the best in the world, but for students, enough is enough to fulfill our souls. It takes only a small gesture to fill a person with warmth, with a room that can fit 500 people, it’s definitely enough to over-tip our hearts with warm bubbles. The day is still young outside and in the balcony people crowded in waiting. What are we waiting for?
When I look at these people all gathered together for sake of listening to three student bands, I wonder each person’s intentions. There are people who madly talk about music like as if it is all their life’s worth. I wonder about these people. What are their intentions? What is all this emotion for? Are they really crazy about the music, or maybe it was just fashionable to act this way. What’s with all the eccentricity in each person in the balcony? Why do we dress differently, talk about art like as if we know them? Maybe because it holds us closer, bonds us together, or maybe because we’re so afraid to be not a part of the group that we grasp whatever we can to hold us together. How many people here really am in love with the music because they are in love with it? How many of these people will spend all the rest of their life in love with the music? I know that I am standing with the crowd that will always be in love with these music. At least, I know for certain that Johanna will. That her friends, Tukka, Reima, Mika all will.
The concert started with Prologue. I really don’t care if people call them more pop than underground. What’s this point about the underground being more aesthetic than pop? Why praise Indies more than general trend? Why do we always try to seem different when being different doesn’t mean being yourself? Being able to enjoy every moment, up or down, same or different, that’s what really is beautiful about life. Being able to enjoy the winter and embrace the summer, that’s truly the beauty of Helsinki. I cannot say I love Helsinki without saying that I also love the winter darkness. It makes Helsinki all the more Helsinki. Somehow that’s what seemed so beautiful about Prologue. It drew me, it pulled me, it practically dragged me. Actually I don’t remember the rest of the band, I only remember the keyboard / vocal. Something about him pulled me from the bystander to the center front of the group. There was magic in the air and I felt it slowly fill all the loose particle in my body until I felt so full I didn’t know if I should cry or smile, so I smiled with tears ready to flow. It wasn’t the uplifting feeling the second band Soma gave me, but it was something a bit different, it was as if I was being talked to, as if the band played only for me. The vocal Timo, from where I stood, seemed to radiant towards the crowd, a crowd that I could no longer feel or see. The music spoke to me in a soft way, spoke to me in a loud way, spoke to me in a romantic way. It asked me if I knew what I wanted in life, it asked if I really understood it, it asked me if I am being who I am, it asked me if I understood what love and passion is, it asked me to step a bit closer and closer and closer and feel its intimacy. So what other thing could I do but to step a bit closer, and more closer, and then fix myself where I wanted to be. Move on, move on, move on, the music seemed to be telling me, move on in life, move on and be where you want to be and then stay there, stay there and stay there, it said, stay there until you can feel it all, everything around you and nothing around you, but that which touches you, which wakens you and puts you to sleep. What can be more beautiful then that translucent stage between light and darkness, wake and sleep, together and lost?
When they played “Apple Tree” I was in every way thrilled. It was like as if destiny just called to me. In a way I was out of place, wearing my traditional Chinese silk top standing in the middle of a Finnish crowd listening to a Finnish band. In another way, I was in the right place, listening to a song called “Apple Tree”. My whole writing had been thrown around the idea of Apple Tree, that I am a little apple in the collection of many large apples, waiting to be picked, tasted and forbiddened and accepted. Who will now come and stand under my apple tree? Who will take an apple from me?
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