Free Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 by Karl Ove Knausgaard Page B

and afterwards the voices, it was impossible not to move, impossible, it ignited every part of my body, me, the world’s least rhythmic eighteen-year-old, sitting there squirming like a snake, to and fro, and I had to have it louder, I turned it up full blast, and then, already up on my feet, yes, then I had to dance, at that moment, even if I was alone. And, towards the end, on top of all this, like a bloody fighter plane above a tiny dancing village, comes Adrian Belew’s overriding guitar, and oh, oh God, I am dancing and happiness fills me to my fingertips and I only wish it could last, that the solo would go on and on, the plane would never land, the sun would never set, life would never end.
    Or
Heaven Up Here
with Echo and the Bunnymen, the diametric opposite of Talking Heads, because here the essence is not rhythm or drive but sounds and moods, this tremendous wailing that springs from them, all longing and beauty and gloom, which swells and subsides in the music, no, which
is
the music. And even though I understand a lot of what he is singing about, even though I have read piles of interviews with him, as is the case with most of the bands whose records I own, this knowledge is obliterated by the music; the music doesn’t want to know about it, because in music there is no meaning, there is no explanation, there are no people, only voices, each with its own special distinctive quality, as though this is its essential quality, its essence, unadulterated, no body, no personality, yes, a kind of personality without a person, and on every record there is an infinity of such characteristics, from another world, which you meet whenever you play the music. I never worked out what it was that possessed me when music possessed me, other than that I always wanted it.
    Furthermore, it made me someone, of course. Thanks to music I became someone who was at the forefront, someone you had to admire, not as much as you had to admire those who made the music, admittedly, but as a listener I was in the vanguard. Up here in the north probably no one would see that, as hardly anyone in Kristiansand had been aware of it, but there were circles where it was seen and appreciated. And that was where I was heading.
    I spent some time arranging my records in such a way that the impression made by each one would be enhanced and perhaps lead to surprising new associations for whoever thumbed through them, then I walked down to the shop and bought some beer and a ready-made frozen meal, pasta carbonara. In addition, I bought a swede, a cauliflower, some apples, some plums and a bunch of grapes, which I intended to use in the science class with the third and fourth years the following day in a grand illustration of the cosmos, an idea that had occurred to me while skimming through their syllabus the day before.
    When I arrived home I put the ready meal in the microwave and ate it straight from the aluminium tray on the kitchen table while drinking a beer and reading
Dagbladet
. Well sated, I lay on my bed for an hour’s rest. Images of teachers and pupils and the school interior flickered through my consciousness for a long time before at last I was gone. An hour and a half later I was roused by someone ringing the doorbell. I no longer knew what to expect, all sorts of people rang, so it was with a mixture of sleepiness and nervousness that I hurried across the floor to the door.
    Three of the girls in my class stood outside. One, Andrea, smiled brazenly and asked if they could come in; the second, Vivian, giggled and blushed; the third, Live, stared shamelessly at me from behind her large thick glasses.
    ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Come in, all of you!’
    They did what other visitors had done, looked around as they stepped into the sitting room. Huddling close to each other, they pushed and shoved and sniggered and blushed.
    ‘Come on, take a seat!’ I said, nodding in the direction of the sofa.
    They did as they were told.
    ‘Well?’