For iceowl.

It was just inside the new millennium. In year 2000. Out of nowhere, I had decided I would be going to participate in a talent competition for youth. Of course, being completely devoid of any proper talent, I decided to pool all my assets together, towards a single performance arts piece. The culmination of my stupidity, some would say. They were probably right. This is a true story. However, it has been nearly three years since it happened, so this is as true a story as my memory allows. Which doesn't necessarily mean that what is written here is exactly what happened. Shouldn't be too far off though. If you were there, and remember differently, feel free to correct me.

Background

Preparations.

Between 1999 and 2000, I took my pyrotechnics licence. My poetry got (slightly) better, and I got considerable stage and performance art experience when I was touring with a youth culture group. I was gonna show those judges. I teamed up with Magnus. Now, Magnus is your non-average high school kid. He was the guitarist in the most popular band in the place where I lived. He was one of those communist-to-the-bone type people. Like me, but arguably slightly less reasonable. I would love to have called him my friend at the time, but that would be lying. I knew of him. I got to know him. And, one day, out of nowhere, I walked up to him and asked if he wanted to participate in the UKM with me. To my surprise, he said "yes". Which was how I ended up teamed up with one of the more popular guys in my school, to do my thing. We talked about practicing. We talked about it in October. We talked about it in November. And in December. We met once in January, and talked it over. In January, I suddenly realised that the UKM was less than a month away. And despite having teamed up with Magnus, I still hadn't thought out what Magnus could do for the performance. I had already gotten a permission from the fire services to use pyro tech indoors, but what would Magnus do? Then I thought about it; Magnus can do what he does best; Talking. So I sat down with a dictionary, and started writing down words. Powerful words. Words about revolutions. Words about torture. Names of dictators. Words describing happiness. Words describing beauty. Words about discrimination and horror. Biblical names. References to arcane television shows. All of these words were unconnected. I put them on pieces of paper, and picked them out of a bowl one by one. Then I added words to turn the random words into sentences. The result wasn't poetry. It was pretty damn horrible. But the words were strong. And if everything went to plan, people would be more than busy with looking, rather than listening. The words would be background noise. The words, the random words that were a parody of my poetic sufferance from the year before, would be nothing but noise. Powerful noise, but still just noise. January went by. I had given Magnus the "poem", and he loved it. He started practising to read it. But we never practiced together. February 3. Four days until the UKM, and we still hadn't practiced. We met, and had a talk. We goofed about, and he came up with the idea of shocking as many people as possible. Going on stage naked, or something. I disliked the idea, but said that we should just take things the way they wanted to go. Let the show run itself. Then I spent 5 minutes instructing him how to use my Pyrotechnics controller and the angle grinder, and asked him kindly not to blow up any pyro while I was standing anywhere near it, as it would reduce me to a howling pile of skin and bones.

The Day of the Show

The day before the show, I was in Oslo, and had the presence of mind to walk into a theatre shop. I purchased some white and black theatre make-up. And I picked up a few thousand Norwegian Kroner worth of pyrotechnics devices. The day of the show, it turned out that the fire alarm could not be turned off. - No, there will be so many people that we cannot turn it off

- Bad plan, missus.

- No, I am serious, we cannot turn off the fire alarm

- But it will go off.

- Well, why don't we discuss this IF it goes off

- I am sorry to say that you obviously have no clue what you are talking about. The room will be filled with smoke. As a matter of fact, we will have to ask people with asthma, allergies or a weak heart to leave the room

- Eh.. You are #4 on the programme, right? The one right before the break? The *reads* Poetry and Performance Arts? I am sure it will be okay. It is normal to be a little nervous. So I told the lady to (gently and politely) shove it, and called the fire department, explaining that the fire alarm would be going off in about 3 hours, but that there was nothing to worry about, and that it would be down to incompetence. I met Magnus about 40 minutes before we were to go on stage, and we decided to paint each other. He painted my face and upper body, and we slit the back of my T-shirt, so it could be easily ripped off. He was dressed up in some kind of Dracula outfit. Which seemed to fit nicely to the occation. Before we knew of it, we were called to the stage. My heart went from 200 to 300 bpm, and adrenaline was seeping out through every pore in my body. But.. We still hadn't practiced!!

We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn

So, very unceremoniously, we walked on stage. I lit a single candle on the front of the stage, while Magnus rigged up some sort of podium, and stood behind it. I wired the last pyrotech things that we had unwired for safety purposes, and the audience was getting uneasy. Please, may I have your attention. Whatever happens to me on stage will not affect you. I am a trained professional, and I have practised this type of shows many times. We would, however, like you to take note of the safety exits. Please note that there are three members of the audience who are sitting with fire extinguishing equipment. These people are trained to do their job, but if anything should happen, please do not obstruct them. If we turn on the lights in the room, that means you will need to leave the hall in a calm and orderly fashion. Anyone with asthma or allergies to smoke, and anyone with a weak heart would be well advised to go drink coffee in the lobby right about now. You are about to see the show of a lifetime. I tossed the note with my safety announcement aside, and was smiling as I noticed that, rather than moving away or leaving the room, people were moving closer. Suddenly, Magnus started reading the first line of the poem. The Pain of Grueling Fires of Doom

The single strands of Hitler's Beard

... He wasn't reading the poem. He was proclaiming it. The words flowing from his mouth as if he meant every word of it. Trying to convince the audience. Trying to evangelise its message. Feeling proud, I bent forward to light my torches in the candle. While reading the poem, Magnus turned towards me, and started walking. I remember being thoroughly surprised at him obviously having learned the poem by heart. Then I noticed him saying words I definitely didn't write. He was ad-libbing seamlessly between my poetry and whatever showed up in his mind there and then, something he did several times during the show. Reaching for me with his right hand, he nodded towards the bottle of petrol standing on the floor. I understood, and threw a splash of petrol on my shirt. Then, gently touching my shirt with my torch, I set myself on fire. With the sound of a small dog barking, my whole shirt went up in flames. Magnus grabbed it at my chest, which was also where the flames were strongest. He continued ad-libbing the poem as he ripped the shirt right off my back, and held the black, burning piece of fabric above his head, as I was screaming off the top of my lungs, pretending to be hurt. At the end of the scream, we both looked over at each other. And the show began. Hysterically screaming each line of the poem, Magnus started setting off pyrotech effects. He had forgotten which effect was where, and just fired them at random. The first effect blasted off three feet away from my leg, while I was juggling with three burning torches. And the poem kept droning on. I dipped my hand in petrol, and set my hand on fire. I breathed fire off my burning hand, as Magnus started sending burning shreds of metal all over the stage with the angle grinder. Burning sparks of metal were bouncing off my body (and, I discovered, burning their way into my skin, but I was too high on adrenaline to notice), as the odd word from the poem sifted through the noise. After ripping the angle grinder from Magnus' hands, I did the same thing to him. Then, as if we had practised it, we stopped, and straightened up from our fighting stances. Letting the angle grinder spin down, the room was filled with an eerie silence. The soft flapping sound of the flames of the torches could be heard. Suddenly, he stuck out his tongue, and we bowed forward, touching his tongue with mine, for everybody to see. Marilyn Manson style. Gene Simmons style. We noticed a photographer from the local newspaper line up to take a picture of us. Magnus nodded at one of our major pyro effects, and I nodded back. Standing spread-eagled on the edge of the stage, holding a torch in each hand, I felt, more than heard or saw, the blast from the pyrotech device behind me go off. The scolding heat behind me nearly pushed me off the stage. Already off balance, I decided to jump. Diving face-first off a stage is not something that is generally recommended. Especially not when you are holding firebreathing liquid in your mouth, and if you are holding two brightly-burning juggling torches. Magnus, cuing the CD player connected to the concert-grade PA system, had Coal Chamber's Sway ("The Roof.. The roof.. The roof is on fire", a cover of the Bloodhound Gang song.) blasting at a disgustingly loud volume. I was crashing towards the floor in front of the stage, in the 3 meter wide gap between the stage and the judges table, almost flattening the photographer that was kneeling to get her best shot. On the floor, I breathed fire in the general direction of the judges, before sinking together in a big pile, and climbing, with much bravado, back on stage. On stage, I curled to a ball, with burning torches splayed around me. My hair was on fire. I lay there, breathing heavily, while Magnus set off our last few pyro props (fireballs). Then, I held my breath, while Magnus bowed and took the applause from the audience. It seemed to go on and on and on. The curtain was drawn, and I got up. Show is over.

The verdict

Judges panel; "We liked your performance. It was very powerful, but badly planned; It was very difficult to hear the words at times, and the fire alarm going off was quite disturbing. It also seemed awfully dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that we are not going to send you on to the next round. Please never come back to the UKM"*

The result

My hair grew back after about a month.The scars on my arms from the pyrotechnics blowing up too close to me, and the painful elbow from my dive down from the stage subsided slowly. It only took me a few days to pick out the scraps of metal that had embedded themselves, glowing red, into my skin. Everybody we spoke to after the show was offended that we didn't win the competition. Even the winners of the competition expressed some sort of confusion what they were doing with the first prize. We made the first page of the local newspaper (the picture? Me diving down while breathing fire. You can see the flames lick the roof, and you can see from the motion blur that I am crashing straight towards the photographer) and the second page of the regional newspaper. The regional television asked us if we would be willing to do the show again, on camera. Magnus and myself looked at each other, shook our heads, and decided that we'd had enough of this for a while. My girlfriend of the time almost broke up with me for kissing a guy on stage. My parents never commented on that part of the show. And my sister still thinks I am the coolest person in the world.

*) This is not literally what they said, of course, but that is what they said. If you know what I mean.



I would love to write the whole poem here, but I won't, for several reason. The primary reason ("Yeh, keep telling yourself that, SharQ", "shut up") is that it was never meant to be heard. The real reason is that I lost it ages ago.