Words by

Atli Bollason

Photo by

Art Bicnick

Don’t surrender to mediocrity

I recently turned 40. 

The days are long, and I feel good. In fact, I’ve always been happy, and I’ve never felt like I was lacking anything. 

If I’ve ever lacked something, it might be pain. Sadness. Around the age of 11, I began seeking out melancholic music and stories, in order to expand my otherwise happy-go-lucky glitter-pink emotional spectrum. And the depth I found in that melancholy state of mind became almost addictive. It felt divine. 

And that real, divine beauty (as deep as time itself) felt wildly different from what was usually shown in cinemas or on the radio or stacked on most nightstands. I very quickly began to feel like all of that was just shallow filler. Froth. And I also realised that for beauty to feel true, it also had to be somehow unique — or new, at least to me. So I started actively seeking things that were simply different. Things that made me gape and ask, “What the hell is this? What lunatic came up with this? How?” 

One big crap-brown pancake 

You can still find such things — but mostly on the far edges. If I look broadly across the cultural landscape, it feels like everything is being flattened. Wherever you go, it’s the same people in the same awful Tommy Hilfiger t-shirts shopping at the same shitty stores, listening to the same shitty music, and laughing at the same shitty memes. And yes — I honestly believe it’s significantly worse now than it was when I was growing up.

I’m old enough to remember when the internet arrived. Suddenly, I had a 12-year-old pen pal in Birmingham who also loved the video game Marathon. We found each other. This incredible technology connected everyone, and suddenly even the freaks from Raufarhöfn or Drangsnes could find their own community. And that dream lived for a few years. But then the internet just became a massive cacophonous shopping mall. According to the theory, the web and the free flow of capital was supposed to be liberating and bring variety — but it turned out to be a steamroller flattening everything into the same crap-brown pancake. 

I’m not just talking about art and entertainment. All meaning, all value; it’s all been flattened into the same life-coaching, start-up, business school, Under Armour, Paw Patrol, Marvel, Kringlan bullshit language — so that everything we do, create, and think is measured and valued on the same scale. And according to that scale, a good life is one where you spend half your waking hours producing junk, and the other half buying junk. Those who produce the most junk can buy the most junk — and somehow, they’re considered the winners of this deranged game that drives every decision everywhere. 

But I’ve never understood that game. I have a really hard time grasping what it’s even for — let alone why everyone is expected to play. Even the goddamn penguins on the Norfolk Islands. 

Sand in the gears 

Naturally, one can feel disheartened. But what I’ve tried to do is search for meaning elsewhere. To put my energy into recognising and cultivating value in something other than PowerPoint bullet points. And even though I wasn’t consciously thinking about these things when I was 11 years old and seeking deep beauty, it’s this same mindset that has kept me going — often without me even realising it.

Instead of the tepid soup that dominates everything, I try to seek out the small and the specific. That which is so tiny that it’s not even spare change in the purse of capitalism. Not even a single pixel on the ultra-HD screen of the present. I seek out the strange and different and beautiful and ugly. Something colourful. That you feel. Something that isn’t oil in the machine — but sand in the gears.

You see, taste isn’t something you’re born with, or that’s set in stone. Taste is a choice — a choice of what you choose to pay attention to. And if you care about every colour of the spectrum, then you have to notice them all, support them, fight for them. Taylor Swift doesn’t need me. Grammy winners don’t need me. Nor do the Nobel Prize winners.

But the faceless musicians behind obscure Bandcamp accounts, the authors of books printed in runs of 100 copies but still available for peanuts at the discount book fair, the directors whose films disappear into the stream’s abyss after two or three festival screenings… These are the people who need us. These are the heroes. The people who create and create and don’t give up even if they never get a dime in their pocket — or even a pat on the back.

Of course, I’ve attended plenty of terrible gigs in dingy basements where awful bands played D-list mediocrity rock — but I’ve also been touched by God. I’ve stared into deep beauty with 20 other weirdos who were willing to wade through sweat and stink to find grace. 

And when you’ve experienced that, you carry a secret. A wonderful secret place that only a few know. A white, sheltered beach with palm trees casting shade, where the ocean is turquoise and never too cold and the sunset is like fireworks. A secret place that is instantly ruined the moment when lobster-pink chavs in Hilfiger tees show up with a Soundbox and pint-sized Stellas and start posting stories… and before long, your beautiful diamond has turned into mushy crap. 

“Grow up” 

Why am I thinking of this on the eve of my 40th birthday, of my life’s solstice? Well, because it’s precisely around this time that people often begin to embrace, both jokingly and sincerely, being “middle-aged.” They may start thinking it’s fine to play golf. Or that it’s okay to enjoy whatever’s on the pop charts. That it’s perfectly acceptable to just turn off your brain and watch some fluff on Netflix instead of dragging yourself out to a concert in Mengi where four Uzbeks are chopping eggplants with contact mics. Some even try to sell this as some kind of maturity. That it’s good to bury the hatchet with the mainstream. To stop this endless resistance. To approach everything “on its own terms.” To “grow up.” 

I call bullshit. 

That’s not maturity. That’s surrender. That’s withering. That’s dying. 

If you ever feel that the sand is starting to melt and becoming oil, an easy way to resist is to consciously support your local community. I fully understand that not all of us have the time to immerse ourselves in Lithuanian experimental choirs or Caribbean concrete poetry. But surely we can all manage to swing by Tjarnarbíó, Iðnó, Mengi, or Núllið, or buy our clothes from No No Yes of Course or Kiosk, read Icelandic authors, and check out what our friends are up to. After all, they are our friends. Support them. Be curious. Give them a chance. 

To the small, the strange, the specific. Long may they live!