The story, in brief
And it goes a little something like…
Rolling off the ridge of home town repetition and a bit of heartbreak, I followed an old friend’s offer to come to Finland.
Whilst there for a month, I met a musician. We decided to work on a project together and apply for grants to fund said project.
Returning home, I dismantled a life, put it into boxes and hit the road. Where all roads lead to Mooseville.
It took a few months to reach Mooseville again.
But, this was okay as the contact there was supposed to be setting things up.
Apparently.
Arrived into the calm before final shoot-out in a Western edge of Winter.
The project fell apart the first day as the guitarist and now boyfriend to the musician was revealed to be a violent belligerent alcoholic and the musician to have some undisclosed problems.
I had rent of a place for two months, so there I was stuck, trying to figure out what or where next with one of the worst winters in recent memory.
A rain monkey; I grew to understand the many silent languages of snow.
Most of them suck.
The ones that are not belligerent have low tolerance issues.
Whilst thumb twiddling in the celestial waste-ennui of what the fuck now? I stumbled upon someone with expertise in a field and over ill-considered golden brown coloured ethanol (Jaloviina aka “Jallu”) we decided to team up and extract a project or two from Helsinki.
This led to a complete stranger, who was apparently an economist trying to break my neck in an unprovoked attack from behind and learning to teach English in Poland.
It was a touching journey of self-discovery. One, where I was mostly given names for various things that were wrong with me, some that weren’t and the reoccurring message of “Don’t Try: But here, give me your ideas and I’ll do them for you. As me. They would be mine. I would have your ideas, as my ideas. Do you understand? You would be giving me, your creative ideas, for me to do, as me, without crediting you. That is okay yes? It is a Finnish thing. I can have?”
The thing with deep tissue damage in the throat is; it is a little bit like getting haunted by the ghost hag or randomly force choked as you twinge it. This can lead to sudden panic as you struggle with your throat on a subway platform trying to figure out how to get it to reopen without collapsing.
Throughout this though, I developed a strange affection for Mooseville.
It has a faraway frontier charm that’s as close to dying and rebirth as you can get without chipping a molar on the old revolver you found in a skip, amongst that dead doctor’s belongings.
So, even through a couch surfed period of homelessness, I made every effort to stay.
To learn the language and settle in to wait for the long dark.
Along the way, I got unknowingly involved in rental tax fraud that nearly destroyed my chances at remaining. Had a brief relationship with someone trying to will themselves into a death obsessed cross between an Alan Moore character and Brian De Palma knock-off Medea.
Found out I was dying a lot faster than “we’re all dying Sullivan, we’re all dying”.
Accidentally got swept up into the weird web of someone in the employment office that appeared to have a grudge. Discovered the Finnish electronic music underground.
Lost a lover. Lost a girlfriend. Found an apartment and a new creative partner, renewed work with a couple of old creative partners. Got defrauded by a nightclub owner and the PR man for a large festival. Tricked into getting heavily pepper sprayed in the eyes.
Discovered my landlord had lied to get the rental contract signed. Entered into a long period of sonic and vibration, low frequency torture from the surreal combination of an illegal dancehall and ventilation.
In between, I got stabbed repeatedly by the classroom bully as he attempted to blind me and then kill me in response for interrupting his public humiliation and taunting of a fellow classmate.
Discovered how difficult it is to recover from PTSD when trapped in a sonic torture box. Met a series of death threats, had my criminal case tampered with. Skipped through meetings with a malpracticing public health doctor with an eating disorder. Discovered a misogynist hiphop producer secretly recording me with his phone. Got accused of being a paedophile on the run by the print shop lady who has never met me outside of her print shop (“What would my mother think?” of her dark fantasy, apparently, was the core question).
Had a grown-ass man, ex-attorney, auxiliary judge and husband to a very high flying board member of the Finnish Bar Association and member of the panel who selects the judiciary. Stand over me, walk around me, miming shooting and pumping and shooting a shotgun at a seated me, whilst telling me “No one needs to get shot.”
As an aside, you have to wonder, if doing that does not intimidate a person, should you continue sending them bigoted jokes?
Got to talk to and briefly hug, in thanks and everything, Drew McDowall (as good as you hoped & ooh those Coil hugs. Helm is lovely also.). Hired a lawyer who charged me for doing nothing and led me to believe he was doing work he was not. Including but not limited to filing cases he never filed. Then attempting to charge me nearly three times the going rate.
Was taunted by a building board for concerns of health and safety regarding their illegal construction. Found out, that cough, that might be asbestosis… missing building asbestos test results and expensive x-rays means a surprise for another day!
Threatened with legal action if I left and forced to stay to make sure no more “anomalies” happened with a case where witnesses disappeared and the events began to swirl and change.
Stress eats everything like the Nothing in that story with the wish sugarglider. PTSD will distort and lame even the most secure working and romantic relationships. Especially if the sufferer is under threat and put in a position between homelessness and living in a vibrating torture box.
If you’re lucky…
You will be allowed a moment to surface.
Up out of the water through the ice hole of cortisol to see how much it destroys memory. But, only a moment. Unless a very strong mannequin hand can grab a hold, you will slide back beneath the water and under the ice.
And forget.
Once everything else had been worn and chipped away.
Robbed of time, money and health.
With ventilation inflicted hyperacusis that prevents any meaningful work on music.
Alone.
I was forced to return to the thing I had given up.
Words?
Words.
Picture found on Google. Used without permission. Found here: Camu
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You can support the struggle through this nonsense and the rest, if you like, by buying Mooseville99 a ko fi or three or more ;)
Thank you for reading.
