After spending the past 4 hours in a folkloristic stupor of translating these finely crafted Finnish poems of Karelian national epicness into cliché-ridden lines of heavy metal lyrics in English, I’m now very grateful indeed to punch in a full stop to it for the time being and switch on to writing this blog where I can say things I’m in no way allowed to say in the context of heroic verse about skyforging and stuff. Like “fuck”.

So: Fuck. Fucking hell, to be more precise. With maybe an exclamation mark added at the end. My head is swimming with archaic terms and descriptions of deeds more grandiose and large-scale than a person born on the 20^th century could possibly come to grips with. The original plan was to really delve into Kalevala, in both languages, before writing anything down. That plan is now discarded on the grounds of being too much to handle. As I stuffed new information of happenings and goings-on into my memory, older bits of knowledge kept flaking and falling off at an increasing pace. So now I just take a maximum of four verses at a time under careful scrutiny and proceed from there, hoping to maintain some of the original quality of the text. Four songs translated so far, eleven still to go. On top of all the other interesting things I’m now also aware of Various Charms, including a Charm to Calm Down Snakes, a Charm to Prevent Dogs from Barking, and a Charm for Magic Ski Equipment. I’m sure this recent awareness has enriched my life in some as of yet undiscovered way, but I can’t help wondering whether there exists a Charm for Getting Back In Touch With Reality. Cause I could really use that now.

THIS WEEKS ALBUM OF CHOICE:
“Perfect Strangers” by Deep Purple. I don’t know why I dug this album out but I’m moderately glad I did. It’s better than I remembered. I originally waited for it to be released with the kind of feverish anticipation one might wait for the Second Coming and when it finally was released, back in ’84, I took to it like only a 14 year old who loved the Purple albums of 70’s can and who had no idea what a lyric like “Knocking At Your Back Door” actually meant. Later on I found it a bit appalling and not holding up very well against the passing of time. Listening to it now, the overall sound is a bit too 80’s to be called any good, especially the drums sound tinny and powerless, and Ian Gillan’s style of bawling vocal delivery gets too much at times, but all in all the good songs outnumber the not-so-good songs. “Wasted Sunsets” is a genuinely good and beautiful song, one of Purple’s greatest ballads in my opinion, with touching lyrics. Mostly the lyrics on the album are along the lines of embarrassing and/or plain horrible. The present day me, as opposed to a 14-year old me, knows very well what “Knocking At Your Back Door” means and can only admire the nerve of a lyricist who can come up with something like that. It’s a great song though, containing all the elements of a classic Purple sound. The title track is another magnificent one, as is the closer “Hungry Daze”.

Shame it didn’t last. The follow up album “House Of Blue Light” was a horrible let down. Here’s the video for “Perfect Strangers”.




THIS WEEKS’ BOTTLES OF CHOICE:
Upon entering the liquor store, I did get distracted by an label showing an elephant, just as I assumed I would, in the last post. So I bought all kinds of other bottles but not the Fillaboa albarino I was after. Later on the existing Fillaboa, lurking in the drinks cabinet, was duly opened and consumed, and although it didn’t turn out to be that remarkable, yesterday I still found myself hunting after the remaining bottles in various Alkos around my vicinity.
In the evening we had a lovely dinner at the Loved One’s brothers’ house and had some Veuve Clicquot vintage champagne among other things. As my opportunities to have genuine champagne are usually somewhat limited this came as a pleasant surprise. We brought them a bottle of Lagar De Cervera albarino as a gift and I hope they will have as nice a time with it as we would have had.