On Old Age

You don't have to be a six-footer, you don't have to have a great brain

The first one was terrible. I was sweating, I went back and forth several times, I tried, gave up, I waited untill there were fewer people around — and then I just did it. (After having practiced while riding my bike first.)  I positioned myself so that I could film both myself and the little mermaid, I swallowed once, pushed record and started reciting. (Unless reciting is too big a word.):

After that I went to the castle, where I thought one of the guards would knock me over:

Then I went to Strøget, with lots of people potentially eavesdropping (but they seldom do, and even if they do, so what?):

Before I tried Nyhavn:

And Kongens Have (tried three times Hamlet's To be or not to be, but riverrun was easier):

I felt like David Attenborough (hero alert), mysteriously being slightly out of breath while talking to a camera — but if he had forgotten his words like me, he would have demanded another take.

And at last, in the end, I had to sing a song.

https://youtube.com/shorts/6PP0WADALLc?si=I0LVZYX5t0XzlL3M

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Lessons? That it's almost always much worse than you think. That it's great to have a repertoire of memorised poems and songs. (I memorised three sonnets by Shakespeare before I hitchhiked for 42 days 15 years ago — and these, and the beginning of Finnegans Wake along with snippets from Hamlet, are still just about the only poems I know by heart.) That it didn't matter that I don't have time to join a community theatre this year, to walk the street and recite Shakespeare is good enough for the moment.

It was embarrassing to suddenly go all Shakespeare into my camera for no apparent reason. And the singing was even more embarrassing, I had to hide go somewhere secluded to avoid looks from passers-by. I am a Norwegian in Denmark, after all, it's an obvious sign of insanity here to raise your voice like that. But putting it on my blog is OK, apparently.

And you know what? In the end, I loved it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Even if someone can hear me. Even if no-one can hear me, and it cannot even be considered a caricature of an audition.

I just have to expand my repertoire first.