Tråden om Bruno K. Öijer

When I was 13, I carried out newspapers on Sundays during freezing cold winter mornings. We were poor, and I needed to get a few bucks together. I received a printed note from the foreman the first morning. It said that many great men and even presidents of the United States had begun their careers as newspaper couriers. I thought that was a good idea. As president of the United States, I would overnight eliminate all poverty and all injustice. But then I got hold of a book on American political science. It said you must be born in the United States to become president. I could at most become a member of Congress. That’s when I shelved my presidential plans.

I became interested early on in American history and culture. When I was 10 or 11 years old, I read nonfiction books about the North American Native Americans. Even at that age, I saw through how falsely they were portrayed in Hollywood movies. I realized that the growth of the United States was based on extermination and genocide. A little later, I read about the Civil War and the enslavement of Black people. After Kennedy was assassinated, I obtained books on LBJ's vision of the Great Society and followed the progress of the civil rights movement, etc.

I have always been a fan of American film noir and of the Western film genre, which after all contained some works that were not deceptive. From my teens onward, I read a lot of literature about the colonization of the West and the lawless border areas and studied the historical truth behind semi-mythological figures such as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Wyatt Earp. Of course, the literature has also been a great source of inspiration for me. Let me just mention Thoreau, Whitman, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Hemingway.

But perhaps it is the music that has meant the most. All blues. And then the whole line of good singer-songwriters from the fifties onward.

[...]

For more than four months [1979-80], I drifted across the city, trying to take in as much as possible while keeping careful notes of environments and events. I enjoyed myself very much. I rarely returned home at night. Often ended up at bars with the worst reputation on the Lower East Side where the drinks never cost more than $1. Other, more fashionable places I liked were Fanelli’s Café and Kettle of Fish in the Village.

The proximity to Soho meant a lot. The old beautiful brick houses with dim yellowish lighting at night like an old opera backdrop. At that time, artists could rent large unfurnished lofts there for a cheap price, with a toilet placed unsheltered in the middle of the floor. Every night there was a party in a loft; I met many, many artists and writers in passing. I have no idea what happened to them. But it was a great time. Soon they would all be kicked out and would not even be able to afford a studio out in the Bronx. I saw extreme poverty and vulnerability along the Bowery. Addicts, beggars, and outsiders covered in newsprint literally froze to death during the winter. There was dirt, blood, broken glass, and violence everywhere in these neighborhoods. Shootings and ambulance sirens were constant.

Greenwich Village, on the other hand, was a nice and kind place in many ways. I was at some cafés where poets unknown to me read. [They all] read from the page and [were] nervous; they tried to be funny sometimes in the middle of a serious poem to get the audience involved, make the audience laugh. I got tired of that and stopped going to poetry readings.

One of the best things was that music was played everywhere. I was at CBGB and Max's Kansas City, but punk was over. I did not see any of the famous bands. But I did, for example, end up in a small bar where Kinky Friedman performed. And that felt good. It gave me more than when I saw a punk band wrapped in bloody pig intestines at CBGB.