14 | some references
Jun. 3rd, 2025 04:16 amListening to this tonight.
The whole album, Music for People in Trouble, is amazing, but this is one of my favourite songs on it. It's raw and atmospheric, poetic and haunting. I've used it for the part of my OIFDEO/ESVST universe that takes place in Norway, where Marcel and his partner, Jean Louis, end up after years of corrupt and criminal living in an unnamed part of Central Europe. Even emperors retire, is the tagline.
I came to think of Marcel yesterday, feeling an urge to reread OIFDEO, my novel about his late teens in Amsterdam, but at the same time I just wasn't in the mood for that much tragedy and his very narrow mindset. I love him as a character, but he is extremely flawed - and at his worst during that time.
Twenty years later, he lives on a run-down farm in Norway with his long-term lover and former business partner, and during that period he grows as much as he's capable of and becomes as happy as it's possible for him to get. My girlfriend and I have a saying that goes, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you get, which we came up with due to these two specifically. And now I feel like exploring that part of Marcel's life some more.
It's around the same time that Jean Louis and Marie-Claude correspond, so timeline-wise it runs parallel to that and would work fine as prep for the July novel writing project. I'll have to ask my gf if she feels like diving a bit into it with me here in June. Will also need to reread some old drabbles and fics I've previously written from that era - or I might just go from what I remember and start from a blank page.
One of the things I've continuously used as inspiration for this universe is the poetry of Anise Koltz, a famous Luxembourgish poet - back from when the story took place in Luxembourg, rather in an unnamed imaginary Central European country. I love her poetry so much, I had a friend of mine who studies French translate some of her poems to Danish, to be able to continue to use her work as basis for my stories even as I changed languages. I have 10-15 ones as reference, most of them relate to Marie-Claude, but this one is very Marcel and Jean Louis. Especially in their Norway days.
*** by Anise Koltz
My deep-sea diving brother
can no longer walk
Flanked by sharp fins
he rejects the polluted and corrupt
non-aquatic world
He sides with the sharks
and attacks anyone
who enters
his waters
Visually, I stumbled upon this on Tumblr and it reminded me a lot of the surroundings around Marcel and Jean Louis' farm in Norway, a winter landscape. So I saved it as reference.

Frits Thaulow (1847-1906)
I should be asleep, but my anxiety is sky-high, I'm extremely conscious of my foot, nervous about something being wrong, although precisely nothing is alarming. Just one of those nights, I guess. It has been an intense past week, so maybe this is also just the reaction to that. It'll probably take the remainder of this week to really settle back into a routine again.
I must just do the best I can and make the best of it.