The Importance of Being Iceland

I have been reading The Importance of Being Iceland by Eileen Myles and trying to better understand my experience in Iceland. This book of art and poetry has helped me to realize that Iceland has changed me and it is capable of changing anyone who visits. I knew it would change me. Although I tried to keep my expectations at a minimum, the change that has occurred within my heart and soul has been very different than what I was expecting.

I feel compassion for this country who trusted it's roots. Who trusted that tradition would prevail over modernity. I feel compassion for this country who accepts being judged and looked at and talked about and blogged about by people who don't know any better. Its people have a lot of strength and courage.

While reading excerpts from Myles I realized that before my trip I was avoiding reading anything about Iceland that was skewed from my idealist views of this country. I read poetry, fictional stories, and excerpts about history. I read about the countryside and the ideal life that I wanted to believe existed and would somehow always exist. I researched things that appealed to me about Iceland, especially Reykjavik. With the ideas I formed in my head about this traditional, quaint place I was able to create a space that could never truly exist. This idealization made my time spent in Iceland much more reflective. The things I saw and felt evoked physical reactions. I could feel these emotions in my heart, body, and soul.

Here are some notes I took while reading Eileen Myles' excerpts of her feelings of Iceland.

• Iceland is like a gas station, a pit stop. America is becoming this place which is nothing, but Iceland is not.
• Unsteadiness is the country's biggest force. It is like a city of hotels where the water is always hot. Maybe Iceland is a more efficient America.
• Above all, Iceland is not an irritated place. Icelanders are very forgiving and no one is mad that you don't speak Icelandic.
• It reminded me of a comic book where the rocks were the people and they were just waiting for the settlers to go away.
• Icelanders are like poets who are good at being alone.
• Their language creates a specific sense of belonging.
• Their national strangeness is synonymous with some of the most uniquely untouched circumstances in the world.
• Roni Horn's Water Library - political statement, water from melted glaciers, a piece showing the world and your own monstrous human head invading it - this piece has been shown all over the world, but feels different in Iceland.
• You look at this landscape and you feel sublime things. It's like if America still looked like Hudson River Valley and artists came from all over to paint it.
• The Icelandic Love Corporation - art project consisting of four women playing with the environment as opposed to installing it.
• These people are perfectly unfriendly. It's a great country to live around if you like being lonely.
• Travel is not transcendence. It's immanence. It's trying to be here.
• Icelandic churches invoke a different kind of singing.
• What our global language, English, is doing - affecting and changing other culture's sounds, meanings, etc.