I remember ... We in the band were staying in three places. I
was in the cute little house with the cherry trees all around.
Björk was in a slightly bigger one where a little brook ran
through an overgrown yard, and fire flies lit up the pitch-black
American night.
“The
band” of course lived in a barn ...
The
dinner was held by the small backhouse, right near the cottage
(a silo, actually), where Sigtryggur got to stay with his wife
and daughter. (Four places?) The lunatics from the band Tesla
had been confined there and the kitchen facilities left a little
to be desired. What you call chicken, the Americans call “spare
ribs” (or sparirif, like we might possibly call it in Icelandic).
What
was special about these ribs from an entire pig family was that
they were flown to us from some spare rib processing station in
Tennessee or WannabeMe. (Einar remembers better, he ate more of
them than anyone.)
After
you fell asleep at 17:30, those of us who could hold our liquor
better (mostly COOLERs and COOLER LIGHTS) kept on discussing books
and boxing. It was an enjoyable and interesting conversation where
even I could form a special and very personal opinion about something
that I don’t quite remember right now. The reason that I
don’t remember the discussion word-for-word is that when
I was ready to slam Einar down with a literary left hook, Sigtryggur’s
little daughter Una came and yelled, “there’s a dog,
he’s eating the garbage!” This dog was of course the
friend of your American chicken, and is called whatever he chooses
to be called at any given time. But in my mind this dog will always
be the dog Black Bear that ate spare ribs from the best spare
rib restaurant in America, while you slept. And now I can’t
remember any more. No, actually, while I
think of it: the story’s good, I don’t have any comments
to make...