July has ambushed us again, and you know what that means: another whack of rock groups.
As I've explained in the past, July is that month when readership plummets, Zen monasteries close for the summer, and I run about the house naked… figuratively, at least. Which is to say, I vary from the more serious business of this blog and indulge a silly whim or two.
Of which this one has become an annual tradition.
So if you're new to this ritual, click on the embedded link above for the particulars. For the rest of you, gird your loins for:
Rock Groups 2022
Debris
Manley Toggle and the Light Crew
Dipswitch
Quadruped
Reg-O-Matic (rapper named Reginald)
Mångata (ethereal electronica)
Petrovascular
Tom Collins and the Highballs
Shotgun Wedding
Peristaltik
Dead Right
Looseleaf
Solid State
The Plethora
Airship
Dish Rack
Moosemeat
Tazelwurm
FlashBang
Crossbow
Sparehead #1 (don't pronounce the #)
Turdücken
Bandsaw
Hi-Horse
The Whistleblowers (Irish folk-rock)
The Wheelers
Tomnahurich (Scottish folk-rock)
The No Code (accent on No)
Les Castors du Rhône
Bright Blue
Rockbound
Skred
Monkeynut
Tony Zamboni and the Ice Machine
Blatweasel
The Rescue Dogs
Homogenous Mass (rap group)
Stretch
Avvakum
Aqua Regia
Tan Ru and the Nomads
Onyx
Dirty Thieving Bastards
Sinlahekin
Cutter John and the Penguins
(Photo courtesy of Markus Spiske and Rawpixel.com.)
"It could have been worse."
So says the young protagonist of Mitt liv som hund ("My Life as a Dog"). For him, every misfortune is an opening to Kuan Yin.
That the speaker is twelve; that his life is crap; and that there's no reason to suspect it's going to get any better, tells you this is no ordinary kid.
My Life as a Dog was made in the Eighties, when my parents' generation came into their "power years" – the moment just before retirement when a peer group finds itself running things. Movie-wise, the result was a slew of barely-fictionalised memoirs of childhoods spent negotiating World War II and its aftermath.
A festival of these films – all of them superb – might include Le Grand Chemin, Empire of the Sun, Hope and Glory, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Stand By Me, Europa Europa, and De aanslag.
But this one is my favourite.
In Dog we shadow Ingemar – a Swedish kid deserted by luck and most of his family – as he strives not to upset anyone. The fact that he takes Laïka, first Earthling in space, as his role model, is just the first instance of his rare insight.
He needs it. His mom is dying. His family is destitute; his dad abandoned them long ago. Ingemar
and his older brother are trapped between the need to placate and care for their increasingly erratic mother and keeping the social workers at bay.
His only friend is his dog Sickan. As long as they're together, he believes, everything's OK. (Nor is he the first human to conclude that dogs are better company than people.)
Canine loyalty is a godsend for Ingemar, because notwithstanding his unfailing goodwill, he's a lightning rod for disaster. Other kids take advantage of him; adults project their fears and disappointments on him. And he just doesn't fit in. He's too happy, too game, too prone to pluck the straight laces of Cold War Stockholm. Everywhere he's told he's one too many: unsuitable, unwelcome, a jonah. Like his cosmonaut hero, he's a defenceless alien, suspended far from home in an airless hell.
And then he's blasted off to an uncle he's never met, in a rural wasteland known to cartographers as Småland. (Literally: "Small Land".)
Nevertheless, to take a page from our young friend: "it could be worse". Småland is green. The sun is soft. And the first words he hears on touching down are, "You've brought the nice weather with you!"
One would be tempted to dismiss the little village he ends up in as urban romanticism: a stable, supple community where generations live in harmony. But director Lasse Hallström seems to be pointing out that there are two ways to raise children. In Småland it's for grown-ups to take care of kids, not the other way 'round. And as the old saw would have it, the whole village is actively engaged in just that.
Better still: Uncle Gunnar turns out to share the same quirky DNA as his nephew. Under his roof, Ingemar gets the adult direction he's been missing: loving, understanding, respectful of his nature.
Not that there isn't friction; this is, after all, 1958. A ringing Brigitte Bardot lookalike signals Sweden's impending sexual liberation. Girls muscle into sports. Boys mock the Church. Immigrants crowd in. TV mesmerises a neighbourhood. Tempers flare.
But then they flare out again. Nothing is that important in Småland.
Young Anton Glanzelius received a mountain of justified praise for his bodhisattva-league performance as young Ingemar. Now a television producer, he says, "I just played myself." And though actor Tomas von Brömssen caught a little criticism for his Stockholm accent, one would be hard-pressed to find a closer reading of rustic Uncle Gunnar: a carefully-measured jumble of eccentricity and responsibility.
But what truly makes 
Dog is Hallström's palpable affection for children. His instinctive grasp of their perspective and mannerisms recalls François Truffaut's own kindergeist masterpiece, Argent de Poche. You'll want to hug every one of these kids. (Even Ingemar's damaged brother.)
A few critics took issue with what they perceived to be a surfeit of treacle in Hallström's vision, but the well-researched trauma symptoms subtly insinuated into Ingemar's personality attest to significant, if unspoken, darkness. (His "drinking problem", for one, is a documented neurosis of emotionally disturbed children.)
It's just that not quite everybody in his life is unreachable. Also, Ingemar has this theory about dukkha – one he's backed up with hard data:
In fact, I've been kinda lucky. I mean, compared to others. You have to compare, so you can get a little distance from things.
Like Laïka. She really must have seen things in perspective. It's important to keep a certain distance.
I think about that guy who tried to set a world record for jumping over buses with a motorcycle. He lined up 31 buses.
If he'd left it at 30, maybe he would have survived.
Until next time: keep a tight rope, droogies.
So I'm doodling around on the Enlightenment Superpath, and I surf into Arvesund, a Swedish company that makes prefab outbuildings. I browse through attractive garden sheds, summer cabins, sauna houses, and the odd lusthus, when suddenly I discover their Eremitens koja: a purpose-designed, so-designated hermit hut, from the drawing table of architect Mats Theselius!
My price inquiry to the company has 
gone unanswered, but another firm sells a kit to these lines, made entirely of recycled wood, for 96 500 Swedish kronor (about $11,300 Yank, at current rates). Models with new-wood exteriors sell for 79 500 SEK ($9,300 US); new wood overall for 67 500 SEK ($7,900US).
This is not the kind of money a hermit carries around; I could build at least eight such cabins for the cost of that lowest-price model. (Four, with woodstoves.) But I gotta hand it to the designer: he gets it. If it's true that some of the serving suggestions in Arvesund's literature are a bit, shall we say, spiritually encumbered, the dimensions and basic accommodations are entirely on-spec. This is indeed "just enough". Good on ya, Mats!
But the mere existence of this product raises a burning question: are we hermits becoming that thing that all populations must be to have legitimacy in the Red Dust World: a market? Will those glossy up-market magazines that pass for the Buddhist press soon be carrying adverts for elegant artisanal Japanese rice kettles and fair-trade rushlights made by Indonesian villagers?
Estimated Category of Risk: NBL.
(Photographs courtesy of Arvesund; front view located on Materialicious.com; interior and side view courtesy of Poppytalk.com; specs courtesy of SW Byggritningar AB.)
