Spotlight: Harald Toksværd
Harald speaks bluntly in this interview with PLU. Buy his book. You can also catch his new single here under his alias Harry Eucrow.
Who are you and why should I give a shit about what you say?
Another over-privileged white kid who thinks someone ought to give a shit about what they say, and honestly, you probably shouldn’t. I’m 23, from Denmark. I do music under the names Harry Eucrow and Saint Lazarus, performance poetry, prose and activism. I just released my first novel, Veni Veni Veni, which is a sort of psychological, generational travel story about Europe and the times we live in.
“Essentially, it’s a book about alienation.”
And the real question is, do I have a new and relevant perspective on the world as it is today? I don’t think I do. We have no lack of stories about over-privileged white kids going out and taking on the world as if it belonged to them. And I guess what I want to do is confront that privilege and reflect on its consequences – the way it shapes us and the world, what to do with it. I don’t have a lot of answers to the problems of today, no grand thesis for existence. But I do have a story that takes on these old narratives, and tries to confront their inadequacies, tries to explain why we need to write new and better stories, with new and better perspectives. I guess that’s why you should give a shit. And if you know an edgy teenage boy who really needs to take himself less seriously and open the fuck up to the world, maybe my book can help them get there.
What are some of the dominant themes of your book?
Essentially, it’s a book about alienation. I’ve taken to calling it a postmodern Parisian bildung-novel, as it’s a sort of pastiche over this classic narrative of the poor, young poet who goes to Paris to find love, his art and himself. In a way, it’s meant as a long-needed euthanization of the genre. It’s about living in times of crisis but being too self-absorbed to engage with it, about the death of the 19th and 20th centuries’ grand ideologies. About travelling for the sake of travelling, and about the way we construct narratives about ourselves that neither we nor the world around us can live up to. A eulogy for all the bullshit we believed as teenagers, and the assholes we were. An anti-travelogue, as it were.
Hear the poetry in the music of Harald’s band Saint Lazarus.
What are your connections to PLU and other creative communities and how have they helped you?
Well, this book would never have been written if it weren’t for PLU. You guys feature in it, actually. It was based, originally, on a trip I took at 19, hitchhiking around Europe shortly after finishing high school, where I ended up in Paris. At that point I was completely exhausted, mentally and physically, out of money, had three months of hangovers built up and didn’t really know what to do with myself. Through a friend, I was introduced to the anglophone poetry scenes here, and the first poems I ever wrote, I wrote to perform at PLU. The book ended up heavily fictionalized, but some of my experiences and the people I met at your scene are preserved almost completely. It was my first taste of sort of participating in this artsy scene I’d always yearned for – though, of course, reality was never as romantic as fiction. When I got home, I found the local scenes in Copenhagen and started going there regularly to read, and if it hadn’t been for that, I don’t know if I would’ve ever written much of anything.
What pisses you off?
Capitalism, slam poetry and boring clothes.
What is art for?
Whatever the fuck you want it to be for. If you want to spend the rest of your life writing poetry for your own eyes only, that’s your prerogative. As a chronic attention junkie, I make art to expand myself beyond the boundaries of my body or my voice. To crystallize some sense of self and the world outside of myself, and hopefully connect with it through that. But I do think art, or good art, at least, needs to be either beautiful or important. There’s nothing wrong with an image that’s nothing but an image if it resonates. But if it’s not meant to be simply an image, you need to have something to say. I loathe art for art’s sake, art that only speaks to art. You need to have a critique, reflections, questions, whatever. But you need to want to do something in the world, or you’re just fucking around.
Anything else you want to say to your fans?