Someone who played the recorder and went to choir practice, a calm and low-voiced type. But—it was impossible not to like her. And to be allowed into Irene’s room across from the kitchen on the other side of the hall, in the evenings, in the rain, the black darkness on the other side of the window. Irene perched on her bed, on a light blue bedspread, knitting long scarves in subdued colors, or playing the recorder, the sheet music on a music stand next to the bed. Or, with a book: one of the four boy or girl books she had in her possession, the kind that when it is raining it just says, “The rain beat against the window.”
But to be allowed to come into this neatness, just ordinary things there: hairbrush, music stand, boy book, girl book, knitting, Johanna loved it regardless. Remembers how she used to stand in the doorway and stare at Irene, who was playing, stare and stare until Irene noticed her and put down her flute and looked up: “Hi, Lille, what, cat got your tongue?” And laughing, stretched out her arms toward Johanna. “Come here, you small silly changeling!” And at full speed Johanna had rushed right into her arms.
When Irene moved away from home, Johanna got her room. For a while, in the beginning, she tried to live like Irene, maintain the order and the neatness. But it did not go very welclass="underline" little by little everything was, is, one big mess anyway. Things—paper, books, pictures, this and that—all over the place, everywhere.
But still, with Irene, as if there was a fundamental difference between the two of them. Despite everything having been so different in the District when Irene was growing up; there was no Winter Garden or high school or school for artistic expression and theatrical performance where she would have had the opportunity to develop her recorder music to a professional level, like there would be later—the school Johanna attends, and Ulla Bäckström from Rosengården 2. So like a fish in water you might think that the school had been designed just for her; the theater, the dance, and the music, the singing about Ulla Bäckström in the corridors at school.
But still, Irene on the one hand, Johanna on the other: in Irene there was nothing that ran wild, that could take its own wild paths, become too much of too much—
So for the time being, this is Johanna’s room. Everything that brings you to the music. The Story of the Marsh Queen, the Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1: a never-ending first chapter that washes over the room and buried the yellow plastic cars a long time ago.
The Marsh Queen who rose from the mire. The material that will be made into a story is constantly growing. Quotations, clippings, informations. All over the place, everywhere.
“Write her into the story. There aren’t many women in the history of music. At least make her a footnote. In The History of Punk Music.”
It is Råttis J. Järvinen, a music teacher, who said that to Johanna at school. In school there they are doing Project Earth; it is supposed to be a story, inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. This is what Råttis J. Järvinen says, and it is beautifuclass="underline" “To be young is to lose an innocence but find a treasure—like Orpheus who loved his Eurydice so much he was prepared to follow her to the underworld.”
Project Earth. A project that is supposed to be about something that touches you, someone else’s story about you. The person you are, the one you could be and want to be, to the music. “Make the music yours, in your own language.”
Everything that brings you to the music. The Marsh Queen who says: “Being on stage is so terrible, they tear you to bits with their admiring looks, admiring hands, you could just die.”
The Marsh Queen who says: “The Glitter Scene is my life.”
Patti, Debbie, Ametiste, and the Marsh Queen, who once grew up here in the District in the house in the darker part of the woods: her name was Sandra Wärn.
So when it is at its best in the room, the room with broad views, big vision. The Marsh Queen. Johanna. “Take the world by storm.” Wembley Arena 2012. “The Glitter Scene is my life.”
But first it is a matter of: from here. The window. See the road like a line. The field. Tobias’s greenhouse stands like a dirty yellow spot on the side of the road, in the cool abstract glow of the Winter Garden. The Winter Garden that is shining, shining.
“See the road like a line.” Patti and the women, in the Piss Factory. Patti at the assembly line, away from here, reading her Rimbaud during her lunch break.
The Piss Factory.
Johanna and the Child, fluorescent on the wall.
Johanna turns off the lights, crawls under the covers in her bed across from the window, does not close the curtains. Wants to have the light, a dull glow from the Winter Garden. The room, the dreams, the Marsh Queen, time, history, vision: you can float in it, like a boat.
But calmly, all of the lights in the house in the background. Solveig’s and Tobias’s voices from the kitchen: Tobias has a habit of stopping by in the evenings after he has been at his greenhouse before he bikes back to the residential housing for seniors where he lives up in the town center. He is stubborn about that bike, despite the fact that it is more than six miles and he is old, his legs are getting worse and worse. But if the road conditions are bad Solveig convinces him to let her drive him—not so easy, Tobias is woven of a stubborn cloth. But stilclass="underline" voices in the yard, car doors slamming, she will be back soon.
Or, other evenings, Solveig who is watching television in the living room, the volume turned down very low, a quiet hum in the background. Sometimes Johanna gets up and goes to her, lies down on the sofa in the living room, her head resting in Solveig’s arms. Steep stairs, white houses on television: women, men who are running up and down stairs, meeting in hallways, talking, talking and having relationships with each other. Johanna does not follow along, Solveig’s fingers in her hair, she is not thinking about the Marsh Queen then either, not thinking about anything in particular, or about the houses. The houses that Solveig sells, supplies through her business. Blueprints, photographs, sometimes Johanna is allowed to be at a showing. To walk through the empty apartments, through the houses, imagine, all sorts of things. Brochures about Rosengården 5 and 6 and 8, residential areas, all of them alike. Old brochures about the Winter Garden before it was finished, a special language in them. Kapu kai. The forbidden seas. The hacienda must be built.
Not the Winter Garden that would exist later, for real. But the Winter Garden when it was still just an idea on paper, presented in brochures: the one planned by the Rita Strange Corporation—with all the history, stories from the District. The American girl. It happened at Bule Marsh.
In reality, the Winter Garden became something else. But still, what it was supposed to be does not disappear from your mind just because of that. The Winter Garden, an island that grows inside your head, that connects to you personally. To what is most personal. Because there is so much in the Winter Garden that affects you. You know it, you just cannot put your finger on exactly how. Or maybe you just do not want to.