GONE BERSERK: 1) PRELUDE TO ICELAND IN DARKEST WINTER
From 22 Years Ago: Reflection, Rumination & Rhetoric From the Road
Twenty-two years ago this month, I set off with three friends on my inaugural Surreal Bounce Odyssey.
It began like this inside Starbucks on Montecito’s Coast Village Road:
October 2001
Montecito mornings can be graced with fog, known locally as marine layer. James McNeill Whistler, the most famous nocturnal painter, called this a silvery day.
On a silvery morning, local artist Thomas Van Stein drops by my office: Starbucks.
“Caffeine is poison,” says Van Stein. “The high we experience from drinking coffee is our body’s desire to run it out of our system as fast as possible.”
“Sounds like you’ve already had too much,” I say. “Now listen to this.” I recount my Jonathan Winters story:
Ahead of me, Jonathan Winters waddles down Coast Village Road—his out-and-about time. Atop his square head, the venerable comedian sports a wide-brim cowhide hat and a fisherman’s vest—with Royal Flying Corps insignia wings sewn on the chest—girdles his hefty paunch.
“Mister Winters?”
He freezes and squints at me.
“I just moved here from your nation’s capital,” I say. “A good friend of mine there used to run the CIA. The only ambition he has left is to have lunch with you one day.”
Every word of this is absolutely true.
Winters narrows his eyes into mine. “CIA, you say? Hmmm—they’re scary people.”
I shake my head. “The comedians around here are scarier.” I unclip my cell phone and touch-key the former spymaster‘s number. “Hold on,” I tell Clair George before handing the phone to Winters. “Here he is—say hi.”
The comedian accepts the phone, holds it to his ear. “So you used to run the CIA? Oh, it was your twin brother? Yep, I had one of those, too. I don’t know if he was drunk or stupid, probably both. Huh? No, the only thing I have against gays is parades. You’re in Washington, huh?”
It goes on like this for three minutes, with them yakking away like old friends, Winters looking at me, the occasional wink, like, ain’t I good? Finally he disconnects, hands my phone back.
“So we’ll have lunch when my friend comes to town?”
He points at me. “You’re on!” And he gives me his telephone number.
Further down the street, I reconnect to Clair in Bethesda, Maryland. “Enjoy that?”
“Yeah. Who WAS that guy?”
“What do you mean who WAS that guy? That was Jonathan Winters!”
“What?”
“He’s ready to have lunch with you. If I bump into John Cleese, we’ll make it a foursome.”
“THAT was Jonathan Winters?”
“Of course—who’d you think?”
“I don’t know. He was very funny. I thought it was some old CIA guy you dug up. Jonathan Winters? How’d you meet him?”
“On the street.”
“On the street?” For a guy who once ran the CIA, Clair is not with it this day, probably because the Washington, D.C. area is hotter than a size extra-small girdle on the circus fat lady.
“Yeah, he was walking down the street. I introduced myself, called you, handed him the phone.”
“I can’t believe it,” says Clair. “I just talked to Jonathan Winters on the phone? You just made my day. No, my year!”
“Was he funny?”
“Funny? He was hilarious!”
“What else is happening in DC?”
“It’s one of those days when you draw all the curtains, turn out the lights and run air conditioning to the max. How about there?”
“Sunny, 73 degrees, an ocean breeze.”
“Are you ashamed of yourself yet?”
“Working on it.”
Van Stein shakes his head after hearing my story. “Can you imagine, Jonathan Winters is now running around Montecito telling everyone some stranger handed him a phone on the street and connected him to the CIA. No wonder everyone thinks he’s nuts. You‘re going to get him committed again.”
“In this case, the voices are real. You don’t know what nuts is till you’ve been to Iceland.”
“You’ve been to Iceland?”
“No, but I’m going.”
“When?”
“Soon, I hope. I’ve been planning it for five years.”
“Five years?”
“Yup. Other things got in the way. You should join me.”
Van Stein closes one eye, studies me carefully with the other.“Why me?”
“Do you know how long it stays dark in Iceland in winter? About 23 hours. That’s a pretty good deal for a nocturnal plein-air artist like yourself. Then there’s the quality of that darkness. They say the purest oxygen and water are in Iceland. So think what the night sky must look like. But let’s get back to nuts. Only one word of Icelandic ever made it into the English language. Do you have any idea what that word is?”
Van Stein sits up straight. “Hit me.”
“Berserk,” I whisper.
“Ber-serk,” Van Stein repeats. “Of course. Norse warriors—the Berserkers. You’re right. We need to go there. But it must be during a full moon.”
“And in January, when they have Thorrablot.”
“Thorra-what?”
“A three-week feast.”
Van Stein smacks his lips
“They serve seal flippers, rotted shark, which they bury for three months till it’s good and rotted. Also: boiled sheep’s head, raw whale blubber and pickled rams testicles. For dessert they bake a nice lamb’s liver pudding.”
This is a hearty people, descended from Vikings. They’ve been doing Thorrablot since 1878 when they became independent from Denmark—before Pepto Bismo was invented.
Van Stein is rocking back and forth. “How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been meaning to do Iceland for a while so I did some research. But I guess I needed to meet a nocturnal artist to actually go there. We’re talking about a volcanic chunk of ice that resembles the moon so closely, NASA sent its lunar astronauts to practice there.”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I’ve got more commitments than money.”
“Money shouldn’t mean squat to an artist,” I say.
“Yep, squat’s all I got.”
“Not if you make it to Iceland. Then you’ve got the runtur.”
“The what?”
“Their version of a pub crawl. It doesn’t start till after midnight, when the locals are already blasted on a native schnapps called Black Death. As an artist, you could do a whole show around Iceland. Call it Purity. Or Berserk-ness. You can paint Santa Barbara blindfolded—how about a real challenge?”
Van Stein falls off his chair, picks himself up, and brushes latte foam from his lips. “That’s it—I’m going to Patagonia in Ventura to buy gear!”