#80s generation

Summer has come and passed

The innocent can never last

Wake me up when September ends

Like my father's come to pass

Seven years has gone so fast

Wake me up when September ends

Here comes the rain again falling from the stars

Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are

As my memory rests

But never forgets what I lost

Wake me up when September ends

Summer has come and passed

The innocent can never last

Wake me up when September ends

Ring out the bells again

Like we did when spring began

Wake me up when September ends

Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars

Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are

As my memory rests

But never forgets what I lost

Wake me up when September ends.

Danish poet Klavs Bondebjerg would have been 66 today, but unfortunately he died 15 years ago. He had his debut collection out in 1982 -  the first of six volumes of poetry. He worked for Danish Radio as a journalist and also wrote travel books.

July 9th is the birthday of Danish poet and film director Linda Wendel. She turns 64 today. Wendel’s debut was Discodigte in 1980, and after that she co-edited a few texts relating to the 80s generation in Danish poetry.

Wendel went into film quite soon after that and started her own production company in the early 2000s. She has made both documentaries and regular feature films, including a portrait of her musician husband, Niels Skousen, and other films about Danish authors and actors.

My friend from Sevastopol, who is now 21, describing the events of 2014 in Crimea, told me that this is a very special feeling - to fall asleep in one country and wake up in another. She said that in such a situation all the landmarks are lost, a plenty of things become incomprehensible and seem alien.

Suddenly homeland is lost, anxiety about the future and sorrow fill the heart. Russia, in which she and all around her suddenly appeared, seems strange, huge, distant and unfamiliar. 

While the country, in which she was born, is moving away every day. So my friend feels resentment and pain towards her new country.

She doesn't trust this country, doesn’t seek to respect its laws, doesn't feel attachment.

“Moscow is farther to me than Kiev” - she says with a perceptible Ukrainian accent.

She said all those things, thinking that I, being the Moscow-based baby doll, unable to understand... Because I always lived in a huge and frighteningly strange Russia, which my friend doesn’t consider as her own country.

Our generation born in the 80s has aged. We, whose childhood fell on the 90s, are already over thirty.

People sometimes ask me "Do you remember the USSR?" And I always answer "I do. I do remember it very well." After all I was 6 when in 1991 the same thing happened to me, as to my friend in 2014. Then I fell asleep in one country and woke up in another. Completely different.. 

“Kids today are so weak-willed”

“Once I beated the heck out of a classmate and we’re still friends”

István Virág, BUD-OSL, OSL-BUD (2012)