Back in the living area, Tina shows me some of the
magazines she works for. I ask her if she thinks design is valued
more highly in Denmark than elsewhere. “It depends a lot on age.
If you enter the home of a design lover in their seventies, it might
seem like some sort of a museum; young people tend to mix things,
buying a few older pieces of value, and many inexpensive things
that catch their eye. Today I’d say that people are looking for
objects that have a story. I went to a sale of vintage objects with
a maximum price of ten euros a piece. I thought there would be
nobody there, but instead people were waiting in line. I chose an
old puzzle, I wasn’t even sure all the pieces were still there, but
I liked the idea of all the people who had tried to put the puzzle
together before I did. Maybe there is also the fact that people
spend much more time in the virtual world today, and at the end of
the day, they like the sense of the pastime residing in an old object.
In our day and age, solitude can become a huge problem. Queen
Margrethe talked about this in her New Year address - she said we
have to be aware that in our time we run the risk of being more
alone than ever before. Her speech was moving because she lost
her husband two years ago, and you could understand that she was
talking about the solitude of growing old and seeing your loved
ones pass away; it was also about her solitude as the Queen”.
Tina goes to exhibitions, openings, fashion shows.
“The friends in a life are always few, those people who you
want to spend time with even when you’re tired, when you don’t
feel like talking. You can feel lonely living in a small town where you
may have been left without kin, where you always meet the same
people at the cafe or the corner store; but you can also be lonely
in the big city, even if you are constantly moving around”. One of
Tina’s sons was a rising star of Danish football, reaching the
national youth team, but then – to everyone’s surprise – he decided
to stop playing. Who knows? Maybe he understood the solitude
– and anxiety – that can grip a striker who hasn’t scored for weeks,
while the manager, his teammates and the fans are wondering if
he’s finished or was always an imposter in the end. Perhaps Tina’s
son is a wise man, and at age 16 he knew what wonders of life were
in store for him, far from the packed stadiums and enormous royal
palaces. Maybe, after all, the greatest boon is to spend a couple
of hours at Tivoli without being recognized.
District: Vesterbro
Tina a Copenaghen.
阅读中文故事
Histoire à lire en français
Text auf Deutsch lesen
Lee la historia en español
ストーリーの日本語版はこちら
393
