Louise Korthals & Tom Jönsthövel (Netherlands)

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Tom Jönsthövel (b. 1983) recently acquired his PhD in Applied Mathematics at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Besides his PhD studies, he started his own engineering consultancy company, and worked as a professional studio musician, film score composer, and, pianist. His major interests are scientific computing, music (composing/performing), traveling and photography.

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Louise Korthals (b. 1984) is a Dutch actress, singer and writer. She studied sociology (and philosophy) in England and Amsterdam. After that she went to the ‘Koningstheaterakademie’, an academy for both creating and performing arts. In April 2011 she was the great winner of the renowned ‘Wim Sonneveld award’ in the Netherlands, a prize that is assigned to upcoming musical and performing talent, who show great promise within the performing arts. She is currently working on a full evening’s theater performance. The opening performance will take place in Amsterdam on the 17th of November 2012. 

 

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“The Blue House” reading by Louise Korthals in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Soundtrack and video production by Tom Jönsthövel.

“The Blue House”

by
Tomas Tranströmer

     It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.

     It has stood for more than eighty summers. Its timber has been impregnated, four times with joy and three times with sorrow. When someone who has lived in the house dies it is repainted. The dead person paints it himself, without a brush,  from the inside.

     On the other side is open terrain. Formerly a garden, now wilderness. A still surf of weed, pagodas of weed, an unfurling body of text, Upanishades of weed, a Viking fleet of weed, dragon heads, lances, an empire of weed.

Above the overgrown garden flutters the shadow of a boomerang, thrown again and again. It is related to someone who lived in the house long before my time. Almost a child. An impulse issues from him, a thought, a thought of will: “create. . .draw. ..”  In order to escape his destiny in time.

     The house resembles a child’s drawing.  A deputizing childishness which grew forth because someone prematurely renounced the charge of being a child. Open the doors, enter! Inside unrest dwells in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed there hangs an amateur painting representing a ship with seventeen sails, rough sea and a wind which the gilded frame cannot subdue.

     It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life!  And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.

     A motor far out on the water extends the horizon of the summer night. Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We do not actually know it, but we sense it: our life has a sister vessel which plies an entirely different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.

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“The Blue House” from The Blue House, translated by Göran Malmqvist, published by Thunder City Press. Copyright © 1987 by Göran Malmqvist. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.