BETTY
“Your Royal Highness, welcome!” Brita Lund chirped.
She was my official handler for the length of my UniVox assignment. For a Norwegian, she was especially effusive.
I stepped into my formal living room and looked at the huge crew within. They’d set up to capture two hours of me talking, only to reduce it to fifteen minutes in a final cut. All dressed up, but exhausted from flying over fences from five am to nine, I was already over this. My goal? Talk about this competition, remain a confident host, and finish so I could complete my early evening rides.
“Smiles, smiles,” Brita whispered in Norsk. “The director is very… upbeat.”
A woman with bright purple hair approached. She wore a maxi dress that was best described as the product of Anthropologie doing the nasty with an IKEA couch. The muted-colored smock dress had so many gauzy layers that she looked like aminimalist doily.
The director stopped, made prayer hands, and bowed, “Well, is this our subject?”
It wasn’t a curtsy and I wasn’t interested in being known as asubject, but I preferred genuinely weird to stuffy and navel-gazing.
“Your Royal Highness, this is Kaldi Journey.”
Kaldi Journey? Is that her real name!?
“And Kaldi, this is Her Royal Highness Princess Elisabeth of Norway.”
“Gosh! I am like… so blessed!” Kaldi shook my hand before I reached out, then hugged me.
Confused, I went limp. My space wassoviolated and I was wholly unprepared. Of course, if I rebuffed her, I’d be a bitch. I made eye contact with Brita over Kaldi’s shoulder and mouthed “hjelpe meg” but she, too, was helpless.
“Your aura is so sweet,” Kaldi continued. “This is going to beamazing. And the light and ambiance here is sosick.”
Was sick… good?
“Uh… thank you?” I winced. “My mother is the decorator. Very Scandinavian. Clean lines. You know the type.”
“I don’t. I’m spiritually Australian.”
What the fuck does that mean?Her accent was Midwestern as my mother’s, a fact I pondered while following her to our makeshift set.
“So, just sit right there. We’re going to bring up some videos of some UniVox frontrunners,” Kaldi said.
I lowered myself, sitting in an armchair with my legs neatly crossed.
“You can relax. I promise I don’t bite. We just want some fun reactions. We’ll run a few of them as a teaser on social. I was told you haven’t seen any of the bands yet.”
“I was told to avoid the subject,” I said. “And living in America for the past few months has made that easy.”
“Great. Well, now is the time for an honest reaction!”Kaldi handed me an iPad. “Let’s roll, please. This first one is your entry… Giftehode.”
A man appeared, snapping a clapperboard to start the recording.What is this life?
In my hands, the screen flashed to several people dressed in black slowly appearing from a dark background. A woman with thick pigtails opened her mouth as guitars played ominously behind her. She started at a low growl before screaming unintelligibly. I tried to remain open-minded, aware they were filming me.
“It is… metal,” I said over the screaming. “They are really into it.”
I listened to the words as they went along. It was my native tongue, but the dissonance made it hard to read. Finally, I figured it out. “Utryddelsessonaten”.
“I have no idea what the song means,” Kaldi said as the song ended.
“Utryddelsessonatenmeans ‘extinction sonata’. It’s about the end of the Earth because we destroyed it while the choir sang on. Sounds dark, but it’s actually quite beautiful. They’re from where in Norway?”
She cocked her head, “Yes, Norway.”
