Read Online One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Åsne Seierstad
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and hoped that hip hop would replace street violence. People would meet to party, not to fight. Later on, the music often came to validate and glorify street violence and gangsta rap was often sexist and racist in nature, its words riddled with referencesto drugs. Hip hop was a lifestyle with seemingly simple rules, as explained by KRS-One and Marley Marl, among the first rappers from the South Bronx: ‘Hip is the knowledge. Hop is the movement. Hip and Hop is an intelligent movement.’
Anders strove to be both the hip and the hop . Hip meant being up-to-date and relevant. Keeping up, getting it, being shown respect. As for the hop part, he practisedhard on the paved path that crossed the grass outside his block of flats. He tried breaks and spins but never pulled off a headspin or backspin. He hadn’t enough rhythm or body control to be a good dancer.
Perhaps he could be a rapper? After all, he kept a diary, writing down his thoughts and experiences like the rappers did. But he hadn’t got the right sort of voice for rap; it was high andsoft, like a girl’s.
So he opted for hip hop’s third form of expression: graffiti.
If breaking was visual rap in three dimensions, then graffiti was frozen breaking. The letters twisted, just as the dancing body did. To produce fine lines you had to let your body sway, readying yourself so the rhythm travelled from your body to your hand as it directed the aerosol paint can at the wall.
Graffititapped into the pulse of growing bodies. The lines on the wall were like them: angular, hard, insistent. The motifs had to involve speed and movement, be tough yet playful. But it was also a culture of performance and achievement. Everything was judged and then approved or rejected. If you had a good style and some original designs, you could mark yourself out from all the anonymous urban youthsand shine a little.
* * *
In the area where Anders grew up, the young people’s aspirations were strictly divided between tagging and tennis. It wasn’t here, in the land of nice villas set among old apple trees and peonies, that Morg’s role models hung out.
Ris was a secondary school on the well-to-do west side of Oslo, with pupils from an area stretching from the ski jump at Holmenkollento the lower ground at Skøyen. Most of them grew up with the self-confidence that goes with a big garden, and they spent their time outside school on the ski tracks, the football pitches and the tennis courts. At weekends they got together at home-alone parties or watched films in each other’s basement TV rooms. It was important to have the right logos on your shirt or padded jacket, like Polo,Phoenix or Peak Performance. Anders’s classmates were aiming for careers in law or finance. In the 8A class photo of 1993, most of them were wearing white polo shirts with the necks rolled down, under shirts or woollen sweaters.
One boy in the middle of the back row stands out from the rest. In an outsized check shirt and a hoodie, Anders stands there smiling with earphones in his ears. The poseand the plugged ears marks his distance from the others.
The class could broadly be divided into four groups. There was the contingent with the polo-necked shirts, the straights. They were the majority. Anders was never with them. Then there were a few with shaved heads who went round in flying jackets, turned-up camouflage trousers and black boots. They flirted with neo-Nazism and liked heavymetal. Anders was on nodding terms with them. They didn’t bother anybody, and nobody bothered them. They were against immigration, and since Anders had some foreign friends he didn’t hang out with them. Anyway, he couldn’t stand heavy metal. Then there were the hip-hoppers. They did a bit of tagging and were on the rebellious side, would-be gangsters. If the hip-hop movement once had a politicalmessage, it had got lost on the way to Ris. Ideologically, tagging had no particular aim other than to serve as a marker of
Anders strove to be both the hip and the hop . Hip meant being up-to-date and relevant. Keeping up, getting it, being shown respect. As for the hop part, he practisedhard on the paved path that crossed the grass outside his block of flats. He tried breaks and spins but never pulled off a headspin or backspin. He hadn’t enough rhythm or body control to be a good dancer.
Perhaps he could be a rapper? After all, he kept a diary, writing down his thoughts and experiences like the rappers did. But he hadn’t got the right sort of voice for rap; it was high andsoft, like a girl’s.
So he opted for hip hop’s third form of expression: graffiti.
If breaking was visual rap in three dimensions, then graffiti was frozen breaking. The letters twisted, just as the dancing body did. To produce fine lines you had to let your body sway, readying yourself so the rhythm travelled from your body to your hand as it directed the aerosol paint can at the wall.
Graffititapped into the pulse of growing bodies. The lines on the wall were like them: angular, hard, insistent. The motifs had to involve speed and movement, be tough yet playful. But it was also a culture of performance and achievement. Everything was judged and then approved or rejected. If you had a good style and some original designs, you could mark yourself out from all the anonymous urban youthsand shine a little.
* * *
In the area where Anders grew up, the young people’s aspirations were strictly divided between tagging and tennis. It wasn’t here, in the land of nice villas set among old apple trees and peonies, that Morg’s role models hung out.
Ris was a secondary school on the well-to-do west side of Oslo, with pupils from an area stretching from the ski jump at Holmenkollento the lower ground at Skøyen. Most of them grew up with the self-confidence that goes with a big garden, and they spent their time outside school on the ski tracks, the football pitches and the tennis courts. At weekends they got together at home-alone parties or watched films in each other’s basement TV rooms. It was important to have the right logos on your shirt or padded jacket, like Polo,Phoenix or Peak Performance. Anders’s classmates were aiming for careers in law or finance. In the 8A class photo of 1993, most of them were wearing white polo shirts with the necks rolled down, under shirts or woollen sweaters.
One boy in the middle of the back row stands out from the rest. In an outsized check shirt and a hoodie, Anders stands there smiling with earphones in his ears. The poseand the plugged ears marks his distance from the others.
The class could broadly be divided into four groups. There was the contingent with the polo-necked shirts, the straights. They were the majority. Anders was never with them. Then there were a few with shaved heads who went round in flying jackets, turned-up camouflage trousers and black boots. They flirted with neo-Nazism and liked heavymetal. Anders was on nodding terms with them. They didn’t bother anybody, and nobody bothered them. They were against immigration, and since Anders had some foreign friends he didn’t hang out with them. Anyway, he couldn’t stand heavy metal. Then there were the hip-hoppers. They did a bit of tagging and were on the rebellious side, would-be gangsters. If the hip-hop movement once had a politicalmessage, it had got lost on the way to Ris. Ideologically, tagging had no particular aim other than to serve as a marker of
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