Gnarr (10 page)

Here is one highly illuminating example of the Wu Wei principle: I was at a city council meeting, and as so often happens, the entire opposition took the floor, one after the other, to say what an idiot I was, that we were doing everything wrong, and how much bullshit
we were coming out with. As usual, I was listening quietly, with a silly grin, as if I hadn’t even grasped that they were laying into me. This led one of the city councilors to get so hot under the collar that he exploded. He let fly a volume of invective such as I have rarely experienced. I was lying, he spluttered, I was a retard and altogether not quite sane. I felt the anger slowly rising in me and shaping itself in my head into a few phrases that I’d have liked to hurl back at him: disgusting, mindless populist, mendacious, opportunistic ass-kisser!

But I bit my tongue, kept silent, and put on an even sillier grin. When the man had finished, he stepped down from the rostrum, shaking at the knees. The other councilors pulled dismayed faces and seemed edgy, some downright shocked. Their colleague had really gone too far with his personal insults and tasteless jabs. With a smile, I looked across at the chairman, put my hand up and asked to be heard. Although I was inwardly seething, although lies and baseless slander had just been uttered about me, I remained outwardly completely calm. And then I simply made his hate-filled tirade into the subject of discussion.

It was a pity, I said, that he had such a bad opinion of me. But unfortunately I was unable to concur with his view that I was an incompetent mayor. Because I considered myself to be really a pretty good mayor, although this was, of course, a relative matter. After all, this question, the question of good and bad, was
one that the philosophers of antiquity had been chewing over forever, and we were hardly going to solve the problem just like that. Then I explained why I thought I was a good mayor, and ended by saying: “I want you to know that your impression of me is not reciprocated. I think you’re on the level and I know that you’re a great guy in many respects.”

In the party, we’ve always placed this principle at the top of our agenda and always tried to base our contact with others on it: We return good for good, respect for respect, and friendship for friendship. We meet insults with courtesy, ill will with indulgence, and stubbornness with tolerance. In this way the good is always getting stronger. We have been criticized many times, in fact, for not putting up a decent fight. Truth be told, we’ve often let opportunities to get back at our opponents just slip away. Sure, the temptation is great, but if we yielded to it, we’d be no further advanced. Then judo is no longer judo, but a boxing match—and anyone who knows anything at all about those things knows that there is a world of difference between them.

My career as an actor and stand-up comedian has decisively altered the lives of my children. I have five children, and the age range between the oldest and the youngest is twenty years. Again and again they have been asked if their father was perhaps crazy; alternately, they have been congratulated and assured they could consider themselves lucky to have such a father. The talk show hosts and gossip journalists all want to come to my house to see me in my private life and include my family in an interview. That’s why I decided very early on to draw a clear dividing line between the media and my family, and avoid dragging my wife and children into the spotlight.

But I try as much as possible to have a normal, healthy family life, and aim to provide a safe home and a good education for my children. In private, I make jokes rather rarely. At home, I’m more of a nerd.

The most important person on earth is and will remain my wife, Jóga, full name Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir. We are an inseparable unit. Although we are two different individuals, we work and function as one. I never decide anything without discussing it beforehand with
my wife. In return, she benefits from my judgment. I would argue that she made a much more decisive and energetic contribution to founding and organizing the Best Party than I ever could have. She always sees an opportunity where others see a black hole, and now our brains are so perfectly matched that they function together as a kind of super brain. I’m the principal actor, and she directs.

If I’m an exhibitionist, then my wife is the exact opposite. She hates any kind of spotlight or media attention. We appear as little as possible at premieres or openings and are extremely cautious when the press tries to rummage around in our private lives. My wife is a massage therapist, and her profession means she has to deal with lots of people. She made it clear from the beginning that she would support me always and unconditionally, but she had no desire to tread the political boards.

Of course, after the election nothing in her life was the same as before. Suddenly you discover you’re the mayor’s wife. You get invitations to all imaginable events. As the wife of the mayor of Reykjavík, one is a kind of First Lady of the nation. Ultimately, in Iceland there’s only one city that’s worthy of the name—and, consequently, only one mayor. (In this respect, Lady Gaga wasn’t all that wrong when she appointed me to the post of “Mayor of Iceland.”)

The activity of the mayor of Reykjavík is so extensive and so varied that it automatically seeps into one’s
private life. Every day runs on a fixed schedule, which is more or less drawn up by others. Moreover, anything and everything can happen in this job, and at any time the daily planning can go pear-shaped. Not to mention the work-related chronic stress. Also, I travel a lot, and my wife always has to be ready for my appointments getting in the way of her plans too. Being married to the mayor is a sort of part-time job in itself (voluntary and unpaid, of course).

My wife can manage, with only two days’ notice, to rustle up a feast for three hundred people and turn it into an unforgettable experience for all concerned. In contrast, I can’t even manage to organize a single day. I come up with an idea, forget what I’d planned the very next moment, and suddenly find myself doing something quite different. I head out of the house with my swimming bag because I have an appointment with someone in the hot tub, and as soon as I’m in the car, it seems to me the ideal time to do the shopping for dinner. And because I’m in the city anyway, I’ll quickly pop the car over to the car wash. Leaving the shopping in the trunk.

In many ways, I’m just a normal man with normal strengths and weaknesses. Every now and then I’m also a genius. And at the same time I’m mentally retarded. I always find it difficult to adapt to new circumstances, which—given my spontaneous inspirations and my crackpot ideas—is of course not like me at all. So I’m basically just a walking contradiction with a
strong tendency to chaos, and only Jóga knows how to introduce a little order into this chaos.

As a matter of principle, I never make any major decisions without talking with my wife about the potential impact on our family life. Outwardly I may often come across as hasty and inconsiderate, but in private I’m the exact opposite—extremely conscientious and circumspect. So it’s often happened over time that my wife has played a more active part in my work than we had originally planned. She is my court of arbitration and also my closest collaborator. She also has some knowledge of the “internal” workings of the party.

My children didn’t pay any attention to my election as mayor. On my youngest son, however, it had a direct impact. He was born in 2005, and as it happened he was just starting school as the Best Party was implementing its educational reforms. After the management of his former kindergarten attacked me sharply in an open letter, I decided to send the boy to a school that lay outside my jurisdiction. Even apart from that, he needed some time before he could make out what my new profession involved. At first he seemed to think of me as a kind of emperor who could do anything and everything he felt like doing, but eventually he realized that his father was just an ordinary man in an unusual job.

I was also surprised to see how many family members and distant relatives suddenly appeared out of the woodwork and asked me to do them some favor.
Every possible uncle, sister-in-law, and cousin suddenly wanted me to help them out with some trivial problem. And of course, my political decisions can have a concrete impact on people in my immediate sphere. Like when close relatives lose their jobs, or the jobs of friends and family members are rationalized into nonexistence. Some of them are still pissed off at me.

I remember, for example, the extremely awkward situation that came about when we wanted to give a helping hand to the aforementioned ailing energy group Orkuveita Reykjavíkur. This bailout unfortunately entailed restructuring—i.e., layoffs. One of the victims was the father of Heiða, our party chairman. His entire department was closed down. Of course, Heiða had not planned to throw her own father out of work as a result of her party activities, but this kind of thing, unfortunately, can’t always be prevented.

Let’s begin at the beginning. What are your recollections of the origins of the Best Party and Jón’s campaign?

Jón making videos that were on YouTube in late 2009—“Simply the Best,” seeming all full of himself—and then writing little articles and poking, poking. That was the start.

When did you realize that what he was doing was becoming more than just poking fun?

I thought it was a genius idea, especially when Jón thought of making a party out of it—a political party. I was the first member, the first member of his political party. And from then on, it was fun.

Jón has said that the Best Party didn’t just happen overnight, but was “a product of many ideas—like ideas having sex and multiplying.” From this the Best Party was born. I notice that it is viewed with
a certain mystery and respect; it was this phenomenon, and you don’t question it too much
.

It was magical. And then to pick people, courageous people, artists, who were willing to work and be part of it and also … to tease. Because the situation was so serious in Iceland and none of us wanted more of the typical politicians that “know it all.” So to push that to the limit—that’s what we were after. But we didn’t even know how to apply, how to start a political party. We didn’t have any idea.

So, how does one start a political party?

You have to get people signing petitions for you, and you need a certain amount of signatures, and then you have to go to the City Hall and put down all that you have. Jón and Heiða did that, and from there on we were legal to do the campaign.

If the party was the product, the child, of all these ideas coming together, were you then the midwife and the mother alike?

Yeah, experienced mother and, yes, midwife—that’s a good word for it. To give protection to the ideas and stop it when it was going too far and it wouldn’t be healthy for the “child.” Help bring it into the world.

Jón has said, “People don’t realize it but the Best Party—a lot of it has to do with Jóga.” Can you talk about what he meant—about the various roles you played and continue to play behind the scenes?

Some of it was just talking to the partners of people involved in the campaign. At first, some of them were like, “Forget it, no, my husband isn’t going to go with that party.” And I encouraged people to go for it.

How did you do that?

Because I believed it was necessary, it was needed, and it was an art piece, and it would be worth it. And I thought maybe at some point all the other politicians, they would wake up. That was my vision, from seeing in the middle—I thought they would say, “Okay, you’re right, let’s be human.” Jón was doing such a great mirror image—holding up a mirror—to show them, to wake them up, to get them to be humble, and to be willing to take it on to another level. I was not thinking that Jón would end up as mayor and the whole party would end up there, but instead that they could wake them up—by art. By this art piece.

It does seem like it was art, like Dada art
.

That’s what it was. It was punk.

Which is part of who you are, too, right? Punk is part of your own history
.

Yeah, and the punks are in their fifties now, and of course that age should take over. Why should they all be sixty and seventy and eighty years old? We all have responsibility to go into office, to serve—our generation.

Were there instances where you knew you needed certain kinds of expertise—say, an attorney, and you had to be like a casting director who had to find that person?

At one point, for instance, we needed someone who knew something about law. I knew one lawyer from twenty-five years back who also is a saxophone player and a real, genuine, living human being, but still a lawyer whom I trusted—and I made the call.

Was it difficult to persuade him?

He showed up one hour later. He just came and met us, and from there on he was on board.

As Jón’s wife, you were very close to everything that was happening in the campaign, you were right in the middle of it day and night, but you also seem to have this ability to step back and see the big picture.
How did that ability help guide Jón and other members of the party in decision-making?

With me, I recognize geniuses, and I recognize genius ideas. It hits me. Jón is a genius. Then, all of these genius ideas he is getting, and all these other people also, so maybe that’s why I’m like a good casting director—I can see them, I can pick them out. They are geniuses but with good hearts, and they’re brave, and—this is key—they have what it takes to be on the frontline. They’re singers, they’re in a band, they know how to be onstage, which helps a lot.

But that’s not my thing. I always love to help people go further, for their own mission. To see what suits them, what helps them to grow, and what’s the next step to go a little bit out of their comfortable zone. I encourage them—“Go, go, go, go, go, go out of your comfort zone.” In so many ways, it also has to do with the city, with the country, with Iceland. I want us all to go further. But it suits me to be in the background and supporting them. I love it when there are artists that can wake the mass up—the mass of people. I need to be somewhere supporting the people that can wake the mass up. Then I’m happy.