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| Although technically my name is Jenny Hampe Endresen, I am a girl with many nick-names.... Through the years I have been called the following: "Hampe Golightly", "Sauerkraut Missionary", "Coco", "Bottle-cap Maiden", "The Ranting Sermon Factory", and "Saint Jenny, Martyr of the Holy Sock", among others. Of course, all of these names refer to various chapters in my transient and fleeting (yet resplendent and magnificent) existence. My story is as insignificant and vainglorious as anyone's; but one day, in my early twenties, after a bout of very profound religious (a.k.a. mystical) experiences I realized that I was the center of that which is endless---- that every single atom, amoeba, grass-blade, beetle, and wildflower is the very axis upon which the entire, vast universe spins.... Well, it was then, in that moment, that I understood that my wee tale (tail?) is as worthy or as unworthy as any else's to tell (never mind that I am neither a J.D. Salinger or a Nabokov), that my creations are as worthy or unworthy to execute, etc., and so this is why I bother at all, despite the mundane, the repetitive, the stereotypical, predictable, un-noteworthy blandness of my small (yet "meaningful") story.... I had a great teacher once, a sculptor in Kentucky, who admonished us his disciples not to be comparative thinkers---- that only mediocrity results from this mentality. And so, I learned to lean upon the vast, untapped resources within myself---- myself as the center of It All, as the very Son (or Daughter) of God that I knew myself to be. It is from this source wherefore anything "great" springs. So, I shall endeavor not to compare myself, whilst narrating this little tale, with others of greater beauty, wealth, intelligence, or "success".... not to mention those who create more flamboyant, authentic, and heart-felt paintings/poetry/tramp-art/roadside attractions/harpsichord concertos than myself, who ultimately is no-one after all---- mere dust! Yes, the dust-speck, the sand-speck, the grass-blade, the quivering brown maple-leaf on the highest branch of a gnarled, ancient maple tree.... Indeed, how the reflection upon my ultimate nothingness, transience, fleetingness does in fact inspire me! "The moment God sees us fully convinced of our nothingness He reaches out His hand to us", said Saint Thérèse.... Even the Mona Lisa is dust. The Queen of Denmark is dust. The billionaire in his grandiose sea-side mansion is dust, ultimately no different than the wretched beggar on the street, or that poor earthworm dried up on the sidewalk! All of this is terribly obvious, a hackneyed truth, and yet inexhaustible as a well-spring of inspiration…. Destined to fade and die, yet bothering to live anyhow, despite my destiny, I shall further explain.... |
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| I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in the mid-sixties, primarily of German ancestry. My mother's father came from his parent's farm in Alsace, Germany to Ohio in the 1920s; my father's family (German on one side; English-Scottish on the other) settled in Iowa. When I was less than a year old my parent's moved to Westport, Connecticut, an infamous coastal town and suburb of New York City. I was a shy and somewhat solitary child, who was decidedly a failure at anything athletic, yet hailed by my classmates as the "best artist" of my school. I spent much time reading, and was captivated by various historical eras other than my own, particularly the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I certainly did not try out for cheer-leading or school plays, and I was not on the field hockey team, or any other team, for that matter. I wore Victorian dresses, capes, strange hats, and mismatched stockings to school, and I embroidered slogans from "The Communist Manifesto" and quotations from King Arthur upon my knapsack. My hair hung in two long, thick braids down to my waist, unless they were pinned to the top of my head, like a Russian princess. I was thoroughly an outcast, together with my best friend, who was of Scottish descent. We deemed ourselves aesthetes and slaves to beauty, carried antique leather-bound volumes of Oscar Wilde, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and William Morris everywhere we went, listened to Bach and Vivaldi almost exclusively, and decided to revive the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood single-handedly. We called all the "popular" boys and girls "philistines", and made voo-doo dolls of our tormentors. (These voodoo dolls were most Edward Gorey in essence, and made from my father's old Brooks Brothers stockings, always in black, without faces or arms.) We also invented our own language, and co-authored a book we entitled "The Medieval Novel". The Amish Brethren were another source of fascination: how we revered their quaint appearances, their long dresses and long beards, their bonnets and wide-brimmed hats, their horses and buggies, their non-electric and "plain" lifestyle.... By fifth grade my best friend and I were determined to live upon the desolate moors of Scotland, in a sprawling stone farmhouse, without electricity or running water, together with other poets, artists, writers, and musicians. We would raise sheep, and spin and weave, and become as self-sufficient as possible, so as to "avoid contributing to the ruthless mechanical system that is destroying the earth", as one of my great idols, Harlan Hubbard, once said. In junior high school the Russian authors captivated us, and J.D. Salinger was our "soul-mate", to whom we wrote long, rambling, illustrated letters which were alas never answered. And then, one day, my friend and I parted ways. An enormous disagreement arose upon a boat on the Avon River in England (which her mother and father had rented for some weeks) over the disputed ownership of a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare from the 1700s that we found in an antiquarian bookstore in Stratford; the book was most unfortunately flailed overboard in a fit of rage. (I have never heard from my friend since; but I know she lives. Today she is a cultural historian at the University of York in England, and has authored books, and hopefully still wears Victorian dresses, and wreaths of laurel leaves upon her scholarly, golden, curl-bedecked head....) |
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| After high school, and various emotional traumas therein, I mechanically moved on, like every other graduate, to college. I attended New York University film school (imagining myself to become a cinematographer, eventually), and thus entered a new phase of life. In reaction to the heartbreaking loss of certain friendships, I actively rebelled against the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and everything else I previously held dear. I decided not to become a farmer upon the moors of Scotland. I began to go to nightclubs. I had my first sip of alcohol. And I chopped off my ankle-length braids, in favor of a Louise-Brooks-inspired 1920s bob. In fact, the 1920s was my newly coveted time-period, and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald became my new heroes. I wore an exquisite black and red beaded dress from 1919 to one of my mother's art openings, in New York City, and that weekend we stayed at a suite at the Plaza Hotel, shopped at Bergdorf's and Henri Bendel, dined at the Russian Tea Room and Mortimer's, and other swanky establishments. My apartment-mate and accomplice, a flaming homosexual whose name shall not be published, was also invited. It was a new era of N.Y.C.-induced extravagance and materialism. I smoked my first (and last) cigarette, met Andy Warhol and Boy George, and drank vodka gimlets at the Milk Bar, and sundry, smoky jazz bars. Suddenly Coco Chanel was the pivot-point of the creation for me, and i was determined to be Chanel from head to toe by the time I began my junior year, even if it killed me. So, I saved my pennies religiously by working at menial jobs, until I could afford to purchase my first Chanel suit, at Bergdorf Goodman. In fact, I managed it as such that every article of clothing, as well as all make-up, jewelery, shoes, and perfume, was Chanel, when my collaborator and I rented that limousine and parted the thronging crowds outside of the nightclub Area by the wave of one black Chanel-gloved hand, in September of 1985. More Chanel suits, as well as Hermés scarves, trenchcoats, and jodphurs, ensued, as a result of endless toil at places like Dean and Deluca on Prince Strret, and an antique camera shop on Wooster Street. My film-studies were, I'm terribly ashamed to admit, of secondary importance that year. First and foremost was the House of Chanel, and my plot to overthrow Karl Lagerfeld, and become the newly-appointed head personage of that venerable realm. |
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| However, by the end of my junior year in college I began to tire of the vanity of the New York City club-scene, and commenced attending operas, symphonies and art exhibits in solitude, leaving my former accomplices to their own, decadent devices. Yet another chapter was on the verge of unfolding. The time was ripe for new and unprecedented input. My belovéd drawing teacher from high school, as well as a few old friends from Westport, convinced me to spend a summer in Kentucky, studying at a private studio with the afore-mentioned sculptor, Mike Skop. I went to Kentucky wearing red lipstick and a giant straw hat from Bergdorf's, my journals infiltrated with clippings from VOGUE and Women's Wear Daily, and reproductions of Balthus paintings (my favorite artist at the time). The disciples of my new "master" (all old friends from Westport, and former students of the previously mentioned high school drawing teacher) sneered and sniggered at my Bergdorfian, high-fashion ways, and my apparently un-deep musical and artistic tastes, whilst my lack of comprehension of the trenchant thought of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, as well as the Buddhist scriptures, marked me more of an outsider than ever. However, it was not long before I was as well-versed as any in phenomenology, existentialism, and Eastern philosophy, and swore I was finished forever with red lipstick, night-clubs, high heels, and the House of Chanel. I was now a devout student of Reality, and I left Balthus by the wayside, in favor of Jackson Pollock, De Kooning, Picasso, Miró, Mondrian, and other Abstract Expressionists, Symbolists, and likewise profound modern artists. In my fervent study of Chuang T'zu, Meister Eckhart, Emerson, and "The Cloud of Unknowing" mystical experiences did soon rain down upon my small, yet newly-enlightened, brain. My musical affinities also "deepened", and instead of my turn-table spinning with the likes of Ruth Etting, Julie London, and the Andrew Sisters, it now boasted the sounds of the divinely-inspired Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane.... For was not jazz the musical equivalent of what Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Joseph Cornell getting at? And poetry was also hallowed: Wallace Stevens, T.S. Elliot, Walt Whitman, e.e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound.... They were all allotted ample space upon my bookshelves, next to Kandinsky's "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", "Either/Or", St. Teresa's "Interior Castle", "Being and Time", "Franny and Zooey", and all the rest. All of a sudden, black tie parties at the Young International Club and shopping at Bonwit Teller were no longer among my top-ten favorite activities, and I would remain in Kentucky, at the feet of the white-bearded Master, in order to glean all the essential wisdom and spiritual fruits I could, before he shuffled off this mortal coil. There was a terrible sense of urgency in this, as i planned my future as a non-sectarian hermit-monk, on some abandoned isle in non-electric splendor. And thus it was that I cut my purple Bergdorf Goodman charge card in half with a pair of very sharp scissors, and donated my Chanel suits to Salvation Army.... |
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| Indeed, at that point in time I did feel I was chosen by God to be a young bodhisattva. I grew my hair into ong braids, once again, donned not a speck of red lipstick, and began to wear long dresses, aprons, shawls, and wooden shoes, like any proper Russian grandmother or European peasant-woman would. I was 21 years old, but my world-view was timeless and mystical, and old as the hills, and my painting was contemplative in nature, full of the influences of Pollock, Miró, and Paul Klee. I decided that the art world (but especially the N.Y.C. art world) was vacuous, tainted, and corrupt, and I would utterly forsake it, o verily. Longing to dedicate my existence and energy to meditation, contemplation, and creation, I first went to the north-west coast of Scotland, in search of spiritual poverty and solitude.... The dream of lonely exile on the deserted, windswept island St. Kilda was vastly compelling.... |
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| I would live a life of extreme asceticism, I decided. But Scotland's dreary weather eventually grew tiresome, and after precisely seven and a half months I returned to my homeland and instead moved to a remote island off the coast of Maine, where, in a charming old farmhouse with views of the Atlantic, I first tasted of the non-electric life in earnest, which I had so long dreamt of. No telephone, no running water, no Internet (for it did not exist), no washing machine, no electric toenail clippers, no remote-control carrot-dicer.... What could be more perfect for a neo-Luddite would-be monk? Still, I needed to eat. So I dug clams, harvested mussels, got free fish from my fishermen-neighbors, picked huckleberries, learned to identify edible wild mushrooms, and obtained my first book ever on organic gardening, "The New Organic Grower", by Eliot Coleman, which I studied with rapt fascination. Henry david Thoreau was now my chief "guru", as well as the previously mentioned Harlan Hubbard, known as "the modern-day Thoreau", whom I had the honor to meet and speak with in several occasions when I lived in Kentucky. I also discovered Wendell Berry, Helen and Scott Nearing, and John Seymour, the "father of self-sufficiency". I was off and on to my next, mighty phase: a quest for 100% self-reliance, so as to no longer have anything to do with commerce, careers, money, and things of that ilk which I then deemed tawdry and un-spiritual. Somewhere in the Bible it said, "Ye cannot serve both God and mammon", and Kierkegaard declared, "there is an either/or.... either God, or----- the rest is indifferent." These tenets I interpreted most literally. And so, I would learn to grow all my own food, chop my own firewood (for heating, cooking, and bathing), spin, and weave (even though it also says, in the Song of Solomon, to behold the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, that neither do they spin, or toil, or gather into barns, and yet their Heavenly Father feedeth them)....I would dip my own candles, make cheese, churn butter, sew all my own clothes, can, and preserve.... Yes, I was determined! I would learn all of these homesteading skills.... I would become a farmer! I would become a farmer, so that I would not need money (so I naïvely believed), in order that I might devote my life not to a career, but to making sacred art. When I was in Scotland I acquired the original book on outsider art by Roger Cardinal, and was by that time also well-versed in the anti-cultural rantings and ravings of Jean Dubuffet, and this new view of primal, "raw" creativity blended perfectly with my new-found obsession with living in the wilderness and growing my own beans. However, this religion of self-sufficiency, like most religions, did in fact afford little time for anything else but itself. But no matter, for, like any other zealous truth-seeker, I finally found the ultimate meaning of human existence, and nothing was lacking, except perhaps a farm, and a husband to wield the axe and drive the horses.... |
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| Shortly thereafter I met a handsome Norwegian boy, who took me back across the sea to the most wild and forsaken fjord we could ever hope to find. We were married and had babies (we reasoned we needed many children and many hands to milk the cows and goats, cut the hay, slaughter the pigs, smoke the hams, shear the sheep, harvest the honey, and all the rest). Our first farm was roadless and accessible only by boat, far out in the Nærøyfjord (named the #1 Most Beautiful Place on Earth in recent years by the National Geographic Society). The immense mountains that loomed about our lonely little farm (which had buildings dating back to the 1600s) rose 6,000 feet from sea-level, and the sun was hence obstructed from view, down at the bottom of that narrow crack where we chose to settle, for six and a half months of the year. Meanwhile, avalanches and mud-slides and enormous boulders thundered down, year round, on all sides. We were precariously perched, on that small patch of earth, between stone and scree; but we did there embark in earnest upon the much-coveted life-style which we were convinced was the most exalted of all. Like Thoreau, we wished to live deliberately, and confront only the essential facts of life. It was there we obtained our first small flocks of sheep, chickens and geese and several wild boars. My husband learned to butcher, and we made sausages with a hand-cranked meat-grinder. We experimented with soap-making. We grew a substantial garden in between those massive mountain walls that surrounded us, bathed in a wood-heated recycled milk-tank under the stars, boiled our children's square cotton diapers on the cookstove, and rinsed them in the icy glacier-water of the near-by river. We fished in the fjord, climbed the mountains to gather wild blueberries, cloudberries and lingonberries, and made stinging nettle soup in the spring. One snowy November night I learned to spin our sheep's wool on my newly-purchased spinning wheel, and I knit socks and sweaters for my wee ones with that yarn (which often I colored with onion skins, birch leaves, yarrow, madder, and woad). Whatever we gleaned from fjord and field we also sold to the to the boat-loads of tourists who visited the café we ran, which was located in an old boathouse on the wharf. We former suburbanites were utterly thrilled with all we were managing to learn and put into practice.... It all seemed nothing short of miraculous. |
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| A few years later, after some unpleasant encounters with one of our two elderly neighbors (which actually ended up coming to blows), we decided to buy a 150-acre farm on an island in the North Sea, at the mouth of the Sognefjørd. It was upon that island that we acquired our first draft-horse (a Norwegian fjord-horse), a few Jersey cows, 75 or so sheep, plus all the other usual farm animals (pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, Border Collies, and cats). Cheese-making and butter-churning became daily activities, as well as gardening, preserving, fishing, sourdough bread baking, wood-chopping, etc. ad infinitum. We began a mussel farm, though my husband's 30-foot wooden fishing boat lacked a winch, so it was difficult to harvest the efficiently for sale. But the boat came in handy for fishing, transportation, and gathering foolish sheep who had gotten stuck while nibbling seaweed on the shores of the steep crags which comprised our rocky island. Our home-schooled children (clad in home-made, Amish-style attire) did all partake in this great adventure. To this day they all have extremely vivid and fond memories of their peculiar upbringings, despite the absence of television, computers, schooling, shopping malls, and McDonald's hamburgers, on that old-fashioned little farm by the sparkling sea.... |
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| And then the day came when I felt compelled to learn to weave. I obtained an antique loom, and shortly thereafter had managed to learn all the rudimentary skills necessary to weave countless rag-rugs out of my father's thread-bare Brooks Brothers shirts and suits, old gingham dresses, and flannel long underwear. I also wove "vadmel", a type of fulled woolen fabric, and colorful bands to be used for various utilitarian purposes. On that island farm I also acquired my first hand-cranked Singer sewing machine from the early 1900s, and spent my days and evenings making clothes and rag-dolls for my children, in addition to darning socks, patching small trousers, and other noble, housewife-ish, maternal employment. It was indeed a blissful and deeply satisfying time, despite the absence of a feeling of community, substantial friendship, or culture (aside from the Scandinavian folk-culture, which we nearly worshiped). |
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| However, it was also a time of self-righteousness and moral superiority. We looked down upon those wo drove cars, used electricity, had store-bought clothes, surrendered their children to mediocre public day-care and education, and mindlessly supported the global food and farming industries. Self-sufficiency was like an olympic sport to us, we would not be outdone! This tendency became even more fanatical when i moved to yet another remote, abandoned Norwegian farm, this one in the mountains of Telemark.... |
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| The non-electric life upon a steep and roadless mountain farm was indeed intoxicating. Goats, honey-bees, and horse-and-sleigh rides supplemented all the other accomplishments. In the mountains there were not much fish to be had, save a few trout in the river that ran through the farm; but the neighbors hunted upon our land, and we could beg a little moose-meat upon occasion. The cheese I produced was now a mix of Jersey cow milk and goat, and I began to craft goat-milk soap. Diapers were again boiled on the wood-burning cook-stove, made clean by the home-made soap that I grated with a cheese-grater. I experimented with dipping tallow (sheep-fat) candles, and also grew flax, which I learned to spin and aspired to weave. We also grew some small patches of oats and barley, which we prepared to flail, thresh, and winnow completely by hand. I even made birch-root and birch-bark baskets, and constructed folk-costumes, while my husband built wooden sleighs, stringed musical instruments, and eventually erected a saw-mill. Self-sufficiency was a marvelous and lofty endeavor to attain unto.... But still, we did not succeed at making our own salt or shoes or toothbrushes (though we knew people who did all those things); we eventually began to realize that one single family cannot possibly do it all, in solitude, without any sort of supportive community. And why should any one family do it all? It seemed almost sacreligious to question these tenets we had for decades clung to.... But I did in earnest begin to question, and ponder. Besides which, after slaving night and day to become self-sufficient, we discovered that we STILL needed money! I also started feeling the effects of being the village outcast: the strange American lady with ankle-length dresses and aprons, who knit stockings while she walked, and forever smelled faintly of goats. No, the local residents shopped at the Norwegian equivalent of Walmart™, and had absolutely no interest in the traditions we extolled or the skills we had mastered. We were not held in high esteem---- au contraire, our Coca Cola© drinking neighbors loathed the sight of us. My husband with his long beard, my youngest Viking son with blonde ringlets hanging down to his elbows, our home-made clothing, our horse-and-wagon, the sheep and cow and goat bells that sounded upon our well-grazed hill-sides: all these things were deemed out-dated and unnecessary. I began to receive hate-letters in the mail, and the farm's property was frequently vandalized by the local red-neck youth. Without a community of friends and neighbors who not only empathized with but actually respected our profoundly ecological way of life, how could this splendiferous lifestyle be sustained? It all came to a crashing halt for me when I realized this. It felt so lonely, and no-one cared, except to poke fun at those would-be Amish-Viking freaks. My happiness began to unravel---- sauerkraut-making and sock-darning in isolation were not enough. But then I remembered my long-lost friends in America, and ART. I began a fervent correspondence project with said Americans, wherein I poured out my heart and soul into hand-written letters and the decorated envelopes that enveloped them.... O, the thrill of surrendering my creations unto the unknown of the Norwegian (and American) postal-service! This new past-time sustained me. And now, back in my native New England, my hem-line has risen a few inches, I no longer wear a slat-bonnet, and (discreet) red lipstick has re-appeared. I still do not drive a car, but I do have a telephone. And I take the train to New York City, and the Museum of Modern Art, whenever I can possibly afford it, as well as Iceland and Telemark and Stockholm. My dream: to have goats again, and a sprawling garden full of daffodils and hollyhocks, in a desolate northern place, incorporated into a magnificent Bottle-Cap Cathedral Roadside Attraction.... If i ever manage to obtain a few acres of land and a wee shack or two, the world will NOT be disappointed.... And the bottle-cap encrusted spires shall scrape against the heavens, o verily.... |
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| *Disclaimer: Some minor details have been altered in order to protect the identities of certain personages herein depicted, or simply to make for better reading. But all in all, these events are indeed factual, for better or worse. |
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