So every time I talk about Porridge Club, the mad glint in my eye, and the fact that it has a name ending in ‘Club’ makes it appear as though I’ve joined either a most wholesome or most disturbing cult. If I am quite honest, hearing my own proselytizing about it makes me occasionally wonder if I have joined a cult. Many of the signs are there: I talk about it constantly, have built many of my new, increasingly primary, social connections within its hallowed walls, and I am always attempting to recruit new members to join me in my worship of chilling out on a floor doing nothing. Because that’s what we do at Porridge Club. I mean, not NOTHING, because many ideas and friendships and projects and working relationships, etc. etc. are birthed there, but mostly it’s a lot of lounging around eating oats and drinking coffee and exclaiming with delight when a familiar face wanders in the front door, or exclaiming with delight when an unfamiliar face wanders in the front door. We are easily delighted.
I guess I just described a bar filled with regulars, but without the alcohol.
But (fortunately or unfortunately, depending your perspective) we also do drink. From a chicken’s butt, no less. But this occurs usually at events we hear about at porridge club, and because many of its members lurk about and cause trouble at various artistic institutions, free wine gets involved. Win-fucking-win.
But people like me are probably giving this heroic effort at creating a space for chilled people with flexible schedules and busy minds a bad reputation, what with all my rabid enthusiasm.
I suppose writing this blog post is not helping.
Whatever! Just sit down and let me tell you how I got saved by Porridge Club.
Every Monday and Wednesday morning, I make my way to Hagegata near Tøyen station, climb my way to a loft apartment within a magical artwork created by Ole Sjølie, and spend a few hours with good (I mean, really good), folk.
I’m not kidding about the artwork bit, it turns out its former owner, Sjølie, wanted to live within one of his paintings, and so he made his own apartment feel much like one of his abstract monochrome, multi-textured paintings did. I will write more on Sjølie later, because he is an important part of dep.artment (and thus, Porridge Club’s) story.
But Porridge Club. Why the fuck do I hang out with people twice a week to eat porridge like a fairytale peasant?
Much like the fairytale peasant, I am a simple soul with a penchant for a strong drink and a good yarn, I can do a hard day’s labour and complain admirably while doing it, and I know a witch when I see one (incidentally, I really did meet one recently and she was delightful and had a big dog and offered to take me bouldering).
The gathering of porridge enthusiasts (not really, I rarely eat breakfast, but I do deplete coffee supplies) was initiated by Pawel Stypula, dep.artement’s founder and current owner of Sjølie’s live-in painting. He pitched it as a way of surviving the loneliness of the Norwegian winter, and invited all of his friends to just come any time, between the hours of 8am and 12pm, to drink coffee, eat porridge, and sit in front of the fire. Unluckily for him, I had just decided to become disciple to a cult that nobody started and doesn’t exist, but my fervor alone might will it into existence (much like Pratchett’s gods!), and so I’ve been spreading the good word about this place to anyone who will listen – my god, even to a Californian I met in Egypt on the off-chance he may detour through Oslo. Thus, with his extensive social circle and my wagging tongue, the gathering has grown, and I get my fill of social contact and then some twice every week.
Fortunately, the several-hundred member strong group do not all attend at the same time, but statistically it is possible that this might occur one day. Shem, poor neighbours.
Mostly, however, we are a few regulars who turn up, people originally starting out as strangers, and now we’ve grown quite fond of one another. The main thing that really seems to bring us there is how much we like Pawel and his generosity, and how much we like people, just enjoying a little basking in the warmth of human (and occasionally canine) company. I read an article recently that said that as adults, we tend to forget the beauty of just ‘hanging out’ – spending time with people you like with no agenda or activity, just mooching and getting some time in each others’ orbit. With my family back home I do this all the time. And in this way, I have become comfortable with the new people I have met, a sort of pseudo family who I don’t have to entertain or be anything particular with, just turn up and be. Together.
So how has it saved me? Well, I’ve been, these past years, finding a kind of new shape, or perhaps simply shedding an old one without knowing which form the new will take. And this leaves me, I suppose, open to vulnerability, free of my exoskeleton and all misformed and squishy. And this has made me a little scared, very often feeling hopeless as happens when I don’t know which direction to take and, with each winter, very depressed.
Image source.
I’ve been trying New Life Things (e.g. ADHD meds, different work, quitting dating, healthier food habits, etc.) and have been somewhat lost in all this change, unmoored in dark waters. God, what a pretty picture – a squishy blob of floating uncertainty. But oh! Almost out of nowhere, a deus ex-machina to my catastrophic mid-life crisis, I am swept and rescued by an unlikely passing ship that is this gathering of wonderful people, and they have porridge! And a fire! And I ignore the worms! They don’t seem to notice or care that I’m oddly formed, and they are all themselves interesting shapes and energies and sounds. I feel safe there. And with each conversation about art or technology or family or history or porridge or death, I find my squishiness firming, though the form remains ill-defined and I think I like that. I look out with my bug-eyes at them all in wonder, at their open minds, their kindness to each other, their complete lack of surprise when I say something that pops into my mind that usually makes other people side-eye me and ask who manages my medications (his name is Knut, and he’s doing great!).
But nobody at Porridge Club thinks that I say odd things, and this is sweet relief.
Copyright: Deliberately Buried.
I have heard similar from other regulars, and I realise that this one act of generosity by Pawel has potentially positively impacted hundreds of people, by building a community in which to obtain a sense of belonging and even purpose.
Being an aggressive friendmaker these past years, I have always been aware of the importance of having a community to thread yourself into to help build your resilience against the life bombs thrown your way. My found-family had helped me through culture-shock, divorce, joblessness, homesickness, a rotten break-up, yadda-yadda crummy things, AND I’ve enjoyed the privilege of sharing the joyful life moments: finding great work, falling in love, yadda-yadda cool shit.
And though I didn’t think I needed a new community of any sort, Porridge Club offered me a space for parts of me that I was only just discovering: the creative side of me was starting to make itself known, demand my attention. I slipped easily into the space they made for me, and it felt just right. The depression that had taken hold of me at this point in my life was something I couldn’t understand (who ever does?), and I felt it affecting my relationships with those in my close circle of friends/family. And in this dark space I certainly didn’t have any desire to go and commit my weary self to new social obligations and people. But there I was, looking forward to two days a week of doing nothing with a bunch of people I barely knew. And within those walls, with these strangers (well, strangers no longer), depression was but a memory. I was weaved in, tight and strong, and bad things just could not penetrate.
In a TED talk by Marisa Franco, she highlights the importance of building a community or network as a way to find contentment/happiness. She cites several studies (and legit seemed as if she thought we were going to recognise any of those thousand academic names she dropped), so it’s worth watching for the scientific backing. But if you’re too exhausted from already reading this far into MY expert theories that are based on nothing but a hunch, then listen up, losers: that TED lady is right. Look, you introverts may not be able to make immediate use of her tips, but at its core, the advice is just telling you to try to connect to others in ways that you can, rather than wait for others to find you in your hidey hole. And that, if you find yourself unmoored or unhappy, it might help to bounce your reflection off of other people and learn new ways of thinking, feeling, being. Loneliness is a motherfucker, and we can say what we want about enjoying isolation, but goddamn it feels good to grow and develop as a person – something that being part of a group facilitates.
I want to stress here that I don’t suggest that you attempt to cure your depression by using human beings as your personal medicine cabinet, because that is a surefire way to alienate people. I mean only that being part of a community can offer you strength and bring light. And community means giving as well as receiving. Together, like.
I also want to write a post about loneliness at some point in the future, because this is something I personally have never struggled with, but heard much about, particularly in Norway. I am sure that if creating or finding a community were easy, the lonely people would have done it by now, and I think that there are many factors, including culture, that contribute to isolation in the country. I can’t tell people to go against what feels comfortable for them, or go against their culture or what makes sense to them. But I do suggest just taking a few small steps, if possible, into something new, or try to add a new layer to something that already exists. I am sure that many people are part of groups that could become supportive and joyous communities with just a few adjustments. The group of parents who get together to arrange school events: perhaps they could have a regular group chat that shares silly memes and develops its own in-group jokes, or even meets once in a while for coffee or playdates with the kids. Or people you meet at whatever sport or activity you do, or random hobby you participate in, I don’t know your life. Take a tiny step toward building a community by extending invitations, bringing food to celebrate something, creating a point of regular communication in any way.
And online communities are great, but I do think that IRL ones have value that can’t be matched by online alone.
OK, Jesus, I feel like this post is going on too long, here is another bit of hilarity from Deliberately Buried.
