I have just finished reading Christian Egander Skov’s Folkeligt skal alt nu være. It is one of the most thoughtful, nuanced and balanced books I have read in a long time about a subject that has become surprisingly difficult to discuss: what binds a democratic society together. One of the book’s central arguments is that democracy depends on something deeper than constitutions, elections and the rule of law. Those institutions are indispensable, but they cannot sustain themselves. Democracy also presupposes a shared political community—citizens who recognise one another as belonging to the same civic culture and who therefore accept mutual obligations. Danish has a word for this: folkelighed. There is no precise English equivalent. Perhaps the closest expression is civic belonging. It is not folklore. It is not nationalism. And it is certainly not “blood and soil.” Rather, it describes the shared history, language, institutions, traditions and everyday practices that allow individuals to become part of a political community. It is something people actively choose to participate in and continuously create together. That distinction struck me. Like many others, I have largely grown up intellectually within a liberal tradition that celebrates individual freedom and autonomy. I continue to believe deeply in those values. But this book reminded me that individualism also has its limits. An individual can only flourish within a community that makes individual freedom possible in the first place. Freedom is not simply the absence of obligations. It also depends upon trust, shared norms and institutions that none of us could create alone. Reading the book also reminded me of Martin Buber’s I and Thou, which I wrote about some months ago. The two books are, of course, concerned with different questions. Buber explores the encounter between human beings, whereas Skov is interested in the foundations of democratic society. Yet I could not help noticing a common intuition running through both. Neither sees the individual as fully self-sufficient. For Buber, we become fully human through genuine relationships with other people. For Skov, liberal democracy depends upon citizens who are willing to become part of a shared civic community. In both cases, the I is not diminished by the we. Quite the opposite. The individual becomes more fully itself because it exists in relation to something beyond itself. Perhaps that is one of the enduring paradoxes of liberal democracy. We rightly celebrate individual liberty. Yet liberty cannot sustain itself indefinitely unless free individuals also choose to belong. We often think democracy begins with rights. Books like this remind me that it may begin even earlier—with the willingness to say we.

06/30/2026 16:43:42

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• I have just finished reading Christian Egander Skov’s Folkeligt skal alt nu være. It is one of the most thoughtful, nuanced and balanced books I have read in a long time about a subject that has become surprisingly difficult to discuss: what binds a democratic society together. One of the book’s central arguments is that democracy depends on something deeper than constitutions, elections and the rule of law. Those institutions are indispensable, but they cannot sustain themselves. Democracy also presupposes a shared political community—citizens who recognise one another as belonging to the same civic culture and who therefore accept mutual obligations. Danish has a word for this: folkelighed. There is no precise English equivalent. Perhaps the closest expression is civic belonging. It is not folklore. It is not nationalism. And it is certainly not “blood and soil.” Rather, it describes the shared history, language, institutions, traditions and everyday practices that allow individuals to become part of a political community. It is something people actively choose to participate in and continuously create together. That distinction struck me. Like many others, I have largely grown up intellectually within a liberal tradition that celebrates individual freedom and autonomy. I continue to believe deeply in those values. But this book reminded me that individualism also has its limits. An individual can only flourish within a community that makes individual freedom possible in the first place. Freedom is not simply the absence of obligations. It also depends upon trust, shared norms and institutions that none of us could create alone. Reading the book also reminded me of Martin Buber’s I and Thou, which I wrote about some months ago. The two books are, of course, concerned with different questions. Buber explores the encounter between human beings, whereas Skov is interested in the foundations of democratic society. Yet I could not help noticing a common intuition running through both. Neither sees the individual as fully self-sufficient. For Buber, we become fully human through genuine relationships with other people. For Skov, liberal democracy depends upon citizens who are willing to become part of a shared civic community. In both cases, the I is not diminished by the we. Quite the opposite. The individual becomes more fully itself because it exists in relation to something beyond itself. Perhaps that is one of the enduring paradoxes of liberal democracy. We rightly celebrate individual liberty. Yet liberty cannot sustain itself indefinitely unless free individuals also choose to belong. We often think democracy begins with rights. Books like this remind me that it may begin even earlier—with the willingness to say we. (06/30/2026 16:43:42)
• This Tuesday was a special day for Jeanne, Vilhelm and me. Most of all, it was a special day for our youngest son, Jens. He sat his final examination before graduating from Aurehøj Gymnasium in Gentofte, just north of Copenhagen. These three years have been a wonderful time for Jens. Not only because Aurehøj was – and remains – a remarkable place to learn, but because the years between adolescence and adulthood are among the most formative in any life. Friendships are forged, interests become passions, and vague dreams slowly begin to take shape. Looking at Jens in his student cap outside the school, I could not help thinking back to another photograph. Forty-five years ago, I stood on exactly the same steps, in front of exactly the same building, wearing my own newly acquired student cap as a freshly graduated Aurehøj student. At the time, I had no idea where life would take me. I certainly could not have imagined that one day I would return to those same steps with my own son. Graduation season is a time of celebration. But it is also slightly melancholy. Every transition from one chapter of life to the next contains a small farewell. Something ends so that something new can begin. For Jens and his classmates, a door has closed and many others have opened. For parents, moments like these are reminders of how quickly time passes. And perhaps that is why old photographs matter so much. They remind us that while generations change, some places, traditions and hopes endure. Congratulations, Jens. (06/25/2026 08:15:47)
• One of the pleasures of growing older is discovering that your ears can still be surprised. This year, I once again attended the KLANG Festival together with my old friend Martin Malgreen, chair of the festival’s board. KLANG has for many years been one of Copenhagen’s most important platforms for experimental music, creating a space where curiosity matters more than familiarity and where listening itself becomes an active practice. On Wednesday evening we moved through three very different concerts. The first, KLINGGGG by Wassermann, Anker and Parkins, was primarily acoustic. The human voice played the leading role, although often in forms that barely resembled what we normally think of as singing. Strange sounds, whispers, clicks, extended vocal techniques and unexpected interactions between the performers constantly challenged the boundary between language and sound. Then came Ann Rosén’s Walking in the Now. Here, the visual dimension became central. Watching marks and gestures emerge on the screen while the sound unfolded created an experience somewhere between concert, drawing and performance art. It was a reminder that listening is not always something we do only with our ears. Finally, Jena Jang’s Necrocore – Somatic Noise. An intense and uncompromising noise performance. Dense walls of sound, physical vibrations and electronic distortion transformed the concert hall into something closer to an environment than a musical performance. At moments it felt almost less like listening to music and more like being inside it. Three concerts. Three radically different approaches to sound. What I admire about festivals like KLANG is that they remind us that music is not a genre but a question. What counts as music? What counts as listening? And how much of our understanding of art is really just habit? Not every experiment succeeds. Not every work speaks equally strongly to every listener. But curiosity remains one of the most underrated cultural virtues. And KLANG continues to reward it. (06/14/2026 20:34:20)
• One of the privileges of still being a lawyer, but no longer a full-time partner, is that I can spend more time advising artists and cultural organisations—not on legal matters, but on strategy, governance, fundraising, and the long-term challenge of building sustainable institutions. I have had the pleasure of advising A Kassen for quite a number of years. Last Thursday I travelled to Lund for the opening of their new exhibition at Skissernas Museum. Founded in 2004, A Kassen has spent more than two decades pursuing a collective artistic practice that often begins with things already present in the world. As the curator pointed out during the opening, the group borrowed its name from the Danish unemployment insurance funds. In much the same way, their art frequently starts by taking hold of existing objects, systems, and structures and moving them into a new context. The exhibition is less a collection of individual works than a miniature city that visitors walk through. Traffic poles from Copenhagen. Urban furniture. Signage. Geometric forms. Fragments of public space relocated into the museum and made strange again. Several works explore the relationship between geometry and perception. According to the curator, algorithms have been used to “straighten out” faces and objects, translating them into abstract forms. The result is both playful and unsettling. We recognise the world, yet we also see how easily it can be reduced to patterns and systems. What I have always appreciated about A Kassen is their ability to move effortlessly between humour and seriousness. A traffic signal becomes a sculpture. A rubbish bin becomes architecture. A barrier becomes a drawing in space. The exhibition raises questions about public space, authority, and how we organise the environments we inhabit. But it does so without preaching. Instead, it invites us to look again at things we thought we already understood. Perhaps that is one of art’s most important functions. Not to show us something entirely new. But to make us see the familiar once more. (06/14/2026 20:07:44)
• On our way back to the airport in Paris, Jeanne and I managed to squeeze in a 15-minute stop at Anselm Kiefer’s Nymphäum at Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin. Fifteen minutes is nowhere near enough for Anselm Kiefer. But it was enough to remind me why he remains one of the most compelling painters alive. I have loved Kiefer’s work ever since seeing his monumental exhibition at the Doge’s Palace in Venice a few years ago. Alongside Gerhard Richter and the recently deceased Georg Baselitz, he belongs to that remarkable generation of post-war German artists who spent decades wrestling with memory, history, mythology and the ruins of the twentieth century. In Nymphäum, Kiefer turns to the nymphs of Greek mythology. Yet these are not the graceful figures of classical painting. They emerge only partially from forests, water, darkness and layers of paint. They appear and disappear at the same time. What struck me most is how the exhibition is also a conversation with other artists across centuries. One painting echoes Edvard Munch’s The Scream, although Kiefer lets the scream dissolve into vegetation and geological time rather than existential panic. Other works recall Gustav Klimt, where illuminated city windows shimmer like mosaics behind foliage. The exhibition text also points to resonances with Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie, Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead, Andy Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings, and even Aby Warburg’s famous studies of the “Ninfa” figure wandering through Western art. This has always been one of Kiefer’s great strengths. His paintings never stand alone. They feel like archaeological sites where myths, literature, philosophy, religion, art history and personal memory have all been buried together and are slowly re-emerging through the surface. The result is strangely beautiful. The nymphs in these paintings are neither fully present nor fully absent. They survive as traces, memories and transformations — much like culture itself. (06/14/2026 15:04:02)
• Yesterday, on Fernando Pessoa’s 148th birthday, I finished reading the Danish translation of The Anarchist Banker. It is a remarkably short book that nevertheless manages to raise a surprisingly large question: what if the most consistent anarchist is not the revolutionary, but the banker? Pessoa’s protagonist argues precisely that. If the goal of anarchism is maximum individual freedom, then the logical path is not collective struggle or social engineering, but the relentless pursuit of one’s own freedom through economic independence. Profit maximization becomes a form of anarchist practice. The argument is elegant, provocative, and intentionally unsettling. What fascinated me most was not whether the banker is right, but the premise he exposes. Much political thinking assumes that dismantling institutions automatically creates freedom. Pessoa’s banker forces us to ask a more uncomfortable question: freedom for whom? People are not equally equipped to make use of freedom. They differ in resources, abilities, knowledge, circumstances, and luck. That is where the argument begins to reveal its blind spot. A society built entirely on autonomy and voluntary exchange risks becoming strangely unsocial. Freedom without the capacity to exercise it quickly becomes asymmetrical. The banker insists that helping others can itself become a form of domination. Yet one is left wondering whether respect for freedom also requires some concern for whether freedom is genuinely accessible. The book is perhaps too neat, too simplified, and too eager to win its own argument. But precisely because of that simplification it works so well as a thought experiment. It forces the reader to examine assumptions that usually remain hidden. There is also something amusing about how our attention gravitates toward whatever we happen to be thinking about. Having spent the morning with Pessoa and his anarchist banker, I arrived in Paris only to discover posters for not one but two Pessoa-related events at the Théâtre de la Ville: Robert Wilson’s Pessoa – Since I’ve Been Me and an entire Journée Pessoa dedicated to the Portuguese writer. Unfortunately, both were in French, and I was flying home later the same day. Sometimes the world appears to be sending a message. More often, perhaps, it is simply reminding us what already occupies our minds. (06/14/2026 14:37:01)
• On Friday, Jeanne and I found ourselves just outside Paris, attending a milestone that felt both deeply personal and surprisingly universal. Vilhelm graduated from the Master in Economics & Finance programme at HEC Paris. Watching the ceremony, I was struck by how international the audience was. Students, parents and families had travelled from all over the world to celebrate years of hard work, ambition and sacrifice. Different languages, different cultures, different backgrounds — but a shared sense of pride and gratitude. All three of us are acutely aware of how privileged we have been to have this opportunity. Access to excellent education is never something to take for granted, and HEC is one of those rare places where extraordinary talent from across the world is gathered in one community. Throughout his studies, Vilhelm often said something that stayed with me: “One of the best things about being here is that many of the people around me are smarter than I am. It means I learn more every day.” That observation captures something important about education. Much of modern life encourages us to seek environments where we feel competent, knowledgeable and successful. Yet growth often happens in the opposite situation: when we are surrounded by people who challenge our assumptions, expose our limitations and expand our horizons. The value of institutions such as HEC is not only what is taught in the classroom. It is the daily encounter with talent, discipline, curiosity and perspectives from every corner of the world. Congratulations, Vilhelm. And congratulations to all the graduates of the Class of 2026. The diploma matters. But perhaps even more important are the friendships, experiences and intellectual humility gained along the way. (06/14/2026 14:05:15)
• What does it mean to meditate? The word meditation comes from the Latin meditatio and meditari — to reflect, contemplate, rehearse, or exercise the mind. Long before meditation became associated with mindfulness apps and wellness culture, it referred to a disciplined practice of attention. Today, meditation takes many forms, but most share a common ambition: to slow the mind’s constant chatter and cultivate a different quality of awareness. Research suggests benefits ranging from reduced stress and improved concentration to better emotional regulation and a greater sense of well-being. Music has often been part of that journey. Across cultures, chants, drones, organs, and classical music have all been used to support meditative states. And few composers are as frequently described as meditative as Johann Sebastian Bach. There is something paradoxical about Bach. His music is highly structured, mathematically precise, and intellectually demanding. Yet many listeners experience it not as cerebral but as contemplative. Musicians, theologians, and philosophers have long remarked that Bach’s music seems to create a sense of order large enough for the listener to rest within it. The idea that Bach can be meditative is hardly new. His music combines rigorous structure with a profound sense of stillness. The Goldberg Variations are perhaps the clearest example: thirty variations of astonishing invention unfolding from a single aria, creating the sensation that the listener is simultaneously travelling and standing still. This morning Jeanne and I attended the Meditationskoncert at the Østerbro Chamber Music Festival. At the centre of the programme stood Bach’s Goldberg Variations — unquestionably the defining element of the experience. Rather than being performed on harpsichord or piano, the work had been transcribed for string trio and performed by Katharina Giegling (violin and meditation guide), Anna Theegarten (viola), and Julia Sompolinska (cello). The arrangement revealed new colours and textures in the music, highlighting the extraordinary independence of Bach’s individual voices and transforming the work into an intimate musical conversation. I will confess that I still prefer the piece on piano. For me, Glenn Gould remains difficult to surpass. Yet that hardly mattered. The combination of Bach’s endlessly unfolding variations, guided meditation, attentive listening, and a room collectively committed to slowing down produced many of the very things meditation promises: focus, calm, presence, and a temporary suspension of the endless stream of practical concerns that usually occupies the mind. For an hour or so, the world became a little quieter. (06/14/2026 13:54:04)
• I have just finished Christina Hesselholdt’s Passion in Wax (in Danish: Passion i Voks), the third novel featuring the sibling pair Gustava and Mikael. By now, I find myself hoping that Hesselholdt is quietly working towards a tetralogy—or perhaps even a pentalogy. I have grown remarkably fond of these characters and the strange imaginative universe they inhabit. What fascinates me most is the way Hesselholdt allows memories, obsessions, family histories and fantasies to accumulate across books. Reading Passion in Wax after Through a Filter of Red (in Danish: Gennem et filter af rødt) feels less like starting a new story and more like revisiting a familiar landscape that has shifted ever so slightly while you were away. One of the motifs that stayed with me is the recurring presence of Rued Langgaard’s Insektarium. On the surface it is a curious musical work consisting of miniature portraits of insects. In the novel, however, it becomes something much larger: a soundtrack to Mikael’s inner world. The book is populated by insects, visions, memories and apocalyptic imagery. Langgaard’s wandering grasshopper seems to echo through Mikael’s imagination, where personal memories merge with biblical imagery from Revelation, family history and increasingly elaborate fantasies. The result is both unsettling and oddly moving. The title itself also struck me as a kind of continuation of the previous novel. In Through a Filter of Red, reality appears mediated through memory, longing and interpretation. In Passion in Wax, those same memories seem to have hardened into wax figures displayed in an imaginary museum. The world is no longer merely filtered; it is preserved. That imagined museum may be the novel’s most powerful image. People, memories and passions are frozen in wax, yet something refuses to remain still. The grasshoppers keep wandering. The music keeps playing. The past refuses to become entirely past. I must admit that I occasionally felt the novel lingered a little too long within its own symbolic universe. In any case, Passion in Wax left me looking forward to the next visit from Gustava and Mikael—assuming, and hoping, that there is one. (06/10/2026 16:51:36)
• One of the pleasures of living in Copenhagen is that you can decide on a whim to stop by a neighbourhood bar and end up hearing world-class jazz. That happened to me yesterday evening when I managed to catch the second set by Andreas Toftemark Quintet at Blågårds Apotek. Andreas Toftemark is one of the most interesting voices on the younger Danish jazz scene. Based in Copenhagen, but shaped by studies in New York, Berlin, Paris and Copenhagen, he belongs to that generation of musicians who effortlessly bridge American hard bop traditions and contemporary European jazz. I have become particularly fond of his latest album, Roadmap, released on April Records. The record, recorded together with American trumpeter Benny Benack III, has a wonderful sense of direction and momentum while remaining deeply melodic. The title track, which was also played last night, remains one of my favourites. The quintet at Blågårds Apotek was not the same line-up as on the album, but the format was. Alongside Toftemark on saxophone were Rolf Thofte on trumpet, Rasmus Sørensen on piano, Matthias Petri on bass and Nikolaj Bangsgaard on drums. Most of the repertoire consisted of compositions by Toftemark, with contributions from Sørensen and Thofte as well. Another highlight was their rendition of Roy Hargrove’s Top of My Head. I have loved Roy Hargrove’s music for decades. He died far too young in 2018. I was fortunate enough to hear him live around 1994 when I lived in New York, and later again in Copenhagen at Pumpehuset. Toftemark’s quintet delivered a fine version of the tune. Not quite the same as hearing Hargrove himself, of course. And Andreas could perhaps have gone all the way and sung the closing lyrics as Hargrove did on the original recording. Then again, perhaps some roads are best left to the memories. (06/07/2026 16:39:18)

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