Sex, Drugs, & Mock n' Troll
Meandering into the aimlessness of modern edgelord provocateurism
First, something you must understand is the meaning of provocateurism, or what it is to be a modern provocateur, even though I've already mentioned it several times in this discourse about Ortega's boyfriend. Historically, a provocateur within the arts is someone who deliberately disrupts norms in order to force a reaction that reveals something deeper socially, politically, and/or psychologically (think Dada movement of the early 20th century, or the Beat Generation of the mid-20th century; the latter is relevant to the review of the podcast). Provocateurism is a style or strategy characterized by the deliberate provocation of strong reactions, often through shocking, controversial, or transgressive behavior (it's a literate term for trolling and rage baiting). They are by definition counterculturalists, though the culture to be disrupted today is a lot less uniform due to the addition of social media.
Technically within these fandom spaces here, I personally would fall into the category of provocateur, as my fiction (and my editorializing) contains uncomfortable taboos that challenge the fandom majority and consensus (and sometimes trolls various stans, or merely exist for the visceral reaction).
It takes one to know one, and while I come from the school of Allen Ginsberg (as I've mentioned long before this dude entered our celebrity's space), Rønnenfelt comes from the school of John Giorno, one of the many topics covered in this hour-and-a-half of circle jerk of an artiste who talks about On the Road-like road tripping in a move to Trump Country in 2024, but then doesn't seem to understand the meaning of Americana even after being completely immersed into it.
Rønnenfelt's ego can't be bothered to exert some genuine honesty in his talk about his [drug-fueled] creative collaborations so much so that he carefully manipulates a narrative of a humble Hero of Copenhagen punk when the truth is that he just wants to feel good (at times referring to "crime" when that's just a euphemism). He also relies on the general public's ignorance of the communal nature of the Copenhagen punk underground (which isn't exclusive to Denmark) because it's just simpler for him to talk about himself and his childhood friends from Iceage.
My own brain cells were already dying at this point. Too many long pauses where I swear his brain just shut off. There's a video version, but I can't do it.
In February of last year, Rønnenfelt went on The Ion Pod (hosted by indie filmmaker/actor/producer KJ Rothweiler & The Life frontman Curtis Everett Pawley) to shoot the shit about his work and all of those topics in the caption to their Insta preview of the episode, and within it we get to listen to him drift through his tales of teenage terrorism and traveling/bumming around the U.S. with extra processing difficulty (more so than in other interviews he held at the time). And while it's clear they all jived on similar interests like fanboying fellow drug user (and addict) William S. Burroughs (one of Ginsberg's BFFs in the Beat collective) and David Lynch, they also waxed poetic on the benefits of drugs to facilitate creative expression.
On Using Drugs to Create:
Rothweiler and Pawley started talking about using drugs to create, and within the conversation (before recounting the Giorno story about suggesting amphetamines to literature students to become great writers) Rønnenfelt clearly gave the "one doesn't have to, but" attitude before eventually conceding that drug use is part of the creative process with his description of it as a "tool":
"With writing these things…it's a tool to actually figure out what's going on and so much can be revealed through that."
— Elias Rønnenfelt on using drugs to create, Ion Podcast #165, February 13, 2025
I can't disagree with their assessments of drug effects on the senses; they're mainly right about drugs and perception (for my inexperienced readers, they can make you hyperfocused on details; strong weed in particular can make an already observant person hyperaware of everything), but one host was also right about the "false confidence" drugs give you when creating (as Rønnenfelt confirmed that sometimes when he's writing on drugs he'll think that what he wrote is hot shit, but once sober the next day it'll be "dog shit").
Point being, yes, he uses drugs to create/write, even mentioning that they might be necessary during the editing process.
On Creating from a Source of Poverty/Pain/Failure:
What I found even more interesting than the drugs (because I already expected acknowledgement of some sort) is his attitude about repeating things, or writing from a place of pain and/or destitution. As the hosts asked about this, Rønnenfelt went on about how he was starving when he wrote Plowing [Into the Field of Love], and while some "good things" came of the experience, he would rather not do it again (even though that's exactly what he was doing at the time of this interview, when his landlord was kicking him out of his apartment for an owner move-in).
I found the last part of what he said most interesting, given the current April 2026 situation:
"You should explore some things and then fucking get on with it, you know? Not that I've ‘arrived’. I think you can find inspiration and make something in certain life situations, but if you just blank repeat whatever you've been doing over and over, yeah, no, that's not gonna be inspiring. It's just gonna be, um...repetition.”
That fleeting inspiration only lasts for so long for these types; boredom easily sets in, and then it's off to the next conquest, whether it be sex, tripping, and trolling (or all three).
At times I felt like I was being trolled, the bradylalia/i.e. exceptionally long pauses between words and phrases too exaggerated for a Danish guy who's been writing, reading, and speaking it for so long (not to mention non-words like "unpredicticality" sneaking their way into the word slurry); supposedly making "meaningful" poetry and songs with it all through his career. (His poetry book, Sunken Heights, has some Jewel-level gems in it that even Giorno would've hated.)
On Activism (or Inactivism, As It Is)
Which shuffles us even deeper into his aloofness, his exhausted exhalations of the arrogance and humility cards playing against each other under a very oily head of hair; unkempt as he is (and appears to be in the video version of the interview), it's an expression of what he represents: Laziness, and the direction of energy expended on art for angst's sake, the angst of a pure, young, Danish white guy. Top of the food chain right there, and during the whole mass migration crisis that affected his home region in 2015, as refugees fleeing the Syrian War were filing through Denmark on their way to Sweden (since Denmark has tighter laws), I sure can't imagine why a white guy in a country of majority white guys would ever draw or insinuate anything negative about non-white guys around that time.
After being asked what else he was doing, and if he was DJing somewhere, he responded with a yes, but that it wasn't for him. Something else that wasn't for him was organizing for causes:
"Yeah, no, we're gonna do a big Palestine fundraiser in April where like, everyone from Copenhagen is playing and that's gonna be cool. But I don't think at heart that I'm an organizer. But yeah. Leave that to other hands, powers."
You read it, I hope I don't need to explain anything further on that, aside for the kudos Rothweiler & Pawley deserve for waiting patiently as their guest wandered in the fields of his mind while trying not to sound too bothered that he might have to promote his new music so that people can listen to what he has to say.
The Long Talk to Nowhere (+ Bonus Interview)
There really weren't many surprises for me, having read and listened to (more painfully staccato+pause brain waves) a few interviews of his. If you're totally new to Rønnenfelt's languid drawl, this would be a decent introduction. However, if you're a stan, then of course this is one of your more valuable examples of exactly who Elias Rønnenfelt really is, which wasn't any more or less than what we've known all along: Perpetually stoned on something, searching his brain for the right words to say that will keep control of the mysterious narrative surrounding some of his music, that which he happened to blurt out just a couple of months later in this interview for this 'zine
So Young zine, April 17, 2025 featuring him
Dead-eye drug sincerity, I suppose.
But what of those provocative moments, the trolling, the underground underbelly of art that saturates a certain type of angry youth dynamics that keeps a 32-year-old punk rock musician with 62,000 IG followers socially adolescent and barely conscious?
Nothing. That's the point, and for some people, that's enough to maintain the distraction.
— April 20, 2026
