I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
Of fans with golden daffodils
- William Wordsworth (well…)

You have destroyed my flowerlike life…
- Morrissey (Miserable lie)

In the middle of August this year [2006], Oline Stig wrote in DN [Dagens Nyheter, the biggest Swedish Daily] a critical review of two books about funerals. In the introduction she wrote about a trend-breaking Swedish death obituary (1977) with a flower instead of the usual cross. That flower was not easy to use, and the resistance was founded in, according to the then director of DN, the fact that they wanted to avoid something like that wild grown outfit [vildvuxen utstyrsel] in obituaries.
“Flowers are not dangerous”, the deceased husband said in an earlier letter [brevdikt] to the editor.
This brought my [Inger Edelfeldt] thoughts to Manchester. During the time The Smiths waved the most with their daffodils, Morrissey, in a TV-show where children interviewed artists, was asked about the meaning with these flowers, and he answered: “I think flowers are very beautiful things. They are nice and innocent things, they don’t harm anybody, they don’t burp, they do not do anything ugly. Why not? It’s better, I think, than waving socks about.”
And the daffodils (and also gladiolus) has certainly followed Moz through his career. Those going to his concern at Hovet in Stockholm this spring was as usual spotted already at the train. They could be spotted not only because of their haircuts, clothes and badges but also by the daffodils that showed from [stack upp] pockets or were held in hands.
In Johnny Rogan’s biographical book Morrissey and Marr, the severed alliance (by the way hated by Mårran [she actually writes that] himself) you can read that the flowers were introduced by Morrissey and Marr when The Smiths were playing at the club “Hacienda” in Manchester, and Morrissey gave the following explanation: “They are symbolical, and the reasons to that are at least three. We started with them as a counterbalance to the Hacienda club when we played there; it was so sterile an inhuman. We wanted some harmony with nature. An we wanted to show some optimism in Manchester, something the flowers also stand for (Manchester is still half paralysed, and that paralysation is still permeating the entire Factory…) [This is my translation of Edelfeldt’s translation of Rogan]
And later: “The flowers are a human gesture…the world of music had reached the point where people really were afraid to show what they felt; to show their feelings at all. I thought that was a sin and a disgrace [synd och skam] and besides you got bored. The flowers gave hope.”
He got, still according to Rogan’s book, inspiration from Oscar Wilde who used to fill his home with daffodils in Oxford. For the fans of Wilde the flowers became an important feature and Morrissey wanted something like that. According to Rogan, Morrissey said that the disciples of The Smiths would soon put gladioli in front of his feet.
At the The Smiths concert in London Lyceum 1983 flowers were distributed to the audience, which should have started the tradition where the The Smiths audience instead brought flowers.
It can be mentioned here, that in contrast to the innocence of the flowers, the music press at the same time started to speculate about if several of Morrissey’s texts were really about pedofili (“Handsome devil”, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle”, “Reel Around the Fountain”) – assumptions that of course made M himself really upset. They can be said to be the beginning of a number of suspicions [misstänkliggöranden] about his innocent but bantering [raljanta], and to many provocative, appearance. He would later repeatedly be exposed to a rather brutal stalking from the media that eventually included accusations even for racism and eventually made him leave England.
But back to the daffodils. Morrissey himself should by now be fed up with them (at least the fans are not allowed to throw them up on stage) but what fans want, even after 23 years, abandon such a beautiful symbol of soft resistance against brutality? That Moz himself since then have excavated several more fields and does not have flowers on stage anymore is apparently not important. But in Hultsfred [a Swedish festival in June 2004] the other year actually had a thistle in front of his zipper, a daffodil-comment as good as any, or perhaps a comment on his documented [omvittnat] TROUBLESOME character? Already in an early The Smiths concert he had a small tree in his pocket, possibly even that a way to break the expected symbolism. He never waved socks though, but he performed with painted wounds and bruises on his body during a period when boxers were the object of his interest. And this year he has from several stages in Sweden spoken about his fascination by Scandinavian chocolate, especially “Plopp”. He probably gets sack-loads of this chocolate from his fans.
It may seem like I have an ironic distance to the phenomenon Morrissey. I do not: I am only trying to handle the peculiar and teenage-like fascination that he causes in me, with or without flowers, necklace, hearing-aid, apple in mouth, plaster on the nipple, double-ice-cream-cones and other attributes.
However, I have to admit: I was not there from the beginning. My curiosity was woken up only a few years ago by a strange phenomenon: some people that REALLY liked my books at the same time REALLY liked Morrissey.
During the period in the Eighties when The Smiths debuted, I was in my room listening to Hungarian folk music (after the Seventies when I had worshiped David Bowie and T Rex) so The Smiths passed me by, how incredible that may sound.
But as soon as I – that is many years later – started to listen to Moz, in The Smiths as well as solo, I fell instantly in love. In the unique mixture of shimmering unguarded nakedness and sharp irony in his voice, in the texts, the style, the humour, the complexity, and even in the fact that he refuses to be handled easy, he wants to keep his integrity at all odds. Now it is possible by now to object that his unwillingness to have an image has in fact become…an image. At the same time as I am curious I understand extremely well his unwillingness to “explain” and thereby simplify his feelings, his texts and his life.
I had a nightmare once…I dreamt I was Morrissey and I tried to get out of my hotel room. I stumbled over all the daffodils, Plopp-bars, necklaces, boxing gloves, Moz-saint-portraits, used [male] underwear and other paraphernalia that the fans had given me.
At the top of the pile was a fan-letter that said: “Please, please, give me the answers that I want this time:
WHERE you in love with Johnny Marr? We have wondered 23 years!
ARE you to play together again?
Do you believe in God?
Do you still wear leather shoes even though you are an animal rights activist?
Are you a mean bastard that nobody can stand? Tell me it is true because then you may want to have a cup of tea with ME!
My favourite flower is the daffodil.
I have many badges with your picture on them.
I have all your records. All the interviews.
But I am REALLY not a typical Moz-fan.

That is what all of us typical Moz-fans have in common: that we really, really are not typical Moz-fans.”

*

No, it did not say Inger Edelfeldt under that letter. I am not that typical. And I did not have that dream either. But I do have almost all records and dvd:s and he is frequently featured in my latest novel “Is there life on Mars” [Finns det liv på jorden].
  Bowie came from Mars, Moz from Manchester.
England chased him away, he moved to Los Angeles, now he lives in Rome.
Who is he really? Well, who are you, who am I? not so easy to summarise, if you are not satisfied with easy explanations and image-making.
Keep up being awkward, Morrissey! [Fortsätt konstra]
And I will continue to get a strange, complicated, interesting, revived feeling in my chest as soon as I see a daffodil or a gladiolus.