No siento nada

by Liv Strömquist
translated by Alba Pagán

I could have another you in a minute.

Is the message of Irreplaceable really about women empowerment? Or is its lyric “I” just a last minute-feminised version^* of Leonardo DiCaprio upgrading his latest swimsuit model girlfriend to, um, a newer model? Can we even feel^† love in the times of late capitalism? Is love a threat for capitalism?

If you needed a proof that Sweden can produce much better things than IKEA meatballs and toxic waste, here it is.

With the participation of (in order of appearance)

Leonardo DiCaprio and his many girlfriends Byung-Chul Han, philosopher Plato, Socrates, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Phaedrus and Alcibiades Eva Illouz, sociologist Lou Andreas-Salomé, writer and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek, philosopher Bendix Grünlich and Antonie Buddenbrook, from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen Henrik Hertz, Danish poet, contemporary of Kierkegaard Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden Brainy Smurf, Panoramix (known as Getafix in English) and Jabba the Hutt Samantha and Charlotte, the characters of Sex and the City Papa Smurf Hilda Doolittle, aka H.D., and Lionel Durand, the chief of the Paris Bureau of Newsweek Ezra Pound and Frances Gregg, friends of H.D. Richard Aldington, D. H. Lawrence, Cecil Gray, Perdita (the daugther of H.D. and Gray) and Bryher Pieter Rodeck aka Peter van Eck, H.D.’s fellow passenger who brought some colour to the book Sigmund Freud Erich Fromm The Little Prince, the Rose and the Fox Georges Bataille, philosopher Rumi Beyoncé Aphrodite, Eros and Sappho Lovie Austin, American musician, composer and bandleader Count Vronsky and Anna Karenina Marsilio Ficino, Florentine philosopher and astrologer Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron John Hobhouse, friend of Byron Theseus and Ariadne Emily Dickinson Marnie and Hannah, the characters of Girls Markus Heilig, Swedish psychiatrist, and John Bowlby, British psychologist Michel Houellebecq, French author

*	Ne-Yo, one of the song’s six (that’s right) authors, tweeted: “Once I realized how the song comes across if sung by a guy, that’s when I decided to give it away.” To be sung by a woman, that is. What a nice gesture.
†	Swedish Den rödaste rosen slår ut can be translated as “The reddest rose blossoms” or “The reddest rose opens”. In fact it is a reference to “the reddest rose unfolds”, a line from H.D.’s poem Red Rose and a Beggar. So the book’s title is La rose la plus rouge s’épanouit in French, La rosa più rossa si schiude in Italian and A rosa mais vermelha desabrocha in Portuguese. The English version (set to be published this year) is simply The Reddest Rose. However, it appears as Ich fühl’s nicht in German and No siento nada in Spanish, “I don’t feel anything”. I personally find this title suiting the comic better than La rosa más roja se abre.