We were watching a Swedish movie the other night. It ended with a woman driving away, furious, and a man, her ex-lover, walking backwards and forward in despair. Then large black letters appeared on the screen: “SLUT”! For a few seconds, I thought it was a comment on the actions of the female character, until I remembered that, of course, slut just means “end” in Swedish. (Slampa means “slut”).
There are other Swedish words that may sound funny to speakers of other languages. Kiss means “pee”. “Kiss” is kyss (or puss), but I think it’s pronounced the same way, which may cause certain confusion. Sex means “six”, but it’s also “sex”. “Meet me at six for sex” could be Träffa mig vid sex för sex. Bra means “good”. Kaka means cake. Kul means cool, fun. Skit means shit. Fika means coffe break. Fick is “got”. Kock means “cook” (chef) and kuk means “cock”. And so it goes.
If you know English and a bit of German, then you will find that you can understand a few Swedish sentences — or labels. For instance, Sveriges mest sålda diskmedel was easy: “Sweden’s most sold (best-selling) dishwasher (detergent)”.
Swedish road signs are not always clear, and it might be helpful to learn a few terms. Fart hinder, for instance, means speed bumps; if you see it written in a sign, slow down.
Reading longer texts is much trickier. I had difficulties even with very simple books for children. In most cases, I couldn’t go past Det var en gång.
I like the sound of Swedish, even though it is harder to understand a spoken conversation than a written text, and I can’t make head or tails of it. But it has a nice rhythm and seems softer on the ears than German. The classic comedy movie “Top Secret” has a scene where “Swedish” is actually English spoken backwards, and in fact it really sounds like Swedish a little bit.
In terms of grammar and pronunciation, it doesn’t seem like a completely impossible language to learn; contrary to English, German or French, everything sounds more or less as it’s written, as long as you master the difference between å, ä and ö.
I haven’t learned much so far, but perhaps one day I will…
As for local news: today, a new artist, a Swedish musician from Stockholm, is coming to stay up here for a couple of days, so the time will be spent in preparations for her arrival. Instead of doing my daglig promenad, I may have to spend the time doing other things. Actually, I think will make a kaka now…
I was planning to go to Stockholm this past weekend, but because of some other developments at the house, I had to postpone the plan to a later date.
Perhaps it was just as well, because this weekend there were large protests in central Stockholm against “vaccine passes” and other restrictive measures, and it probably wouldn’t be the easiest time to stroll around. About 10,000 people showed up, which is a lot for that city. Bear in mind that the restrictive policies in Sweden are quite light compared to other European countries and only really started with the milder “Omicron”.
While I have not been so far inconvenienced by any restriction up here in Börkö, which feels almost like a different planet in its tranquility, in any case I think it is good that people are protesting for their rights.
Sweden is many times criticized because of its supposed social conformism and its supposed fanatical adherence to the “politically correct”, but in the case of Covid rules, they have been actually quite moderate.
There is a book from the 1970s called “The New Totalitarians”, which is a criticism of Swedish society and its social democracy model. It argues that Swedish people lived in a soft totalitarian “Brave New World” type of society thanks to the 40-year socialist rule. I haven’t read it, but as it seems to come from an Anglo-American perspective of “England and America are the best and freest countries in the world”, and in the context of the height of the Cold War, I am very suspicious.
For me everything seems very nice up here, but of course, exactly because things are so incredibly nice, I keep thinking that “it is a trap, there must be a trick somewhere”.
However, I have to say that I know absolutely nothing about Swedish politics, I don’t even know who’s the current prime minister, and King and Queen, assuming they still have those. And I haven’t been here long enough to form any opinion about their social system, to be honest.
The only thing I can talk a little bit about, perhaps, is green politics and global warming. Greta Thunberg is of course one of the most famous Swedish personalities right now. I don’t really know her full story, but being the child of a couple of famous Swedish media celebrities, then having someone pay for her trip across the ocean in a sailing boat, then giving a speech at the UN… I don’t know, her rise to global fame just seems very contrived and not spontaneous at all.
I consider myself an environmentalist, and I think that there are several concrete problems that people could do something about — pollution in air and the oceans, protection of local fauna and flora, deforestation, etc. But “climate change” is something so vague and general, and the solutions proposed, like a “global carbon tax”, so outlandish, that it just feels — like a lot of the pandemic restrictions, by the way — as some type of scam to benefit the very rich and fleece the middle class. I could be wrong, though.
And speaking of climate change, today the day was warmer, and I am still amazed at how the landscape can change here so fast. Yesterday as I walked, I had to wade through deep snow; now a lot of the snow is gone again and you can see much more green and brown.
There is still a bit of ice on some roads, though, but I feel that I am learning to fall. After the two first times that I fell on the ice, when I had just arrived, the pain on my bones lasted for days; but now I still slip and fall at least one or two times every day, but I recover almost immediately. However, I suppose it’s better to avoid risks at this age, so I plan to buy myself a pair of broddar for my shoes.
Today’s walk was done in the company of Ösa, who is a singer and artist from Stockholm. It is nice to walk with someone who knows the region a bit more, and she showed me a new trail that I didn’t know about. This time we went down (or is it up?) to Kulla, where there is another lake and a nice forest path. On the way, we saw a lot of fallen trees from the previous windy days.
As we returned, there was sudden a power shortage at the house. It’s strange, because we were expecting one during those windy days, and nothing happened; now we have one when it’s warmer and sunnier and quieter, and it seems to be affecting the whole neighbourhood. It is still going on, and therefore I will be able to publish this only when power comes back… Hopefully, still today.
P. S. Power just came back, in the end the shortage lasted only 45 minutes. And now I am going to Älmsta again, so I might still update the site with new adventures… Hang on. I’m sure you’re impatient and have nothing better to do than read about Sweden…
As I mentioned before, the bird came to my window again yesterday morning, but it was so quick that I couldn’t take his picture. So I put some sunflower seeds to lure him back. He hasn’t appeared since. I suppose Swedish birds are not as materialistic as German ones, they are not interested in seeds, they just want food for the soul.
On the good news side, we have now a new second-hand washing machine, I helped Robert to install it and it’s working well so far. I hope I don’t break this one. By the way, today Robert invited me to visit his local theatre group, so I may have more news about that soon.
But let’s move on to today’s subject. In my morning walk, I saw a few interesting things. First, a group people ice-fishing in the frozen lake nearby. Basically they drill several holes on the ice, then place their fishing rods with bait, and wait.
As I walked more towards the inner part of the forest, I saw something a bit more unusual and unsettling. There were several animal footprints crossing each other, which is not uncommon, but this time one of them was really huge. I don’t know what animal it belonged to, but it was bigger than my foot. A Yeti? But he lives in the Himalaya, doesn’t he? There was also a large surface where the snow had been crushed as if someone or something had been lying there for a while. Now, I could identify a set of footprints as those of an elk or moose, or at any rate a large animal with hoofs. Then there were some other smaller footprints, that I thought could be a fox. But the big ones? What was it? A wolf? A linx?
Using my investigation and deduction skills, I concluded that a moose was peacefully munching on some leaves, when a giant lynx came and jumped on him, starting to eat him on the spot. Then a fox came to get some of the remains, but was chased away. Then the lynx dragged his prey to a safer place, and that’s why you don’t see any bones or other remains.
Well, perhaps it’s a complete fantasy, but it’s my interpretation and I’m sticking to it.
Now, seeing people fishing on a frozen lake, and then seeing strange animal footprints in the snow, made me think about how people managed to survive in this hostile region long ago, when there was no electric heating, no modern weapons, no coffee-makers, no Internet.
I was born in Argentina but I grew up and went to school in Brazil, and I have to say that Brazilian history classes are very deficient. We learn very little about Africa, and whatever we learn of it is related to Portuguese colonization there and the influence of African cultures in Brazil through the slaves. We learn almost nothing about Asia, except for the silk trade and perhaps the travels of Marco Polo. We learn a lot about South America. We learn a lot about Spain and Portugal, and a bit about Italy in the Renaissance. We learn a lot about France and their stupid revolutions, about Germany and their stupid reformation, about England and their stupid industrial revolution.
But nothing, zero, about Scandinavia. It is as if, to the north of Germany, nothing else existed.
Now everyone has watched films about the vikings, but I fear that those are mostly romanticized versions that do not real reflect how life was really like a thousand years ago. For that, you may need straight to the source material. I mean the sagas.
“Saga” just means “story” in Swedish and most Scandinavian languages. They were mostly composed in Iceland, many of them by the famous Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturrulson (1179-1241), but also by other anonymous authors. Most of them were composed, at least in written form, during the early middle ages, when a large part of the region had already converted to Christianity, but they mostly refer to an older, mythical past.
I read only one of them, the Völsunga Saga, but I found it quite interesting. It is very violent and adventurous. The most important themes are courage and revenge. Apparently, people back then lived and fought mostly to avenge the wrongs suffered by their ancestors. One of the sequences I best remember is about the fraternal twins Sigmund and Signy (almost everyone in this saga has names starting with “Sig”, which makes it a bit confusing). Sigmund is male, Signy female, and they are the eldest children of King Volsung.
Signy marries King Seiggir because of an alliance, even though she hates him and doesn’t want to, but her father arranges her marriage anyway. Then she finds out that Seiggir is planning to overthrow Volsung. There is a battle. Volsung and one of his sons die. The others, including Sigmund, are put in chains. All are eaten by a vicious she-wolf, who may also be a witch, except Sigmund. Signy saves him, and he hides in the woods.
Signy has two sons by King Seiggir. When the older one becomes ten, she sends him to Sigmund in the forest, so that he may help him to avenge Volsung. But when he gets there, Sigmund says he’s going to loo for firewood, then gives him a bag of flour and tells him to make bread while he’s away. Sigmund comes back. “Where is the bread?” asks Sigmund. “I didn’t dare touch the bag”, the child replies, “because there was something alive in the flour.” Sigmund is disappointed because the boy is not courageous as he expected. He asks his sister what to do.
“Seize and kill him,” she replies, “There is no need for him to live any longer.” And so he does it. The next winter, she sends her other son. The same thing happens, and the boy is killed.
Then Signy exchanges her appearance with a sorceress and as such has sex with his own twin brother. Sigmund never realizes it is her, but later on, Signy is pregnant. The boy, Sinfjotli, of pure Volsung blood, grows handsome, strong and courageous.
The same flour trick is repeated. When Sigmund comes back, he asks the boy if he had found anything in the flour.
“I’m not at all sure that there wasn’t something alive in the flour when I first started kneading”, he says, “but I kneaded in whatever was there.”
Sigmund laughs and says: “I don’t think you’ll eat any of this bread tonight, for you’ve kneaded in a huge poisonous snake.”
Then Sigmund and Sinfjotli eventually manage to avenge Volsung’s death by burning King Seiggir to death, but that’s another story.
Anyway, after the Christianization of Scandinavia brought peace, those unending feuds among families and rival clans mostly ended, but then Kings started to focus their efforts on wars abroad, and much later Sweden eventually became an empire.
But that’s also another story, and another text as this one’s already way too long.
The bird appeared again at my window this morning, but let’s forget about him for now. Today I want to talk about Swedish houses. I don’t know about Stockholm, Uppsala or other big cities, but around here in Björkö-Arholma most houses follow a similar pattern. Almost all are made of wood. And the colour is almost always red.
And it is not any red either. It is a special tone of dark red called “Faluröd”. Its origins lie in the city of Falun (thus the name) where there was a famous copper mine, and you could find large amounts of copper residue lying about. People would mix this waste with linseed oil and rye flour to paint their houses in a nice dark red colour, perhaps to imitate the brick houses of the upper classes, but on the cheap.
These days the copper waste is no longer used, but the Falun red still is, and a can of paint in this specific tone can be bought directly in the stores.
When the houses are not red, they are most likely yellow. Again, not any yellow, but a specific toned-down yellow, more or less the colour of yellow pea soup (ärtsoppa, in case you were wondering).
You can also find a few greyish-blue houses, and some made of simple varnished wood or logs — usually those houses have green window frames, which go well with the brown, simulating the colours of the forest. White is possible, but seems to be mostly reserved for public buildings such as churches or post offices. And that’s about it. I would say that, around here, 60% of the houses are Falu red, 30% are Ärtsoppa yellow, and 10% other colours, usually grey-blue, grey-white, or wood-brown.
You won’t find any bright colours. Fuchsia or ultramarine, forget it. I think Swedish authorities issue every year a limited number of Pantone colours that you are allowed to utilize. The most different house I could find was one painted in a sort of light salmon-pink colour, but I am sure must be illegal and the owner will soon be arrested by the police.
You also won’t find any weird modern-architecture shapes. Most are just old-fashioned houses that look like, well, houses. There are not many very old houses around here, or, if they are, they are well preserved. The former school where I am living and the church nearby were built in 1905 or 1906, but they could have been built yesterday as well, so well they match their surroundings, and so well kept they are.
In general, the houses are not fenced, so it is not always clear when one property ends and another begins. Many houses have decorative elements in their garden, even though, again, it’s not always clear when the garden ends and the forest begins and the lynx start to roam.
Another interesting feature of the houses around here is that many of them have tiny miniature houses on the back for children to play, usually in the same style and colour of the main house.
I still haven’t been invited inside any of the houses, so I can’t speak about their interior decoration, but they seem to be very cozy and warm inside. Perhaps one day I will have the chance to go inside; for now, I just spy them from outside through the windows, but today I didn’t realize an old woman was watching me from a window I was just about to photograph. I waved and pretended to be taking pictures of birds. I hope she didn’t call the police.
On the other hand, Swedish people do not seem to care too much about privacy. They’d rather have big windows to let in the light, than worry about someone peeping in. One of the houses I saw had basically had just one giant glass window covering almost the whole dining room, so you would be able to watch the family dining from the road (if there was anyone there, which there wasn’t). I think the bedroom, however, was probably more secluded.
Perhaps I will buy a house here one day, but for now, all I can afford is one of those tiny ones for children…
A little bird appeared on my window this morning, right next to the desk where I usually sit. It was a yellow and blue bird: in English it’s called a “great tit”, which sounds a bit funny to my ears, but in Swedish it’s “talgoxe”, and in Italian it’s “cinciallegra”. They are pretty common in Europe, so if you live in the continent I suppose you know what I mean.
Those are the same type of birds that I used to see all the time in my window back in Germany, where I was living before and, alas, where I should soon return. But, back there, I put a plate full with sunflower seeds, so they had a reason for coming. On this window, which by the way is pretty high, there was nothing, just ice and snow.
I don’t know what the bird wanted, but he remained for a while at the windowsill and seemed to be looking at me. He even came twice — or they were two different birds, it’s hard to know.
Now, this may sound a little crazy, but I always interpreted birds as supernatural messengers. Whenever I see a bird coming very close, or doing something unusual, it seems, to me, to have a meaning beyond its mere presence. I don’t know how to explain it, but there is something about birds that makes me feel like the ancients who used to see omens or prophecies in all kinds of animals. Only, in this case, I don’t know what it meant.
Was it a bird that came all the way from my neighbourhood in Germany to tell me, “Hey man, we don’t have any more seeds back there!” Or was it a bird who followed me all the way on my travel, and now expected to find sunflower seeds here too?
Was it a signal to return sooner, or a signal to stay here forever?
That’s the problem of birds as messengers, you’re never quite sure of what they’re trying to say.
Later on, outside, I saw a magpie up in the tree next to our building (they are also common here), and I had taken a picture of a blackbird before, so that takes care of the three birds of the title.
And the funeral?
Well, a bit later on, I heard the church bell ringing insistently, and I found it strange, as I knew from my previous visit that the church is not so active during winter. I thought: this can only mean two things, a wedding, or a funeral. Unfortunately, it was the second.
I dropped by, and there was quite a crowd for such a small place. In fact, half of the people needed to wait for their turn outside. Either the person was really popular, or there is some sort of life here in Björkö after all, even in winter. Perhaps you don’t see anyone simply because people just stay home baking cookies and watching movies, and I am the only fool who takes long walks under minus zero degrees and strong winds?
Anyhow, in true Swedish fashion, that’s how we ended the day here at the house: baking cardamom buns. Cardamom is a spice that comes from Asia, but it seems to be really popular here in Sweden. They use it in all kinds of things, from bread to cookies to cakes. The American artist residing here made them, following an original local recipe. I just assisted with the baking, and with the eating. They were really good.
Let us hope the birds are good omens, and good things are coming our way.
“Dangerous winds”, said the weather report. The trees outside were swinging as if they were drunk and dancing to ABBA songs. There were news of power shortages in the neighbourhood. “Don’t go out”, said everyone. But I feel as if my days here are slowly ending, and of course I had to go out, wind or no wind. This time, I took the bus to Älmsta, about 30 km away up north.
There’s not a lot in Älmsta, but there is a larger supermarket, a drugstore, a few shops, even a pet salon, a Thai restaurant, a cafe, and… a public library. So obviously I had to go there and add one more library card to my collection. It was free, and in two minutes I could already borrow books.
Unfortunately they didn’t have many books in English, or any other language that was not Swedish. You could probably count them with the fingers of your hands and feet: it was just one shelf, with no more than 20 books. I borrowed a collection of short stories by Dylan Thomas. The other option was Harry Potter, but I’ve already seen the film.
The lady at the desk was extremely helpful and showed me how everything there worked, from the copy machine to the fire extinguishers. She said that, besides the regular hours, which are limited (it opens only on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday) I could get inside the library to read even when the library is closed and there is no staff. I just need to use my library card and PIN to open the door, and I’m in. Sweden really is a high-trust country.
And, so far, people are incredibly nice and polite here, more than in any other place that I remember recently, certainly more than wherever I was before. As I left, even the two teenage girls reading books near the exit smiled and said “Bye bye”. Is this a fairy tale country or what?
Outside it was still very windy, so much so that even the birds appeared to have trouble flying. I was glad there was a nice little cafe open. I stopped to have a fika, or coffee break. I was the only customer.
By the way, the word fika is an inverted form of “kaffi,” the 19th-century Swedish word for “coffee.” This shuffling of the syllables is not exactly the “vesre” slang from Buenos Aires that you hear in tangos. Apparently, it was a way to disguise the practice, since the importation and consumption of coffee was banned five times between 1756 and 1817 — some say that, at the time, it was considered a threat to Swedish culture, deeming it a “foreign custom” that was corrupting Swedish people.
I left the cafe, but there were not many other places to go, so I went to the drugstore and to the supermarket. Supposedly there is also an antiquary shop, but I couldn’t find it. Another nice thing here is that no one asked for masks, “vaccine passes” or tests anywhere. Sweden really feels like a fairy tale country these days. By 2:20 in the afternoon, I took the bus back.
All in all, it was a wonderful day, but now I feel a little… I don’t know… Perhaps a bit restless… I have no problem with solitude, and I had a great time so far in the isolation of Björkö. I felt fine not seeing anyone except the people here at the house. But, paradoxically, now that I got to see a tiny little more of social activity, even in the limited confines of Älmsta, I start to feel that I need to go out more…
So I will be going to Stockhölm and Uppsala in the next few days, and I will probably be coming back to Älmsta and to its library more often too. Perhaps I’ll even try to learn a bit of Swedish, so that I can be able to read at least a few sentences of the easiest books for children they have…
In my first attempt to use the washing machine here at the house — the only washing machine for miles, unless we ask a neighbour to wash our clothes, or go to the launderette in Norrtälje which is 48 km away, unless there is something at Älmsta which is slightly nearer at 30 km — I seem not to have properly closed the metal flap doors of the spinning drum. (It’s an old BOSCH WOL 2050, a top-loader machine that is not certainly the latest model.)
Although it completed the cycle, once I opened the deck, I realized it was not possible to remove the clothes or even spin the drum back to its original position. It was completely stuck. After finding a video on Youtube on how to fix it, I decided to fix it myself. The video makes it seem very easy, and it lasts under two minutes, but I spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon trying to follow its instructions. I finally managed to open the machine and do as instructed, and in normal circumstances, this would have solved the problem.
However, the “idiot” who used the machine had not just improperly closed the metal flap doors of the drum, he seems to have let them completely open, with the result that the drum started spinning with its top open and the metal got bent or stuck in the mechanism somehow. It was just impossible to spin it in any direction.
Bottom line: there was no way to fix it easily, bringing a technician over from Stockholm would cost more than buying a newer and better machine, so now the problem was just how to remove my clothes from inside it. But by this time Robert had arrived. Robert is one of the directors of BKN and all-purpose man around here — he fixes radiators, put traps for mice, arranges furniture, and in his spare time he also organizes a local theatre group and is a very talented theatre actor and director.
So Robert basically used an electric saw to cut open the metal drum of the machine, and we removed the clothes; later I helped him to bring the machine down the stairs (it was really heavy) and take it outside to be thrown in the junkyard.
Then he said: “Should we now discuss about Ibsen and Strindberg?”
And that’s what we did, for the next hour, over cookies and tea. Robert is a very knowledgeable man in his 60s who knows much more about Strindberg and Ibsen than I can ever hope to know, so now I am afraid of writing a very silly script, a drama that will make people laugh, or a comedy that will make people cry.
Conclusion: now no one can wash their clothes at the house until they bring a new washing machine, I am starting to suffer from writer’s block, and I didn’t even have time for my daily walk today.
But it was a very nice conversation, and by the end of the afternoon I had learned a lot about Ibsen, Strindberg, the theatre world in Sweden, and of course about the internal mechanism of washing machines, so the day wasn’t completely wasted after all.
Today, a certain desperation set in. I realized with alarm that I am already in the middle of my stay in Sweden! I have written very little of my script! I have not visited neither Stockholm nor Uppsala! I did not meet almost any Swedish people! I did not discover the secrets of the Scandinavian soul! I have just wasted all my precious time just walking around this desert island, taking photographs of frozen landscapes and feeding carrots to horses and cows, annoying the few remaining readers with random details of my daily walks.
Besides, the other day, Anna, the organizer of the arts space here, forgot her expensive Macbook computer on the bus to Stockholm, and she thought it was lost forever, but later that same night someone called her saying he had found it, and she got it back — so I thought about writing a paean to the honesty and kindness of the Swedish people. However, as soon as she got back at Björkö, she found out that the hard drive had actually been wiped out, and all its contents copied somewhere else, so I may need to review a bit that idea about honesty… Right now the police is involved and we’ll find out what happened exactly maybe next week.
To top it off, we ended the day watching Bergman’s “The Passion of Anna”, which I hadn’t seen but perhaps wasn’t the best choice for the night — a very bleak film even for Bergman standards about people living in isolation in a small island in Sweden during winter and slowly going mad… I don’t know, but I think it might even have been filmed around here…
I could continue writing, but all I would be able to write today would probably be something about Nordic melancholia and why Nordic countries are usually considered in polls among the happiest in the world but, paradoxically, at the same time they used to have one of the highest suicide rates in the world (to be fair, I don’t know if it is true anymore, I think they’ve been surpassed by Japan).
But I wanted to end on a more cheerful and hopeful note, so today there was a wonderful sunset here with amazing red and purple colours, and the day itself was quite beautiful, and I had a nice walk, and now I am having a nice cup of tea with arraksbollar, and there will be even nicer things coming up soon.
Today the day was mostly consumed assisting with the filming of a performance by other artists who are residing or visiting up here. I do not have much idea of what it was about, other that it involved ties being tied around a person.
It is interesting that most of the artists currently residing or visiting the studios these days are visual artists in their 50s, many of them women. Except for an American artist in her early thirties, I am the youngest one for now. Which is something new for me lately.
I don’t know if I would consider myself an artist, and I do not pretend to be an expert in contemporary art — especially not in performance art.
On the one hand, I am a filmmaker and writer, perhaps not a very good one, but it is what I try to do; and so I am more attracted to conventional narratives and techniques, to classic fiction and figurative or art, and less to experimental stuff. If “anything can be art”, then, nothing is art? I don’t know, but I am not so much in the camp of the Marcel Duchamp theory of the artwork as “whatever the artist decides”.
On the other hand, I do admire the courage of artists who like to experiment and try different things all the time; and in fact, many of the artists here are doing quite interesting if unusual things, and sometimes I wish I could have the same free spirit.
Ösa, the Swedish artist who is behind the tie performance, is also a singer and a painter. There is another artist from New York, Zoey, who collects moss and tree branches and uses them to create new objects; Håkan, whom I mentioned before, is a Swedish documentary filmmaker who has really interesting footage about all kinds of subjects; Alexandra is a painter and performer from Chicago who moved to Stockholm; and then there are the newest visitors Anna, Sergio and Ulrika who work with… Actually, I don’t know yet, but I am sure it’s something interesting. And all of them are really nice and kind people, too.
Artists tend to have a bad reputation, especially these days. Whatever they do is considered “non-essential”, and the first thing to be cut when any type of restrictions are announced, which unfortunately happens very often these days. Many people seem to consider artists “bums”, which I feel is an extremely unfair charge. Just today’s five- minute performance took the whole day to prepare; the production of a single theatre play can take months, and the same is true of movies. Art takes a lot of work.
Besides, some people seem to have this absurd idea that artists live a worry-free life, receiving lots of benefits from the government, but honestly, I’ve been all around the world and I haven’t seen any country where this is true. Whatever governments spend on art is really very little compared to most other sectors, it really is the last thing they invest on. Most artists receive little to no funding, and tend to have difficult lives balancing their “real job”, their family or personal life and their art. So artists will always have my sympathy.
About my own project, which is a re-imagination of the work of Scandinavian playwrights Strindberg and Ibsen… It’s coming along, albeit slowly, very slowly. I do not know what will come out of it yet, perhaps nothing. Who knows? Another thing about art is that you don’t always know what will result from all the work that you put into it, or even if it will be any good; and sometimes it doesn’t turn out as expected and can even feel like a wasteful use of time. But sometimes you’re pleasurably surprised…
What is art? Perhaps we can let Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa answer that one:
“What we don’t have, or don’t dare, or don’t get, we can possess in a dream, and it’s with that dream that we make art. At other times the emotion is so strong that, although reduced to action, the action, to which it has been reduced, does not satisfy it; with the leftover emotion, which was left unexpressed in life, the work of art is formed. Thus, there are two types of artist: the one who expresses what he doesn’t have and the one who expresses what’s left of what he had.
Love, sleep, drugs and intoxicants are elementary forms of art, or rather forms of producing the same effect. But love, sleep, and drugs each have their disillusionment. Love feds up or disappoints. We wake up from sleep, and when we have slept, we have not lived. Drugs are paid for with the ruin of that very physique they served to stimulate. But in art there is no disillusionment, because the illusion was admitted from the beginning. From art there is no awakening, because in it we do not sleep, although we dream. In art there is no tribute or fine that we pay for having enjoyed it.
The pleasure art offers us, as in a certain way it is not ours, we do not have to pay for or regret.
By art we understand everything that delights us without being ours — the trace of what passed, the smile given to others, a sunset, a poem, the objective universe.
To possess is to lose. But to feel without possessing is to keep, because it is to extract its essence from it.”
Yesterday I was told that the “aurora borealis”, also known as northern lights, might be seen late at night, even from down here at Björkö. So I set my alarm clock to wake me up at 3:30 AM.
But at first I could not sleep, and when I finally did, I kept dreaming that I needed to wake up to watch the aurora borealis, but for some reason or other I would never wake up at the right time. When I finally woke up (in the dream), I ran downstairs and then outside to the garden, which was now eerily similar to the garden of my old childhood house in Brazil, and I looked up and saw the “aurora borealis”, which in the dream was a giant green map of Europe, as in an old Atlas, taking half of the sky. Right next to it, just over my head, a duck was flying in slow motion. I tried to take a photograph, but of course my camera ran out of batteries just then.
Then my sister (because we were at my childhood garden, so in the logic of dreams it was natural for her to be there) said: “Look!” And I said, looking up, “Yes, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”. “No!” she replied, “I mean, look back there in the garden, in the pines! There is a creepy naked bald man hiding there!” I looked, and it was true. There was a naked bald man hiding behind a tree. Then suddenly there were other people too, and they were trying to save a woman in a white dress who looked like a silent movie actress and who somehow had climbed and become trapped up there in one of the pine trees and could not come down, and all these other people including the naked man were trying to help her. Eventually they managed to bring her down, and I thought, “This is too absurd, this is not real, this can only be a dream!” So I ran back to my room, to set up the alarm clock correctly on my phone, but of course I could not find my phone. So I thought, “No, wait, this is still a dream!” — and then by sheer willpower I forced myself to wake up — this time for real. It was 3:50 AM. The alarm clock had not rung.
I ran downstairs and went outside, but, sadly, there was no aurora borealis to be seen anywhere. But at least there was a wonderful full moon, so I took pictures of that.
Then I was told that actually the northern lights could have been seen at 11:00 PM, so there was no need to wake up at 3:00 AM, but when I saw the message, it was too late.
