Around the World (Not Really) in 80 Days (22, Actually)

As I sit here in my house in Sweden, 12 hours after getting off an 11-hour flight from a 22-day trip 9 time zones away, I am feeling a little manic. Sometimes I struggle to build a narrative worthy of a blog post, but right now I feel I have more than enough to say!

I am now going to write a post which will be unusually far-reaching, unusually honest, and possibly unusually long. I’m going to take you to New Mexico, to Nevada, to California, and back to Sweden. But I’m also going to take you to health scares, to panic attacks, to billion-dollar corporate events, to the psychology of beauty and to the beauty of skulls, and finally to some of the hard differences between Sweden and America, and how soft people might fit into those hard differences. And all the while, this multi-week American adventure will provide the narrative backbone.

It all began a few months ago when some nice people from Production Club of Los Angeles asked me if the Hand Of Man was available to run for a 5-hour long corporate party in early December in Las Vegas, Nevada. Many months, many conversations, many contract iterations, and many dollar discussions later, I was ready for a 3-week trip to the States. I would spend 10 days in Taos working through my jet lag repairing and sexing-up the Hand, followed by 5 days in Vegas running the piece for an elite group of tech VIPs, followed finally by 3 days in San Francisco visiting my dad and my brother.

Now one thing to understand about this trip is that there was a health scare looming over most of it. The trip was ‘set in stone’ about 6 weeks before my departure… I was locked in to going. But about 3 weeks before departure, Christina suddenly experienced the onset of some very worrying symptoms that defied easy interpretation. While our first guesses revolved around a mis-calibrated stress response, the intensity and consistency of the symptoms started to point in other directions, and conversations with Christina’s (wonderfully sensitive and responsive) doctor inevitably began to reference possibilities of long-term debilitating conditions. It was against this backdrop of disability and worry and fear that I set off to the wild high desert of Taos, over three weeks ago. 

The last time the Hand of Man saw action was for Transfix, the ill-fated festival that almost cost us the shirts off our backs (along with every other artist unfortunate enough to be involved), coincidentally also in Las Vegas. So I hadn’t seen the sculpture since it was used by other people, maintained by other people, and put away into storage by other people. I scheduled about 10 days in Taos to repair it and spruce it up… and I needed just about all 10 of those days. 

Outdoor welding on the mesa...

I was lucky enough to stay with Matt and Richard, two of my very favorite people in Taos.

A few days after arriving in Taos, I broke down. I’d been moving so fast, my attention so unerringly focused on the tasks in front of me, that I had not yet taken time to feel the fear and sadness of dealing with a potentially life-changing diagnosis in my partner. I will now tell you something that it’s taken me a long time to learn: Anxiety and panic are signs that you are burying difficult or uncomfortable emotions, and the cure for anxiety is simply letting those unbearable emotions out. Cry. Cry some more. Maybe scream a little. If you’re lucky enough to have a friend who will put their arm around you and tell you to just breathe… and that everything is going to be alright, then take advantage of it… lucky you! (Thanks Richard.) Cry and scream. It works. You will feel better. (Of course it can be difficult to let those unwanted emotions out when they are so buried that you don’t even know they are there. But try crying and screaming. Just try it.) 

I want to make a movie about this. Matt, do you remember the painting you were encouraging me to make? I want to make that, but as a movie. Not just me, but others, many others. On repeat. I’m not being specific here because I don’t want someone else to steal my idea… but Matt, and you too Richard, you know what I’m talking about.

One of the things I like to do when in Taos is root around inside my shipping container of personal goods -clothes, books, artwork and knickknacks - all the stuff that did not ‘make the cut’ to come to Sweden, and see if there’s anything that I actually miss. I usually find a shirt or two and a book or three that need to come back. I have always, since I was a teenager, had a tendency to fall superficially in love with famous women, supermodels and actresses, and in that shipping container I have a huge variety of books and magazines - mostly magazines - that focus on beautiful and frequently naked women. I have the entire run of Penthouse Magazine from issue #1 in 1969 until approximately 2007, and I have a few hundred Playboys as well. Actually, I don't so much fall in love with these famous women as much as I become transfixed with their beauty. Beauty is enjoyable; beauty can inspire obsession. Many books, fiction and otherwise, have been dedicated to the topic. My father used to do the same thing. He was a plastic surgeon and so looking at beautiful women was research for him, but I know he also just enjoyed it.  He was partial to Rita Hayworth.  I am a sculptor and painter… so even though I also just enjoy it, it’s research for me too. 

But as I thumbed through these old Victoria’s Secret catalogs and old issues of Maxim and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, something occurred to me. It wasn’t a brand-new thought, but it came with new clarity. Why are individual people attracted to individual faces, and what could it tell us about their psychology? That is the question, and to me it is a deep and interesting question. It is often said that the 1990’s were the golden era of the supermodel and so for me it’s an easy place to start fleshing out this question. Many young women became famous in that decade just for their faces, their beauty, and yet I find very few of them to be truly gorgeous. There are, in fact, some fashion models from the era who I find to be quite unattractive, even though they enjoy a level of fame which clearly suggests that many people would disagree. But why? Why do I find one girl gorgeous while I can’t even understand how the next girl got a job in modeling... while there is presumably someone else somewhere who feels the exact opposite? Is it their nose? The unique shape of the mouth corners or the canthal tilt? The squareness of the jaw or the size of the chin? And what do these preferences say about me as a person?

To the degree that I have thought this through, I observe three parameters; youth, androgyny, and cultural associations. Let’s start with youth. Youth is traditionally considered to be a marker of beauty. But what does it mean when someone is attracted to a young face? I propose that there is no one answer to this. I imagine that some of those who are attracted to youth are trying to recapture their own youth (in other words seeing themself through the other) while others are looking for someone who is easily manipulated and controlled. And what about when someone is attracted to a face which shows signs of age? Is that person secretly looking to be parented? Are they hoping to absorb wisdom or obtain guidance? I think it’s interesting that for most people these dynamics are invisible; we just like the faces that we like and we don’t know why.

And what about androgyny? Sexual dimorphism is the opposite of androgyny; a very feminine face is sexually dimorphic (at the feminine end of the spectrum) while a very masculine face is sexually dimorphic (at the male end), and androgyny is in the middle. I think most heterosexuals are drawn to sexually dimorphic faces of the opposite gender, but some are more drawn to androgynous faces. Could it be that a preference for an androgynous face reflects a (perhaps unconscious) androgynous impulse in the viewer? Could a preference for a sexually dimorphic face reflect political conservatism (a man should be manly, and a woman should be feminine)? Or could it alternatively reveal a hidden insecurity which an association with beautiful / handsome members of the opposite sex is intended to obscure? I’m raising more questions than I’m answering here because I think the field is wide open, and indeed the questions and their interpretations are almost endless...

The last of my observed parameters is cultural associations. Why are some people only attracted to members of their own race or culture, while others prefer members of another race? Is it true that white men who are attracted to Asian women are secretly looking for a partner who is easy to dominate and control, or is that a stereotype? Are those people who are attracted to members of another race simply attracted to those facial features for aesthetic reasons? Or did they perhaps grow up among caregivers or sympathetic elders of that race? Or are they (unconsciously?) making a political statement by their choice of partner? Again, I raise more questions than I answer, and indeed I am asking only a small fraction of the questions which could be asked on this broad topic.

The human race is bewilderingly heterogeneous; 8 billion individual people should be expected to present with 8 billion complex and individual constructs for who they find attractive. In an effort to dive deeper, while in Taos I looked up “the psychology of physical attraction” and to my surprise there is a book called “The Psychology of Physical Attraction”! I ordered it, and as I sit here writing this it has just arrived. If I get around to reading it, among the other two or three books I’m supposedly reading right now, I will report back. In the meantime I continue to think about mouth corners, jaw profiles, and eyebrow arches. A square jaw signals sexual dimorphism in a man and androgyny in a woman. A short upturned nose signals youth. A heavy brow ridge telegraphs male, while a small chin signals female. And in much the same way that I enjoy trying to interpret the psychology of artists through their artistic output, I believe you could theoretically learn a lot about an individual’s inner workings by analyzing the faces they find attractive. I find it all endlessly fascinating. 

The timing of my trip to Taos was lucky and I was able to spend Thanksgiving with Matt and Richard and some of the amazing and intelligent people in their circle. It was so easy to have good, deep conversations with several of their friends, people I barely knew, or didn't know at all. More on this later…

With the Hand finally ready, mechanically and aesthetically, I loaded it onto a semi-truck on a Friday morning. I then drove all over Taos doing last things, drove down to Albuquerque with my trusted pal Cedar, and was sleeping in Las Vegas by that night. It was just one of many long and exhausting days in the last few weeks. The next day we took delivery of the Hand and completely assembled it in about 5 hours with some local help. It’s a wonderfully straightforward sculpture to build and unbuild, if I do say so myself.

The Hand, assembled 

Me and Cedar

The next few days in Las Vegas were a mix of hard work and leisurely inactivity. We wandered around, we watched a digitally reimagined version of The Wizard of Oz on the world’s largest interior LED screen at The Sphere (which was totally amazing), we saw interesting sculptures and not-so-interesting casinos, and I met with a venue which might display my sculpture With Open Arms. On at least 2 occasions we struck up friendly and surprisingly deep conversations with people who were working at retail stores. I love that about America; people are open and friendly and if you treat them with genuine curiosity and attentiveness they will tell you about themselves. This is how people connect with other people.

The Wizard of Oz… as you’ve certainly never seen it before.

Of course I love the fact...

that the female nude is everywhere in Vegas.

It’s like Barcelona...

… without the good taste!

These great animatronic faces, which look just like Scarlet Johansson, are featured in South Korean eyewear manufacturer Gentle Monster’s stores all over the world.

Of course they remind me of my own Face Forward. Unfortunately all the Scarlet Johanssons were broken and not running. Click here for a random Youtube clip of them working. I would have loved to see that. 

About half-way through my time in Vegas, Christina finally got the results of all her medical tests. She had undergone neurological tests, blood tests, CAT scans, and finally an MRI. And what the doctors eventually found was… nothing! Physiologically speaking, Christina is in excellent health. And so, perhaps, our early guesses about stress and stress management were actually closer to the mark. As I write this, Christina’s symptoms are finally gone and she is feeling much better, which is a huge relief to us all. Now her interesting work begins… in trying to understand what this all might have been about, on an underlying psychological level. (I never wrote about this on my blog because it’s not very sexy, nor did I discuss it widely, but about 2 years ago I had a debilitating series of anxiety attacks. I was eventually able to pinpoint the underlying cause, which was related to our dislocation into this new and foreign culture. I want to stress, though, that the emotions which precipitated this crippling wave of anxiety were essentially invisible to me at the time. Once I came to understand the feelings that I had been burying, and once I screamed and cried about it all, the anxiety dissipated. The anxiety was real and it was exhausting, but ultimately I held the keys to dispelling it. I just had to dig down into some uncomfortable places to find them. The mind, and its connection to the body, is consistently amazing!)

The gig for the Hand was on Thursday, and we fucking nailed it! The set design for the Hand was the best I’ve ever seen, involving custom-painted shipping containers, multiple dilapidated cars, and multi-colored lighting and smoke effects. For the first time ever, I had a microphone up in the control chair so I could narrate live the ongoing mayhem, and I was joined by a hilarious and charismatic second MC on the ground named Shondel. She and I hyped up the crowd and gave every operator a countdown (to drop the cars) and generally succeeded in making the whole thing feel exciting and ridiculous. Throughout the entire evening, our crowd never waned; we reliably had 300 - 400 spectators and never lacked for operators. One operator threw the car back towards us in the control chair and I’ve never come closer to a dangerous situation running the Hand! It was hilarious and absurd and a great success. Production Club loved us and I made connections with many other artists and people on the crew who might in time become friends, or at least professional contacts. Many people came up to me to tell me that we “crushed it,” and for the most part the double-entendre was unintentional!

We operated the sculpture until midnight and at 7AM the next day Cedar and I were back onsite to begin the dismantling. While we had 4 extra people for the assembly, we got no help on disassembly day… but it didn’t seem to matter. Disassembly is always easier and Cedar and I had the whole piece palletized and strapped and loaded up onto a semi-truck in 5 hours. 

A quick shower, a taxi ride, and a flight, and it was goodbye Las Vegas and hello San Francisco. My brother Trevor coordinated a trip to SF and what followed was two-and-a-half relaxed days with my brother and father. My dad is suffering from poor health which was initially brought on by the death of his wife almost 2 years ago, but the good news is that after a nadir in his condition about a half-year ago, he is slowly improving. He has a new live-in caretaker who is attentive and a good cook, and his sense of humor is making a comeback! It was great to see him, and always great to see my brother. 

Me and Trevor eating burritos in the Mission

If you read my blog you’ll remember that a few months ago I was going through a major resurgence in my interest in skulls. Around that time I found a really beautiful human skull for sale online that I really wanted, but no matter how I tried I could not justify the expenditure. But just then, as if the god of unnecessary indulgences was smiling directly down upon me, I received in the mail a residuals check from my years as an animatronics builder and puppeteer back in Hollywood… in an amount that more-than-comfortably covered the purchase of the skull. (One day I will write a blog post about those Hollywood days… they were fun.) Because the vendor would not ship the skull out of the US, I had it shipped to Trevor in New Hampshire, and this trip to San Francisco finally marked my meeting with her. I say ‘her' because it is the skull of a young female; there are ways you can tell the age and gender. (Age is only discernable up to about 25… and again after about 55; in the middle years it is harder to gauge.) After a vaguely stressful transportation of the skull in my carryon bag (it’s not illegal but I worry anyway), she has now joined my slowly growing collection here in Sweden. Welcome to your new home, young lady!

As I mentioned at the beginning, I am now back in Sweden. It is in the nature of ‘recurring things’ that they come back again and again… and so here, again, I return to the theme of the difficulties of making social connections in Sweden. But fear not, in the spirit of my jet-lag-induced delirium cum honesty, I think I have something new to say on the matter. I’ve mentioned already that I had a very easy time striking up conversations with strangers in the last 3 weeks, both in Taos and in Las Vegas. It’s as if I was a corked up bottle of champagne, a bottle filled with ‘excitement to talk to people’ that had been forcibly shut tight by years living in Sweden and was suddenly free to open… and my gregarious enthusiasm was met freely by just about everyone I tried to chat with. That openness is a well-known feature of Americans, and something I love. In contrast, Swedes are reserved and hard to ‘crack,’ a national trait that is also well-known. But... is it too easy to just blame the Swedes and their national character? Or do I also bear some responsibility for my difficulties in connecting with these people?

I spent a week in Las Vegas with my good friend Cedar, and half a week in San Francisco with my brother Trevor. These two men, both of whom I am quite close to, have very different temperaments in terms of how they present themselves to the world, and I found that in subtle ways I presented differently to the world depending on who I was with. Cedar is fairly reserved and engages in conversation selectively… and I found that I was really quite gregarious while romping around Vegas with him; I willingly initiated conversations with strangers all week. Trevor and I have always had a dynamic in which he was the more outgoing of the two of us, and it was natural and comfortable for me to ease back into the role of the more reserved one with him. (Although, coming directly from Vegas, I felt less reserved and more boisterous than usual). My point is that, without meaning to or consciously directing myself, I have the capacity to adapt myself to the social dynamics of the situation. I imagine everyone does this to some degree. 

So… Sweden. Why not just manifest here in Sweden that same boisterousness and assertiveness that came so easily to me in Vegas? I think there are various elements to consider in trying to answer this question. For one thing, my Swedish is still not great, and so any conversations, random or otherwise, need to be in English for now. This can have some advantages (charming, signaling that you’re not Swedish and so can be held to a different set of cultural expectations) but also disadvantages (signaling also that I’ll never be ‘in the gang,’ never a true Swede). But… language aside… to what degree am I adapting myself to the cultural expectations of those around me, and to what degree is that healthy? Yes it’s true that if you try to initiate conversations enough times with people who in return send signals of disinterest or disdain, you will eventually close down a bit. But what if I were simply to take the position that this is their problem, their shortcoming, and not mine? There are various cultural / historical explanations for why Swedes are reserved and closed towards strangers, but what if I were to simply adopt the attitude that they are doing it wrong? Sometimes I really do feel that they are doing it wrong! What if I were to just keep on being nice, and chatty? To stop adapting myself to their provincial and closed attitudes? Sometimes, if you’re nice, they respond. 

Let's see if I have it in me… if I have the energy. Sometimes, you know, it’s actually nice to have zero expectations of friendly banter… to know that you can go out, run your errands, and not be expected to talk to anyone. Other times, though, it’s lonely. Swedes are statistically some of the loneliest people in the world, a fact that does not surprise me. And it’s hard to build community when it’s so hard to meet people. I feel thankful for the few good friends we have here. Thank you Krister and Ylva and Brian and Tina and Scott and Kasey and Kate and Victor and Birdie and Marc and Carina and Dante. We cherish your friendships. We look forward to seeing you soon. 

OK, that’s all I’ve got. 

Happy Santa Lucia Day!

Cheer up!

-Christian