I have just returned to Lund from a 2-week journey back to Taos. The reasons for my trip were work-related; I exhibited two large sculptures at The PASEO (Taos's own interactive street art festival run by our good friend J. Matt Thomas), and I did maintenance and modifications on two more sculptures which will travel to other festivals in the near future (more on that later).
Traveling one-third of the way around the world (8-hour time difference) for such a short time is quite an experience. For one thing, jet-lag is real. And it's even more real when you are immediately moving big metal things around with heavy equipment upon arrival. I'm lucky I didn't hurt myself!
For another thing, that 8-hour time difference, in my case, represents the gulf between small-town New Mexico...
and urban Sweden...
and bouncing around so quickly offers a good opportunity to see some differences between the places. I will circle back around to that later as well, because what's more interesting is...
My trip back to Taos was unexpectedly fun. To be perfectly honest I was not much looking forward to it. I anticipated it being a lot of work (which it definitely was), but I also worried that it would feel like 'a step backwards,' when I really would prefer to focus my energy on being here in Lund... on looking forward. Well, these worries were largely unfounded.
I listened to an episode of the podcast Hidden Brain which discussed some of the ways in which our perceptions of ourselves are often wrong. One example used in the podcast was a story of a guy who referred to himself as an asocial loner, and yet who was often the social life of the party, and I couldn't help wonder as I listened if there was not perhaps some similarity there to me. I often also think of myself as someone for whom social ties are not all that important, and so as I anticipated my return to Taos I gave very little thought to what it might be like to see all the people I know there. And yet, reconnecting with the wonderful community there was probably the highlight for me. I felt well taken care of genuinely missed. And I'll tell you this: if you want to feel appreciated, just do the following: tell everyone in your community that you are moving away, and then actually move away, and then with little warning come back 6 weeks later. Ideally, if possible, make this surprise return visit during a cultural event in which you are featured. It will work every time, I promise!
While there in Taos I got the chance to attend my old figure-drawing group one night, and they actually threw a little low-key party in my honor. I gave a little impromptu speech talking about what a great group it is, and when I said that I missed everyone, a few people interrupted with "We miss you!" Aww.. it brought a tear to my eye!
And a few of my drawings from that night. I was afraid I would have "lost it" after not having drawn for so long, but they're not too bad. I have finally found a figure drawing group in Malmö which I'll attend one of these days.
As far as making my time in Taos really nice, special thanks go to our neighbors Todd and Marlena, and our pals Matt and Richard who hosted me in their dreamy little guest house.
The PASEO itself was tons of fun.
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So what about those previously mentioned differences between rural New Mexico and urban Lund, Sweden, which I mentioned before and which I claim to have such insights about? Well, most of them are pretty obvious, to be honest. New Mexico is more wild; Sweden is more organized. New Mexico is poorer, and you can see it in the people who have fallen through the cracks (the gaping crevasses) of the social fabric, as well as in the crazy cars and dilapidated buildings. People talk about the social safety net here in Sweden and apparently they're not all lying; the evidence of a generally elevated standard of living is all around you.
I think that if you are looking for it, you can see subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the two places which reflect the two underlying systems - free-market capitalism versus democratic socialism - upon which they are built. A friend of a friend called Europe "more humane" and I think that's one good way to put it. There are so many places in America (and Taos is one of them) where if you don't have a car, you are fucked. Public transportation is often rudimentary and inefficient, or simply nonexistent. Airports and other transportation hubs are laid out so as to be easy for those who have cars, and really inconvenient for those who don't. In America if you can't buy good health insurance you get a lower level of care. If you can't pay for a good education, you'll get a bad one instead. We all know that capitalism is a survival-of-the-fittest type system, but what I find interesting in America is that the structure of the place almost seems to punish those who are already struggling. Here in our neck of the woods, or at least in the Copenhagen - Malmö - Lund corridor, the public transportation is so good that you don't need a car, the health care and education are high-quality and free to all, and people in the public service sector actually seem to want to help you. Democratic socialism. You get the idea. (I have been told, however, that Sweden currently has the 2nd-highest rate of increasing socioeconomic disparity in the world, second only to North Korea. I guess it's hard to keep capitalism down.)
People in Sweden are, in general, more beautiful and quite a bit taller. At 6 feet I feel reasonably tall in the US. At 6 feet I feel decidedly average here in Sweden. I would guess that 50% of Scandinavian men and perhaps 5% of Scandinavian women are taller than me.
But for the moment, the most interesting and baffling difference for me is the disparity in eye contact. I mentioned this in my last post but I am compelled to revisit it briefly because, after my visit to Taos, I see with renewed clarity the starkness of the difference. In Taos (and I think this is largely true for America... isn't it?), people look at each other. People look at each other on the street, in the supermarket, even while driving. People don't look at each other here nearly as much. It's weird. There is something broadly socio-psychological going on here, and I don't yet know what it is. At this point my only theory is a bit murky, having something to do with 'security' of social standing. Something like: in America, people are constantly trying to figure out how they measure up to everyone else, or where they fit in the social/economic/sexual hierarchy of things, while in Sweden, because conditions are more broadly egalitarian, there is less anxiety about individual standing - more of a sense of security - and so there is less need to visually check oneself against others. Have I cracked the problem, here? I don't really know... I think there must be more to it than that. It feels like there's a lack of curiosity about other people here. Why aren't people more curious about each other here?
There is, however, an exception. I have, on exactly three occasions, had sustained eye contact with pedestrians when I was either on a bicycle or in our car. This suggests a different theory, which is that people might actually be curious, but simply don't want to risk eye contact when there's a chance of it developing into something else... such as perhaps a conversation (Oh, the horror!). One person being in a vehicle presumably guards against this terrifying possibility. I was part of a conversation recently in which it was suggested that Swedes are pretty hard to perturb or offend, unless you try to sit next to one of them on a bus, or try to actually talk to one of them. So perhaps this 'eye contact problem' is just another iteration of the famous 'Scandinavian coldness.' But if this is the case, I then wonder... "Well why are they so cold, so insular?"
There is something deep in the culture here that I'm going to have to keep investigating...
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For some years now I have consistently identified Jonathan Glazer's 2000 film Sexy Beast as my favorite film of all time, and yet I've always had a hard time explaining why exactly I liked it so much. I knew it had something to do with a certain identification I felt with the main character, played by Ray Winstone. Sexy Beast now has some competition for the top spot in the form of Pablo Larraín's 2021 film Spencer, a highly speculative and somewhat surreal interpretation of three days in the life of Princess Diana. I watched the film three times (!) during my Taos trip, and am looking forward to seeing it again. Even though I've always felt a weird connection with Diana based on our near-identical birthdays and the fact that I sustained the most devastating injury of my life (shattering my calcaneus (heel bone)) on the day she died, my appreciation for the movie has little to do with her. I am entranced by the movie for two reasons. Firstly, Kristen Stewart in the title role is fucking amazing. Entrancing. Mesmerizing. And gorgeous. A huge percentage of the movie is just tight closeups on her, and she just carries the whole fucking movie in those closeups. I can't take my eyes off her. Secondly, there are elements of the protagonist's arc which parallel that of the protagonist's arc in Sexy Beast, and which thereby finally shed some light on why I identify with Ray Winstone's character, and which furthermore must have some relevance to my life, personally.
Specifically, each character is struggling for a kind of freedom from stricture, a freedom to live the kind of life that they choose for themselves, rather than a kind of life that others are trying to make for them. If we work from the assumption that seemingly unexplained outpourings of emotion are important keys to our inner lives, and if we furthermore examine the fact that the first time I read the following lyrics for Warduna’s epic song “Helvegen"...
"You will be free from the bonds that bind you
You are free from the bonds that bound you"
... I immediately started crying, I think it’s safe to say that there is something deeply meaningful for me in the concept of freedom and self-determination.
Well I've been yammering on for so long about films and emotional reactions that I can’t quite remember whether or not you asked me to take a self indulgent detour into self-analysis. But there you have it.
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Now, back to Sweden. Almost 5 years ago, in my post of October 17th, 2017, I posted the following slide:
Vi ses!
