I think it's time to write a new blog post.
Should I talk about STUFF? (As in: our weird attachment to possessions)
Should it be a travelogue? I've done a hell of a lot of traveling lately.
Should I share my continuing observations about Sweden?
Yes. I'll do all of that.
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Stuff
Stuff. Possessions. Belongings. Way back in the beginning of July, Christina and I packed a 20-foot container full of the best of our stuff... to be sent to Sweden. We worked out the timing of our air travel so that we would arrive within a few days of our stuff. After all, we didn't want to be away from our stuff for too long. And then our container was delayed, so... we didn't have our stuff. So we had to buy more stuff to try to fill up our house with stuff (which is exactly what we didn't want to have to do - it's the reason we sent over a container). But we didn't want to buy too much stuff, because we had more stuff coming in the container. Finally, our container full of stuff arrived. We were so excited because we missed our stuff. As we unloaded it, it was suddenly clear that we had brought a LOT of stuff. Actually, we thought, it was kind of nice to live without so much stuff, wasn't it? And in the following days, as we unpacked all that stuff, we thought: Why did we even bring this stuff? It was an overwhelming amount of stuff and a lot of it seemed like crap!
Now, a few months on, it's actually nice to have all our stuff. It makes this place feel a little more like home. I'm pretty sure we squandered that very brief opportunity to live the minimalist lives of ascetics.
The comedian George Carlin famously said that homes were just covers for our stuff, and I think he was right. People accumulate a lot of stuff. We sure have.
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Travelogue
During the pandemic I went for two years without getting on an airplane, but I've been making up for it lately. In September I was in Taos for two weeks, then back home to Lund for a bit. Then Christina and I went to England for a week, then back here for a bit. Then a week in Portugal, then back here for a bit. Then a week in Gotland, then back here for... hopefully more than a bit.
I already talked about my trip to Taos, which was unexpectedly fun.
Then, England. Christina and I joined our friends Cedar, Brian, and Terril...
... back in Chatsworth to take down the Flybrary. I got to drive a van for a week on the left (wrong!) side of the road, which was fun. We had a chance to go through the Chatsworth House (castle, palace, royal residence, whatever...) one more time, which was totally worth it. That place is amazing. Just look at this bedroom....
We even had a free day to explore Manchester (I have to say I was disappointed that Manchester was not one big shrine to Joy Division!)
A week later we all found ourselves in Portugal, where we re-built the Flybrary on the property of its proud new owner. Yes, that's right, a 30-year old tech entrepreneur purchased Christina's sculpture and we installed it for him at his ranch south of Lisbon.
I got to drive the forklifts, which I enjoy.
It rained a lot while we were there and the mud proved to be an incredible adversary. So much so, in fact, that the crane required to put up the bird truss (which is the top part of the sculpture) could not come onto the property. So in a sense the mud won. The sculpture is incomplete and we need to return in the spring to finish it.
There was an interesting cast of characters assembled at the ranch during our stay, including other artists, videographers, and digital nomads. (I think if I were a young person today, I'd be pretty tempted by the digital nomad lifestyle.) Once we'd finally washed off the mud we all assembled for a group photo.
Then we had a day to check out Lisbon, which is a charming and picturesque city.
After saying goodbye to our pals, and spending a few days back at home in Lund, Christina and Kodiak and my mother and I went for a week-long vacation to the Swedish island of Gotland. Gotland is the largest island in the Baltic and has had an interesting history full of battles and bloodshed. It has changed hands many times in the last 1000 years, mostly between the Swedes, Danes, and Russians. Even now there is a large Swedish military presence on Gotland, as the general belief seems to be that Russia still poses a threat there. Gotland even had its own civil war... Gotlanders against Gotlanders! And it's really not THAT big.
Gotland is well-endowed with wild and beautiful nature, which reminded us a bit of New Mexico.
At the northern tip of Gotland is another, much smaller, island called Fårö. Fårö is interesting for being even more wild and remote.
An old building on Fårö
And a few of Fårö's Rauks. A Rauk is a limestone tower left standing after the softer stone around it has eroded away. That one in the foreground is over 30 feet tall. Gotland and Fårö have lots of them.
Fårö was also a very important place for the Swedish film maker Ingmar Bergman. He shot seven films there, bought a house there where he lived at the end of his life, and died there. We visited the Ingmar Bergman museum on the island. I've never seen any of his films, but I have now set my sights on one called Persona. The Swedish 200 crown banknote features Rauks on one side and Bergman on the other.
And now we're back. It's nice to not have to go anywhere for a while. I have a sculpture showing at a festival in Chile in a few weeks, but I'm not going. It's nice to not have to go.
But... it's Face Forward, a very finicky sculpture. What could possibly go wrong?
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Et cetera
I continue to be intrigued but ultimately baffled by the Swedish aversion to looking at other people. The teenage daughter of an American couple we know here jokingly put it this way: "Must not make eye contact!"
I've noticed that young children here are actually quite keen on making eye contact, as you would expect. (A particularly memorable incident involved a little girl who was riding her bicycle in a daring and confident way, and when she noticed me looking at her and smiling, she totally loved it. She kept looking back at me to be sure I was still watching her show off. This was only one of several similar episodes.) So when do kids stop wanting to be engaged with others in this way? And why?
I guess the bottom line is that I think this tendency to be insular and disengaged with other people is sort of... sad.
I continue to generate new theories about this insular reluctance to engaging with others, but they are just theories. I've come up with quite a few by now, but I have no idea which ones are valid and which aren't. My newest theory is: when people look at each other, they are looking for... something. Some connection, some engagement, some excitement, some satisfaction of curiosity. Maybe people here are so perfectly satisfied with their lives... their perfect jobs and perfect partners and perfect homes that they aren't looking for anything. To me, that sounds like a shutting-down of curiosity, a shrinking of the horizons... but what do I know?
Just another theory.
Sweden is, when compared with many other places (such as, for example, New York City, or Japan, or India, or Spain, or Mexico, or Italy), a visually austere place. It's not visually rich. It's not dense. It's sparse. It's plain. Could the lack of interesting things to look at in the man-made environment somehow be linked to the aversion that people have to looking at each other?
I find it fascinating that Northern and Southern Europe line up so perfectly well at opposite ends of the spectrum on so many parameters.
This is totally unscientific and a gross generalization, but I do think I'm on to something here...
I have quite a few other brewing thoughts and observations about being in Sweden, mostly centered around the kinds of sacrifices one is expected to make in service to living in a place in which the good of the many supercedes the liberties of the individual, and how - as an American - that can be a hard pill to swallow. But these are half-baked ideas which need time to mature, hopefully in time for a future blog post.
It's not very sexy to write about, but... Kodiak continues to have a hard time adjusting to being here. Christina and I are both struggling in our own ways as well. We miss our friends and our shop and Taos. Moving is a big fucking disruption. There's a lot to juggle. It's hard, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
It's that time of year, again, to submit ideas to Burning Man. And I think I'm going to do it, again.
Why, you ask, would I do such a thing? Why would I put so much work into a proposal which will likely be rejected, given Burning Man's recent track record of rejecting my ideas as well as their reluctance to fund overseas projects because of high costs?
Well, two reasons I guess.
One, there just aren't that many opportunities to fund big sculpture that I know about. Burning Man offers a nice opportunity to artists to help make an idea into a reality, and put it in front of lots of eyes.
And two, I believe in my idea. I want to build it. My idea this year is a little bit of a throwback to earlier themes and techniques (incorporating kinetic mechanisms for the first time in a while), but also an embracing of new ideas. I think it would be an awesome sculpture. So... fuck it, why not apply?
In any case, it's always a good idea to work on fleshing out your ideas, and these proposals force me to draw and think and sometimes sculpt.
I've been working on my motorcycle - preparing it for inspection by the Swedish traffic authorities - and riding it a bit as the weather allows. Fun.
And in about 2 weeks I have a meeting to assess my current Swedish language skills, which is the first step in enrolling in free, state-sponsored Swedish classes. Fun? I don't know about that. But I am excited, actually.
Hej då
