A Well Thought-Out Place

I've decided that one of the overarching characteristics of Swedish society... one of the 'by-words', if you will, is 'well thought-out.'

When it snows, the town of Lund sends out a fleet of miniature tractors which clear the snow from the sidewalks and salt them. Not the street, mind you... the sidewalks. Well thought-out.

Kodiak and Griselda on a freshly cleared and salted sidewalk

As I've mentioned before, pedestrians and bicyclists have the right of way at crosswalks in town, and there are a lot of crosswalks. In order to compel drivers to slow down before the crosswalk, most of these crossings have a slight little ramp in the road... analogous to a speed bump... and it is paved in brick which transmits a different and 'chunkier' feel to the driver. Well thought-out.

(I personally see a philosophical correlation between the high importance placed on the rights of pedestrians and cyclists and the democratic/socialist orientation of the country.)

On a recent visit to the police station, to get Kodiak's National ID Card, we found these orange tags. 

If you hit a wild animal on the road, but suspect you have not killed it, you are supposed to place one of these orange tags around a tree near the site of the collision. Then you go and report the incident to the police, who in turn send out a team of specially trained hunters and tracker dogs to kill the animal. And the point of all this is... to reduce unnecessary suffering of the injured animal. Well thought-out.

I mentioned all of this to our Swedish friend Krister. He, having spent his whole life here, acknowledged my observation, but also made the point that it can all feel a bit TOO well thought-out sometimes. A bit too regimented. I can easily see his point. For instance, Kodiak has a drone, which we used to fly at our property in Taos from time to time... getting beautiful views of the gorge. Here in Sweden, you need to register every drone with the government and mark it with the name of the operator. And there are various classes of drones, some of which require training to operate. I'm actually not certain whether our drone would require training or not, but I am pretty sure Kodiak is considered too young to be an operator here. The upshot of all this is that, until we jump through the various required hoops, we cannot legally fly the drone here. Also... no flying in town and no flying at night. Lots of rules. It's a far cry from the lawless cowboy town we moved from. It's easy for me to see, from a bigger perspective, how these assorted rules would make for a better and more humane society for everyone to live in. And... as an American who is used to being able to do what I feel like doing, when I feel like doing it, it can be a bit challenging. But it's a tradeoff we are willing to make. 

Kodiak has been to the emergency room twice now, both times with not-too-serious injuries that resolved themselves. But these episoded have been our first exposure to the healthcare system here, and I can report that, although it can be quite slow, the care is pretty top notch. Kodiak has had an MRI, an x-ray, and follow-up appointments with orthopedic and eye specialists. And all of that has been free. And prescription medicines are free for kids up to age 18. No real complaints yet. 

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Change of topic.

In the world of house-building, a builder (what we call in the US a 'contractor') can either...

A) Build a house for a client, in which case the cost of the building is pre-paid by the client and there is essentially no risk for the builder, or...

B) Build a house 'on spec', in which case the house is built by the builder, with his (or her) money, and only once it is finished is it put on the market to be sold. In this scenario there is considerable risk for the builder because there is no guarantee it will sell, or will sell at a good price. (Although the housing market is usually thought of as a good bet)

Most of the artwork that I have made over my career has been made in a context similar to mode A above. Whether it was for festivals or the special-effects industry, most of the work I've made has been commissioned, which is to say it has been approved and paid for before it was built. My risk has always been low. As I toiled away, working on these big sculptures, I knew the work would be shown and I knew I would be paid.

Many artists (I'm tempted to say 'most artists' but I guess I'm not really sure, so...) Many artists work in mode B. They labor in their studios making paintings or sculptures or photographs or music, powered only by their own belief in what they are doing... and when the artworks are done they put them up for sale, either through galleries or websites or social media. As they make the work they hope it will sell but they don't really know. (I suppose that if you get 'connected' with a gallery that believes in your work there is some sense of assurance, but even then there are no guarantees.)

I think a few factors have coalesced for me and are slowly forcing me from mode A into mode B, and it's scary. The factors at play are the gradual closing of opportunities to fund big sculpture, our moving across the ocean and away from our traditional sources of funding, and my burgeoning interest in making a kind of work that is better suited to smaller and more traditional pieces. So it is, in a way, like starting over... because I am not connected with a gallery and I am not known as a painter or traditional sculptor. And yet, when I consult the list I've recently made (for myself) of ideas I've had for new works over the last few months, they are all paintings or small sculptures. There is really no need to close any doors, though. If a large-sculpture commission comes my way and I can make it work in terms of time and workshop space, etc, then of course I would move forward. But it's feeling less and less like that's where my passion lies. And yes, moving into uncharted territory is scary.

But I do have that list. The one I mentioned earlier, the list of painting and sculpture ideas. And I have begun to paint again. And play with a new medium, oil pastels. And I'm set up to start working on a new small sculpture which I hope to cast in bronze at the KKV foundry. And, I had a bit of a 'clarity moment' a few weeks ago... something along the lines of "Well, you're an artist. It's what you chose to be. And the job of an artist is to make art. So do your job... make art!"

I think I'm basically on the right track. 

Small oil painting, recent

Oil pastel 'drawing'. Oil pastels are like drawing with paint... 

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And I got into the state-sponsored (free) Swedish language course, so I'm now learning Swedish. Ironically, I won't be in the class for long because it's designed only to bring students up to a basic functional level, not true fluency, and because of my self-study and proficiency for languages I am close to testing out of it.

And Christina and I are looking at houses in the countryside just outside of Lund, hoping to find something we can afford to buy. In which case, we'd be living the bicontinental dream! A house in the US and a house in Sweden! Dreamy! (Well, let's see if we can really pull that off before we all get too excited...)

And for all you motorcyclists out there reading this, my bike did not pass the initial Swedish inspection. I have to do some work to it before I can re-test. And... I thought I'd be bravely riding here all year-round, because cold weather can be dealt with with the use of proper clothing. What I didn't count on is perpetually slick / snowy / icy roads. (See the first two photos in this post, above.)

Well, as Porky Pig says... That's All Folks!

Finally here?

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

From One Side of this Small Planet to the Other...

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! 

Group photo from the evening

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. 

I showed Face Forward...

... and Garraplata (or, translated: SilverClaw, or just: The Lobster), which presided over two nights of some pretty rockin' Silent Disco!

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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: 

...and I post it now, again, because as a family we are, again, at the irritability phase. Specifically, Kodiak is at the irritability phase. And to some degree, Kodiak being in that phase brings us into that phase as well.

Moving a family across the world into a new culture sounds like an awesome and romantic thing to do, and of course it is. But it's also a move into a place where you have no friends, you don't know how things work and it's therefor hard to get things done, and you likely don't speak the language (which is true for Kodiak and me). When the initial euphoria wears off, these impediments become real factors. The slide above normalizes this process, and reminds us that it is just one step on a path. 

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We are getting close to making some art again. Christina has been accepted at KKV, the community-run art workshop in Malmö, and I will likely be accepted soon as well. Our individual art studios are all set up here in the house. Now all we need is some time.

Speaking of art, while in Taos I struck a deal with our good friend Sasha Vom Dorp in which we got two large prints of his beautiful photographs to put up in our new house. Christina and I each chose an image (and boy was that difficult), and in exchange Sasha will get some of our artwork. Thanks Sasha, your work is so beautiful!

Vi ses!

What the hell are they doing over there?

"So what the hell are they doing over there?" I can hear you asking, my faithful reader.
"What is it like to land in a different country? How are they spending their days? In what ways is Sweden different from the US? Or from Taos?" Even though I'm on the other side of the world, I can clearly hear you wondering. 

Or maybe that's just me, trying to make sense of all this change.

Well, I have answers.

I can start by saying that IT'S A LOT. As in: THERE'S A LOT TO DO.

In no particular order, our days are consumed by:

• Getting Kodiak to school, and back (although he's just on the cusp of riding his bike there and back by himself.. which is a big step!!)
• Walking Griselda, or doing whatever it takes to exhaust her inexhaustible energy
• Finding bicycles (we got through that already)
• Managing the arrival of the container (still not here, arriving Friday, lots of paperwork)
• Trying to learn the road signs here so we can drive legally
• Dealing with the paperwork associated with moving here, which differs for me than for Christina, but involves:
-Getting the residency permit card (me)
-Trying to get a personal number, which you need for pretty much everything (me)
-Getting Kodiak registered so he can get health insurance, etc.
-Trying to register our business here
-Insuring our house, and car (car: see below)
And while doing all of the above, we are also of course trying to...
• Explore this place we now live in
• Do fun things with Kodiak in the afternoons and on weekends
• Make art (or at least make plans for making art)
• And learn Swedish. It is perhaps not too surprising that I am not yet finding a ton of time to practice my Swedish.

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We bought a car last week... a VW Up! (The exclamation point is not my editorializing, it's part of the vehicle name)

One interesting thing is that buying and registering a car is quite a bit easier here than in the states. Here in Sweden (and this was true in Spain as well) you do NOT have to visit a government office of any kind to buy a car, and you do not have to show anyone your driver's license. Everything is done by mail. We do not yet have our Swedish driver's licenses, but this was no impediment to buying the car. With the exception of a VW diesel bug that we had a few years ago, this is certainly the smallest car we've ever owned. But... it does get between 42 and 60 mpg.

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Way back in 2016, when we moved to Barcelona, I wrote that visiting a town's thrift stores and book stores (especially used book stores) was one of the ways that I got to know the place. Well, Lund and Malmö have some pretty good thrift stores. The best thing I've yet to find, by far, is this taxidermy Peregrine Falcon... (at least I think it's a Peregrine Falcon...)

I haven't really found any amazing used book stores here yet, which is slightly surprising considering it's a university town. But I have not, by any means, exhausted the search.

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I think it's a natural human instinct to want to compare things... or compare places, in this case... and I find myself often comparing life here in Lund to life back in Taos. But I think it's important that I be careful in the way that I construct my comparisons so that they are meaningful. What I mean to say is this: when one considers, for instance, the fact that Lund has quite a few public-access, outdoor workout facilities...

... it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that "Sweden just takes better care of its citizens than America." But is this really a comparison between Sweden and America? Or between rural and urban? Taos is a tiny town which I would call more rural than urban (and a poor little town, at that) and Lund is a city (albeit a small one.) By population Lund is 15 times larger than Taos, and considerably wealthier. So a more fair question would be: How well does a wealthy little American town of ~90,000 take care of its populace? Does that town have public access workout facilities? I don't have the data to answer this specific question, but the point is that one must be careful to construct comparisons fairly... to compare apples to apples... if one wants meaningful results.

So I'm still working on making those meaningful observations. A few things I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty are: 

• Services seem to work better here. Civil servants are very efficient and relatively nice. Mail from government agencies comes really fast. People working in stores are nice and helpful, and attend to you fairly quickly.

• People seem less angry and fearful here. People of all different races are jumbled together in work spaces and in public spaces, and it's not uncommon to see people of different races walking and talking together. I'm sure that also happens in some parts of America, but there are a lot of places where it doesn't. Anyway it's refreshing to see. 

• The roads are WAY better. Traffic in the cities is significantly more complicated to navigate because of the large number of bicyclists everywhere, and you must therefore drive more slowly, but things seem to run smoothly nonetheless. There are roundabouts (traffic circles) everywhere and they work well to keep traffic moving. 

• People don't make eye contact on the streets here very much. I have some theories about why this might be, ranging from "it's just cultural" to "people are more self-absorbed here" (and smart phones certainly contribute to that) to "perhaps eye contact is really just about sex and people have now outsourced hooking up to apps, so no one needs to look at anyone else anymore".

A last observation I'll make about our arrival in Sweden is that, for whatever set of reasons, it has felt suspiciously smooth. What I mean, specifically, is that it feels to me almost like we've moved to some more northerly, better-functioning part of the US. I've joked with Christina that I think we may have actually moved to Minnesota. I have felt very little "culture shock", certainly MUCH less than when we moved to Barcelona. I attribute this to several factors: 

• Everyone here speaks English.

• Sweden is, in general, not VERY different looking than America. It is useful here to think of Barcelona, with its narrow streets, gothic architecture, and generalized 'visual density', as a contrast.

• We've lived in Europe before, and so it's not so new to me anymore. 

It's exciting to feel you're in a brand-new place that feels really different from home, and so in a way I miss the culture shock. 

_________________________

I joined the public library (which is quite good) here in Lund in my first week. It's one of the few things you can actually do here without a personal number. I immediately checked out a few books... one on learning Swedish, another on understanding contemporary art, and another on J. C. Leyendecker. I was already vaguely aware of Leyendecker, but the book was a revelation. I have now added him to my list of favorite artists, and... more importantly... he shot to the top spot in my list of painters I would like to emulate (at least in terms of his style).

These are good examples of why I love his style- it is crisp, bold, and high-contrast... a very "illustration"-style. 

Amusingly, as a gay man he fits right in with all my other favorites... Bacon, Caravaggio, Cadmus, and McQueen. One thing I find quite entertaining is that he managed to surreptitiously insert homoerotic imagery into his work in a time when it was not at all acceptable...

Observe the barely concealed erection... in a national advertisement!

... and he did this while working at the very highest levels of the American advertising industry! That takes some daring!

He was a direct predecessor to, and inspiration for Norman Rockwell, who borrowed his style and became even more famous, despite being less talented (I'm sure some will disagree but to me it's obvious!)

Am I guilty of talking about painting, and how I'd like to paint, more than I actually paint? If you read this blog, you know that I am, and it's a fact about which I am embarrassed and which I intend to rectify. I now have my own painting studio in this home we've newly rented in Lund, and our container is finally arriving on Friday(!!!) so I will have no more excuses to get back to it. My first few dips back into painting will simply be copies of some of Leyendecker's faces and hands.

Until next time... Hejdå

Getting Out

I suppose that, by necessity, this post will largely take the form of reportage. So much has happened that, in order to maintain some sense of continuity, I'd better just tell you the story. If I'm able to sneak in some opinions, anecdotes, or asides, well then so much the better.

I last left you, my reader, with the news that we were moving to Sweden. So much has transpired since then that, as I write to you now, I am writing from our newly rented home in the small town of Lund, in Southern Sweden. 

The last few months in Taos were a whirlwind. So much work. Too much work.

Christina and I, despite having gotten married in Sweden in 2017, had always wanted to have another ceremony... in Taos. So on the blustery and rainy day of June 25th, in front of about 12 good friends, we tied the knot... again!

We then followed that with a going-away party at our pal Steve McFarland's Revolt Gallery, where we took this lovely group shot...

The subsequent week was consumed by the job of preparing for our container shipment. Knowing that we would be given only 3 hours free-of-charge to load the container, I spent several weeks mocking up the load in our workshop.

You can see the 'island' of stuff in the middle of the floor... which is the load waiting to go into the container.

This turned out to be time well-spent, as the load went flawlessly. We stuffed that container full, to the ceiling and to the doors. I like to say that we put the best 25% of our stuff in there. The load included a small mill, a small lathe, quite a bit of Christina's blacksmithing equipment, hundreds of pounds of books, 2 motorcycles and a moped, a piano, 30 or so pieces of artwork, all my painting equipment, 3 mannequins, 2 sewing machines, furniture, beds, bicycles, clothing and kitchen equipment. Et cetera. 

The original estimate for the arrival of the container at our home in Lund was the 8th of August, and to a large degree we built our travel plans around that date. As it happens, that date has been pushed back by at least 3 weeks, which has precipitated a few difficulties. More on that later.

After we sent the container off, we entered into a somewhat strange 3-4 week period. It felt strange because, even though we'd made this big ceremonial 'GoodBye' to Taos, we were actually still there, engaged every day in the hard labor of cleaning and organizing our land, preparing our home for rental, and selling off big items like tools and vehicles. It was during this time that I also installed Fledgling (with help from friends Cedar Goebel, Josh Cunningham, and Shiloh Gossner) in its 'forever home' at Revolt Gallery.

Then, finally, it was time to leave. Christina and Kodiak departed on July 22nd, landing first at a hotel in Lund and then taking occupancy of the house around the beginning of August. The house was literally empty upon their arrival (save for the fridge, stove, and laundry machines) so their first few days were occupied with the task of finding some basic furniture and light fixtures. 

Meanwhile I stayed in Taos an additional week, wrapping up the last things, and then set out for the East Coast in a rental car with our dog Griselda. Most US-based airlines no longer fly dogs in cargo (allegedly because of... the pandemic!) and Griselda is too big to fly in the cabin, and I had been wanting to visit my brother Trevor and his family at their new digs in New Hampshire. So off we went on a 4 day drive across the country. After spending 4 lovely days with Trevor in the rather idyllic little town of Portsmouth...

we were finally off on our big adventure. Luckily SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) still flies dogs in cargo, so on the grey and rainy morning of August 5th Griselda and I landed in Copenhagen, where we were met by Christina and Kodiak. Griselda went wild when she saw them!

I mentioned a few minutes ago that the delay of our shipping container has caused some problems, and what I mean is this: Christina and I put quite a lot of thought into exactly what to pack, and one of the guiding principles in that process was that we did not want to have to buy - in Sweden - a bunch of stuff that we already owned. Why buy mattresses (which are expensive), or kitchen stuff, or a dining room table, or bicycles, when we already own it all? So we were quite careful to time the arrival of the container with our arrival. But the fact that it's quite late (apparently caused by congestion at US ports, a result of... the pandemic!) has meant that we have needed to buy exactly those things, again. After all, we need to sleep and eat and get around.

The other problem it has caused is a little less concrete. The last few months in Taos were marked by a non-stop sense of purpose and focus. There was never a lack of tasks to accomplish, all in service of the larger goal. Now, having arrived in Sweden with nothing to unpack, no art supplies, no tools or motorcycles to keep us busy, we are in somewhat of a 'holding pattern.' This dramatic change of pace felt quite strange to me for a day or two. But then again, if I'm totally honest about it, it has been nice to have nothing particularly pressing to do most of the time, other than explore and discover this new place we are in. Things have been so busy, so intense, for so long that I never felt I had the breathing room to write a blog post... until now. I'm even going to get back to studying the Swedish language pretty soon. This week or two actually feels a bit like a real summer vacation and it's nice to enjoy the downtime with Kodiak before he starts at his new school next week.

I suppose I'll wrap things up with a few early observations about this place, and how it compares to America. My overarching theory of America is that it is fundamentally broken because it was built on the wrong principles of capitalism, racism (and sexism and homophobia), and guns. Having spent the overwhelming majority of my first 52 years in that place, I think the filter through which I'll be looking at Sweden is something like: "In what ways does this place, which purports to prioritize people over profits and the collective over the individual, and which furthermore has no history of slavery, differ from America? And is life actually better here?"

To be honest, I can't give a real answer yet. I've only been here 6 days, and I still feel like a tourist. In fact I imagine I will continue to feel like a tourist for the next year or more. That being said, there are a few things that are already apparent. Wealth seems to be more evenly spread around; I have seen almost no signs of either very rich people or very poor people. And people of different races seem to get along more smoothly. I've noticed this especially in Malmö, the larger city to the southwest of Lund. Pedestrians have an inviolable right-of-way, followed closely in the hierarchy by bicyclists. Cars will stop for you, without fail. Also, the police are more integrated here and their role appears to be closer to the old-fashioned idea of "serve and protect," as opposed to whatever it is they're doing in America now. (For the record, I don't believe the police are completely to blame for their current role in American society; I think economic inequality [poverty] mixed with racism and guns makes their job quite difficult, and dangerous.) 

Malmö, despite having a bad reputation, seems like a very cool city. Christina and I both envision ourselves spending a lot of time there. KKV, the collective artist's workshop where Christina and I will likely be working quite a lot in the next few years, is located in Malmö. The city also has an off-leash dog park which borders the North Sea... and therefor has a 'dog beach'... and which measures approximately 60 acres (!). This feels like something one would be hard-pressed to find in the US, and needless to say, Griselda loves it.

Griselda and one of her many new friends running on the Dog Beach!

Our home in Lund is lovely, although rather large for our purposes (not complaining!) and also still quite empty. It has a luxuriously large yard complete with apple trees and a tree house. Our goal, if we can manage it, is to stay here in this house no more than 2 years (or maybe less) and purchase a home or rural property in that time. It's ambitious, but property is more affordable here than in most parts of the US, so we shall see.

Our yard, just now!

I feel that this post was necessarily superficial, as there was a lot to cover. I imagine that in the coming posts I'll go into more detail and offer deeper observation about what life is like here, and how it differs from the good old US of A. I hope to also talk more about the bicycle culture here, and maybe even get back to talking about art-making!

Cheers