Choose Your Weapons

In the arts, as well as at war, it's important to choose your weapons well. I wonder about musicians who go for the most unwieldy instruments. What were they thinking?


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Choose Your Weapons

Painstaking Process

I continue the theme of drawings, but this time with something I made rather recently. It's a video of me making a drawing, and the changes it goes through before completion.

Drawings and paintings, they don't jump out suddenly in a fixed form. It's a process, more often than not a painstaking one. Otherwise the finished pictures will not catch the eyes of the spectators.

It's the same when writing a story. It has to be edited again and again, before its writer is satisfied. Unlike, for example, building a house, the story is erected, torn down, and erected again. Its architecture is changed fundamentally, over and over, before it reaches a shape in which it can rest.

Surely, a musician would say the same, whether it's a composer or a performer. The latter also has to chew through every note and syllable, in search of the way to perform the song that becomes unquestionably natural, self-evident, when reached.

So, here are five minutes of the struggle that is the creative process. I wouldn't say that it ends with a masterpiece, far from it, but I can safely say that the birth of a masterpiece is similarly painstaking.

More of my drawings can be seen on my FaceBook account, and more of my artwork on my website.

The Pen of My Youth

Facial landscape.

Memory Lane. I went through some old sketch pads, taking photos or scanning (depending on size) a number of drawings. Here are some of the drawings I made in the 1970's, when I was around 20 years old. Oh, how I'd love to have time for doing more of it!

Embrace.

Portrait.

Quarrel.

Reader.

Renaissance lady.

Croquis.

Click on the images to see them enlarged.

More of my drawings can be seen on my FaceBook account, and more of my artwork on my website.

Disappearing Skyscraper

I mentioned Turning Torso, the Malmö skyscraper, in my previous blog post. The building intrigues me, so I stare at it as soon as I have it in sight. One time, it was gone.

This most characteristic ingredient in the Malmö cityscape had suddenly disappeared. Where it was supposed to rise proudly, there was only sky.

It was ironic, since that was at a time when this costly building was intensely discussed in the media, and the initiator of the project was taking a lot of heat – quite ridiculously, since this is now one of the few things at all putting Malmö on the world map.

Had the expensive skyscraper vanished?

Slowly, teasingly, it started to reappear in the sky. Some local fog or cloud or something had hidden it. For the next hour or so, the building kept disappearing and reappearing, as if uncertain about the joy of its own existence. A spectacle.

Above is a picture of one of those phases. Below is a video I took of the event. I'm sorry that you have to tilt your head, but I filmed it with my regular digital camera, which I mainly used for still photos, so I forgot that films are always landscape. Surely, I could turn it 90 degrees in any movie editor, but that possibility escaped me before uploading it on YouTube.

Inspirational Sensualism

Now I've restored all the images on this blog, after my accidental deletion of them through my Galaxy cell phone. I celebrate by adding an image, the croquis above.

I made the drawing a couple of years ago. Croquis is great fun. Also, it's an excellent and very effective way of exercising one's artistic ability.

The human body is the foundation and measure of all art – drawings, sculpture, and painting, of course, but also for example architecture, as can be clearly seen on the Malmö building Turning Torso, by Santiago Calatrava. Our aesthetic ideals spring from the human body, its proportions, colors, and movements.

Sadly, I don't find all the time I'd like for this exercise. Nor is it that easy to get willing models. Otherwise I'd do it daily.

It's strange how quickly one develops one's abilities when doing croquis. Even a beginner can clearly see improvement from one drawing to the next. There is great inspiration in the uninhibited study of the human body, and making the pen follow its form is highly sensual.

If you look for a hobby that's highly rewarding and deeply satisfying, look no further.

Here is more of my artwork – drawings, painting, photos, and video experiments. Below is a croquis I made way back in the 1970's, when I had much more time and opportunity for it.

(Click on the images to see them enlarged.)

Mistaken Image Deletion

The other day, I accidentally erased all the images on my blog. I did so on my Android phone, not realizing that it would delete them from the blog as well.

Shit happens. I will reload the images in the near future, when I find the time. Fortunately I have them all on my computer harddrive. In the meantime, enjoy the dramatic black rectangles indicating all the beautiful pictures that were once there...

Many Occasions to Contemplate Murder

In 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot on a Stockholm street. That shocked the Swedish nation, previously spared from such violence against our leaders. It gnawed my mind persistently, so I wrote a book.

The book, Occasionally I Contemplate Murder, was not at all about the assassination of Olof Palme, in spite of its slightly cryptic dedication:

To the poor target
of the one who probably
triggered this book.

Instead, I wrote about the mysteries of life, death, and what kind of meaning might be found in their interaction. The eternal question, refusing a definite answer: What's it all about?

Out of the Gloom

In an effort to write without getting drowned in gloom, something that the subject in combination with the Swedish language would be hard to avoid, I decided to do it in English. I wanted the contrast of the somber content and a light-hearted tone, as if not taking it that seriously. Otherwise, the book might become as heavy to write as it would be to read.

English literature has a tradition of such dead-serious comedians, some of them old favorites of mine – like Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut. The darkest subjects can only be explored by comedy.

This was the first time I wrote a book in English, originally. When I lived in the USA for about a year in 1979-80, I translated some of my Swedish work into English, but that's another story. With Occasionally I Contemplate Murder I was delighted to find that my intention was fulfilled. In the English language it was indeed possible for me to keep a light tone in spite of the dark matters at hand. I worked on it during 1986 and got it finished somewhere in the spring of 1987.

So, there I was with a complete book script in English, but what to do with it? I sent it to a US literary agent, which had been mine for a while when I stayed in New York (Sanford J. Greenburger), but they had failed to sell another script of mine, so they were not that keen on the new one – especially since it was more of an essay than a novel.

When they declined, I just let the script lie in a drawer. But soon, a Swedish publisher, Eric Fylkesson, heard about it and asked if he could read it. Eric had a small publishing house releasing odd and intriguing titles. He was – and is – also a brilliant poet, both in text and on stage. He is one of the Swedish writers I admire the most, so I was happy to let him read the script.

To my delight, he urged me to translate it into Swedish, saying that he would gladly publish it if I did. Although I was flattered, I doubted that it would be possible to turn the text into Swedish and keep its essential light-hearted style. Eric wouldn't take no for an answer, but insisted that I give it a try. Well, I did, and it actually worked.

Because I had the English version as a source, I could find the corresponding Swedish language. The translated text didn't fall into an abyss. Much to my surprise.

Here, There, and Back Again

In August of 1987, the Swedish book was published. It never entered any bestseller lists, but it became kind of a cult thing. Lots of people let me know that the book had triggered their thoughts. I was especially pleased to learn that several colleagues appreciated it greatly.

Well, life went on and the book slowly fell asleep like most books do. Almost 20 years after it was published in Sweden, the media world had gone through multiple revolutions. Suddenly it was possible for me to have it published in English. At first, I did so on my website, just for fun. I embraced the idea of reaching the world with my words, without any go-between.

Then, Internet bookstores and Print on Demand publishing made it possible to get the actual book out. In spite of the world wide web miracle, that's still how a book becomes real. You need to hold it and turn the pages. Otherwise, the reading experience is somewhat lacking. Touching is part of reading.

The first edition was published in 2006 with the simple title Murder. For the second edition, I edited the text for the umpth time and also decided on a new title: Occasionally I Contemplate Murder – to make it say something more about the content and the type of book. And I had great fun producing the drastic cover image.

Alas, there have been many targets and triggers since Olof Palme was assassinated. Just these last days, we struggle with the shock of a Norwegian fanatic methodically shooting down more than sixty teenagers. One would like to believe that this must be the last act of such kind.

Life and death, and the way they dance together, are still in dire need of explanations and still constantly escaping them. There are many occasions to contemplate.

Here is more about the book: Occasionally I Contemplate Murder
Here it is on Amazon US and on Amazon UK.

Faith or Not, You Have to Leap

Steve Martin has made a bundle of movies. Of those I've seen, three stand out: the revealing view of superficial society in LA Story, the sensitive modernized version of Cyrano de Bergerac in Roxanne, and the naked take on fake religion suddenly becoming real in Leap of Faith. This is about the last one, right now my favorite – although maybe because I just saw it anew.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Faith or Not, You Have to Leap

Murder Mystery

The truth is elusive. That's what intrigues us about crime cases – real or fictional. What really happened is rarely ascertained, nor why it did. That's certainly true in the case of Alex and Derek King, who killed their father Terry when they were only 12 and 13. Their story raises more question than it answers. Is it only in fiction we can reach solid conclusions?


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Murder Mystery

Facebook Fading?

There is such a thing as a maximum, even for Facebook. Now, it seems to be declining in the parts of the world where it has the most subscribers. Internet users are an impatient lot – because they can be.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Facebook Fading?

Don't Wanna Stay Alive When You're 25

I was a huge fan of David Bowie in the 1970's, but gradually lost that fascination as the 80's approached. He seemed to lose his edge and that desperation contained within, just barely kept from erupting. I wonder if rock'n'roll is something reserved for the young.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Don't Wanna Stay Alive When You're 25

The Few Get More

The rich ones keep on grabbing more of the world's wealth. One percent of the world population owns 39% of its wealth. Greed is insatiable.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

The Few Get More

Shooting on My Street

Hollywood came to my street in Stockholm. For a day and a night, they were shooting scenes for the Stieg Larsson crime story The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The size of it! Hollywood is a flashmob Caesar.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Shooting on My Street

Religion Has Always Been Doubted

I've just published a new edition of my book about the Greek philosophers and what they thought about religion, their gods, and the myths about them: Cosmos of the Ancients. I was curious about how much they actually believed in their gods. Not much at all, I found.

Generally, we tend to take for granted that in ancient times, doubts about religious matters were almost unfathomable. We expect that the further back in time we go, the less people were able to see through the religious concepts or question them at all. The gods were as real to them as the sky, the sun, and the moon.

I was not so sure of it, considering the nature of the human mind, which has been about the same – as far as we know – for hundreds of thousands of years. That's how long the human brain size has been about the same. This big thing must have been put to use in all kinds of matters, especially those that appeared from inside of it.

We are unable to scrutinize human though in any detail, way back to the stone age, but there are lots of thoughts preserved from Ancient Greece. That's at least some 2,400 years back, in a time where gods were worshipped and myths about them were common knowledge. So, I decided to investigate what the Greek philosophers revealed about their thoughts on religious matters.

They were the finest minds of the time, no doubt, so what they concluded might not have been the views of the common man. But if they were at all able to question the existence of the gods and the accuracy of the myths about them, then all the people of that time would at least have had the ability to do the same. It could not have been beyond their mental capacity.

Indeed, most of the philosophers expressed some kind of disbelief regarding religious views. Several of them were outright atheists, others regarded the gods as symbols of sorts, or imagined supernatural powers of other kinds. Actually, philosophers with a belief in the common myhtology were hard to find.

This might very well be true for any time and any culture. The religious beliefs are not embraced by all, at least not entirely. There has always been doubt and alternative ideas about it all. This needs to be considered wherever religion is studied. We can't take blind belief for granted, even when we go far back or examine a culture where religion seemed to rule the world view. Its rule was probably never absolute.

People's minds wander. They've always done so. The one thing that is the hardest to find, upon closer examination, is consensus. That's probably how we progress at all.

Here's my book about the Greek philosophers and their religious views on Amazon.
It's also a Kindle ebook.
And here is more information about the book on my website.

The Anguish of a Writer

The last month or so, I've been struggling with an old novel of mine, editing it for a new release. The struggle has been one of extreme doubt – should I really publish this book again, or let it continue its merciful sleep in oblivion?

It's a stone age story I wrote already in the late 1970's, which was published in Sweden in 1982 as Evigheten väntar (Eternity Awaits). See the cover of the book above. Already the title reveals its weakness – a tendency towards the overly sentimental and melodramatic. The text is quite pretentious at times, with wordings that reek of poetic gluttony.

It was intentional, in a way, since my aim with the book was to explore what kind of meaning stone age people found for their life, and how their brains, already at least as big as ours, perceived their world. They did not just live their lives, but indulged in them, marveled at the wonders of the world around them, and meditated their own beings with amazement.

Still, that made the text heavy with exaggeration and sticky with ornamentation.

So, when starting to edit the novel, some 30 years after it was written, I went through quite a lot of anguish. Could this firework of a text at all be edited into something readable?

I did what I could, without changing the novel into some other story. It was an edit, not a rewrite, although the idea of the latter was sometimes tempting. I made a number of little changes on just about each and every page, and still it felt thick with the kind of sentiment that almost turns itself into parody.

Several times I considered giving it up, and turn my attention to another script instead. I have a few to choose from. But with a persistence that got its energy from frustration instead of any strength of my character, I carried on until the last page. The script had gotten quite messy from all the marks of my pen, and it took a while to type all the corrections into the Word file.

I made a PageMaker file of the text, still very unsure of its quality, and started sketching on a cover design. That was some kind of comfort. I always enjoy making the book design, deciding on typography, caring about page breaks, and so on. That can be more pleasing than writing the book. It was certainly the case with this one.

When I was ready with that, I printed the whole thing out on paper, to have one last editing session with it. This final reading I usually do on restaurants, coffee shops, train rides and such, just to get out of my home.

On a local restaurant that I frequent regularly, a friend got curious about the manuscript and asked if he could have a look at it. This friend is a priest, struggling with his daily professional duties, which can be grim at times, as well as with his own faith and its collisions with the flawed institution that is his church. I value his opinion, since he has put in a tremendous effort to reach it.

Now, he opened the script and read the first few lines out loud. They contain a very comprised creation myth of sorts, as told by the book's main character, and how it sort of leads to his own birth and emergence in the world. It plays on the word “föda”, which means both breed and feed. Here it is, in a rough translation from the Swedish original:

I am.
Now, I command my spirit.

Mountain breeds sand, breeds soil. Soil breeds the trees, which breed all the animals. The animals breed the people. People breed people and nothing more.

People bred me, Imri, the last. I remember how I slipped out of the embrace of my maternal flesh. It was cold, but light came and warmed by body. The sun dried my skin.

And so on.
The priest was pleased, and so was I. He said several kind words about the poetic expressions and found them delightful. To my surprise, so did I. For a few months, I had worked so hard on the editing that I had forgotten to taste the words and let them get to me. Now they did.

He read a few sentences here and there in the manuscript, and we both felt the pleasure remain. Not only did the decorated text make sense, but I found that it was enjoyable. It was not over the top, at least not more so than needed for the story it had to tell.

What I had not been able to discover by myself was obvious through the medium of my friend's reading. Actually, he could have done it in silence, and it would have worked the same. When I allowed him to read it and watched him doing so, I was suddenly aware of the text's qualities and my belief in it. My anguish disappeared and I thanked my frustrating persistence, which had all along known better than my mind did.

So, now I will hurry to get the book published. But I will change the title – and the cover.