1 0 0 0 . w o r d s : I . w a l k . a . l o n e l y . s t r e e t

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{ Stars of glass. }

In Tokyo I wrote:

"Shibuya is like a gigantic noisy outdoors shopping mall, but once inside the back alleys you can still hear the city hum and the colors are muted.
  Walking around alone I think: If I get lost now, no one would know where to look for me. It's a thought that's both exhilarating and heartbreaking."

I remember how free I felt, as though I was dangling from a thread loosely attached to earth.

Let's use magic to bind Stockholm, June 30th 2012, with Tokyo, May 15th 2009.
  Both days I walked a lonely street. This is what my camera caught:

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1 0 0 0 . w o r d s : s u n . k i s s

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{ Bergius Botanical Garden }

In May, the Karol and I spent a few sun kissed hours at Bergianska. We walked by the lake, fantasized about future picnics, expected sunbathing snakes on a hill made of rocks and stole a single stem of rhubarb. It stung in our mouths with the wild taste of summer.
  Karol said: I think this summer will pass by quickly!
  I replied: No! It hasn't even begun.
  It was only May.
  We mustn't trick ourselves into thinking about things like summer in grown up time.

Since then Stockholm has had the rainiest June since we first began measuring rain, and summer feels distant, like a friend away on travels.

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w i l l o w ' s . s o n g

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{ Britt Ekland }

One more Midsummer thing...

My favourite Midsummer song, Willow's Song from The Wicker Man (1973), performed by Magnet and composed by Paul Giovanni. To me no Midsummer is complete without it. The melody is so sad and the lyrics so evocative, it's a funny little bit!

Suddenly I'm keen to put together a favourite acoustic ballads mix tape! Maybe I should?

(The image links to its source, a rather flat post on sexy 70's women.)

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WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN

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{ A wooden sea. }

Yesterday, two days after Midsummer, the Glenn and I was cleaning. Under our bed, together with a toy synthesizer and a large cardboard poster folder, I found various pieces of wood, leftovers from the grand 60's bookshelf that we've mounted in our miniscule kitchen. (I know, that tiny space is completely unphotographable.)
  One of the pieces was a shelf for one of the cupboards, a shelf I didn't know we had. I was angling it in different ways in the sunshine before I decided to take an Instagram. The wooden surface looks like frozen waves of grain. In the distance is the calm horizon and up close the stronger darker currents.

I could hear my father's voice say: Wooden ships and iron men, iron ships and wooden men.

He went out to sea only 15 year's old (you had to be 16 but a captain agreed to forge his age) in 1956, and he would say this line with laughter in his voice, lightly mocking the men that came after him. I wish I could have frozen time and remembered - recorded - all his stories, as if that could bring me closer to him and make me part of that long gone reality.
  Listening to his stories, it was impossible for me to combine the safety of our clean suburban house with those dark oceans and endless hours under the stars. Sitting in our kitchen, he would sometimes calculate the stars with his sextant, as if that would shorten the distance between him and the ocean.

m i d s u m m e r . d r e a m s

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{ A Midsummer's strawberry cake, and a Wicker Man sky. }

The things I want to write about the most are the ones I find the hardest to write. My thoughts muddle up and my language gets stiff and pretentious. I don't think I have yet a good written "spoken language".
   I used to be someone who was constantly reading and writing - short stories, long stories, poetry, comic books, songs, aimlessly. When I started writing movie scripts and adapting action and thought into a format, that came to a full stop. I miss having a language of my own.

For me, Midsummer and writing are both about a return to something unknown and wild.

Midsummer and solstice fill me with wonder, and make me long for a connection to something ancient and more true if that makes sense, something other than cake and snaps and laughter, all three brilliant things. Maybe it's my childhood's folkloristic fairy tales acting up.

I'm not a Christian nor a Neopagan, and I don't have a need to belong to an organized religion. I'm spiritual and childish and romantic and sentimental, and because of that, skeptical.
  I often wonder: What if Christianity hadn't come to Scandinavia? Where would we be today had we still been practicing Norse religion? And what would Norse religion have been like today? It's an interesting hypothesis. Maybe Sweden would anyway have been a land of "I don't know, but I believe in something".

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d e a r . j u n e

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These are my favourites of all the photos I've posted on Webstagram during the last few weeks. I'm as taken with Instagram as everyone else, it's especially great if you as I don't have access to another digital camera than your phone's. Looking at how many photos I've removed, I realize that I'm as critical there as I am of everything I do here. I hope that might turn into a positive.

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● ＼(^_＼)

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I know. This is not a football blog.

Sweden - France, the final score was 2 - 0.

Sad French fans...

...and sad French football players.

Sweden, catch the star!

Zlatan...

...Zlatan...

...Zlatan, or as the French sometimes call him, Zaltan. Such a difficult name. Apparently.

Swedish fans.

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This is not a football blog, and I know very little of football.

I'm not nationalistic, well only sometimes in other countries, for sentimental reasons, and to annoy. When I watch football I cheer on the most interesting team, not Sweden, because I want for an interesting game. And Sweden isn't very good - well, until yesterday when they (sorry, we) beat France. And that's what I'd like to write about.

When I watch Sweden play in the UEFA cup or the World Cup I wonder how much the Law of Jante ("...a pattern of group behaviour towards individuals within Scandinavian communities, which negatively portrays and criticises individual success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate") matters. I'm not saying that it does, but I wonder if it does. Are you allowed to shine and take place and score goals and beat other players to it? Or are you waiting for the team to do it, kinda for you, as a group and not as brilliant individuals within a group? Zlatan seems to be beyond the Law of Jante, which annoys people. I think it's excellent.

When Sweden yesterday met France, we had already lost and we were out. The game result didn't make any difference. And of course we were brilliant. Was it nerves that had held us back? I wonder what would happen if the coach would tell our team: You suck. You're worthless. You'll lose. You have absolutely no chance. So go up there and do your best but it won't make any difference.

Would we then play great?

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D'ARTAGNAN AND SUMMER STORMS

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I dreamt that one of the three musketeers fenced with d'Artagnan. Except that d'Artagnan wasn't human, he was a small human sized dinosaur. In his tiny irritating dinosaur hand he held his épée and on his irritating dinosaur head he had the big hat with a purple plume. For every stab he shrieked a high pitched "Eeeee!". I remember thinking, still in dream: Dreaming this is so humiliating.

I was too annoyed for three days to tell anyone about this dream. Then I couldn't hold it in anymore.

It was weeks ago, and I still think about it at least once a day.

Above is my Thunder pattern. And I wonder for Illustrator's Centre's midsummer theme, can I use it, or is it too far fetched? There are summer storms, yes?

And I ♥ Basquiat's paintings of Mona-Lisa and van Gogh. I giggled plenty when I saw them, watching the very sad The Radiant Child on YouTube. Without Bonjour Johanna's info, I would never have guessed the movie was there, within arm's reach.

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r e j e c t i o n

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"It's a bad idea, and even worse as a movie!" Say it out loud and taste the words. Det är en dålig idé, och ännu sämre som film.

Some things you never forget, and rejection is unfortunately often one of them.

This one was so harsh, especially printed on official office paper. I told a friend about it recently, and she said: Oh, the things we (film makers) must put up with. The letter was sent to me by SFI (Swedish Film Board). And there aren't that many places to apply from.

Speaking of film makers, can I even call myself that? I haven't finished a movie since 2007. Three years of working out of our own pockets on a documentary that last minute fell through took its toll. Sometimes I feel like I can't even remember how to do it. Where do you start? What is a movie? The options.

Maybe you've noticed I don't blog Monday to Friday anymore. It's on purpose. I'm mulling things over - life, money, work, wants, studies - and am not sure how I want to use this space. I don't want to give it up, I'm just not sure how to go about things. My doubt has to do with getting even truer to myself, and not taking ways for granted. I want what I do to matter and to leave an imprint, if only on myself.

So anyway. The rejection. It didn't bring me down, instead I showed it laughingly to anyone I met and even thought of having it framed. If I ever have an official desk somewhere I might do it. The letter arrived during filming, so I could bring it to the set and entertain crew and actors with it. That might not be very professional, but it was funny. Look, I'd say, we suck! I have it in writing!

This is the movie.

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m e . t o o

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Suddenly, on a whim, I'm Instagram:ing too... It happened out of the blue, like a dotty outburst of chicken pox. You can find me here.

Happy Monday, peeps. I'm tired from the last days' one hour dentist appointment, exciting football games and an impromptu IKEA visit.

(We're building stuff at home, do you hear that Lisa - building stuff... in the hallway!)
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k a l e i d o s c o p e . m o o n

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This broken surface does not speak of the transit of venus, no, it's what I at times see through my kaleidoscope. And this song is as beautiful as it gets:

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MYRIAD

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We've done it!

= We've applied to the music festival Iceland Airwaves! Iceland + music + festival = ☆

I don't know if they'll have us, but we've applied.

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f a n

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At Dans Dakar I decided to put my Cynthia Stern fan:ship into production, and recorded with burning arms and sleeping legs 30 min of the set, when I could have been dancing! When we watched it it sounded like #################### break ################## = hoover on acid through broken megaphone, and not at all good.

I should have brought my iPhone a pair of ear plugs. Poor beast.


// Photo by Johnny Bobergotti //
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