measuring my dreams

i fell asleep in our installation last night
on a table that is a shelter
you can sit under it and open the blinds
you can lie on top of it and someboy might come and measure the lines of your body
write them down on paper, like i wrote the measurements of my small house on my body

when i woke up this morning, the straight line of the table, its flat surface, was still in my lower back
i could feel it, i couldn’t bend my back

i walked the lines of the dance floor valeria created
a floor within a floor
we are not allowed to wear our shoes inside
i like to walk on the border barefeet
on both sides there are traces of people who walked on these floors before
next to valeria’s lines there is the line of balint’s cables
they connect the machines that catch the soundwaves and turn them into new ones
i walked around and around in squares until my fingers could touch my toes again
until my thoughts shaped circles

and when i went outside
the horizon threw out a line and caught my eyes

tasting the sea

ett ord

when somebody addresses me in swedish the first thing i say is
i am sorry
i say: i am sorry, i don’t speak any swedish
and i am sorry
so maybe i should say förlåt
förlåt, i only know one word in swedish

room

i was standing on a chair on a meadow, looking at the sea

i’ve been dragging the chair around for the last couple of days

and whenever i get a bit anxious, being in this crazy, wonderful process with 5 other people

i stand on the chair and stare

sometimes i see other people stand on the chair

i leave it behind at odd places

i found the chair a few days ago

when i collected things i liked

the things turned into a room

i set the room up outside the abandoned house where i was collecting things

an outdoors room

later on i moved the room inside another room

inside the salon

the social space for the people in the Folkshochschule

there is a library in the basement

it has mainly swedish books and a small collection of english ones

they are all donated books

inbetween mainly not very interesting reads i found vriginia woolf’s “a room of one’s own”

i put the book on the table in my room

i put the chair in front of it, to sit on it while reading

i liked the shape of it, it fitted

but the writing on the seat annoyed me

“en stol att klivå pa”

i didn’t know what it meant

i thought i could sandpaper it to get rid of it

the morning after i had set up my room a woman approached me in the breakfast room

she told me she liked the room i had set up and especially the chair

“a chair to stand on!” she said and i didn’t get it at first

my puzzled look made her explain

en stol att klivå pa, a chair to stand on

i was delighted

so now i own a chair to stand on

and while standing on it today, i looked out over the white waves

the sea was dark today, a blueish stale grey

there was a cake in the oven, a chocolate cake

and i was wearing a t-shirt with a green heart, a heart of green leaves

it was a windy day and i turned around to have the wind in my back

to look at the clouds

above the round shape of the school there was a heart shaped cloud

i stared at it until it started to change its shape

ran inside to catch the moment that had already passed

i stood at the chair once more and looked at the other clouds and suddenly they all looked a bit like they could have been heart shaped only minutes earlier

and when it got colder i put on the shirt i found on the streets in barcelona

because it is warm and the inside is soft, it has a hood and a big pocket in the front

so your hands can touch while they rest, while they warm up

it also has a text and a big heart printed on it

the heart has a hole in it

i guess that is why it was thrown away

but i like the hole best

it makes me think of a quote by one of my favorite writers:

Christian Bobin, The very lowly. A meditation on Francis of Assisis.

“... love does not fill anything, not the hole you have in your head, not the abyss that you have in your heart. Love is an absence much more than a fullness. Love is a fullness of absence. This is, I grant you, an incomprehensible thing. But this thing that is impossible to understand is so very simple to live.”

and it is.

meet my new collaborators. partners in crime. inspirators, idea providers. dance partners. meal sharers. soundboards, sparring partners.

meet therese, who shows us the sea and will take us to the forest.

meet joakim, the mad professor.

meet judit, who makes us stroke soft fabrics and joins our hands.

meet valeria, who moves us.

meet balint, who collects our sounds and comforts jellyfish by letting them listen to the sounds of the waves.

they don’t fill the hole in my barcelona heart. they create new ones, new holes, they create space. endless space.

 chocolate cake with swedish cream, a sweet-sour fruit and a love soldier (from the jewellery collection by Heidi Seppälä)

almost

my down to earth brain invented a metal spine today

in the basement of the Folkshochschule, in the treasure room

with all the left overs, the things that have been discarded

we discovered big bags with hundreds of jeans

jeans and jean fabric clothes

i am intrigued by clothes, by how we are perceived differently when we look differently

and i sifted through all of them

taking the ones that fitted me in some sort of way

that fit my body or my mind

i wore a white jeans suit when i performed being a map yesterday

white jeans, a white jeans jacket, a white shirt

and today i wore a dress i liked a lot

nice length, nice details, red stitching, buckles

pockets, i love pockets!

it was too big though

in a way

i remembered the word i had received as a gift yesterday

lagom

an untranslatable swedish word

meaning enough, sufficient, just right

in balance, perfect-simple, suitable

almost perfect

a popular folk etymology claims that it is a contraction of "laget om" ("around the team"), a phrase used in Viking times to specify how much mead one should drink from the horn as it was passed around in order for everyone to receive a fair share

the dress was perfect-simple, suitable for the day, almost in balance

so i brought it in balance

i invented a metal spine

a rigid thing, it seems, it sounds like

but i can move it, transform it

a flexible thought makes a flexible spine

an almost perfect dress

lagom

i had received the word when i handed in the keys for the four houses on the premises that are about to be torn down

we had inspected the buildings

we had taken all the things we could use for our project

i wanted to take down the blinds, but i wasn’t sure if i could take them

so i asked and i had to explain what blinds were

my hands mimicking opening and closing them

they drew lines in the air in front of an imaginary window

and after some miscommunication we understood each other

the woman laughed and told me she was happy she had learned a new english word

i asked for a swedish one in return

i received “lagom”

and when we returned to the houses to take down all the blinds

i bumped into a man who was taking out a kitchen

we conversed about reusing things, about sustainability, about the impossibility to get the world back into its proper shape although that can never be a reason to give in

we need to believe in the impossible

but we shouldn’t try to be perfect

it would only frustrate us

and he told me he was a fisher and a hunter, he told me he didn’t eat meat often, but when he did, he made sure the animal had had a good life

and i remembered the chicken i had eaten yesterday

and how balint had told me he ate meat but not chicken, because they have the worst life of all animals

and today i walked past the meat and went for the vegetarian option

but i couldn’t resist and returned for a piece of dead animal

a small piece only, but still

but still

we can’t be perfect

we can only do what we can

find the right balance between our own happiness and the world’s

we can be in the almost

look through open blinds 

Joakim had spread the blinds out on the grass

until we would find a place to hang them, to project Therese’s footage on them,

to see sea

waves invading the thin metal stripes

blinds on the grass, closed

out of place

resembling big sheets of paper

an aireal view of a strange city

i took off my shoes and walked the streets, the pathways

the blind maze that in no way could get my feet lost

but my thoughts got lost

and i thought of almost everything

almost

not too much, not too little

lagom

walking with a map

 

because we do

sweden, 02.00

the sky is still my favorite colour blue

the deep blue before it turns dark

the blue that keeps me awake

today i was interviewed by the swedish radio

i stood on my hands

the world turned me upside down

we are small people in a big world

we often want to be in the middle of it

the center of things

but when you look at us in more detail we are usually on its edges

on edge

the interviewer asked me why i wanted to be in this project

what i was aiming for

and i told her i applied because of the questions that were asked in the application form

they didn’t want to know who I (capital) was and what amazing things I (capital) could produce

but what i could bring to a group, how i would function in relation to different people

what i could teach them, what i could learn from them

our teacher, coach, process leader hasn’t asked us yet what we make

but we all talked for 10 minutes about what made us different from other people

listening to the other 5 i realised i got most excited though when they spoke about something i recognised

something i shared with them, the things that make us human, make us artists, make us vulnerable

today we stood in two small lines, two lines of 3 people on both sides of a dance studio

we ran towards the person opposite of us, almost bumping into the soft body, almost touching

yesterday we took each others arms and treated them as if they belonged to us

a new arm, a strange arm, we explored it in every way possible

later on we made sounds from deep within our body and threw them to all the corners in the room

we are meeting each other in many ways

and tomorrow we finally present our work

the interviewer asked about my work, about what i want to show people

i talked about walking and being slow and trying to make people look at the world in a different way

about showing them you can do whatever you want and if you find the proper word for it you can make a living out of it

or at least live it

when i was younger i said i wanted to turn the world upside down

but why would you?

you better turn people upside down

yourself

i am ill-prepared

i stick with Masanobu Fukuoka’s motto:

the best planning is no planning

instead of ordering digital slides and thinking about words

i explored three empty houses on the premises of the Folkshochschule that is hosting us

the houses will be demolished and we can use whatever is inside

i found a map of the area that is so big and heavy i can hardly carry it on my own

i found an apron and some baking tins

i found a bottle of wodka and some beautiful cups

i went for a walk and collected raspberry leaves to dry in order to make tea
i found a cook book with recipies for sweet things

i went to the supermarket and bought flower, butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate

tomorrow i will take them on a walk

i will carry the map on my back and they will walk behind me so they can read it

i will have baked a cake from the cookbook i found and made tea and filled my hipflask with wodka

we will be dressed in white and we will stay close together so we will look like a white dot from above

like the white dot that represents the place where we are staying on the map

i might tell them stories

and we will become a story for the people we encounter on our walk

it will be somewhat crazy

normal people don’t drag huge maps through the streets to find their way

normal people don’t call baking a cake or drinking wodka art

normal people don’t get to know each other by squeezing each other’s body (except in violent situations)

or maybe they do

because we do

i do

 

 

therese, valeria, balint