I just asked ChatGPT this question: Why is traveling so enjoyable and inspiring? While not the most poetically written prose I’ve ever read, the chat bot’s response was nonetheless accurate and relevant:

It’s been an intense weekend to say the least. I spent the better part of today (Sunday) in the studio painting, sketching and thinking. We spent most of yesterday in Vejbystrand where we enjoyed spectacularly beautiful spring weather. The drone view above is from May 2021.

Here’s a new 60 x 90 cm acrylic painting titled “UP 2023”. The conceptual idea stems from how ever deep we fall into life’s many and often seemingly treacherous crevasses, the only way out is up, up, UP!

In the 1980s, I painted with tubed oil colors and occasionally even dabbled in mixing and producing homemade phosphorous night-glowing paints. There are qualities of oil paint that acrylic can’t replicate – even when using a medium to increase viscosity. On the other hand, the fact that acrylic dries so insanely fast means I get to make changes with immediate visual effects instead of having to wait for a layer of oil paint to dry. Also, after ten years of oil painting, i can no longer stand the smell of turpentine and the thinner I used to clean brushes, tools, and hands is definitely off-limits.

This is the beautiful venue where I had my talks this last Friday for graduating seniors at Malmö Latin, a well-known performing and visual arts high school in Malmö. The talk’s overreaching theme was creativity, passion, and the art of visual storytelling through film and photography.

It’s been a little over a year since two of the school’s teachers were horrifically murdered by a violently disturbed student. This was not something I wanted to touch on during my talks, but thoughts of the incident were not easily ignored. Especially while I was sitting in the teacher’s lounge, waiting to take the stage.

I’ve been engaged to do these talks for about a decade now and continue to enjoy each opportunity I get to inspire young people by highlighting some of the creative processes within my profession. I also stress the importance of trying different jobs in order to discover and eventually work with something they truly feel passionate about.

I summed up both of Friday’s talks with this: Friends, lead with your heart but be forgiving towards yourselves whenever you fuck up. According to an ancient Chinese legend, you’ll likely fuck up at least 10,000 times before getting really good at anything you do in life. But don’t let that discourage you!

Photo credit: Charlie Kristiansson, film teacher at Malmö Latin.

Finally, finally, finally. My new book is now available for order on Amazon. I have been documenting an incredibly remarkable area called Sieng Gong along the Chao Phraya River near Bangkok’s Chinatown. Last fall, I finished the documentation and now you can order the book “Heavy Metal” on Amazon.se or Amazon.com.

Some of the book’s pictures will be shown during tomorrow’s open house at our new Pop Up Gallery between 16:30-20:00 on Hallenborgs Gata 12. Welcome!

Whenever there’s an opportunity to order a burger, regardless of where in the world I am, and there’s nothing else on the menu that tickles my fancy, nine times out of ten, I’ll order one.

How many burgers I’ve eaten in my lifetime? I’m guessing that the very first one was likely served to me when I was 4 or 5 years of age.

In a few months, I’ll be 60.

Of the 55 years since my very first bite, I would wager that I’ve on average eaten two burgers per month. So, 24 (per year) x 55 (years) = 1320 hamburgers.

The vegan burger above was from tonight’s dinner at The Vegan Bar here in Malmö. Yeah, it was pretty good. The patty was of some soy construction and not nearly as juicy, chewy, or smokey as I would have preferred. And that bun…oh boy, not having sesame seeds on a hamburger bun was just plain weird. That said, the chili mayo and potato fries did a good job of compensating for the dinner’s pseudo hamburger. Missed pickles, though. 🍔

Earlier today, Elle suggested we have lunch at what is arguably one of Stockholm’s most popular cafés, St Paul’s Bageri (bakery), located on one of the capital’s legendary streets, Götgatan.

While the brewed coffee was flavorful and the grilled Focaccia with feta and sun-dried tomatoes tasted surprisingly good, it was this beautifully designed retro lamp that captivated most of my attention during our lunch.

This Resurfaced artifact isn’t from the famous/infamous Berlin Wall, but it is from a Berlin wall. I usually take my time going through my captures after returning home and this is one of a few that will remain in the collection. In about an hour, daughter Elle and I are boarding a train to Stockholm. We’ll be focused on the Swedish capital’s visual arts scene for a couple of days. It’s been a while since the two of us were in Stockholm together. The last time was possibly as far back as 2007.

To all my female friends out there, I wish you all the happiest and most joyous International Women’s Day 2023.

Above all, I would like to congratulate you all on this day for being so incredibly tolerant and patient. How you manage to put up with us men is in itself such a tremendous accomplishment and certainly worthy of more than just one day of celebration a year.

I have been in awe of women for a long, long time, despite having mostly really bad experiences with the first woman in my life, my mother.

The second woman to enter my life was my grandmother Agnes and she taught me what unconditional, accepting love was all about.

The third woman in my life is my wife Charlotte, another unbelievably patient individual who has selflessly loved (and put up with) me for more than a quarter century. The fourth female is unequivocally a young woman in the making, our daughter Elle.

Captured this yesterday from a tall sign completely covered with tattered stickers. posters and papers near Alexanderplatz here in Berlin. It’s the fact that I am continuously and feverishly fascinated by the abundance of public postings in our digital age.

The house on 849 North Alfred Street, where I partially grew up, is no more. According to brother Nick, it’s been torn down, demolished, and removed. A tiny part of me was saddened by the news. That’s to be expected, I suppose. But for the most part, I feel nothing, zilch, zero.

The house on 849 North Alfred Street was one of several homes I lived in during my first years, including stints in Sweden, and as I recall it, it was the first place my parents didn’t rent. For the most part, it was me, my mother, my brother Tyko and two consecutive dogs, first Coco and then Todo, that lived in the house on Alfred. In 1977, we moved about a block east to a smaller house at 842 Croft Avenue.

My father lived in the house on Alfred too, but not longer than a couple of years after we had moved in. Sometime in 1969, my father became romantically involved with a younger woman who had rented one of our house’s upstairs apartments and moved out with her in tow.

Now, among those few positive memories I retain from 849 North Alfred Street is when my grandmother Agnes flew over from Sweden. She was a sweet, simple woman with a huge heart, and having her over for a month on two, possibly on three separate occasions, if memory serves me correctly, was a tremendous treat for me. Not only was Agnes always kind and soft-spoken, but her presence also provided me with some well-needed respite from being blamed for my father abandoning the family and the wide wake of anger that possessed my mother until she died in 1978.

My grandfather Eskil also came to visit once or maybe twice while we were living on Alfred. But he and I never connected much. He was an OG, Old School kinda guy who was craggy, coarse, and tough as nails. Just getting him to board a plane must have been an Olympic feat.

I walked by Alfred during my latest visit to L.A. last October and barely recognized the house. The picture above is from 1987, or about a decade after we had moved out. It clearly shows how the house’s exterior was in shambles at the time and in much, much worse shape than when we lived there (1967-1977).

When I saw the old house last year, there was a television crew filming some show across the street and several unmarked semis lined the empty sidewalks on both Alfred and the alley behind. So I never took a picture of the house. But as the building looked like it was in pretty good shape, I was a bit surprised to hear that it had been torn down. Then again, it was probably over 75 years old and likely cheaper to demolish to make way for a new condo complex than restore.

C’est la vie. 

I am close to clueless when it comes to how social media works. Probably because there’s so little organic logic involved as the algorithms at play are designed to create stickiness and generate engagement. They are the secret sauce that keeps billions of people glued to their screens for hours and hours. Like most folks, I have a dualistic relationship with social media.

My Facebook page, I Love Västra Hamnen has about 16,000 followers and I have absolutely no idea why some images muster 1,000 thumbs up and some only summon 240 likes, or less.

The other day, I noticed how foggy it was and eventually posted an image of the Turning Torso as the fog was about to let up a bit. For some reason, that particular photograph was appreciated by over 11,000 people. Now, I like the image, for sure. But is it really worthy of so many accolades? Go figure.

The plot thickens. Lots going on right now. Breaking news coming any day now. A new chapter. A new era. A new focus. A new space. I’ve always considered myself a painter that got sidetracked by other creative stuff. Well, finally, I’m back on track again. Compared with the instant gratification of photography and the often hypnotic attraction of filmmaking, painting is for the most part tedious, challenging hard work, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But in the long run and especially in today’s flippant flow of infinite visuals, artwork that exists outside the digital realm is less ephemeral and an important🙂 reminder of an age-old, creative expression unique to our species.

Here are some of the albums that have kept me going and in good spirits during much of February 2023. My longtime favorite radio station, San Francisco-based Soma FM, which I listen to several hours a day is not shown here. The station’s Groove Salad channel and the Left Coast 70s channel are my two favorites. And if I’m writing emotionally demanding stuff and just need something in the background to keep me company without distracting my wordsmithing, I’ll tune into the Drone Zone channel.

I have about 450 albums in my offline digital collection. Most are from my deejaying days in the early 1990s. Sadly, I don’t add many new artists, partially because I stream most of my music diet. But it’s also due to the fact that despite many listens and way more exposure than I care for, I just can’t seem to appreciate the vast majority of today’s most popular mainstream music. Still, I totally get that even the most soulless, programmed, auto-tuned songs can be just as involving when listened to through younger ears as my old-school music is to me.

American songwriter, recording artist, guitarist, singer, producer, arranger, and recording engineer Jay Graydon has a brilliant quote about the state of much of today’s music production: “Before Pro Tools, there were Pros”.