The Beatles are holed up in a hotel in Tokyo, I am holed in up a (largish) 1 room flat in Malmö

Here are The Beatles painting their only jointly made artwork holed up in the Tokyo Hilton in June of '66. Paul's cigarette pack poking out of his shirt pocket looks like some sort of egg roll sushi brooch, of all things.
They are engrossed - it seems like a nice escape and probably a relief to be allocated a specific corner for your own artistic style. There is only so much collaborating one can do I guess.

I have been sick today, my body feels like a wet woollen jersey - slow, heavy and uncooperative. My head likewise. I am terrible at being sick, any days not working seem like a wasted opportunity to be productive, and I cannot focus on one thing for an extended period of time. Today alternating between reading snippets of Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and watching The Beatles Anthology while continuing to work on an artwork which feels increasingly futile and has no end in sight. I wanted to spend today writing: but my energy has been siphoned out of my brain, perhaps through the snot dribbling out of my left nostril - the right one remains resolutely blocked.

I don't write long things, I struggle to maintain words over the length of a A4 page. These texts are just ideas observed and described. I never write dialogue. Like everything, the only way to improve one's writing is to increase one's output, which is a new intention. I had thoughts of three separate texts to work on when I went to sleep last night, I woke up this morning with faint recollections of two of them and a left arm that had refused to wake up with the rest of me and lolled around like a tentacle.

I have spent the majority of today trying to remember my third idea and reading maybe every fourth sentence of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It still counts.

My tutor in my second year of art school, Richard Orjis, asked me once something along the lines of 'What's up with all this nostalgia? What isn't interesting about what is happening now?' and the fact that I am still thinking about this 6 years later means it must have made some sort of impression on me. I am not exactly sure what that impression is, except that I associate the word nostalgia with a sort of menacing dread, and I realise I have spent today (along with many many other days) entrenched in the music and writings of the mid sixties. I am listening to Rubber Soul as I type this.

Perhaps tomorrow I can begin to associate with the contemporary world, for tonight I am feeling irrelevant.

At Kutens Bensin

At Kutens Bensin, Fårö. Or as it's also known 'Creperi Tati'. It lay on the other side of what was possibly the largest sloping road on Fårö, and I inwardly cursed it's location as I peddled furiously up what became known as my nemesis hill; I filled with dread and defiance every time it loomed ahead of me, but the promise of relaxation, crepes, and a jukebox asking to be played was enough incentive. (let it be known I conquered this hill every time.)

We went there twice, first for dessert, and the next day for dinner.
The exterior is all overgrown weeds, rusted cars (one was meant to be the car Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death in, I never found it), and miscellaneous signs, watched over by an american flag atop an impossibly tall flag pole. The interior was a hodge-podge of Americana and Swedish nostalgia, wooden beams, formica tables, mismatched chairs; the kind of place where every inch of wall space seems to be covered by a photo, catchy slogan or retro knick-knack, and everything felt worn and lived in, in that comfortable, nostalgic way.

Sitting inside on the first evening, I had a classic chocolate crepe, while Kris ordered a 'Summer evening smile', I believe it was called, with saffron ice cream and dewberry jam. We drank cold Coke out of glass bottles (coke does taste better in glass bottles, you know), read old Swedish magazines and spent two hours taking turns playing the jukebox.


On our return trip with had dinner outside amongst the blue painted garden furniture and rusted refrigerators. The dinner galettes were all named after actors and musicians of the 50's and 60's - the Marilyn's, the Jimmy Deans, the Presleys and so forth. My Galette was called the 'Hopper', after Denis, naturally, and was brimming with chorizo, parma ham, potato, cherry tomatoes and cheese, and accompanied by a crisp, dry apple cider. I read a Goldfinger paperback I discovered earlier in the day at a small book stall set up in a shed next door to the supermarket and the fish smokery.