Back To You

Claire has recently departed after an amazing two weeks in Scandinavia. Based in Malmö (where I currently reside) but also featuring a 4-day visit to Stockholm and a couple of day trips (perhaps night trips would be a more fitting phrase) to Copenhagen and its surrounds. In due course of our travels many photos were taken. With me equipped with a trusty point-and-shoot Konica film camera, and Claire with her Canon digital camera as well as her (smart) phone, we were armed to the hilt.
On looking through the accumulated snaps, a certain trend became rather apparent. And what was meant as documentation of two friends exploring three cities, ended up looking like Claire just followed me around in a rather stalkerish manner - a generous chunk of the images are of my back, or me in various stages or turning around. Perhaps there is now enough material for a 'Florence strides forth' tumblr or some such lunacy. But here let's keep things to only the choicest cuts.
My photos are due to be collected next week,and should hopefully even out the disproportionate number of Claire stalking Florence photos.

All photos by Claire Cooper.

PLACES: Drottningholm / Copenhagen / Drottningholm / Frederiksborg  / Stockholm / Frederiksborg /

Rain check

It has been raining heavily. It's the end of August and I can feel the seasons changing. Today is the last day of my holiday, tomorrow I will be back at work, and the beginning of the Autumn term will be underway. The Autumn season of Cinemateket commences on Tuesday, which will bring an extra couple of hours of culture and enjoyment to every Tuesday and Saturday, and a means of easing into the habit of stockings and more than one layer of clothing. There is something appealing in entering a cinema in daylight, then emerging again in darkness. A way to acknowledge time passing.

Time is passing, even though it feels as if I have gone back in time three months right now, and that will change again at the end of the week. I think I need the rain at times like this, when one is sort of stuck in the middle. August has been a surreal month, great excitement and happiness rubbing shoulders with anxiety and sadness. I think I would like my Autumn a little more constant.

rainy views from today's window. it cleared up later on.

Evil Under the Sun

There was a slightly criminal atmosphere at the beach today, and it wasn't just my copy of Raymond Chandler's 'The Simple Art of Murder' which served as my post-bathe reading, accompanied by an Old Jamaica Ginger Beer.
I arrived to find that one end of the T shaped pier from which I swim had been burnt to a crisp, and not for the first time either. It made for a rather bleak image on a sunny, breezy day. It sort of appealed to the mood at the end of the pier though, the sea dark and choppy, colder than usual, me, the only person in the water - clouds kept covering the sun and dropping the temperature so regularly the Swedes couldn't decide whether or to have a dip or not. Most of the time they simply sunned themselves on the warm wood of the pier and looked at the cordoned off charred wood.
After a brisk swim to a buoy anchored a way off in the water with a pit-stop at the pontoon on the return trip, I left the pier to read my book in the grass, with the sun on my back.

Not in an empty room

Wise words from Agent Cooper:
Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it. Don't wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee.

In my case, it could also be Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band - one of my favourite records, or LP's which contain some of my favourite songs (Deirdre by The Beach Boys, and 'You Better Move On, The Rolling Stones' version of the Arthur Alexander classic.)

It could even be sitting on the grass with a cold beer and a book by one of your favourite authors (Ngaio Marsh, Raymond Chandler and Haruki Murakami) after just having a swim.

These are a few presents I have treated myself to recently, to fill up sometimes lonely days with words, conversation, lyrics and music. 
Besides, there is something very comforting about reading Murakami when the times are tough - almost all of his main characters do little more than read, listen to music, drink beer or whiskey, and make mouth watering meals for themselves seemingly effortlessly. They are always alone, never lonely. And there is a comforting companionship when one follows another's solitude within one's own.

Soft lighting on hard lines

Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona

Alone Again

In May I started compiling a collection of my favourite songs about crying. Crying, tears, general sadness. I was hoping to play it at a clubnight or something similar - a misery laden dj set of a sort. But then my life changed drastically and I was unable to listen to 'In Tears', as I tentatively called it - because I have literally been in that state for the past 5 weeks or so. I have been told that crying is a side-effect of a particularly malignant disease known as 'heartbreak'.
I moved across the world to build a life with someone, and now I do not have that anymore. I do have a collection of amazing songs that seem to know how I feel though - even if no one else does.

I don't know what I will do with these songs. Maybe one day I will stand at a DJ booth in a small and relatively empty bar - I imagine it will be raining. Now a relative loner in this town, none of my friends would be there, and the regulars in the bar would be unable to appreciate the mixture of tearful moody-garage tunes, and woeful sweeping ballads, but I could at least play them in a respectively atmospheric surrounding.

In any event, I made a playlist of this set, for people to enjoy in the comforts of their own home while on a steady diet of Gin & Tonics (whatever gets you through the night, eh). But sad songs are always good to keep on hand, you never know when you might be needing them.

Enjoy! (if that is the right word to use in this situation) IN TEARS

Travelogue part I

  
Museu D'Art Contemporani De Barcelona / fruity furniture, La Rambla del Raval / beach loungers, Barceloneta / mosaic work, La Pedrera rooftop terrace / on the cross harbour cable car / interior courtyard, La Pedrera / Jardí Botànic de Barcelona / street scene, Barri Gòtic / Barcelona from the cross harbour cable car. 


A few of my favourite photographs taken with my trusty Konica point and shoot in Barcelona. More to follow.