Music for a while shall all your cares beguile...

A musical interlude, yet again...

2012-02-12T09:56:00.011+01:00

I can't think of anything to post these days, my head is a mess of thoughts but i can't seem to make sense of them, or find ways to express them. I hope all is well with you, my readers who are still there...
For now; enjoy this song - and gorgeous Fragonard-inspired little masterpiece of a video, by the wonderful Claire Diterzi

:

This christmas

2011-12-27T17:13:00.008+01:00

With both my parents gone, and a dysfunctional, to say the least, relation with my remaining family i have, for the first time ever, celebrated christmas with friends. But i still had to have a little, but dense enough to house an entire family of squirrels without my dog knowing it, tree for my home, as i always have. Back in the days when we had a summer house in the archipelago my mother and i used to go out there and get trees right from the surrounding woods. Now those days feel both incredibly long ago, yet as if it was just last year. Such a strange feeling.
Now her portrait hangs there overlooking my little tree.

On christmas eve i was invited by one of my oldest friends to spend the evening with her, her sister, their mother and one of her oldest friends. I was assigned to do the meatballs, which are a staple on the traditional christmas table, and of course made them just the way my mother did.
So it was the nicest christmas in a long time. Next year i hope to be with my half sister and niece in Pennsylvania as i had originally hoped for this one.

As for the weather it's just been warm and humid, without a trace of frost, and that really pisses me off. I demand cold now!

I hope you have all had a pleasant christmas, and wish you a happy new year!

December will be magic again... i hope

2011-12-17T13:31:00.003+01:00

Now it has been an awful long hiatus again; i've simply felt too blank and overwrought most of the time. Now i'm back to whine about the weather again; this autumn was unusually warm, and after the two last winters being all they should have been with snow and mostly cheek-pinching cold, this december has been hopelessly warm and damp with merely a little frost and absolutely no snow. Today has been grey and rainy and i wonder when and if this will turn. This is sweden, mind you! -and yesteday was able to eat a wild strawberry from my own balcony, as much as i love wild strawberries that only adds to my distress. I really don't like this at all and desperately hope that december, at least the remainder of it, will be magic again!

Kate Bush: "December will be magic again", Christmas special from 1980:

RIP Montserrat Figueras (1942-2011)

2011-11-23T17:20:00.005+01:00

Today i was so sad to hear that the catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras had passed away, aged 69.
She was married to the violist and conductor Jordi Savall, together with whom she performed and made many great recordings, mainly with the ensemble Hespèrion XXI, which they both founded in 1974, specializing in music from medieval times to baroque.

Montserrat Figueras with Hespèrion XXI, lead by Jordi Savall: Cáncion Sefardí

The Belated Halloween Bash

2011-11-07T14:10:00.014+01:00

Last saturday, on all saints' day, i transformed my little apartment into a haunted house and gave a nice, intimate little belated halloween party. Me and my two co-hostesses served the guests quesadillas, beetroot cake with blood red icing and roman punch. Sadly i never had the time, energy, funds or imagination to put together any kind of costume. But it was a fun night all the same.

On the balcony i placed a banshee, or someting, i made of some cardboard, bamboo sticks and two yards of tulle.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-29T14:58:00.005+02:00

A drawing i did this morning based on Thomas Gainsborough's iconic portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, from 1787. Simply done to wish all of my readers, who still are still around, a Happy Halloween!

Yet another little musical interlude...

2011-10-15T11:26:00.005+02:00

I can't believe it's been six months since the last time i checked in here. I always come to think of things i should write about, or images to post here, but as with so much else in my life lately, it never seems to get done.

For now; heres a beautiful little Vashti Bunyan song to break the silence:

LOSS.

2011-04-12T01:28:00.006+02:00

My father, painted by his good friend, the late Stig Claesson.

Four weeks ago my dear father died, aged 86.
He got pneumonia, and as he had COPD after a lifetime of fervent smoking, and stubborny refusing to quit, his lungs could no longer cope. He moved to a nursing home about a year ago, as he had gone weaker and weaker over the last years.

All my life i've been aware that i would lose him while i was young, -it's not like when my mother suddenly died, aged 64, more than five years ago, -that was a shock i haven't quite recovered from today, if i ever even will... -But it's still sad, as i had naturally hoped for him to get better, though it seemed more and more unlikely. In the past five years i have watched him... like land eroded by the sea, more and more bits of who he was falling away and his clear periods getting fewer and farther between. Because of his diabetes and stubborn refusal to do any kind of excercise offered him, he had also lost use of his legs.

Over the years there have been so many scares and false alarms. He had fallen numerous times, there were so many nights waiting for hours in the emergency room, thinking, and fearing that this might be it.

So the night before he died i was with him for a couple of hours. He was in a morphine haze and unaware of me being there. He was just lying there twitching slightly and breathing strenuously. Shortly after ten i tried to say goodbye to him; i took his hands, -his hands that he would normally have clasped firmly around mine, but now they were all limp, and i should have recognized the signs, but still i went home, strangely convinced that he'd be alright. So i got home and went to bed, and at about six in the morning a nurse called and told me that he had passed away. I went there immediately, and then i just stood there, all numb, looking at him. His hands were still warm, but there could be no doubt.
He was no longer there.

One of my father's self-portraits, probably 1980s

I regret that i might not have visited him as often as i could have since he moved to the home, only a few times per week at most. -sometimes he would call me at four in the morning, thinking it was afternoon, and asking me where the hell i was.
I went there as often as i had could of course, but can't help but feeling like i just dumped him there. That i abandoned him.

My biggest comfort is that I did spend so much time with him in the years between my mother's death and before he got too weak to do anything at all. I tried to get him out of the house, go to see exhibitions and go to museums, movies, restaurants and for long walks. And it's also comforting to think of what a long and eventful life he had after all.

So now i am an orphan. -though at times i've felt like i was his parent, i often feel like i have the mental capacity of an eight-year old. I've been held back by all of this, hardly realised any plans, if i ever even had any... i haven't had the energy to take up studies or do anything at all. In a way i am now free to start living, but i don't know where to begin... -and sometimes, i must admit, i feel uncertain whether i even want to, and just falling asleep forever seems so incredibly tempting, but as i have a fear of blades, heights and pain in general, and have no doctor to give me any kind of pills i guess i'm going to have to go on living.
Hopefully someday i'll even learn to enjoy it again.

Me, aged five, photographed by my father.

One of his favorites with Jussi Björling.

Solitude

2011-04-09T18:38:00.008+02:00

Estella Blain (1930-1982) "Solitude" -written, composed and performed by Estella Blain Herself, with the orchestra of Christian Chevalier.
From the EP "Hurlevent" from 1967.

An incredibly beautiful song that suits my mood perfectly these days.

A little musical interlude...

2011-01-14T15:48:00.009+01:00

Line Renaud: "Le Hully Gully"

Even though winter over here has mostly been everything i could possibly wish it to be, so far, freezing cold and dry; i constantly find myself dreaming of swaying palmtrees and oppressive heat, or maybe just a gentle, warm breeze... oh, and those gorgeous french dancers, in their trunks wouldn't be unwelcome either,
a pity they must all be in their 70s by now.

I adore these scopitones, precursors of the music video. Apparently these machines, invented in France in the second half of the 1950s, were made out of parts from discarded flying machines, a sort of jukebox. How i'd love to have one! -thankfully you can get several videos assembled on dvd's here. -or you can find tons to watch on youtube...

Hope to be back soon with posts, as i've said a hundred times before.
See you soon ...if you're still here.

Collage.

2010-12-02T02:24:00.000+01:00

Last weekend a friend arranged a little collage-workshop at her office. The theme was nature and it's different aspects; the devastating, the tamed, the tropical, the bountiful etc... I got to do the occult/magical nature.
I had almost forgotten how much fun collaging was!

(click to enlarge)

Happy Saint Cecilia's day!

2010-11-22T13:47:00.006+01:00

Saint Cecilia by Carlo Saraceni

Today we celebrate Saint Cecilia, martyr and patroness of sacred music, and of all musicians.

William Boyce - Ode on St. Cecilia's day.

A gloomy anniversary.

2010-11-13T20:14:00.001+01:00

Yesterday it was five years ago since my mother passed away, aged 64.

It didn't feel any different from any other day of course, i just thought it worth noticing, and simply saw it as an excuse to write a new post, the first in months. As i've said before... I would post more often, but time always escapes me, and i can never think of what to write. I detest time, and how it just relentlessly swoops by.
And now five years have passed since that awful day, -the worst i've ever experienced.

I both wish to be close in time to when she was still alive, yet i want to have that horrific event as far behind me as possible.
So yesterday i simply lit a few candles and sprayed a little Mitsouko, her signature scent -the only one she ever wore, in the air. That was all i could do.

Mother, photographed by my father, possibly in the early eighties.

with Moa, about a year before she died, photographed by me.

La Question

2010-09-19T10:14:00.008+02:00

One of Françoise Hardy's most beautiful songs; "La Question", from 1971.

"I do not know who you might be

I do not know who you hope for,
I always seek to know you
and your silence disturb my silence

I do not know where from the lie comes
is it your voice that is silent?
worlds where despite myself I plunge into
are like a tunnel that frightens me

your distance from mine
we get lost too often,
and seeking to understand you
is like chasing the wind.

I do not know why I stay
in a sea where I drown
I do not know why I stay
in an air that suffocates me

you're the blood of my wound,
you are the flame of my fire,
you are my unanswered question
My muted cry and my silence..."

Indochine, mon amour!

2010-09-12T10:03:00.011+02:00

I'm shocked, but mostly exhilarated! -this is exactly the kind of news i've been longing and pining for for so long; Marguerite Duras' "Un Barrage contre le pacifique" or "The Sea Wall" (1950) has been made into a movie! (another, based on the same novel, was made in the 1950s, but it's too awful!) -and with one of my favorite actresses of all time; Isabelle Huppert!
But how on earth could I not know about this?!

Directed by the cambodian Rithy Panh and a collaboration between France, Cambodia and Belgium. "The Sea Wall" is set in 1930s Cambodia, then part of French Indochina -where A French widow, played by Huppert, lives with her son and daughter. They make a meager living from growing rice, but their paddies are just on the border of the sea and flooded each year and the crops ruined. So their only hope appears to be in constructing a sea wall. The mother persists and will not give up, fighting nature as well as colonial bureaucracy.

Her 20-year-old son Joseph (Gaspard Ulliel), an irascible young man, is equally determined, but it's the teenaged daughter Suzanne (Astrid Bergés-Frisbey) who proves to be most stubborn. One day, her willowy beauty catches the attention of a well-to-do, foppish Chinese man; Monsieur Jo. As his interest in Suzanne verges toward obsession, her mother and brother find themselves in a quandary: Monsieur Jo could provide the financial security they need, but he is Chinese, and racial prejudice is a fact of life in their society...

So now i can't wait to get to see this beauty-orgy! A pity though that it doesn't seem to have been up for theatrical release anywhere and that i's been released practically without fanfare, just shown at some festivals. I'm going to have to make do with the dvd, ...whenever it pleases to arrive!

Anyway; Here's the trailer:

Asia, and the southeast in particular, has been a long-standing fascination with me, and a favorite destination of escape -even though i've never been there. -except for in my dreams... through books, like "the Gentleman in the parlour" (1930) by W. Somerset Maugham, or films such as "The Scent of Green papaya" or "Indochine" with Catherine Deneuve, and "the Lover"-based on another novel by Duras; "l'Amant"...And through music, tea -naturally... countless travelling magazines... -the lush landscapes, the warmth, dense jungles, tribes and ancent civilizations, the old temples of the Khmers... All those places where i've always drifted away in my thoughts... -and of course; through food!

Delicious vietnamese dishes at Monsieur Vuong in Berlin.
The famous Halong Bay, Vietnam - still from "Indochine"."The Gate of Humanity" in Huế.

Buddhist nun at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Photo by David Wilmot 19th Century, french engraving of the Bayon Temple, Angkor
Angkor Thom Photo: Marc Riboud - (c) Musée GuimetAngkor Thom - Photo by Émile Gsell - (c )Musée Guimet (above)

Traditional Khmer dancers in front of Angkor Wat, Cambodia - 1920s.

And another favorite, as a bonus - the gorgeous trailer for Wong Kar Wai's equally gorgeous film "In the Mood For Love" (2001); -set to Bryan Ferry's beautiful version of the song that gave the film it's name.

"The Sea Wall" images; (c) Catherine Dussart Productions CDP

If i were...

2010-08-31T18:20:00.001+02:00

Just a little diversion. I Was browsing through back issues of one of my favorite blogs; Paris Parfait where i found this and just had to fill it in myself. So much fun! Now;
Do it you too!

If I were a month, I'd be May.

If I were a day, I’d be Saturday.

If I were a time of day, I’d be morning.

If I were a font, I’d be Garamond.

If I were a sea animal, I’d be a Naga in the ocean of milk.

If I were a direction, I’d be southeast.

If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be a Secretaire.

If I were a liquid, I’d be in a bottle by Baccarat.

If I were a gemstone, I'd be Lapis Lazuli.

If I were a tree, I’d be an ancient oak.

If I were a tool, I’d be a pencil.

If I were a flower, I’d be a carnation.

If I were an element of weather, a gust of wind.

If I were a musical instrument, I’d be a Harpsichord.

If I were a color, I’d be coral.

if i were an emotion, I’d be agitation.

If I were a fruit, I’d be an orange.

If I were a sound, I’d be the rustle of leaves.

If I were an element, I’d be water.

If I were a car, I’d be horse-drawn.

If I were a food, I’d be an omelet with chopped chives and parsley, served with crusty sourdough bread.

If I were a place, I’d be a lush garden.

If I were material, I’d be velvet.

If i were a taste, I’d be Fenghuang Dancong-tea.

If I were a scent, I’d be shalimar.

If I were a body part, I’d be a hand.

If I were a song, I'd be "Cloudbusting" by Kate Bush.

If I were a bird, I’d be a magpie.

If I were a gift, I’d be french.

If I were a city, I’d be ancient and european.

If I were a door, I’d be locked from the inside.

If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be embroidered velvet slippers.

If I were a poem, I’d be by Thomas Gray.

A sign of life -and a little talk of death.

2010-08-20T09:43:00.000+02:00

Summer just exploded in my face, and now it's almost over. Luckily i am very much of an autumn-person, even though i adore all seasons -even winter if circumstances are right... -and as last winter was so remarkably cold -albeit with many beautiful, perfect Narnia-days -i just longed so badly for summer; and during the spring -which was rather an extension of the winter -if it weren't for the budding trees one might have thought it was mid november. -and now summer is nearly over; a summer that has been unusually warm, sunny and lovely when swedish summers are often known to mostly rain away.

I hope -as i've said a hundred times before -to at last be able to post more frequently here, i hope to finally get my cluttered apartment tidy, -it has become a veritable mayhem of piles of papers, half-filled bin bags full of assorted trash and wobbly towers of books, cds and dvds -even dishes which feels so nasty!-very Grey Gardens; minus cats, raccoons and Jackie O.

Time has -as it usually tends to do- slipped mercilessly through my fingers, and i've been battling slight bouts of depression and haven't had the peace of mind to tend to anything, -i haven't even drawn for months, no, years!

Early in the spring, my dad moved into a nursing home which has been a terrible ordeal. -not to mention watching his alzheimers - or whatever it is, he hasn't been diagnosed - advancing more and more; he used to at least have some moments of clarity. -but at least i'm sort of prepared for it, and it has been a long drawn-out process- not like it was with my mother who, aged 64, went from her old brilliant self to a hapless spectre within just a few days, before she passed away. That was a shock i still haven't quite recovered from, even now, five years later.

I hope you like my new look and my new header -a picture of my mother and her first "mother in law" -probably taken by her then-boyfriend in the spring of 1966 in her little apartment -which was in the attic of a rustic 18th century building with no electricity or running water, where she cooked on a wood-fired iron stove, and might've sat and enjoyed a cup of lapsang souchong in the light of a kerosene-lamp.

She loved it there and lived there for the rest of her life -even though she later moved across the yard -where I was to grow up...

Me with mum, (above). Me, aged 5 (below).

Hope to be back soon. See you!

the Castle of Engsö.

2010-07-06T14:02:00.000+02:00

Last tuesday I, my friend K, her "sister in law" L and their respective infants Joni and Ingrid, went out to Engsö castle -one of my favourite places on earth. It's situated on a peninsula a two hour-drive west of Stockholm and so beautiful it almost makes you feel as though you're in a painting by Constable, complete with grazing cows.

The castle was built around the late 15th century, "glammed-up" in the 1620s and again in the 1740s when the fourth floor was added and it got much of the appearance it still has today. The architect was Carl Hårleman (1700-1753) one of swedens leading architects at the time.

In spite of being one of the moste beautiful places in the nation Engsö is best known for it's many ghosts, there has even been a team of american paranormal researchers here, lead by a Dr. Raymond Moody -and with their equipment gotten stronger reactions than at any of the famous haunted places in england... There's the 17th century Lady, Brita Bååth - who died, according to the legend - after mistakenly attending the mass of the dead... the hunchback dwarf Anders Luxemburg, and Cotillion - the dog of Axel Von Fersen's younger Sister Sophie, who died and was buried there -"at the feet of his mistress", as his little tombstone says, located somewhere in the park. There is also Brandklipparen, the last horse of King Charles XII who spent his last years there.

The castle doesn't look like any other, not really an architectural masterpiece, but still wonderful, rising tall above the green, lush landscape. The whole site is almost phenomenally beautiful, especially on a bright summers day, as you can imagine. Sadly the castle was closed this day, but we enjoyed a nice picnic in the park and took a look at the church nearby.

When you walk up the stairs to the first floor you'll encounter an eerie portrait of an austere-looking lady, dressed in grey. -it's the ill fated Brita Bååth who, according to the legend, was a "cruel and rigid woman who was said to have driven her two husbands into an early grave..."

-one early christmas day-morning, she was to attend the christmas service. Anxious to miss it she'd instructed the servants to wake her early, but toward the morning she woke up by herself and saw the light in the church windows, annoyed she thought that the service had already begun and that they'd simply forgotten to wake her, so she dressed hastily and got out. Half way to the church she saw an apparition, uncannily resembling her old wet nurse who'd been dead for many years, and the old woman almost seeemd as if she was trying to warn her from continuing, but as she was already late she ignored the vision and scuttled on.

And as she approached the church she noticed that the light in the windows had a cold, pale-green glow to it, with none of the usual warmth of the christmas candles, but this didn't stop her either. But upon entering the church she stood petrified, for in the benches sat skeletons with devoutly clasped hands and grinning faces. She realised she was much to early and that she'd come to the mass of the dead. -and as if that weren't enough the ghosts of her two late husbands came rushing toward her - one swung his rapier at her, but only got a piece of her veil and the other threw a large stone, which struck her to the ground, outside where the servants found her the following morning, and she retold the horrific tale before she died, three days later.

The rapier with the piece of her veil still hangs in the church, hung across her funeral coat of arms, and nobody knows how it got there.

I hope to be able to get back later this summer, when the castle's open, to see it's beautiful interiors again, (not to mention posting more pictures for you to see!) -before last tuestay i hadn't been there in more than six years. A couple of years before my mother's death five years ago, we made it a tradition to go there on my birthdays. So it was so nice getting back there again, for it's too gorgeous a place not to go to at least once a year!

The Piper family arriving at the newly rebuilt Engsö, oil on canvas by unknown artist.

Someone has heard my prayers at last!

2010-05-10T13:20:00.000+02:00

I have long been pining for more period-instrument recordings of the music of André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741-1813) -there have been shockingly few over the years, in fact hardly any at all. -absurd, considering what a huge star he was in his own lifetime, for example; his "La Caravane du Caire" from 1783 was given more than five hundred performances! Now his 1780, "Andromaque" -his only tragédie lyrique, based on Jean Racine's play, has been recorded by Hervé Niquet et Le Concert Spirituel on the spanish label Glossa.
...And i'm thrilled!!!
...And there's more!!!
-Later, i've heard, a recording for cd, of Grétry's 1773 ballet héroïque "Céphale et Procris" will be made by Les Agrémens, lead by Guy van Waas, for Ricercar. Last fall it was performed in concert at the Opéra Royal, Versailles. See it here.

"Céphale et Procris" by Fragonard
Grétry, by Vigée-Lebrun.

Now i'm only praying for the weather to change! -though the winter was unusually rigorous this year, even for us in the north. It really was the very winter i had been longing for for years and not since the 1920s, i believe, have we had as much snow... and then of course i started pining for spring, wich looked like it was coming along nicely, until a couple of days ago when it suddenly felt like we had stepped back several weeks. -and with an impenetrable thicket of clouds above! -and temperatures never rising above 50 F. Just unacceptable! And the iris and the honeysuckle on my balcony seemed to be thriving and i had even taken out my poor lemon tree for the season! But at least it's a great excuse to just stay in, drink tea... and listen to some Grétry, i guess.

And i'm sorry i've posted so infrequently lately -really since i started this blog, but i just haven't had the peace of mind for that, or anything really... and i have scarcely drawn for months, except for some pointless doodlings every now and then. But I do hope to be back soon, and i'm glad you're all still with me.
Au bientôt!

The park at Drottningholm, a lovely day exactly two years ago. Now it's more like november.

Patricia Petibon "Quando voglio"

2010-04-07T23:40:00.000+02:00

Ulriksdal Palace

2010-01-18T21:28:00.000+01:00

Ulriksdal Palace, seen from the lake.

After a mild december it's now been incredibly cold for almost a full month and the snow, though it hasn't been that much of it, has actually stayed! It's heavenly!

I just meant to post a series of photos from my walk last saturday when i went out to the royal estate of Ulriksdal, expressly to capture the white, frosty gorgeousness. But can't leave out writing just a little about it's history.

Scroll down to see more pictures and to read about the theatre.

In the early 17th centry Ulriksdal belonged to Jacob de la Gardie, a nobleman of french bourgeois descent, it was then named Jacobsdahl. Jacob's son Magnus Gabriel was a favourite of Queen Christina (util he eventually fell from grace) as well as one of the walthiest and most powerful men in Sweden. He had his father's estate turned into a magnificent baroque compound with magnificent gardens, -if we're to believe, the often rather exaggerated, engravings of the time.

In the 1680s it was taken over by the crown and renamed Ulriksdal, after a prince who died in infancy.

The court theatre, called "the Confidence", was originally built in the 1670s as a stable, but in the 1750s it was turned into a theatre by Queen Louisa Ulrica, sister of Frederic the great of Prussia.

Sadly the theatre, -just like the one at Drottningholm, was abandoned at the death of her son, Gustav III in 1792, -and in the 1860s the building was brutally turned into a hideous neo-renaissance style hunting lodge, by king Carl XV.

It's name "the confidence" comes from the dining room, with it's "Table volante" -where the table could be lowered down to the cellar and there dressed and set, so that the Royal family could dine in private. -all of this and the original 18th century-fixtures were all covered or simply demolished in the 1860s.

Luckily the theatre was "rediscovered" in the 1970s by the opera singer Kjerstin Dellert, who happened to live nearby. The building was in a terrible state, and unlike Drottningholm, next to nothing remained. Dellert found sponsors and started a complete restoration of the theatre, had the salon and it's adjoining suite of elegant rooms all turned back to their former beauty.

View through one of the windows of the dining room.Adorable houses nearby

(A belated) Happy New Year!

2010-01-06T17:16:00.000+01:00

Hello again! I'm just going to start breaking the silence by wishing you a Happy New Year and by posting a series of photos from my own new year's eve celebrations.
I and a couple of friends spent the evening in my apartment and cooked a delicious vietnamese dinner, -since i got Ghillie Basan's fantastic book "The food and cooking of Vietnam and Cambodia" i've become quite obsessed, also a longing for warm and exotic places...in spite of the fact that i've been pining for razor sharp cold and now gotten it -it's a staggering 5 degrees F outside and the cold has been staying for several weeks now...i can't stop myself from simply dreaming myself away to the far east.

However...the day before i met my friend K downtown to go to the asian markets where we got all we needed -like two old ladies we had both brought our own little baskets, and then on the afternoon of new year's eve we all sat down around my dining table and made spring and summerrolls, wonton dumplings, and a crisp green papaya salad, everything took the whole evening to prepare as i only have a tiny kitchenette with little space for a good mise-en-place.

At the stroke of midnight we crowded on my balcony to see the fireworks.

Just a little questionnaire...

2009-10-25T02:54:00.000+01:00

Just found this fun questionnaire, on , and had to post it here. Simply answer all questions below with titles of books on your shelves...

Again, i'm sorry for not writing more often, but i just haven't had the time, or the motivation, lately.

Are you a man or a woman?

Orlando

Describe yourself:

a la recherche du temps perdu

How are you?

the Bell Jar

Describe the place you live in:

À Rebours

Where would you like to travel?

the Gentleman in the parlour

Describe your best friend:

Madame Bovary / Emma

Wich is your favorite color?

the Arcanum

What's the weather like right now?

Bonjour tristesse

Wich is your favorite season?

How i live now

If your life was a tv-show, what would it be named?

a Room with a view

What's the relationship you're in, like?

Perfume

What are you afraid of?

One hundred years of solitude

What advice would you give?

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

How would you like to die?

the Year of Magical thinking

Your motto:

a Room of one's own

I hope to be back again soon, not least to write about, and post pictures, from my recent trip to New York.

June and midsummer in Berlin

2009-07-03T01:14:00.002+02:00

Hello loves!
I just have to post this german documentary (in two parts) about Drottningholm that i just found on youtube. I can't stand how time just evaporates like this - i haven't made it to Drottningholm since i was there for Handel's Ariodante in the beginning of june, and i used to go there at least once a week! -but of course it's been a terrible start of this summer -after a lovely spring most of june just rained away and the temperature stayed around 13 Celsius...but now we've had several days of almost tropical heat with temperatures never sinking below 20 degrees even at night. So i hope to go soon! -and i really could be there within 30 minutes so i don't know what keeps keeping me!

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Last week i was in Berlin for a couple of days, visiting my friend, who's currently doing an internship at an architecture firm there.

This was my first time abroad since my mother passed away in 2005 and god, i needed a holiday! My friend lives in Kreutzberg in the most beautiful apartment in a 19th century building with stucco ceilings and no less than three beautiful tiled stoves!

On the third day we got tickets for Mozart's "the abduction of the seraglio" at the Staatsoper Unter den linden, it was just third row seats and we scarcely saw the stage, but it was a great performance, with Christine Schäfer as Costanze, who also sings the part on the recording with William Christie.
Annoyingly we didn't get to see her when she gloriously sang "Marter aller arten",
so the operaglasses i found in a little antiques shop in our neighborhood earlier the same day weren't much use, but we heard perfectly:
Unter den linden towards Alexanderplatz with the Staatsoper to the right.

One of my favorite things about Berlin is Dussmann -a huge and fabulous store on Friedrichstraße, open until midnight on weekdays, selling books, music, movies, games and more. -they have the most incredible classical section! Too good to be true! I bought Mondonville's "Titon et Aurore" and Mouret's "Les amours de Ragonde" (Erato/Warner) both with Marc Minkowski and a lovely new cd titled "Le salon de musique de Marie-Antoinette" (Naïve/Ambroisie" with Sandrine Chatron on Harp, playing beautiful pieces by Gluck, Grétry, Mozart and others including Marie-Antoinette's own composition "C'est mon ami" and other arias and duets sung by Isabelle Poulenard and Jean-François Lombard, and then to my pleasant surprise i found a sequal to Véronique Gens and Les Talens Lyriques with Christophe Rousset, terrific 2006 recital cd "Tragédiennes" (Emi/Virgin) simply titled "Tragédiennes 2".

The first one had music by Lully, Campra, Rameau, Mondonville, Leclair, Royer and Gluck and the second one Gluck, Sacchini, Piccinni, Rameau, Grétry, Cherubini, Arriàga and Berlioz. I also picked up Lully's "Atys" (Harmonia Mundi) with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.

the view from the tv-tower

The classical section at Dussmann truly is fantastic, i discovered it the last time i was in Berlin in 2004 and i was like a kid in a candystore! They have absolutely everything! -and i was pleased to see nothing had changed in five years, what with all those superstores closing and downsizing allover the world.

I also made it twice to my favorite eatery, Monsieur Vuong where i had delicious springrolls, noodlesalad Mekong and Phò. How i love that place...just like the rest of the world! Sadly i did not make it to Potsdam and Sanssouci or to revisit the Charlottenburg palace...but they're excellent reasons to go back to that lovely city.

The Sophienkirche in Mitte, a gorgeous little church

Again, i apologise for not being more active here but time has just been slipping through my fingers lately. But i'm pleased to see you're still with me.
See you soon!

Bisous

The Castle of Skokloster

2009-05-12T14:49:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I and my friend P went out to Skokloster castle, where her boyfriend, who's studying to become a director at the Dramatic Institute, was shooting a scene for his thesis-film, and to wich i have drawn the storyboards. The film is set in 1713 and tells, in short, the nightmarish story about the downfall of Count Magnus Stenbock, a nobleman and general under King Charles XII.

But i shall write a little about the castle, for those not already familiar with it. It is one of my favorite places, and a major tourist attraction, and has been since the early 1700s.
Northwest of Stockholm, Beautifully situated by Lake Mälaren lies one of. it not THE most well preserved baroque castle in the entire world. It's construction began in 1654, as a display of the power and wealth of Count Carl Gustaf Wrangel, however construction took a halt upon his death in 1676. Probably one of the most interesting rooms is the huge, unfinished banqueting hall and a suite of adjoining guestrooms, standing just as the workers left them, tools and all, just as they stand today.

The castle is a marvelous treasuretrove with more than 50.000 objects from some of the wealthiest and most powerful noble families in sweden. The room depicted above and below is a royal guestroom. The gilt leather wall hangings are 17th century but weren't put up until 1837 wich is why they've retained much of their colour - Skokloster has one of the biggest collections of gilt leather in the world, in eight rooms and alltogether around 550 square metres of it.
The room has an exquisite collection of chinese inspired furniture from around 17th to 19th century. Some of the chairs were made in Paris around 1780 and later copies were made. The canopy-bed dates from around 1700.

The room used for the film is the so called Brahe dining room where a scene between Stenbock and the king was filmed, and to my horror some of the extras cas as courtiers were wearing the most excruciatingly bad costumes! Not only were they the wrong period but in the worst cuts and fabrics you can imagine, not to mention the hair. I wish i had known and i would have put a stop to it, but too late to say anything at this point, it is just a school production after all, but i do hope they won't show too much!

Dear followers...

2009-04-21T16:43:00.000+02:00

...i'm pleased to see that you are still with me in spite of my long absence. I have been feeling low and uninsipired lately and still can't think of what to write, but i hope to be back soom and hope that you stay with me until i come round again.
Thank you, sweethearts.

The Bastardy Camellia

2009-03-05T01:10:00.000+01:00

I've always adored and lusted for Camellias but never had one. While my mother was alive she always discouraged me. And now i see why. -almost all of it's buds fell off within days, and it has only been able to procure one blossom, lord knows if the remaining buds will fall off as well...i might just have to move to Cornwall.

A little winter after all.

2009-02-24T15:40:00.000+01:00

At last i've gotten that slight, proper snow mayhem i have pined for for so long!
I only hope it stays a while before spring breaks out. Last saturday saw a feeble dusting of snow and during the night it snowed as though someone had ripped up a giant duvet...and on Sunday it was just picture-perfect! Though it's already getting warmer and yet again there's that dreary, dripping sound and huge lumps of snow dropping from the trees...but yesterday surpassed all my wildest dreams.

I can't believe it's been more than a month since last time i wrote, i really meant to wright more often but just haven't been able to post any of those several drafts i've typed down...i have literally all the time in the world and am still unable to make the most of my hours. How do people with proper jobs, relations and families and all that keep from going under?

Pictures taken yesterday in my parent's garden, around my home and out at Djurgården, where i had to go just to capture this magical winter-land! And for a little splash of colour i have to post this scrumptious Hermés scarf i shot at NK department store the other day.

Lamentation.

2009-01-21T01:11:00.000+01:00

Now temperatures have risen again, so that it snowed almost all of yesterday and that it's snowing richly today, is neither here nor there when it all melts away before it reaches the ground. The ice that had spread out across riddarfjärden is now slowly melting away. Allover is that depressing, dripping sound from drainpipes. I can't stand this!

The feeling of winter is now completely gone again, it has been replaced by this tepid humidity. The honeysuckle on the balcony might be budding soon - wich i would love if this was in may and not the middle of january...now it's just saddening.

It looked like the water on riddarfjärden would freeze as it's done as long as i can remember -then it would turn into this huge open space where you can walk for several kilometres, not last year though, or the years before that -the last time was in the winter of 2005 wich was remarkably cold. As it looks this winter might turn out to be just as mild and dreary as it was last year - just like five months of march, wich is really the dingiest, dullest month of all.

It is just as depressing as a summer that completely rains away -or that has no rain at all...
We have had mild winters before, but nothing like this. This just feels like the end of the world. I so miss that exhilarating feeling of walking in this magical, pristine winterland, over frozen waters, the brightness of the snow, the frost crystals on the windows.

Illustrations by Johann Heinrich Füssli and myself

Monsigny.

2009-01-18T01:09:00.000+01:00

I never thought i'd say this; but i so wish i was in Washington, DC. -now...or in a fiew weeks - January 29th. When those who are lucky enough to be thereabouts can see - given that it's not sold out - William Sharp and Dominique Labelle in Monsigny's lyric drama "Le Désérteur" (1769) at the Kennedy Center with Ryan Brown and Opera Lafayette; a conductor and an orchestra i discovered a couple of years ago when they made an excellent recording of Antonio Sacchini's 1786 opera "Oedipe à Colone" for Naxos...

Monsigny by Carmontelle

The composer Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729-1817) was -along with Grétry and Gossec that i mentioned in a recent post - a giant in his own time, but virtually forgotten and rarely performed today and recordings are nonexistent, and "Le Déserteur" was a huge success - it's about "the resourceful heroine Louise who wins a pardon from the king for her fiancé Alexis who is accused of desertion from the army after he was tricked into believing she had married another..." (excerpt of text from the Kennedy Center) Here's a clip i found on youtube with bits from a performance at the Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne in 1994:

Needless to say how much i love this music - it makes me nostalgic somehow - reminds me of performances at Drottningholm in my childhood - and everything else i love about the 18th century, though Monsigny hasn't been performed there in modern times - but was in the 18th century - for example, in honour of Queen Sophia-Magdalena on Magdalene's day, July 22 in 1779 when Monsigny's "La Belle Arsène" was performed.

Ingmar Bergman filmed his "Magic flute" at Drottningholm, and i watched it constantly as a child, -that, along with Scola's "La Nuit de Varennes" and Carné's "Les enfants du Paradis" -i still have the tapes, and they always transport me back...even though it wasn't a very happy childhood...but that had more to do with the world around me - just as it does now...
I will be going on an on about Drottningholm and it's environs, in many, many future posts...

All illustrations courtesy of Réunion des Musées Nationaux.

Farewell, little one!

2009-01-17T02:19:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to share my christmas tree with you before throwing it out...wich was due days ago really - but i couldn't bear to do it just yet as it hadn't begun losing it's needles yet...
It's just a tiny tree, wich has more to do with my tiny apartment and lack of funds, than my 18th-century fanaticism - in the 18th century - at least in sweden - christmas trees weren't much bigger than this and were placed on the dining table.
The huge, gaudy fabergé-egg bauble i got some years ago, shortly after my mother's death as a small homage, as she loved all things russian.

An icy blast, at last!

2009-01-15T14:00:00.000+01:00

Ok, I might have whined too soon - yesterday it felt colder and the air was crisp and cool - I even think i saw a light sparkle of frost in the grass and the ground felt harder, and this morning it was positively freezing out there. -though i won't be fully satisfied until there's a blizzard or even possibly complete snow-mayhem and that i'm able to walk across the ice to the City Hall!

Top-illustration by Wenzel Hollar
Bottom, Moa with the City hall in the background.

Comforting myself.

2009-01-14T15:40:00.000+01:00

Just to comfort myself i' m posting a fiew pictures i took some two weeks ago, it was staggeringly cold, almost -10 C - And i took Moa for a walk around Djurgården - to Stockholmers what Central park is to New Yorkers - and everything was so beautiful... I'm sure by now the ice on the canal is completely gone, and the ground all thawed and soaking wet. But at least it doesn't rain and i so hope that the cold will return...or maybe i should just move to Provence or something -now that the entire northern hemisphere of the world seems to be enjoying a proper winter -except for us...

Bored and yearning.

2009-01-14T04:31:00.000+01:00

The way things look now, this winter seems to be getting as mild and worthless as the last, wich really worries me, we had a fiew lovely, heart-stoppingly cold days around christmas and new years, although scarcely any snow and the little that did come just dripped away and the thermometer now shows +6 C, so depressing! I would so much love a little winter...i'd go out flattening bastardly car's tires if it would help!

But i am so excited about the 2009 season at Drottningholm! They haven't presented any details yet, but they will be giving us Handel's "Ariodante" and Monteverdi's "L'Incoronazione de Poppea" -part of their Monteverdi series - last year was "Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria" and the year before that "l'Orfeo".
-Below is a beautiful duet from "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" with Anne-Sofie von Otter and Mireille Delunsch in the roles of Nerone and Poppea respectively, with Marc Minkowski conducting:

But foremost i am an avid Handelian and severely hope that Christophe Rousset will return for "Ariodante", -in 2000 he conducted Handel's "Tamerlano" wich returned in 2002 and wich i unfortunately didn't see. In 2003 it was "Alcina" wich is one of my favourites...and it was a fabulous performance. Christine Schäfer was Alcina, Anne-Sofie von Otter, Ruggiero -though Von Otter was in surprisingly bad shape... The director was Pierre Audi, set/costume designer, Patric Kinmonth, and in 2005 they and Rousset returned, and this time - to my immense joy - with something in Sweden so rare as french baroque! -"Zoroastre" by Rameau wich i went seing with my mother...it ran again in the following year - when it was also filmed and made into a formidable dvd - a fiew years ago the performances at Drottningholm were traditionally broadcast on national television, something i really miss...i don't know why they stopped. -Below is the final scene from Mozart's "La Clemenza di Tito" filmed at Drottningholm in 1987.

the "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" will probably be an all-swedish production, like the two previous ones by Monteverdi but for "Ariodante" i ferociously hope for a return of Christophe Rousset, and in the title-role i'd like to see Ann Hallenberg - one of my favorite singers, a fabulous mezzo. She's swedish but rarely ever performs here, but is very much in demand everywhere else and has fortunately made several fabulous recordings.

I was so excited last year when she was up to sing the role of Penelope in "il ritorno di Ulisse", though i sadly missed it, and then made a fiew appearances in Stockholm in December, she sang in Mozart's Mass in C-minor at the Nobel prize concert, in Bach's "Christmas oratorio" and songs by Chausson with no less than Marc Minkowski conducting! Follow this link to hear Ann Hallenberg sing Judith's aria "Parto inerme, e non pavento" from "La Betulia Liberata" by Mozart, the conductor is Christophe Rousset.

This is the woman i'm hoping to see and hear.

Another obsession.

2009-01-07T00:37:00.000+01:00

It often grieves me that there are so fiew recordings of the music of the walloon composer André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741-1813), -let alone on period instruments...
Grétry was only a name to me when this wonderful dvd came out a couple of years ago, it's titled "La Petite Musique de Marie-Antoinette" and is a filmed concert from Marie-Antoinette's little private theatre at Trianon. With the orchestra Les Agrémens lead by the belgian clarinet virtuoso, Guy van Waas.

Truly delightful ballet music and symphonies, interspersed by a fiew arias and duets by Grétry and his fellow walloon François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829) sung by the soprano Sophie Karthäuser and the baritone Jean-Yves Pruvot. An absolutely lovely concert in this charming little theatre -where we see the "ghost" of Marie-Antoinette (in a rather horrible wig!) appearing here and there. There is also a documentary about the theatre itself.

Then i discovered that the belgian label Ricercar had released a couple of cds with the same orchestra - and leader, playing music by both Grétry and Gossec, one titled "Grétry - Airs et Ballets" with pretty much the same programme as on the dvd and also Karthäuser singing the airs, and then two with symphonies op. XII and VIII by Gossec, and this one with symphonies for various solo instruments by both Grétry and Gossec - as well as by Dieudonné-Pascal Pieltain (1754-1833) and Antoine-Frédéric Gresnick (1755-1799) - two other Walloons working in paris at the same time. I't just gorgeous music, beautifully performed - so beautiful and so redolent of everything one loves about the 18th century. Complete and uncomplicated pleasure!

...And then; this summer Ricercar re-released a live-recording from 1991 with Ricercar Academy lead by Marc Minkowski (an old favourite of mine!) of Grétry's opéra ballet "La Caravane du Caire" -wich had it's premiere at Fontainebleau on the 30th of October in 1783. A sort of "the abduction of the Seraglio" story set in Egypt. It's an absolutely dazzling recording with infectuous dance music as well as a fiew excerpts of the music for d'Hele's comédie "Le Jugement de Midas" from 1778, with La Petite Bande under the baton of Gustav Leonhardt and recorded in 1980. I cordially recommend them all!

I am still not satisfied of course; for there is still no decent recording of Grétry's most famous work, the comédie-ballet "Zémire et Azor" from 1771, libretto by Marmontel -whom Grétry often worked with - a lighthearted beauty and the beast story in a middle eastern setting. The only existing recording is a rather boring one from the 1970s, on modern instruments conducted by Edgard Doneux - sheer elevator music!

I actually saw Zémire et Azor when it was given at Drottningholm in the summer of 1993, conducted by Louis Langrée. I was eleven and went with my mother and her friend whom i always thought incredibly chic - at that time i wouldn't have cared enough to know Grétry from any other composer... It was first performed there in 1778, seven years after it's creation.

The story is of Sander, travelling along with his servant Ali. Shipwrecked they find themselves on an island with a magnificent garden and palace - wich appears to be deserted, it's great hall set for a banquet - but they don't see a living soul, they help themselves to the buffet...

-Sander has three daughters back home: Fatmé, Lisbé and Zémire, his favourite. Before leaving he promised them gifts; Fatmé and Lisbé wished for lace and fine ribbons but all Zémire asked for was a rose...in a charming trio sung by the sisters; "Veillons, mes soeurs"

-So In the garden of the palace Sander picks the most beautiful rose he can find for Zémire and is then stopped by a beast-like man, Azor - really a transformed prince and the owner of the palace. Azor says that Zander must pay with his life for stealing the rose...unless he can persuade one of his daughters to take his place. Zémire agrees to sacrifice her life for her fathers and Ali takes her to the palace. She almost faints with terror upon seeing him. Here is Azor's aria: "Du moment qu'on aime" -sung by Rufus Wainwright (!) from the film "L'age des ténèbres" by Denys Arcand:

But Azor appears to be a proper gentleman and shows Zémire her family back home in a magic mirror...the scene depicted below, by Pehr Hilleström from the swedish production in 1778. (i apologise for the poor quality)

-Zémire even gets to visit her family as long as she promises to always return to Azor.
When she returns from one of those visits, she finds him in despair as he thinks that she has abandoned him, she protests that she cares for him -and the magic spell on Azor is lifted now that he has found someone who loves him, and so he is turned into his old, handsome self and claims his kingdom - with Zémire as his consort. And then they live happily ever after...

I only wish that some period instruments ensemble would record it!

"Nina ou Les Ennuis de l'absence"
Niclas Lafrensen, le Jeune (1737-1807)

Obsession.

2009-01-06T01:07:00.000+01:00

I just love this design! It's from the swedish factory of Marieberg and from the mid 1770s. I first saw one in the catalogue of an auction house, i use such catalogues for inspiration for objects to fill my drawn interiors with, that one missed it's top and had a little rabbit at the fot of the stairs that goes up the base of the vase, i just love the details - the little banister, the balustres, little knobs, the reeds and flowers, the decor in black and grey on white, with a little trophy-group with a bow, arrows and a quiver on the vase. Then i found another one, depicted below, just like it while browsing the photo library of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, that's in the collections of le Palais des beaux arts - Lille, that one had a polychrome decor, also with a rabbit and a basket and barrel on the vase, so delightful!Then a couple of weeks ago i passed by one of the finest antiques dealers in town and there it was! This one also in black on white but with a dog sitting at the bottom of the stairs and its top crowned by a blackberry. Oh how you must think me deranged! It's the kind of shop where you have to ring a bell before they let you in, so i didn't dare to, to get a closer look until today. It's price was about fourteenhundred dollars, so, sadly as i am penniless i won't be getting it, but they were kind enough to let me take some photos so that you too, if you share my insanity, can drool over it and dream of it standing on your mantlepiece, just like i do in my desperately obsessive mind...

Drottningholm

2009-01-05T00:04:00.000+01:00

Yesterday Moa and i went out to Drottningholm, the royal palace with it’s vast gardens. -a place i love and will be writing a lot more about in the futue... I was delighted to discover the lakes and ponds in the english park frozen and turned into huge ice skating-rinks – a shame i can’t skate. Hardly any snow yet though, wich would have made things all the more beautiful.
We walked around on the ice, out on small islets normally inaccessible, everything was just as it should be in winter except for the shortage of snow, i had almost forgotten what it was like as last winter was horrible and just rained away - wich felt like a bad sign as i have been worrying and obsessing over all the talk of climate change of recent years…but we’ve had mild winters before so maybe it’s not all that bad...i remember some ten years ago when two friends of mine, both born in late december, foolishly they decided to celebrate their fifteenth birthday with a picnic at Drottningholm, and it was rainy and muddy; the ground was like walking on a soaking wet sponge.

Speaking of Drottningholm i found these clips that some sweetheart has had the kindness of posting on youtube that are part of a lovely documentary on ”dance’s past” from 1979, instigated, written and narrated by Dame Margot Fonteyn.
Here she gives a little tour of the well-preserved court theatre at Drottningholm, and it’s absolutely charming! The whole documentary is really worth watching, unfortunately they've disabled embedding of the clips so you have to follow these links:1 (13) and
2 (14)
-the part with Drottningholm starts in clip 1 (13) with a lovely little animation at about 3:23 and continues in clip 2 (14).

New Year's eve with dad.

2009-01-01T03:52:00.000+01:00

New Year's eve was nothing special, i decided to spend it with my dad in my childhood-home, just a fiew blocks away from my apartment. We had a gorgeous lobster and some Dopff brut, then ox filet with garlic and parsly and a decent shiraz, then i planned to make an apple tart but opted for some fresh, cut pineapple with chocolates and coffee - and then some more Dopff at the stroke of midnight while we saw the new year in on television with Jan Malmsjö and Anne-Sofie von Otter. I was invited to a party, but way out in the suburbs and i'm glad i didn't go - can't cope with crowds, especially not now.

I do hope we get a decent winter this year, it snowed generously in the end of November but then just thawed away and then it rained and it rained, but now for a couple of weeks it's been cold, and the rooftops covered with sparkling layers of frost - no snow so far but i really, desperately hope for more of that or i shall get terribly depressed! Oh, enough about that! -i should get some sleep...

Goodnight and Happy New Year!views from my balcony the other day.

The remains of our little feast. A pretty little still-life in the sink - don't you think?

Wishing you a happy new year!

2008-12-31T01:29:00.000+01:00

Dear followers and readers. In the forthcoming year I hereby resolve to do my best to amuse you more regularly!

Happy 2009!

A little number from my dream-spring/summer wardrobe...

2008-12-19T19:11:00.000+01:00

...drawn in May 2006 to Michel Legrand's music to Jacques Demy's "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" from 1964. A film i love.

Introducing Moa

2008-12-18T12:43:00.000+01:00

I must share these pictures of my beautiful dog, with you.
Her name is Moa, a name she had already been given when we first met her, my late mother and i. Sometimes i call her Francesca because of her striking likeness with Francesca Annis

She'll be seven years next august but is still always taken for a puppy; and being a Jack Russell she's likely to stay that way.
The last one is a drawing i did a couple of years ago.

Porn for 18th-century addicts.

2008-12-13T21:31:00.000+01:00

La France au Temps des Libertins- This is probably the most gorgeous book i've ever seen. I got it a couple of years ago after seeing it in the window of an interior decorator's shop. A splendid book bursting with beautiful, inspiring imagery; a coffeetable-book entirely dedicated to the pleasures of the 18th century. Here we see beautifully set tables, salons, grottos, lush parks and landscapes; works of art by Boucher, Lawreince, Lancret among others, beautiful objects and artefacts. It's written by Jacqueline Queneau and Jean-Yves Patte with photographs by Alexandre Bailhache and styling by Caroline Lebeau - who also was culinary stylist in the magnificent film "Vatel" by Roland Joffé from 2000. It came out in 2001 at the french publisher of so many pretty books: Éditions du Chêne, i can't believe it was out for more than five years before i found out about it! -It also has a little surpise "carnet secret" in the back with some actual 18th-century porn.

A weekend in the country or: A reminder that reality can sometimes be sweet...

2008-11-22T09:44:00.000+01:00

In the end of october I, my best friend, her boyfriend, brother and his girlfriend spent a wonderful weekend at the most incredible hostel. It was in a former distillery, built in 1800. It was on the grounds of the country estate Nynäs, about an hour drive from Stockholm.the distillery

It's an amazing building with thick walls and old wooden floors, recently refurbished into this lovely hostel, with reproductions of 19th century wallpaper and furnished with beautiful rustic 18th and 19th century furniture.The house had the most beautiful and well equipped kitchen; and an equally beautiful diningroom where we had our fabulous dinner of toast Skagen, Cœur de filet provençal and a french apple tart with homemade vanilla custard and great wines!

We had an amazing time there. Immediately upon our arrival, just as we had settled in our rooms, we took a walk around the estate. We got up on a cliff with a spectacular view over the lake and the dense woods around it and the echo was incredible!
We discovered the hostel when we visited Nynäs house in september, We had a tour of the absolutely beautiful house - built in the 1640's; it's been rebuilt over the years - lastly in the 1860's and it was a private home until 1984 - and since there was just the four of us, except for the amazing guide, we got to go behind the ropes and have a closer look at the most amazing bed curtains from the early 1600's, in yellow silk and black velvet in an intricate pattern with gold thread embroidery, a fantastic 400-years old silk and velvet marquetry!Nynäs house, the countess' antechamberAn engraving of the house (right) and the distillery (left) from about 1815.

How i've been waiting!

2008-11-22T09:01:00.000+01:00

It's finally snowing! I hope for more of that this winter.
Last year it snowed for like two days or so, and this is Sweden!
Last year my dog got a tick in December - that's how warm it was, and the fiew times that it was cheek-pinchingly cold outside i hoped for more but was always let down. Now we've had quite a cold autumn here and i feel slightly more at ease. And now this!

A weekend, or a fortnight, in the country.

2008-11-21T04:14:00.001+01:00

I am about to undertake a rather huge project i have been thinking about for a long time.
A beautiful diningroom in a beautiful Château or Hôtel particulier; with an oblong table and some of my, mainly 17th and 18th century, favorite personages around it.

It is completely superficial and unimaginative, just for my own pleasure and hopefully your's... people like Marie-Antoinette, the Duchess of Devonshire and her sister... (NO Bess! In my story she dies early on from smallpox and G gets over it all in no time!) Duchesse de Polignac, Madame de Pompadour, de Sévigné, Voltaire, Emilie du Châtelet, Sophie Arnould, Gustaf III of Sweden, Sarah Siddons and Diana Vreeland are the ones who have been invited so far. I suppose i should have some composers/musicians as well...even though most of the guests excelled in at least one instrument, perhaps they could take turns...Marie-Antoinette at the harp, Arnould singing a fiew airs, Camargo delighting us with a fiew turns about the room and so on...the Queen of France would of course help in carving and handing out the various dishes around the table - as she did at Trianon that summer of 1784 when Gustaf III visited...My late mother will naturally have to be there, and mainly dead people - they always tend to be more interesting, just like past is more interesting than present...and not to mention the future, wich i dread to even think about.
Maybe even a series of pictures; A weekend or a fortnight spent in the country with all these distinguished guests...

It will be all about details - the rooms filled with beautiful furniture and artefacts, porcelaine, silver, silly little figurines taken from all my books on 18th century art and fashion as well as from my huge library of images on my laptop, taken from the collections of various museums.
I have made a first draft - a sketch of the diningroom in question, and i really look forward to begin!

I haven't really drawn for years, i've been far to stressed and worried...i'm not cut out for this life. I just scribble and never make any finished drawings, even though i really have all the time in the world - i'm off sick; have been for years and lord knows for how much longer, i just can't seem to get back on my feet.

Amusing myself

2008-10-04T00:31:00.000+02:00

Accent - Stockholm accent.
Booze - I'm not big on drink, but boringly, i like good wines with good food and maybe even the company of good friends. Oh, and champagne!
Chore I hate - anything practical.
Dogs/Cats - Dogs, though i wouldn't mind a cat if i had a house and a garden.
Essential electronics - I-pod; Laptop computer; digital camera; CD player; DVD player
Favourite perfume - Many...Fracas, Bandit, Shalimar, Mitsouko, La chasse aux papillons, No. 19, Endymion, Blenheim bouquet...
Gold/silver - neither keeps me awake at night but maybe gold actually.
Hometown - Stockholm.
Insomnia - Rarely, although I stay up very late!
Job title - None.
Kids - No.
Living arrangements - Snug and cluttered.
Most admired trait - Courage
Number of sexual partners - Let's go with zero as i am terribly repulsive and can't be loved in any other way than the way one feels about an old grandma or a dog perhaps. Don't care for sex anyway...it's no insurance against loneliness.
Overnight hospital stays - A long time ago.
Phobia - the usual and a thousand...that's why i can't do anything with my life.
Quote - "Music for a while shall all your cres beguile..." -John Dryden
Religion - Agnostic/atheist
Siblings - six, but they're all strangers to me.
Time I usually awake - 10 am but i'm aiming at 6 or 7.
Unusual talent - I couldn't say.
Vegetable I refuse to eat - slightly aversed to aubergine otherwise none.
Worst habit - Procrastination
X-rays - When i broke my rib at 7?
Yummy foods I make - Fish soup, mashed potatoes, crème brûlée, apple tart.
Zodiac sign - Gemini.

Another dream

2008-09-03T11:16:00.000+02:00

I've been dreaming again, or, they say you dream every night even if you may or may not remember it. This time it was a very vivid dream, so i remember certain fragments that i now shall put down here.
It seems to have been set mainly in the surroundings of my childhood home in stockholm. My childhood home was amalgamated with a medieval castle ruin, it had a moat around it, a drawbridge and narrow, steep, winding stairs inside. I had accidently dropped my dvds in the moat and jumped into the cold water to fish them all up again, there were some boys clinging to a willow tree bending over the surface, i got under it to pick all the dvds up and was suddenly assisted by the boyfriend of one of my best friends, and she herself was just sitting up on land watching.

In the next segment i was out in the yard with my dog Moa and my aunt's dog Hector, two feisty little Jack Russels. I got up to the door of one of the storage sheds, it was a huge, monumental door but it didn't look like it had been opened and entered for years, i crushed the rusty old padlock and flung open the heavy, creaking doors. There was broken glass on the floor so i told the dogs to wait outside, my own dog didn't last very long and had to come running after me, but Hector sat outside waiting like a good boy. I walked into the obscurity of the room wich my eyes soon got used to, and the shed appeared to be a stable, with the most magnificent, well-kept, healthy horses neatly lined up along both sides of the aisle. There was now a soft, almost cathedral like light in the room. I got out again and shut the doors and got inside my parent's house, inside i found my cousin on the floor next to a bed she had just had delivered to her, she was supposed to come stay with us for a while, she could have been about ten in this dream but is now an unwholesome teenager of seventeen. Both she and her older sister would stay with us alot when they were younger, and their mother, my -mother's younger sister, had been drinking again.
And now i just woke up and had to write it all down.

What am i doing?

2008-08-10T18:07:00.000+02:00

Oh hell! I'm sleeping my days away and i can't seem to get myself out of bed, haven't touched a pencil for months and i can't bring myself to do anything about that or anything else, it's like i'm in the cellar of a house with a fire in the attic rapidly eating its way down, and i'm doing nothing to get out even though i easily could...or could i? If only when lying in bed i looked like her, up there, then things might solve themselves. But an oaf like me must make it happen, damn it! Why wasn't i just born a cat?!

Detail of a painting by J-B. Greuze. the Frick collection, New York

Snogging and wading

2008-03-31T20:04:00.000+02:00

Tonight, or rather this morning i dreamt i was snogging an imam (me!), but his beard was a fake one for he wasn't wearing it when the actual snogging occurred - before i even knew he was an imam. -i found out later when i met him outside of the picturesque, winding, swedish little country-cottage where the snogging took place. I always dream of nice houses and cottages, and then it always takes an unpleasant turn, this time (apart from snogging an imam...wich is usually a man far from what i desire) i found myself wading in a putrid little lake, or swamp. It had dead trees around it lowering their pale branches over the surface. The branches were hung with fish skeletons and along the sides of the lake lay dead fish and more skeletons, and over the entire site lay the most unbearable stench, and i felt sharp, slippery rocks under my bare feet, and the water was thick and greasy.

A dream of Lyon.

2008-02-22T11:25:00.000+01:00

The other night i had another dream, a very fragmentary dream. This time i was in Lyon, so i was told in the dream. Lyon is a city i have no connection to whatsoever, i've never even been there. I remember walking around in endless, vast, palatial marble halls, like those at the Grand Central Station in New York.
I got inside a house in the dense city and out on it's backside, then there was no trace of the city, there was an endless, verdant garden. The garden-facade of the house was completely covered in honeysuckle and boughs of wisteria, i walked in the tall grass and buttercups. In the grass lay scattred sun-bleached plastic toysm a ball, a doll and a watering can. I waded on through the grass and down a gentle slope, i looked out over the magnificent landscape. Fields of golden ochre interspersed by dense, fantastically lush woods and finaly in the horizon, the glittering, blue sea. But no trace of the city.
In the next fragment i was balancing on some railway tracks above blackened gravel between steep sides covered in lifeless grass, thistles and weeds. Then i was suddenly chased away and ran for my life.

Then i was going to a gala opening at the opera and i was going to escort this old countess, and elegant old lady with a shiny satin eveningdress and strands of pearls, her thick, grey hair in a tight chignon. I was also similarily dressed upp, we walked arm in arm through the grand marble-foyer of the operahouse, upp and down broad, monumental stairs. The countess' box was on the right side of the auditorium, had a gilt Louis Seize- sofa clad in a striped silk-damask in purple-stripes on ivory white, all other seats in the auditorium were in deep burgundy-velvet. The auditorium was packed, we sat down and the display commenced. My best friend sat on the balcony opposite, surrounded by her other friends, and waved eagerly.
It was a strange vaudeville with a 70s disco-accompanyment. Giant dancers in sequinned leotards on swings and trapezes, and with big, hysterical smiles in a bizarre mechanical dance, they changed size all the time, like soapbubbles or as if they were inflatable. The salon was also moving, balconies switched places, twitched and turned like a rubik's cube.

The next thing i remember we were bouncing gleefully down the steep, broad front stairs of the opera. Then it was snowing, as in the old day's winters, millions of little snowflakes fell over the big town-square outside. Then i woke up.

Beautiful etchings

2008-02-11T21:21:00.000+01:00

I just have to share with you, these wonderfully charming seasonal fashionplates, etched by Wenceslaus Hollar in England in the 1640's:
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A new, strange dream

2008-02-10T21:04:00.000+01:00

Yesterday night i had a new "house-dream". I often seem to dream of houses, they often start pleasantly, but then take another, more unsettling turn. This house was a weird mix between a castle, country cottage and those beautiful 18th century houses near Drottningholm. There were old, beautifully worn wooden floors, beautiful stained glass and sash windows, old artifacts and furniture, and a soft, beautiful light falling through the irregular glass of the windows. It resembled the summerhouse of Helena Ekdahl in Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander". There also was a conservatory and and many poky, little staircases with chiseled wooden banisters worn by centurie's of hands.
It was such a vivid dream! There's so much i remember, plainly, as if i just seen it on film or even been there. It started at night and pale moonlight seeped through the windows and in sconces on the walls some candles threw their flickering, sparse light in the rooms, nooks and crannies. I was at the upper storey and chased by something or someone i couldn't see, i ran down the stairs and through a door with many intricate locks and barres, i hastily slammed the door shut behind me and locked it carefully. Then i found myself in a quaint little country kitchen, with woodpanelling painted in limegreen and coral, ancient copperpots and utensils. Then, suddenly it was day and the sun pierced through the foliage outside and further through the windows, spreading a golden-green flickering pattern allover the room. I was no longer chased and the door i had just locked so carefully was wide open.
The kitchen led further on to a little bedroom with old torn wallpapers with a rustic, yet elegant printed pattern in dark blue beams on bone white, there were a fiew rustic pieces of furniture, a bed with a beautiful quilt, a dresser, a fiew simple chairs, the same golden green flicker from outside. I went up to the upper storey again and found a large room with walls covered in exquisitely and intricately carved woodpanels, seemingly they had been taken from a much larger, much grander house, they were painted in a dark blue, with gilt carvings and thousands of little flowers painted all over, the panels were divided by columns with corinthian capitals, cut, in incoherent bits to fit in here.
I went downstairs again and out. It must have been about the end of august for the verdure seemed faded and the leaves had a chapped, leathery feel to them and there was a cool breeze. I lay stretched on a table with flaky white paint and surrounded by tall birchtrees. I looked at the house, it must have been mine. It was a strange anomaly, a cluster of little cottages with high, steep roofs and many chimneys, an ancient, crooked, farmhouse in an idyllic, rural setting.
I walked around the house.

Then i suddenly found myself on a huge parkinglot with different monstrous industrial buildings around it, it was dirty and garbage scattered allover the place. I never found my way back to the house and started walking and walking as darkness fell. Then i was in a town, a big ruthless city and below it's townhall mixed with the Chiesa di San Marco in Venice, i was barefoot and wore a nightshirt stained with urin, feeling naked and unprotected.

Then i remember climbing on the outside of a giant dome of terracotta bumps sprinkled with crushed glass, trying to get down, wich was difficult. When down i remember getting down the entrance of the subway. And then i woke up-

In another dream i had just traded my cosy apartment for a dreary, depressing one-storey suburban house in the middle of a barren field of asphalt with some lifeless shrubs adorned with plasticbags, junk and some beige sparrows chirping depressingly. The house was appaling and smelled like a hospital or day care center, an uninspiring, clinical smell trying to cover that of urin and vomit. In the drawing room stood a horrible, settee covered in parched, worn-out leather with revolting, unidentifiable stains. Criminally ugly curtains and a view through the windows of a dull playground with lifeless lawns and a set of swings. Ew! And in the bathroom i found some horrible copies of bijoux and perfumes with boxes, saying "Doir" instead of "Dior", i recall. Fie!

But what can these dreams mean?!

Träumerei

2007-12-11T22:19:00.000+01:00

Last night i had strange dream. I had found a wonderful house towering up in a park of dense, leafy groves and tall grass, surrounded by flowerbeds and ancient oaks. I got inside the house and looked around. A succession of beautiful rooms; small, yet spacious and bathing in daylight. Suddenly it started to shrink, so that i first had to walk bent, then on all fours and then crawl...and then i woke up, wich was a pity as it was a thoroughly wonderful house and quite a wonderful dream. It was a heavenly early summer's day and i was picking flowers with my friend on a meadow nearby, we were happy that one could do that. Then i remember standing at the end of a long gallery on the topfloor of the house, i walked forward, looking out through the windows, over the tree tops, then i hit my head on one of the beams in the ceiling, and first i had to walk bent, then on all fours and finally i had to crawl, then i remember wriggling my way down a narrow, shrinking staircase where i finally got stuck. Strangely i don't remember any feelings of anxiety. -i wonder what a dream interpreter would say about this.

June

2007-11-30T01:57:00.000+01:00

"By the rushy-fringed bank, where grows the willow and the osier dank My sliding chariot stays.
Thickset with agat, and the Azurn sheen of Turkish blue and Em'rald green, That in the channel strays.
Whilst from off the Waters fleet Thus i set my printless feet. O'er the Cowslips velvet Head, That bends not, bends not, as i tread." ("Comus" Dalton, efter Milton.)
Even though i love all seasons and months of the year, i am now longing a bit for June, i know June will return, -if the whole atmosphere doesn't melt down before then of course. We can only hope it doesn't. The photograph above is of myself with a friend last June and wearing wonderfully chic hats of Rhubarb-leaves. -oh, how i love rhubarb! But i've heard that if you eat it too often it can damage your kidneys, it's fortunate that one doesn't.
-My beloved, departed mother, i remember, told me of an early morning...probably in June, when she was young, knackered after a night at the Operabaren fetched some rhubarb-stems in the garden and chopped them to bits to make a crumble or perhaps, a lovely rhubarb-soup. -suddenly she jumped and discovered that she very nearly had severed her own finger! The blade of the knife had gone well into the bone! End of that dazzling story. Oh, how i miss her! I can still remember her lifeless hand in mine, in that dreary hospital room. I don't think i have gotten over her dying, or even dealt with it. It just can't be this easy to go on without such a person...it's probably coming to me any day now...or in forty years, a life long loss. Here she is, just a fiew months before she died, when i couldn't even imagine the succession of ruthless horrors that would soon accost us.

Les Soeurs Scotto.

2007-11-12T21:46:00.000+01:00

"Secrets de cuisine des Soeurs Scotto"(Chêne)
One of the prettiest cookery books i've ever seen! With amazing recipes and wonderful photographs. Three italian-french sisters born in Algeria here shares their old family-recipes and new ones and some gorgeous photographs from their personal album.
It is of course in french but at least my french is sufficient for following the recipes. Now i'm only waiting for delivery from La France!

The Blue bedchamber

2007-09-26T00:00:00.000+02:00

This little interior is by my own hand. This blog was originally intended for showing my art, but even a place where i can write about my dreams, desires and, if you're lucky, my worries and anxieties.
Here. -in the blue bedchamber, here i would recieve my friends, i could really fancy myself lying stretched out on the heavenly, peach-coloured, quilted satin bedspread, dressed in a cherry-red velvet dressing gown and shriek and chortle with enjoyment; flipping through and reading books and magazines. On the beauiful, Louis XVI commode, placed, for instance, out of view between the two windows would be placed a huge samovar supplying me with endless cups of hot tea. It is a petty, banale dream, i know.- but can one blame me for wanting to just encase myself in a cosy little cocoon when the world is so cold and merciless? I'm too weak for this world right now. It's a hopeless situation, and most days i can see no way out, except for when i daydream away...for looking at this world and present, leaves no hope at all. I imagine myself in the library of an elegant, but not too grand little chateau, or an english countryhouse from the Stuart-period. Its walls would be covered with portraits of loved ones, family, friends and pets, beautiful paintings of landscapes, not that one would need the escape, for the house would be surrounded by vast gardens that grew everything one could need, vegetables, fruit and flowers, there would be a beautiful orangery, the whole world around it entirely unspoiled and full of life, but not overpopulated. All my loved ones, and their loved ones should each have such houses and gardens of their own...and so my thoughs flow...and keeps me from being useful.

The "conservatory"

2007-09-19T14:59:00.000+02:00

Today i'm cheerful. -my little "conservatory" appears to be successful! The lemon-tree is in full bloom and tiny little embryo-lemons are showing up, oh! And the blossoms smell ever so sweet, spreading their delightful fragrance in the whole room. Then there's the little fig plant that has grown considerably though i thought i had killed it last winter. -it now carries no less than four little figs that are soon ready to be plucked. My "conservatory", you see, consists of a tiled table on wheels, placed up against my only window. It also has a fiew geraniums and a little olive-tree i bought last spring at the nightmare-palace R.O.O.M, oh, how i loathe R.O.O.M! -i mean really, i'm not ironic. However, the little olivetree bears numerous little bundles of little olives-to-be. I'm so pleased with my little conservatory, i almost feel like a respectable person.
Yesterday i was delighted to discover that one at Chaikhana can buy Mariage Frères teas by the gram so that one doesn't have to buy a new tin each time one runs out. -the tins are gorgeously pretty by the way, but costs twice as much as a paperbag of 100 grams. At last i could refill my tin of Ruschka wich had been standing tragically empty for months now. Oh, How can something be so exceedingly delicious? I cried and i laughed, and i was so happy!

First word

2007-09-17T17:02:00.001+02:00

One thing i ardently covet right now is a big, red, cast-iron teapot fromThe-ô-dor available through their online-store.
One can browse through and purchase the sweetest, most gorgeous teas in exquisitely pretty little tins, and other beautiful related acessories as well. Some of my favourite blends are: Maître Fang - green china tea with a delightful taste of ginger and coconut, Pêche mignon - green tea with peach and pineapple, Toupet de legumes - Black tea with tomato, courget, pepper and redcurrant with rose and peony-petals.