The hook

I just saw danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's "Yours forever", a much stronger story than you might think from the title, and fantastic acting. It's the kind of acting that looks as if it is cut straight out from peoples lives, and in other words doesn't look like acting. The kind of acting that makes me think "This I will never be able to do" and in the next moment "I won't stop trying til I can." That's the catch, the hook that makes me sit up too late with my blog because I just have to express something, makes me take on too much work between classes and makes me hate having to spend time earning mony on other things. It feels like wading in molasses, never getting anywhere, stuck. But like I said, this summer a way out of that is opening.Øyvind and two other people, Hege Gabrielsen and Yngve Marcussen, are starting a school in method based film acting. They want people to be able to apply directly for the second year. And he has told me that I am one of those who can do that. That gives me the chance to go to go to acting school full time for a year, something I possibly will be able to handle economically in my age and situation in life. And with that, I just might get good enough to swing it.

He's breathing!

I did the monologue again tonight, and decided to set my goals no higher than to try to make it breathe. A little.

The first time I did it without a physical person as a substitute for my assassin. I felt it went somewhat better than the last time, but I was nervous and it didn't quite open up. But enough had happened to make Øyvind give me a second go, and then I had a woman sitting in the chair. That made a big difference. The whole thing slowed down, and I felt that what I said had meaning.

But I still have a long way to go with it. And afterwards I realized what kept me back.

Words on Kurtz

I read the manuscript over again tonight, and got hold of some keywords on Kurtz; stubborn, enormously tired, worn out, aggressive, lonely, reminiscing of childhood. Wanting to be freed from his pain.

Directly after reading, I took a half hour with the boots, and interesting things started happening. The polishing gradually took on a frantic character, and tick like mimicry emerged when i did the monologue while polishing. The madness, which I had almost overlooked, maybe not wanted to acknowledge, came out. I still have some ground to cover, but it felt like a good long step toward opening the monologue. I'm starting to believe in it, and I look forward to a new turn tomorrow. Have a good weekend!

A new feeling of night

You know, I'm a real sissy when it comes to staying up late during the week. I have to be in bed somewhere between eleven and eleven thirty, or else I'll be just a little bit too tired to enjoy my next day and get things done. But with my blog this has changed. I have a passion for it that easily keeps me up til after midnight, and I don't fell tired the day after.

I just have to show you this kitchy nocturnal from where I spend my summer vacations.

On the contrary, I'm full of energy in a peaceful way, optimistic about the future. I even feel stronger than before that I have a future. So that means the blog is important, it lets me do something I have needed but not found a means for earlier.

Like I said in the piece about Life and passion, many people feel the are in a hurry all the time, but never feel they get anything done. That's because they are busy doing the wrong things. There is something of vital importance that they haven't done, and don't realise that they want and need to do that keeps them busy and dissatisfied. So that's what my blog must have hit in me, and opened up. Now I'm going to bed...

Searching for Kurtz

I want to show you some photos I took on my way home from Embla the other day. While I'm selecting and uploading them, I'm thinking of Kurtz. During the day a new Kurtz has been emerging in bits and pieces. Some has come from emotions that have been locked and hidden by the influence of Marlon Brando, or the way I've seen him, some has come from Joseph Conrad's Kurtz and some from Elliot's poem The Hollow Men. And I rembered that early in the process of working with the monolouge, I used a woman as a substution for Willard, Kurtz's assassin. The pictures reminds me of pictures from the film, the lights in the deep darkness. And, by the way, Embla is the woman god in Norse mythology. I think a female element is what I need for Kurtz, and I want to make him much weaker, more in need of compassion and care.

I want to see him as a man who leaves the world "not with a bang, but with a whimper", to use Elliot's words. It did me good to find this way of seeing and experiencing him, because under the influence of Brando I've been struggling to make him tough. I've chosen clothes that will show what I've got of muscles, and tried to look like a tough man of war. I've never really believed in this, neither myself as tough in this manner, or the character. I found the opening lines "I've seen horrors. Horrors that you have seen" almost impossible to fill with meaning, and considered leaving them out. I thought of them as Kurtz wanting to teach the young Willard the realities of war, but it never did quite stick. Now they give perfect meaning. He is pleading for compassion, pleading to be seen in a softer light because of the horrors he has seen.

Now I feel that there is life and movement in my work with him, I'm not stuck any longer. Maybe he'll change again several times til Monday, but that doesn't worry me. On the contrary, I look forward to seeing which way it goes.
And every day I'm shining those boots. Tonight I was at it for close to an hour. I polish them til my mind goes totally blank and my sight grows dim. Maybe Kurtz will come out clearly from that.

Deadlock of the stubborn

Kurtz did not go well tonight. I can tell you, the feeling of sitting there on stage knowing that every word you say sounds artificial and like something you don't know why you are saying, really sucks. And when you're done, you see all the faces wearing these slightly worried, serious frowns, politely not looking at you. Well, you just have to take a deep breath and face the music. These are the Norwegian army boots I bought for the occcasion. Having polished them for an entire hour today, and for thirty to fortyfive minutes twice during the weekend, I thought I had the physical action under my skin. I didn't, though. The movements were clumsy and without meaning, just like the words. The whole monolouge felt totally locked for me. Øyvind wasn't worried though, because we've seen it better. He quickly figured out that Kurtz must have polished his boots around 7000 times. I had maybe done them 30. So it's a matter of getting this action so automatized that I don't have to think about doing it at all. I'll have to polish them for at least half an hour every day before I do the monologue again next monday.

But that is not my main problem. The problem is that I wouldn't listen to Øyvinds advice not to do something we have seen recently or many times. I have seen Apocalypse Now maybe six times, and it is my number one favourite film. But since some years had passed since last time I saw it, I thought that wouldn't be a problem. At least that's what I said to myself. But the truth is I just wouldn't listen. Tonight I saw how right Øyvind was when he said that no matter what, Marlon Brando's way of doing the scene will allways stand in the way of my own interpretation. I really felt it tonight, when I made my notes after having been on stage. So much for being stubborn. Maybe that's me being a little bit like Kurtz, in a petty way, and ending up in a deadlock, like him.

Now I'll just have to prove myself by creating my very own Kurtz, against all odds.

Embla ceramics

There's a section of Hegdehaugsveien consisting of only a couple of blocks right by the SAS hotell at Holbergs plass, that has a totally different atmosphere than the busy shopping street most people know. It makes out a small, peaceful world of its own I feel, and here you find Embla ceramics, shop and workshop for the four artists Siw Heier, Diddi Videsjorden, Anne Udnes and Monika Wojtkiewicz. When I walked by the shop som days ago, I was struck by a glimpse of warm, golden light behind the windows, and instantly felt I had to go inside. This vase by Diddi Videsjorden catches some of that shining light, but when I came in I realised that it was the clear, soft colour and golden glow from a large bowl she has made that had reeled me in.

She generously gave me carte blanche to take photos for sygnazeit, but typically I discovered that the battery in my camara was flat. So I came back later, in the evening, as it got dark.As you probably have noticed, the dark and the mirror images that it invites is a favourite of mine. I think it suited these sculptured womens heads by Siw Heier.

Also Anne Udnes sculpts heads. To me this one has a particularily peaceful beauty.

This one portrays her daughter, I was told by Diddi.

Cups in a basket makes a fine mix of patterns.

Two vases by Diddi.

Monika Wojtkiewicz studied fashion sewing at the Academy of Visual Arts in Poznan, Poland, her home country. She also studied engineering in the protection of the environment in Wroclaw. Onle quite recently has she taken up pottery. She made this enigmatic mask.

You'll find Embla ceramics in Hegdehaugsveien 14, somewhat hidden in a world of its own, peacefull like the workshops and burning room in the cellar under the shop.

The soul of art

Art is something done with a flick of the wrist, in a glimpse. That does not mean you don't have to learn things, and work hard. But art is in the moment, before you know it. You may feel it there and then, or you may see it only afterwards.

The photos you have just seen are half planned, half chance. Can it be called art? Anaïs Nin said "art is a rumour". So if I get good at setting out out rumours, my amateur photographs will be artGood night. Sleep tight. And dream....

Mistah Kurtz - he dead

This was T S Eliot's ingress to the poem The Hollow Men, and by that he refered to Joseph Conrad's short story Heart of Darkness. As you know, this story is also the basis of Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now. In the final scenes, Kurtz reads from The Hollow Men to Willard, who is there to kill him.

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Well, Kurtz may have felt hollow, but he did'nt have so many other men to lean together with. He had left the world and was ready to die, ready to fold up his uniform for the last time.

I'm doing Kurtz exit monologue about The Horror in method class, and that is a real challenge. I chose it because I have a lot of recognition with Kurtz when it comes to taking things to the extreme, and ending up isolated by it. I feel like I'm constantly moving on a razors edge, all the time at the risk of making too much of myself, making to much noise, scaring people, embarassing them, if I act in a way that to me feels free and natural. It has happened in method class too. I may tell you about that some day.

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion.

This, also from The Hollow Men, is a perfect way of expressing how I often feel when we do the sensory exercises in class that are meant to make us receptive and able to express ourselves. And when it feels like that, or when I let loose and end up making too much of myself; disturbing other people, annoying them, I'm afraid of ending up in some way isolated, unable to express myself freely in any forum. And that frightens me.

On Monday I'm taking a shot at Kurtz again, this time doing the monologue while polishing the closest I came to a pair of military boots, in order not end up just sitting rigidly in a chair, like a stuffed man.If you hang on, I'll tell you how that went. I'll also tell you more about how we work with ourselves in method class.

The boots, by the way, are by oxs, Italy. I bought them at Zanzibar, one of my favourite shoe shops, in Hegdehaugsveien, which together with Bogstadveien makes the most important shopping street for clothes and shoes and things in Oslo. As you can see, they are definitly not army boots. But the may pass as that at some distance.

Life and passion

Some people live busy lives because they live by their passion and have made it their work. Many more, I'm afraid, live their lives in a blur of activity that does'nt satisfy, because they once let their passion slip away from them, or even betrayed it knowingly and brutally.I did that once, and it left me numbed and stifled for many years. Because of that betrayal I don't think I could have been an actor even if I had tried back then, when I was young. There was so much emotion I had to keep in check, I would not have been able to give a living perfomance in any setting. My insides were so torn up and dark that I felt like I was caught naked in the spotlight when I was with friends or at a party and heard John Lennon sing "One thing you can't hide, is when you're crippled inside."

Whatever light came to me, it could'nt quite break through, and things were muddled. For many years it did'nt get better. Darkness just grew, and I could'nt get a hold of the strands of light and colour that flew by.

When I was divorced about ten years ago, not to say a bad word about my ex wife, things started clearing up. Fundamentally.

I set myself a goal then, and I felt I once again that I had a future, something I had'nt felt for years. I'm now a different person then the one I was then, so I've come a long way in these years. And around this last christmas, things came to a head. This summer may very well be the summer that I leave the sidetrack I've been running down some decades, and get back where I belong.

Secret desires

When I was a young man, I was confused about basic things in life. One thing I did that confused me, was that I went to the local public library and looked at VOGUE. I don't even understand why they kept such a magazine in that dry place. Maybe one of the librarians secretly dreamed of a modeling career in Milano.

Anyway, this activity, which was my secret, confused me. I was intoxicated by that special scent from the glossed paper and the pictures of the beautiful women in those fantastic clothes. And my desire was to be woman. I still haven't come to terms with that desire.Portrait of the blogger as a young man.

Another secret desire I had was to be an actor. I did'nt know why, and i still don't. All I know is that I made the wrong choises, meaning that I never even considered trying to become an actor. So now the conflict between my day job and my betrayed desires frame my life. I have to break out of that frame. That is my quest. And though my day job is interesting in many ways, it will not be given room here. Sygnazeit is for my future in art, and a remedy against mistakes made.

I'm a lucky man though...
Simen and Hedda, the most important people in my life, Piazza Navona, October 2008.

But even with children like these, I am struggling. Sometimes my emotional life feels as distinct and organized as this... Which can be fascinating and intriguing. But I long for some more clarity. Just have to keep struggling...

The Teacher

Andreas Ribe is studying to be a film director, and we both attend Øyvind Frøyland's method acting class. Recently he made the short film "The Teacher". I had a small part in the film, and I loved working with Andreas. He uses improvisations extensively to develop the scenes and characters. I think all the actors felt they took part in creating the film, and we had a great day shooting at a school right here in my neighbourhhood

The film deals with the kind of group pressure that can make people betray their ideals, and by that, of course, themselves. I've been there, and it has been a real challenge to stop doing it. In order to show what it does to a persons soul, we were all made up like living dead...

Turid Rivertz Vatne Jonas Lautitzen (front) and Øyvind Kjeksrud played the leading characters.

Elisabeth Dorothea Gullerud

What it's all about

Sygnazeit will be be about beauty and art, because these things are so important in our lives. Yesterday was a bleak, early spring sunday in Oslo, and feeling slightly grey at heart my spirit was liftet by this window display by Edgar's, on Oslo west end shoping street Bygdøy Allé.

Obscure opening

Some nocturnals from the street where i live...for a start.