five

I woke up early and watched the sunrise. Spent a while reading before breakfast. Kris loaned me a compendium of Orwell’s novels so I’m reading Coming Up for Air. In typical Orwell fashion the following passage hit me like a brick:

‘There’s time for everything except the things worth doing. Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you’ve actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you’ve spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading newspapers.’ George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

I last wrote a song 3 months ago, and I didn’t finish it.

After breakfast I helped Kris and Jon cut and sort a large pile of branches into firewood and compost. I always find simple work enjoyable, especially on clear and cold days.

Lunched. Packed. Cleaned. Left. Just moving from place to place in this country is a pleasure. The landscape is just how you'd imagine it from looking at a map: hundreds of little lakes, winding fjords and peninsulas; painted wooden houses built precariously on hillsides; twisting roads meandering around rocks and lakes then suddenly diving into hills. Of course it gets more boring when you get onto the highway but it’s still pretty good. Thore tells me it’s much the same in the west only better and with mountains. Can’t wait to get over there.

We stopped off at Kris’s brother’s place on the way back (I’ve now met the whole family). He’s an artist and lives with his wife and dog in a town I can’t remember the name of. He has an awesome music collection.

We took a walk down to the harbour. Munch use to live here and we saw the pier from which ‘Girls on a Bridge’ was painted. Petter took us to his studio where we spent a while looking at his work. It’s a fascinating thing to have an artist show you his work and explain it to you and to let you pick his brains about it.

Later Petter said he became an artist because he didn’t want to make money. I identify with this and have felt the same way for several years. I know dozens of folk who feel this way too. Is this what capitalism is producing, generations of people who couldn’t give a toss for material wealth? I hope so.

Kris borrowed a few paintings for his flat. We trekked up the road in a single file carrying them under our arms. Beautiful sky. I tried taking a photo but don’t think it’ll come out well. I’m becoming more reliant on photoshop to make up for my lack of a decent camera. Which is stupid.

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