


"Wake up. Wake up Donnie." Hardly the way we had imagined opening our dialogue with the Singularity but we elected to take the plunge and improvise so we must live with it.1 At least we have the ball rolling and I suppose the time travel reference is apt. You know we had not intended to do any of this today. As I am feeling a little ill the plan was to pass the time reading until my daughter finished her short school day so we parked up at a little lane we know which is officially entitled Södra Nånö Byväg2 but we call water plant lane. It's a quiet place to read but it also looks out to a marshy body of water surrounded by some very charming perimeter effects3. We are reading The Castle4 which we have read before many times and I am once again reminded how it is somehow an apt book for foreigners living in Sweden trying to navigate the dreaded Janteloven5. I would recommend it also to any British artist seeking funding in these lands. Perhaps we should apply for the Working Grant this year as if we were K. seeking an interview with Klamm!6 Before you ask incidentally, our reading round7 that got us through the election last season has not been completed and of all the books in the round we finished only the Dickens, hence the numerous nods in Dane Bowers which we couldn't resist then but if we were writing now may not have offered.
As we sat in the car reading we witnessed a slow metamorphosis of the scene in front of us from silhouetted shapes just visible in the thick morning mist to a chorus of splendidly toned colour effects which related the sulphur of the ice, the blue of the bank of trees, the maroon of the tree foliage, the pale yellow of the sky and the ochre grass poking through the white fore. Revealed very slowly as the mist cleared and the sky brightened, we kept our eye on the scene until we were moved to act but of course we had no equipment for painting. We did however have the drawing board and we happened to have a smart phone which my daughter was using for music, so in short order it all came together and we pressed the button. The rest proceeded much as our previous Wretched Painter videos, in slow boiled reflection, a pinch of Doing, and a cube of stock farce but we make no apologies and we are aware that this is about as watchable as Empire8 but we're not doing it for the subscribers either.
It turned out at 30 minutes during which we did at least introduce ourselves to the Borg and explain something of our rationale, and we even took the Borg for a ride in the car! Of course it is not necessary for you to watch all of these with any great focus, unless you could get some assistants to do it.9 And I assume that you will not be offering commentary. We will try to keep a record of anything that crops up of relevance to the Doing and the DS.
The result of all this was three simple sketch plans for a painting which we hope to take tomorrow before the ice melts and the sulphur effect disappears.
With the ball rolling,
John
1 "Wake up Donnie" is a line from a science fiction film called Donnie Darko from 2001.
2 That's near the tractor museum just past the anchor.
3 John refers to a distant view of trees as 'the perimeter'.
4 Franz Kafka's novel about the mysterious authorities of a small village.
5 The law of Jante is a set of rules articulated in a work by Aksel Sandemose called A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks about a small Danish town of Jante. It is a fictional work but the laws of Jante appearing in the book are thought to actually express egalitarian characteristics of Nordic countries. It is common for forefingers like John to see the laws of Jante in the extreme negative and as an 'explanation' of sorts. The 10 laws of Jante are:
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You're not to think you are anything special.
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You're not to think you are as good as we are.
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You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
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You're not to imagine yourself better than we are.
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You're not to think you know more than we do.
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You're not to think you are more important than we are.
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You're not to think you are good at anything.
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You're not to laugh at us.
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You're not to think anyone cares about you.
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You're not to think you can teach us anything.
6 An authoritative gentleman of the castle who K. pursues unsuccessfully for a meeting to discuss his situation and work as a land surveyor.
7 See Dignity Scholarship Season 2 Work 43: The Snowflake.
8 Possibly a reference to the Andy Warhol film, Empire, in which a slow motion view of the empire state building is shown for 8 hours.
9 We are happy to watch the videos.