My main project here is to work on a new script which is a sort of comedy about Swedish playwright August Strindberg and Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen meeting in the afterlife… Hilarious stuff, right?
However, this proved a much harder task than I imagined, for many reasons that I will explain another day, but the main one being that I don’t know as much about them as I’d like. I feel that I need to do so much more research, but there’s not really a lot of time left for that… So in those days when I am unable to write due to sheer panic of not being able to write anything, I am having fun with a lighter, easier idea, which is a very short documentary about Swedish identity, which consists of asking Swedish people just three simple questions about Sweden and how they view Swedish people like themselves.
Today the day was rainy and not so conducive to long walks in the woods, and I was a bit tired from the long day yesterday at Arholma, so this time I just took the bus and went to Älmsta, first to the public library and then to the local technical school, and managed to obtain a few very funny, interesting interviews. Hopefully there will be other interviews during the next few days, around here, and in Stockholm too.
You will be able to watch the full film when it’s ready, but for now, I think my main impression is that Swedish people think that their main quality is being friendly and nice, and their main defect is… being friendly and nice, too. In the sense that they can either be naive, or insincere, not saying what they really mean. But we will see how it goes as it progresses. I personally cannot say too much about the Swedish character, having been just for very a short time in the country, and having seen more birds than people so far here at Björkö…
Since I did not have time to take too many pictures today, I will leave you with a few stills of the future documentary, if a documentary it can be called — it’s really more an impressionistic portrayal of how Swedes view themselves, without being too deep about it.
