An attempt to take an arty photo in the hotel room mirror, after a party at the outrageously ornate Stockholm Governor’s Palace.
Hair, lips, suit. Everything else differs according to the viewer.
The Tessin Palace is rather… what’s the word? Palatial. Painted ceilings and panelled walls dating back centuries. Pricelessly beautiful clocks, portraits of bewigged nobles, antique chez lounges in every endless room. Trompe l’oeil canopies above a mini-maze in the courtyard.
‘The law requires me to live in this palace,’ Governor Per Unckel says in his speech to the Poetry Festival people. ‘It is not a law I have much difficulty complying with.’ But he says this in a genuinely abashed way rather than boastful. I rather like him.
For some arcane reason, I spend most of the dinner discussing the work of the band The Fall, plus explaining the meaning of the English phrase ‘blotting your copybook’, of all things. The idea that artists are not allowed to do anything at all once they’ve created a perfect work. The apparent pointlessness of Orson Welles’s other films, after he’d made the greatest film ever made. Paul McCartney unlikely to play a concert without some number from the band he was in over four decades ago. That Joseph Heller quote about not doing anything as good as ‘Catch 22’ (‘Yes… but neither has anyone else.’) Compare to Ray Davies:
Rude hack interviewing the Kinks frontman about a recent tour: How can you bear to crank out ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘Waterloo Sunset’ for the millionth time?
Ray Davies: That’s like asking an actor if he ever gets tired of Shakespeare.
That’s the way to do it.
***
I speak to a local poet, Sofia Stenström, born and raised and living all her life in the city. She says this is the first time she’s been inside the historic palace. And I remember how I’ve still never been inside Buckingham Palace.
Discussed with Niklas and Ylva about how so many Swedish pop acts write and sing their songs in English. From Abba onwards. How often is the complement repaid, I ask? Which UK acts have recorded songs in Swedish?
Robyn Hitchcock did one. In addition to predicting a Swedish pop star via the spelling of his name. The Stranglers, too. Big in Sweden, they did a Swedish number. Any more? Do email in.
I’ve hereby sworn to record a new song in Swedish myself. It’s the least an English artist invited to Sweden more than a few times can do.
***
Niklas says I should have called the previous entry ‘Dickyn’.
***
Did another national TV interview this morning. Spoke about dandyism as decadence (cue the absinthe) and dandyism versus decadence, by way of Baudelaire’s great ecrivain-dandy quote (‘Dandyism is the last spark of heroism amidst decadence’). Considered various latter-day media definitions of decadence. From Facebook photos of drunken girls in the Daily Mail, to the New Burlesque club scene. Point me at a TV camera, and I’ll connect Tallulah Bankhead to Amy Winehouse at the drop of a post-modern trilby.
‘Are you a tragic figure?’ was one question.
Inescapably, I said. But the hours are good.
