All hallow’s eve in Norra churchyard, Solna, Sweden. The picture is from 2007 and was taken digitally (Minolta A200, tripod mounted, image editing in GIMP). There is no physical piece of film that bears witness to that moment, only a matrix of numbers (see 20th August). I have nonetheless the exact time and date and this rather blurred, reduced copy will be distributed throughout the the connected world. In that sense the picture has become immortal. There will at least be copies somewhere in the world as long as there are computers on the earth. The file format, JPEG, is an open standard the definition of which can be read in an vast number of places, so it is almost certain that the matrix can be read as an image into the infinite future. Or rather, for so long as there are computers on the Earth and human beings who can look at the pictures.

How strange. The sentence I’ve just written sounds like the ending of that most well-known of the Shakespear sonnets, No. 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”. In the conclusion of the poem are these lines.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st So long as men can breath and eyes can see So long lives this and this gives life to thee.		Men Din eviga sommar skall ej blekna eller förlora ägande av den skönhet du skänkte ej heller ska döden skryta med att du vandrar i hans skugga när i eviga rader du mot tiden växer Så länge människor kan andas och ögon kan se så länge lever detta och detta ger liv till dig.
		(egen översättning)

In my interpretation “this” in the last line refers to the poem itself. This very structure of words gives life to the beloved in an eternal future, as long as there are the living who can read it. A poem like this bears a sharp likeness to a digital image. The words represent images, sensations and emotions, experiences and life itself. At the same time the words are represented by a finite set of symbols and ordered in a defined verse-form. It is compact and can easily be copied without change. An image represented by a matrix of counting-numbers in an openly-defined format has these same attribute. That which gives life to both the image and the poem is, however, not just form and technique but but those who observe them and appreciate their art.

According to the latest statistics from Google, this website has at present only about 500 visitors each 24 hours but there will still be quite a few who see the pictures and many copies that are spread, like droplets in the digital oceans. If I disappear, they will remain, as will my things and the people who know me, have seen me, remember me. The digital representation is but one of many traces of my existence and probably not the most enduring.

All hallow’s eve is a time to remember the dead, a time for families to gather, a time of reflection, of melancholy, sobriety and peace. The tradition has disappeared in England, apart from as an item in the church calender, and there as here in Sweden, the churches are mostly empty. Of those I miss now and those for whom I still bear sorrow, none lie in the churchyards here. Yet I shall walk out and watch the lanterns and those who light them and I shall let my memories echo within me. Memories which are strengthened by photographs and other memories that are carried only in my body. Those of you who know me know who I remember now. We can let the words of the immortal bard hold us together.

So long as men can breathe and eyes can see
so long lives this and this gives life to thee.

[translated 091109]

It’s Sunday morning and I’m still thinking about something I did earlier this week, an event that was for me almost as disturbing as the first time I deliberately killed a wild animal, or to be more exact a pigeon. I’ll never forget how it fell, bouncing against the branches of the big pear tree, how it lay on the grass, its neck bloody and broken, its beak open and wings flapping feebly as if in an epileptic fit. And then the stillness, the open eye like a black glass bead staring up at me. Reflected in the lifeless bird-eye was a frightened teenage boy, holding his grandfather’s air-rifle. That was one morning in May, Shropshire, England, 1973. I remember the rifle, a BSA, 0.22, with telescopic sights.

This Tuesday I happened to cross a similar threshold of destruction. This time it wasn’t an animal I had slaughtered but a few old, sleeping machines: a TV-set, a pair of loudspeakers, a stereo cassette-deck and a scanner. All of them were in good condition and fully serviceable but I threw them in a skip for electronic scrap at the nearest recycling centre (ÅVC). To destroy working and usable machines is actually against my principles. To deliberately destroy and discard a thing that people have made with their hands is like destroying life, or at least a part of that life. Yet sometimes one is forced to kill and destroy and there is not much choice in the matter. I had no longer any use for these machines. I had advertised them “blocket” a national Internet auction site and I’d checked with the Salvation Army charity shops but there was no way for me to even give them away. I’m certain that somewhere in the world there is someone who would gladly receive these things and use them for several years to come. However, even in this age of advanced global communications, it was completely impossible for me to find them. Here in the most modern country in the whole world there was definitely no place for these four machines. Each one of them had become obselete and locally valueless, a waste of space.

Here’s a more detailed description of the goods in question.

• TV by Telefunken, made east Germany about 1985 “I remember my grandmother used to have on like that”
  - replaced by a 32 inch LCD-TV with HDMI etc.
• Stereo loudspeakers, Phillips, 1990, modest sound-quality, inherited 2007
  - never used
• Cassette deck, 1985, AKAI, silver, with analogue VU meters and 0.25” microphone inputs
  - hardly used since 2001, replaced by digital recording equipment
• Flatbed Scanner, Mikrotec E6, SCSI
  - rreplaced by a much smaller USB-based model, SCSI not supported by newer computers

By getting rid of these machines I recovered a good cubic metre of space in the cellar-store where I plan to install some bookshelves and a filing cabinet. What I’ve done with the old kit is perfectly acceptable. I can excuse myself and any possible users with the fact that I had no choice. Had there been a separate container for living, working electronics then I would have carefully placed the things in there. There is, however, no such means for giving away old machines to people who could use them. There seems to be few if any organisations that deal with re-use of appliances. Perhaps it’s only recycling of materials that can be run at a profit.

I don’t know what happens to all the scrap electronics in Sweden. Perhaps the waste is sold on and ends up being shipped out to some poor country where people work by hand to strip it and for example melt down circuit-boards for copper and lead. It could be that some of these appliances survive the journey and that somebody there manages to find them in a usable condition. I read that Greenpeace had mounted a GPS tracker in an old TV and traced it’s course to a bazaar somewhere in Africa. Things like that can happen sometimes.

It’s certainly a shame that we have no channel through which to send away complete, working devices. This is but one example of the waste of manufactured goods. Instead of being re-distributed and re-used such “waste” is merely by crude recovery of materials. To re-use whole objects is of course far less damaging to the environment. Unfortunately, however, it seems that no one even attempts to design products according to that simple principle. The rule is instead to “use and discard” and “replace everything”, because that’s the way the present economic machinery runs. At the same time it is precisely such short-sighted thinking that is the greatest threat to life on Earth. Global warming is just one indication of this wasteful and non-sustainable society. Others are chemical pollution, destruction of habitats and the exhaustion of material resources. If industrial develeopment was directed at the manufacture of more lasting products, such as electronic devices that can be tinkered with and repaired, then perhaps the world’s resources might just hold out. That would, however, require a great change in people’s understanding of what it means to buy, own and discard their possessions.

One thing I read recently gave me a crumb of hope that perhaps some contemporary designers and manufactures are moving toward sustainable times. The text in question was displayed at a well-known furniture warehouse in Barkaby, among the signs for their collection by the designer Anika Reutersward. Their products were declared as “Furniture to own, to love and to inherit” Well done, I say. We’ll buy that. Only let the same motif be applied in all manufacturing industries and we kan come a long way towards a sustainable society. Let us build things that last, machines that can be repaired, goods that one can be proud to own and keep and which can be used in several generations. If we but practice such principles then most of our environmental problems would be solved. Technology to own, love and inherit. With such there may yet be a future for mankind. Perhaps.

[Translated 091109]

About a week ago I wrote about the area of Haga park that’s going to be handed back to the Royal house. So far it’s only a smaller area of round the palace that’s been fenced in and you’re still free to walk through surrounding woodland. You might as well take stroll there while you’ve got the chance. These pictures were taken Saturday morning. You can see the side of the palace facing Brunsvik water and a favourite palce of mine by the statue of prince Frans Gustav Oscar, the musician. It felt good to stop and play a few tunes and hear the echo from the great broadleaved trees there.

It is of course a shame that we will soon lose access to this part of Haga park. Yet compared with other examples of domain loss it is probably not of such great significance. I will post more pictures from Haga in due course but I will make no protest against what’s been done there. There are other more important things I want to write about in this blog. I want to discuss other forms of arbitrary ringfencing of resources. For the most part it won’t be questions about the areas of natural beauty in Stockholm but of wider issues concerining language, science and technology.

A piper in the park. JS plays a 1975 Aulos Pipit 101

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This is a retrospective entry, 2010-02-10. The recording and pictures are from Saturday 2009-10-10, Västerlånggatan in Gamla Stan, Stockholm. I chanced to hear the lads playing at the same place a few weeks earlier and said I could treat them to a little web-space. Better late than never, here’s three tunes from the afternoon in question. Spår 1, kl. 16:15 Spår 2, kl. 17:05 Spår 3, kl. 17:11 Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Now we know just what part of Haga park is going to be fenced off as the princesses private estate. If you can’t read Swedish or don’t live in Solna that’s probably not very interesting. The point is that our elected government has handed over a great chunk of public parkland without so much as a by your leave. For most changes of land use there is a legal requirement to publish plans well in advance, allowing at least some pretence of democratic process.

Naturally enough the Royal Family have quite gladly accepted the gift. However, we the people, especially those of us who live in the neighbourhood of Haga, now have a good few hectares less in which we can walk and play. The princess and her family, when they are in residence, will live in their securely fenced in bubble unseen by any of their subjects. As good Solna neighbours let us then wish them well. In the meantime one should perhaps take stroll around the soon to be royal park whilst one still has the chance to do so.

Amusingly perhaps, the municipality have tried to console us by promising that the perimeter of the royal estate will have a smart new path. As if we hadn’t got enough gravel and tarmac to walk on. Only a city person could imagine that the promise of a well lit path could be an acceptable replacement the woodland and meadows of the old palace grounds.

On the Swedish blog. I’ve pasted in a copy of the last of several emails I wrote asking the various authorities what was going on. I was by no means the only citizen to register their concerns.

The letter in question, 21 June 2009, was to a senior representative of the national authority for government properities. The last two paragraphs are translated here.

My question is this: exactly which areas of Haga will be fenced off as the princesses private estate and what has been planned for the rest of the park?

According to the Town Hall all information regarding the Haga palace is now classified secret, by the order of the municipal administration. There are no drawings of descriptions which can be published. When the state and the municipality act like this, in secrecy, they awaken suspicion against themselves and the Royal family.

For me and for several thousand city residents the Haga park is one of our most highly valued resources. That applied especially to the great majority who have neither their own gardens nor recreational properties. If the government wants our respect and confidence then it would be appropriate for them to publish their plans in good time. So that the people can make their views known.

Your sincerely …