maybe something will come of it
Oslo 8. 5. 00
We discussed were to go, and talked about Moscow, that it would be nice to meet an artist there, and we talked about Sicily, the birthplace of the mafia. We talked about spas and zen buddhist parks, temples and mosques in Norway. But then we came across a woman that lives in Nesodden, a peninsula outside of Oslo, who offers other people healing. Since we wanted to make a journey and at the same time meet somebody new, that could give our journey a new dimension, rather than just our own view and experience of the target of our travels. We wanted to meet a person we could talk to. (We also heard about an elderly man from North Trøndelag that is a healer and a clairvoyant that woke our interest). First we rang Ellen Wallin in Nesodden and arranged an appointment to talk with her and at the same time undergo some healing. We thought we might get closer to our own culture by making a journey within our own country. We did not want to make a journey to a place that before hand would demand a thorough research of the culture and language, and then nevertheless discover that we are just moving on the surface. We also thought healing would involve a travel back inside ourselves, that it would make an interesting contrast to a physical journey.
e.
9. 5. 00
Yesterday we met up in Elisabeth’s studio to do the first photo shoot for the project. Today we met in the centre of Oslo to have sushi and discuss the following day. Neither of us wanted to be prepared in any peticular way for the appointment with Ellen Wallin. We agreed about being as open as possible. We have asked her to have a talk after the treatment, but we would rather not prepare any questions. An inner journey would probably generate questions by itself. When I came home I wondered if she would treat us simultaneously or separately. And how it eventually would feel to sit and wait while the other was being healed.
c.
13. 5. 00
I haven’t had enough time to write since we went to the healer 3 days ago. But today I was pushed into it by Elisabeth’s mail. Straight after we came from the healer we sat down in a café and talked about our impressions. We taped the conversation. Yesterday we met each other again and talked further of the experiences from visiting a healer and if those experiences still occupied our minds. We have different experiences after seeing Ellen Wallin. Elisabeth did not immediately believe in her, I believed in my own way. The hour-long conversation we had before the actual healing was slightly uneasy because I experienced that she had such a way of being present. It was not a negative situation for me, and it did not make me uncomfortable or tense. When she described her way of working and how and when she discovered that she had the gift I didn’t understand it completely, but I exempted it. She talked about seeing strangers sitting in her own livingroom, about glances into her earlier lives, about healing, grouphealing and remote healing, about space and about earth as the only planet in the universe where love can exist. (Love moves around the planet in waves, she said) And that the existence of the earth is threatened by the ecological crisis. This has caused powers from space to radiate from another sun down to earth in three places, the radiation comes in through a hole in the atmosphere down to a point over Egypt, The Netherlands and North of Norway. These rays will continuously be sent until 2003. Until then the earth must have understood the seriousness of the situation so that it can save it’s further existence. I don’t know if I believe in this, but I exempt that she has seen this and that she tells me about it. She also claimed that she could, if she wanted, easily take off and travel out in space, but that she wished to remain on earth for now and that she had to work hard every day to keep in touch with earth. She wanted to heal Elisabeth first and in the meantime I went for a walk around the area where she lived. I felt easy and positively excited. When I returned back to the house her husband was home and he immediately started telling me a lot of details about the new bathroom he had built. I was irritated, but nevertheless showed a polite interest in the topic. I really wanted just to be in my own world before the sánce. I knew nothing about healing before we looked up Ellen Wallin. And nor did I want to be prepare myself for the meeting.The day after we had called upon her I borrowed a book on healing at the library. The thought of reading it excites me, but I have not yet felt able to begin.
c.
14. 5. 00
I feel like describing Ellen Wallin. She is thin, with a slightly well defined and strong body. She has dark hair (coloured?) and her skin is sun-tanned. I can imagine she’s around fifty years old. She had narrow eyes and a small, narrow mouth. At first her presence seemed evasive, but is on the contrary very clear and quite pushy. I imagine her will to be as strong as her body. It was warm May weather and she was dressed in clogs, white tights and a white paper-like pilot vest with a zipper on the front with lots of pockets. She lives not only from healing, but also working with flowers. She lives in a terraced house with a small garden and a terrace at each side of the house. She lives with a man (is he the one she shares a daughter with?) that she describes as a pronounced stickler for order. There was an ashtray on the table in one of the terraces so I assume that she smokes.
When we met on Friday, Elisabeth and I talked about having a conversation with Ellen Wallin that we video-record. Then I suggested doing it in a place, which is neutral to all three and that we use several cameras and a professional camera crew. This recording could then be edited together with other pieces and become a documentary about a topic we still know nothing about.
c.
18. 5. 00
I think a lot. Nothing stands out when it comes to further plans for our project. I think some more time must pass so that the thoughts can relax.
c.
24. 5. 00
Today Elisabeth and I met up again to talk about what we are going to do. First at our favorite coffee place, Pascal and later we went to eat sushi. Our conversation floats well in a restaurant and after a while we became exited and disagreeing. I forgot what caused the disagreement. I asked Elisabeth before we left, but now, some hours later, I have forgotten it again.
When we were at Ellen Wallin’s, we talked about doing an art project that is about travelling and the reason we looked her up was to experience an inner journey. Then she asked us what we thought of when we used the term inner journey. Elisabeth said she did not think of anything specific, but I thought that I somehow would be able to meet myself.
c.
19. 6. 00
In two days we will make a recording with Ellen Wallin in the Botanical Gardens in Oslo. Big and small trees encircle the place we have found, and they stand so tight that it’s as though they create walls in a room. We are outside, but at the same time closed in. A director and a filmmaker named Ann Kjersti Bjørn will do the filming. The thought is that she will use her filmmaking experiences to sense the situation and sort of edit while she is filming. Ellen, Elisabeth and I will sit around a garden table and Anne Kjersti will move around us with a handheld camera.
Just before I went to sleep last night, I thought of a very good question as an introduction for Ellen. But today I have forgotten it. Trying to think back. How did Ellen comprehend what we talked about? And what did she think of our expectations to experience an inner journey? Is my thought of making an inner journey that it will lead to a meeting with myself, an indication of that everything we seek is within ourselves?
And I have several suggestions to questions in general that I want to ask:
How is it to work with something so concrete and so abstract at the same time? Is what she sees metaphorical in a different way than reality?
Is it developing for herself to heal others? Or has she other motives for doing so? Can she give concrete answers to if one should change job or place of living, get a partner and children? Or does she avoid giving concrete answers? Does the answers rather come to the individual indirectly or in other ways? Is healing an illness something different than to heal to develop and to make conscious? Can you get healing abilities by being healed? What is it exactly that she “sees” when she is healing? If she devotes herself completely to her “seeing” abilities, in what kind of world or surroundings would she be in?
c.
22. 5. 00
Yesterday we filmed the conversation with Ellen in the Tøyen Park. It rained a bit before we started. We decided to use an hour but we spent more time. What surprised me during the conversation was that Christel seemed so sceptical to what Ellen talked about but I was suddenly completely open for what she talked about. Last time it was the opposite. Ellen did most of the talking while Christel and I came with some questions from time to time. During the recording an eager bird, that I don’t know the name of, flew round the table and snatched some crumbs from Ellen’s plate. It came back after quite some time or perhaps it was another bird. It flew around Christel while she answered a question from Ellen about what she would have done if she saw an angel at the foot of her bed one morning when she woke up. The whole thing seems very spherical, abstract and ethereal. I don’t quite have the right word for what I feel about this. It’s quite weird. I’m starting to look forward to the editing of the film so that the whole thing becomes more materialised for me. When something is so abstract over a longer period of time I miss physical matter.
e.
24. 6. 00
I feel quite exhausted after the video recording with Ellen. There arised a resistance in me – I was before hand concerned with having a critical and journalistic view – but this only lead to the dialogue becoming static and disengaged.
When Elisabeth and I watched the recordings yesterday we discussed the possibility of rejecting all the material. It will be difficult to get something interesting out of it without cutting very roughly and then creating a totally different setting where we let go of the authenticity in the actual conversation. I feel now that we just have to accept that this was a failed attempt.
c.
2. 7. 00
Christel and I should actually have gone to Skjolden today, to have a look at the place were Wittgenstein had his cottage, but then Christel phones and says she has become ill and that we must postpone our journey for one day. We will leave early tomorrow. I have packed my video camera and my tripod to film the view W. had. I have read “the unknown diary” by W. and underlined the word sun where W. had observed it. I thought it would be nice to read these notes as voiceover, over the sequences of the view over Sognefjorden. The bus trip to Sogndal takes 7 hours and the trip further to Skjolden with bus a bit more than 1 hour. We assume we have to stay the night in a vandereshome in Skjolden and travel back down to Oslo with a night bus. I’m looking forward to going.
e.
5. 7. 00
I became ill and had to stay in bed when we decided to go to Skjolden. When Elisabeth and I met up some days later we decided that the trip to Skjolden had to remain imaginary. The same day we walked around in some souvenir shops and looked at postcards from Sognefjorden. Sunlit scenarios with tall mountains and deep fjords with apple trees in the foreground and snow on the mountaintops. But how is it there, midwinter?
c.
7. 7. 00
We are not going to Skjolden after all. At first I was disappointed, but after a while it felt fine. We will never get it together. We will never be able to go anywhere. I don’t really think Christel nor I have a special urge or need of making a journey. It all boils down to the fact that we sit in a sofa discussing a journey that never comes through. Or maybe we can talk about why we didn’t get it together. My rucksack is still in the living room, but it’s empty. I have unpacked it. I don’t think it’s problematic to the intentions of the project that we don’t go. Even though it is the idea. We are unfaithful towards the original idea. Some times I’ve thought that it bores me, the whole idea about us travelling. And it has sometimes appeared as a mild nightmare I don’t know the end of. The end has shown itself as a frustration. Something happened inside of me. Before I used to love travelling, but now I find travelling to be a torment. The only place where I want to go is to a café in Oslo were I can drink a cup of good coffee. Something I go almost every day. I like to see the same view every day. It doesn’t bore me.
e.
