intimate walk with Rebecca

This was Rebecca's first email: 
'I'd like to walk with you in Stockholm while you're here. I lack intimacy in my life and would find it interesting, though a bit scary, to spend time with someone who works with this as an artistic topic. I think the relation to the other is essential and am curious to see how this will feel and be addressed in a setting like this; a casual walk in the city of Stockholm with an artist whose topic is intimacy and myself who lack intimacy in my life.' 
In her second email she wrote: 
'what about Sunday? That would suit me! Is it ok to be anonymous or go under a fake name in your project?' 
This afternoon I tried to think a little bit about expectations and about what is at stake for me in the intimate walks project. Carola's email response prompted me to look again into the ethical implications of my research. What do I actually want to achieve with it? Am I really looking for intimacy? What do I take? What do I give? 
I'd been feeling foggy in my thinking.  Had slept in late and spent the afternoon at Artipelag, the private art museum out toward the archipelago where Kristina works. It's right on the water surrounded by forests. I had space in my head to take in the nature, taking in the art was a challenge though.

At 7pm I met Rebecca at Slussen in front of the flower stand, same place where I had met Carola, but the flowers were gone already this time. 7pm is sunset time. I was actually a bit tired from the whole day although it hadn't been such a long one. I felt languid and not terribly open to meet strangers. At artipelag out on the parking lot I had watched a young Swedish family for a long time while waiting for the bus. I was fascinated by the playful choreography of the three kids. How they clambered up on rocks, got their hands dirty digging in the earth and horsed around with their father was a very enjoyable spectacle and made me smile despite my melancholic mood. 

Rebecca arrived on her bike. I said I didn't really have a plan where to walk and after some negotiation she decided to leave the bike at the metro station and we walked eastward from Slussen to the cliff overlooking the bay. Rebecca was rather tired also. She had been trying to find somebody to teach her an animation program because she wanted to work with animation for a project. She is a visual artist and has recently finished the fine arts school in Stockholm. Rebecca was talking a lot and seemed a bit restless. I noticed that when meeting a stranger I tend to have difficulties to really follow and understand what that person is saying if they talk a lot. Suddenly I found myself talking also. I wanted to be more true to my impulses and not just play the accommodating intimacy host. So I tried to explain my questions and concerns about the project. After Carola's feedback I'd started to put into question my competence to make the intimate walk into a beneficial and interesting activity for both parties involved. Now in hindsight, I feel that it was good to express my doubts and concerns and to lay my cards on the table. I think this 'confession' of sorts came across as quite genuine and made Rebecca understand that I didn't have a very clear and thought-through concept as is often expected in the visual arts field. So while following my impulse to explain myself and express my current state of mind I noticed that Rebecca is a very good listener. And right there something had already changed on the intimacy barometer. There was another kind of connection and another kind of listening . . . 

As we were looking out over the bay, she showed me about 5 towers in different parts of the city and told me about a project for which she worked with young female singers who all stood on a different tower and sung a type of melancholic Swedish yodel. I had to think of Rapunzel. This yodel was traditionally sung by young women who were herding cattle. Across the bay there was an amusement park with a ferris wheel. I had to think of a short story by Haruki Murakami in which a woman gets stuck overnight in a ferris wheel and sees her own apartment from the gondola high in the air and watches herself making love with a stranger in her bedroom which freaks her out completely. 

We continued our walk and from listening to Rebecca speak I concluded that she is a bit of a workaholic like me. Or at least that work and projects are always the top priority. She expressed her wish to take more care of intimate friendships and I could relate to that. I also feel guilty for not keeping in touch with people and for normally putting work at the top of the list. She mentioned that she experiences a lot of anger and impatience coming from stress, but that she doesn't have very good tools to reduce stress in her life. She started to take some African dance classes, but she doesn't go regularly. We ended up complaining about the art market and the tough conditions and the pressure and competitive spirit and the whole spiel. It didn't feel very constructive. But it's a topic any two artists like to indulge in to feel more connected it seems. 

Eventually we found ourselves in the courtyard of some conference hotel with a nice lawn and some benches under trees (still overlooking the bay). The night was slowly falling. I felt like proposing some exercises. Either 10 minutes sitting in silence or singing together on the bench. Rebecca seemed happy to try them and chose to do the silent presence exercise first cause she found it more challenging. So we sat 10 minutes in silence being present. I felt her rather uncomfortable and tried my best to send out accommodating and friendly energy. We looked at each other in the eyes sometimes and cracked a smile ever so often. About halfway into the exercise the lanterns of the park went on. Twice we took a deep breath together because we noticed that we were both tensing up. Afterwards we talked. She confessed that it hadn't been easy but that with the time something relaxed. We decided to do the singing also. We looked over at the amusement park at the other side of the bay and sent some initially careful and then more and more full-bodied yodels, yowls and improvised melodies into the night of the city. It felt very nice to do and fun. As we walked back to Slussen I think we both felt tired in a more fulfilled way.