Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing

I arrive in Oslo absolutely exhausted but the wonderful Anna Perry picks me up from the station and takes me back to Etterstad Garden Colony where she lives during the summer, cooks me a wonderful meal and introduces me to the colony.  She contacted me a couple of years ago on homeexchange as she wanted to bring her daughter to London. She said she couldn’t leave Oslo as she had to organise children’s activities for the Colony festival - Hargelarm (which means garden din!) - that weekend. But I should come and stay anyway and come to the festival.  Her neighbour lent me her hytte or cabin in the end and I just rested for 5 days and hung out in the garden. Etterstad is wonderful.  Its a cross between an allotment and a housing co-op with a 70’s hippy commune atmosphere but clean and beautiful.  They each have their own garden with a cabin to live in but run events as a community.  There is a wonderful utopian socialist feel to the place.  The children who share all the space in their playing, are the most well-balanced I have ever met.  Everyone is really friendly but respectful of your personal space and its just lovely.

One of the members, Anne Mette Moe a landscape architect with a wonderful cabin, took me to the Henie Onstad Art Centre in her car to see the Schwitters’ room there. Its outside Oslo and I would not have had the energy to make it otherwise.  I really enjoyed being back with the work of Schwitters and being somewhere that recognises his importance.  It was strange in Molde as there was no mention of him in the town anywhere though that will change next year.  

The door from the Schwittershytte is in the gallery at Henie Onstad and they also have some collages and landscapes including the painting of the little cabin in the previous post which is titled the Djupvasshytte.  It isn’t - its another building just up the road. I also watch a film made for the gallery about Schwitters which is really good and makes a lot of visual references to his roving eye with the ladies which makes me laugh!  The many images of bicycle wheels reminds me that I really must get in touch with Sylvia Hallett - a wonderful musician who plays bicycle wheel with a bow and also hardanger fiddle a large Norwegian violin with extra strings that has a very haunting sound that will be great for the fjord shots in my film.  She’s playing our gig Mopomoso in September when I get back.

I have a quick meeting with the new curator at Henie Onstad and tell her about my project.  It would be a perfect place to show my film though as they have an established audience for experimental music already as they put on concerts. My friend Dennis Greenwood the dancer performed there with the Richard Alston Dance Company years ago and he says its wonderful. Henie Onstad Centre.

That night Anna takes me to Cafe Mir and the Blow Out festival of free improvised music.  It is just like being at the Vortex only everyone is Norwegian.  I meet the painter Terry Nilsson-Love who is English but used to live in Molde.  He says its very quiet. Its great to be with artists and musicians again and be introduced to people. Great evening’s music with Ken Vandermark, Johannes Bauer, Raymond Strid, etc.  I put a little film of Børre Mølstad and Per-Åke Holmlander playing an improvised tuba duet with assorted farty noises that am I am sure Schwitters would have loved on Youtube.  I didn’t get the chance to ask their permission so I hope they don’t mind.

The next day I realise I seriously have to rest or I am going to have an M.E  relapse. Decide to spend the day at Etterstad which is great as the festival is on.  The artists in the colony open their cabins to show their work and the many musicians play in a day long concert of wonderful, professional ska, soul, political folk, ironic Brechtian cabaret type songs (I was wrong about Norwegians they can rock!).  Its just like my old socialist days when I organised benefit concerts.  Political activists, tattooed and pierced radical lesbians, mother earth types, actors, performers, artists.  And there are lots of seriously cool and beautiful teenagers, including the band Els Meg i Morgen (Love Me in the Morning) who are a bit like the Velvet Underground, really talented, original songs, all under 19 and will definitely go places. Had a great time and made a little video for the Colony as a ‘thank-you for having me’ present.

I think of how it must have been a bit like the Berlin Dada-ists for Schwitters and the art scene he missed so much in Germany.

I drive up into the mountains from Andalsnes through a great zigzag road full of hair-raising bends called the Trollstigen (Trolls’ Ladder - this is troll country) which Schwitters painted for his tourist pictures. He came on the public bus, but there are now many coach tours and, even on a rainy day at the end of the school holidays, its pretty busy.  But for me the rain is great as the waterfalls were massive and the clouds made for more interesting images than nice sunny days.  I really enjoy this drive but I keep saying to myself – its just like the Lake District, only bigger. This drive is just like Hardnott Pass. I can see over and over again that Schwitters would have felt at home in the Lake District.  And even though the people may not have appreciated European modernism in their artistic tastes – the Cumbrians are wonderfully funny and eccentric.  They invented gurning (pulling ugly faces – there are annual competitions and lying competitions)  and they produced Stan Laurel after all.  I am not sure that Norwegians would have appreciated Schwitters’ sense of humour. They seem very serious.  And they don’t flirt.  Schwitters was a massive flirt and more.

I managed to get hold of the director of the Molde Jazz Festival on the phone yesterday but it turned out to be his mobile and he was on holiday in Nice!  But I told him about my film and sent him an email with a link to the blog and to my Youtube site which has all my films with musicians.  I am missing them.  I work with guitarist John Russell running the UK’s longest running free improvisation night “Mopomoso” at the Vortex Jazz Club in London.  This weekend is John’s annual festival “Fete Quaqua” where he invites about a dozen chosen musicians from all over the world to improvise in varying combinations over 3 days.  He can pull in very good musicians even though there is next to no money. Its this weekend and BBC Radio 3 are recording the second day for broadcast on Jazz on 3.  I wish I could just teleport myself Star Trek style for a couple of nights to the Vortex.  But instead I am going to Oslo tomorrow for Paal Nilsson-Love’s festival at Café Mir which actually looks pretty good too.  I know some of the musicians involved.  Paal’s Dad the painter Terry Nilsson-Love has been writing to me for a couple of years now to say how much he likes my Youtube site.  I hope to finally get to meet him this weekend.  I filmed Paal last year at the Vortex with Mats Gustafsson.  There is quite a lot of Mats on my Youtube (link on the right) site as I think he’s brilliant.

I pick up a couple of young Germans who are hitch-hiking and take them to Geiranger.  They have been walking high up in the mountains from hut to hut.  They said it was very hard though because of the rain. Geiranger is very like Ambleside, the fjord itself is a Unesco World Heritage site – I filmed it last week from the Hurtigruten Ferry.  Everyone else on the boat was at the front but I filmed some great patterns and shapes in the mist from the back of the boat (I know these are the wrong terms – aft is it?)

I continue up from Geiranger to the Djupvasshytte – a mountain lodge that Schwitters often stayed in when he painted landscapes, overlooking a lake - or a tarn, as they would say in Cumbria, as at 1,038 metres its of high altitude.  You can just see the hytte on the left in this picture.

This word hytte is a strange one.  The literal translation is hut.  But it seems to cover tiny little fishing shacks on the edge of a fjord (like on Hjertoya) but also massive mountain lodges like this one.

I had been told the Djupvasshytte wasn’t very nice, so that and the weather made me decide to stay just one night.  But its in the process of renovation and actually its rather wonderful.  My room is great. It overlooks the lake and has windows that open fully.  So at 6.30 this morning I was filming the light on the lake as the sun came up.  In my pyjamas. Last night I curled up in a fantastic big bed and watched The Way Back on my laptop.  It’s a Peter Weir film about a group of Polish prisoners who escape from a Soviet labour camp and cross Mongolia, Tibet and the Himalayas to get to India.  With the mountains outside it seemed very appropriate.  I felt very cosy and remembered some of the beds I slept in in the Himalayas last year (a thin bit of foam on a home-made wooden platform in a drafty wooden shed deep in snow.)

The sky has clouded over now and there are interesting shadows on the lake.  It changes all the time. Dark, light, blue, green, grey, white.  Last night I went out to film before the light went completely (the rain had stopped) and found the exact viewpoint of the painting of Helma at the Djupvasshytte that made me cry.

I then go up to the peak of Dalsnibba (4,843 feet) a nearby mountain.  By car I confess. Its a major tourist destination and very busy. But its obviously a place Schwitters went to to paint, as all the horizons and viewpoints look very familiar.  I groan at having to pay the equivalent of £10 for the toll road but actually have to admit that it is totally wonderful, and absolutely worth every penny.  I film lots of clouds soaring into the air, snow lines and bits of a glacier, waterfalls and edges of rocks.   Coming back down I see the little brown wooden house that is in one of the well known paintings.

I am now however exhausted both emotionally, physically and creatively and in serious need of some artistic company. I decide to drive back to Molde in one go and fly to Oslo the next day where I think I can have a rest and warmer weather. I’ve also arranged to meet some musicians as I’m having withdrawal symptoms from lack of music.  I’m going to stay with an American woman called Anna Perry who contacted me through www.homeexchange.com a couple of years ago.  (I often do home exchanges - its a great way to travel) I didn’t want to exchange then, but did this time.  She wrote and said she has to stay in Oslo this weekend and can’t exchange but would I like to stay with her anyway (she’s looked at my website and decided she fancies meeting me).

Now back in Molde having my own private one person wrap party.  I’m in the Fjordstuor Hotel again which is massively expensive but very nice and wi-fi in my room.  And I’m going to have mussels and beer on the balcony brought by room service.  I’ve finished filming in Norway. Oslo tomorrow.

Tuesday. After a really good few days on Hjertoya I took the weekend off and went to stay with an English/Norwegian man called Bertie Somme in Hustad on the north coast. I met him through couchsurfing. It was a much more remote place and I really liked being out in the wild country. Hot weather as well. Great food as Bertie fishes all the time. So arrived to halibut and then we went fishing the next day and caught a massive cod and a haddock which we also ate. There were some friends staying from Sweden – so it was nice to hang out with other people.

Yesterday (Monday) I went to the Romsdal Museum to meet Terje Thingvold who invited me to stay on Hjertoya island. He was on holiday last week. I was wrong about the art work inside the hut going to Oslo. It is staying in Molde and they are making a reproduction hytte to hold the work at the museum. This will open next year. Also the white card on an old box was actually protecting some collage work that is still in the hytte. I wondered if I would have asked to film it, had I known. But I would have to get permission from the Schwitters estate, as it is still in copyright. I have made a decision not to feature any of Schwitter’s work in my film as its not a documentary, I can’t do it without permission, and I am not sure I would get it as I am making an art work in its own right. I used to make arts programmes for TV so I do have some experience of this.

Meanwhile - Terje told me that next year’s Molde Jazz festival is going to have a Schwitters theme to coincide with the opening of the repro hytte. I really should have met the director of the Molde Jazz festival while in town. Wonder if there is still time? But for now I am stuck in heavy rain and cloud in Andalsnes after a night in the youth hostel. I’m on my way to the Djupvasshytte - a mountain lodge that Schwitters often went to, to paint his landscapes. But its so wet and cloudy you can’t see anything. I’m due in Oslo on Friday for a free improvised music festival…

I rented a car from Rent a Wreck in Molde. It is. Though it goes well enough it is very scratched and a bit dirty. All the info is in Norwegian and I can’t work out how to open the petrol cap! Its great to have a car though. Could not possibly have done this without one.(And it turned out to be very, very cheap though I never met a single human being in the transaction - just a key in a box and a code to open it by email.)

I’m here now to spend the night and its very cosy.  Espen has lit the wood burning stove and the living room is very warm. I’ve made my bed upstairs and can find my way when I get tired without a torch, though its light until about 10.30pm at the moment. That’s my bed-time anyway here. I am now alone on the island which is great.  I’ve just been for a walk to the other end where the mountains are covered in snow in the distance and there are lots of interesting mushrooms.  (I remembered to bring insect repellent this time.  I was bitten to death in the Lake District).  

It is wonderful knowing I am alone here.  I am really a perfect person for a desert island type situation.  Its my idea of heaven. I thought I would have been happy to camp but I have to remind myself that I am 55 and have quite a few health problems.  So the bed is great.

I spent this afternoon filming what is left of the interior of the Schwittershytte which no longer has art work in it – that has been moved to the Romsdal Museum in Molde for conservation.  I will go there next week just to have a look.  But what is extraordinary is that the hut is so small.  How KS, Helma and Ernst all lived there is hard to imagine.  For a start off the roof is so low I kept hitting my head and I am not that tall.  But its about 3 metres square in total with 2 bunk beds built in.

 I was very pleased at how much I managed to get some interesting quite abstract shots of light, debris, textures of plaster and wood, etc.  As well as quite nice light coming in through the windows.  Also the exterior is very interesting as it has a grass roof which lots of flowers growing on it. And the wood has some interesting patterns in the grain.  I am using the old big camera for the wide shots and the tiny HD one for the extreme close-ups and macro shots of textures and patterns – mainly because I can get in much closer hand-holding it. There is still a little corner that does have some of the original installation very similar to the Merzbau in Hanover with the distinctive cadmium red that has not faded at all.

One thing that is very obvious to me is how much Schwitters must have been recreating this island paradise - that he loved so much and associated with Helma – when he was in Elterwater in the Lake District. The 2 barns or huts are very similar.  The one in Elterwater is much bigger and only ever made as an art work not a home.  But there are very obvious similarities in the landscape around the two barns, the mountains, the lakes, the flowers and trees.  I can’t help but remember that essay on art and trauma – can’t remember who by at the moment – that talks about repetition - referencing Freud.  About the compulsion to repeat in order to heal the trauma. I am very aware of the fact that Schwitters was both traumatised at the loss of his home where he made the Merzbau in Hanover, but also bereaved as Helma had recently died and he never got the chance to say goodbye.  I saw the paintings of Helma that he painted from memory when interned on the Isle of Man.  They made me cry in the Victoria and Albert Museum library and I had to go for a cup of tea in the garden to recover. Many people who are refugees identify with Schwitters.  I have always felt like a refugee in my own country – which may be why I travel so much - and now I know I also identify with the loss, the bereavement. Also, I am not aware of any writings on this idea but the first thing I said to the keeper Rob Airey when I saw the Merzbarn Wall in the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle was - “But its got art nouveau bits in it!”.  Why would an artist who came out of a constructivist aesthetic make art nouveau work?  Surely his contemporaries in the German art world in the thirties would find it very decorative? I can’t help but wonder if the curly motives he put in the Merzbarn wall were a reference to the architecture in Norway.  It was all a compulsion to make a memory of Norway. (None of it exists anymore in Molde though – it was bombed to bits during the war and is now all 50’s/60’s modernism.)

Banal footnote - When I feel homesick when I’m travelling I re-create my living room with my laptop. I always have a TV series on my laptop for moments when I miss my home and just want to chill out in front of the TV.  I watched an entire series (24 episodes) of Grey’s Anatomy in Nepal last year as there were so many power cuts and all we could do was get drunk with a group or go to bed and watch TV on my laptop if the battery was charged.  I really want to watch the next episode of “Treme” (great New Orleans based drama about musicians after Hurricane Katrina) on my laptop but I am aware that I only have one battery charge and I should save it for the blog tomorrow.  Mmm, a dilemma…

Just got a phone call from home which was quite a shock.  No electricity but the mobile phone signal is excellent of course.  

2nd day -

I woke up to beautiful blue skies, and warm sunshine and energy. I feel great. I go and record bird sound while just staring at the lake and how beautiful this place is. Then I set off up the hill along the path above the hytte.  (That’s Norwegian for hut or shed by the way). Its very like the Lake District in many ways - pine trees, bilberry bushes everywhere, no bracken, but lots of fungi, crows, both black and hooded. Same sounds. Noisy crows. Also lots of swifts and seagulls, cormorants, and a flock of herons that I never managed to film or photograph.  You don’t get that in the Lake District. 

Then I explored the other side of the island which looks towards the mainland and the mountains. The driftwood and the ladderwrack seaweed which is bright yellow and orange. I hadn’t had a shower as there is no running water here, just the well.  So when I saw the sign saying it was a naturist beach I took my clothes off and went for a swim. (There was no-one around anyway). I nearly died of cold, but it was fantastic!

That night I eat mushroom biryani with chanterelles picked here and the biriani brought from the U.K.  I highly recommend Ashoka long-life boil in the bag punjabi food when travelling.  Its dirt cheap and very authentic and my local corner shop in London sells it.

Day 3

(I’m now writing this up from my hand written notes at the Molde Fjordstuer Hotel as I did watch Treme and had no power left.  Resorted to pen and paper with the blog.)

When you write a proposal for an art project, either to get a gallery interested or to get some funding, you have to invent what you are going to do, to a certain extent, because you really don’t know what you are going to find until you do it. You do a lot of research, but you never really know what it is going to be. On this occasion it wasn’t easy to find out what I would be filming.  At both the Merzbarn and the Schwittershytte it was pretty hard to find out what I would see without actually going there. I got conflicting information about both to be honest.  But on both occassions it was way better than I imagined.  The light was mysterious, the stones looks liked they held a lot of stories, the atmosphere was still there.

Here on Hjertoya, looking over the bay, with snow covered mountains on the other side, I feel enormously lucky to be able to come here and make this work. To be allowed to film inside this tiny little house that Schwitters, Helma and Ernst lived in together for a time.  And to experience for myself the landscape, the birds, the mountains, the fjords, the driftwood, the feathers, the sounds, the echoes, the colours, the textures, the patterns, the reflections, etc, etc, etc…

I hope my film will do it justice.

A massive thank- you to Terje Thingvold at the Romsdall Museum for inviting me and most of all to Espen Flobergseter for looking after me so well. They run a great fishing museum on the island which has some wonderful old boats. Only open in June and July.

With regards the hytte now - I understand that a facsimile has been made which will be at the Museum with the original art work, the plaster work and the collages re-installed from next July to coincide with the Molde Jazz Festival. Here’s more info and a video made of the original before the work was removed - from the Littoral website page.  Schwittershytte.

I spent my first day in Molde absolutely exhausted.  Damp conditions make the M.E worse and I am right next to the fjord.  But it was torrential rain as well.  So I just rested in bed and listened to radio 4 on the Wi-Fi.  Terrible riots in London.  Quite surreal to be in this very small and seemingly rather dull town (but it is August) and hear about people dying in the streets in London.  I assumed it was like when I was young left-wing activist and there were riots about police racism and oppression of black people on the streets.  We all took part in demonstrations.  But no - these young people are rioting in order to loot the shops of iPhones and laptops and designer trainers.  Its very disappointing.

I went for a walk and look around the shops for some warmer knickers as I will freeze in my little bikinis here!  I deliberately didn’t come when the jazz festival is on as I thought it would be too busy.  But there were some interesting people playing here.  I would have liked to have seen Joelle Leandre who I have yet to see live but I love her bass playing.  Paal Nilsson-Love was here.  I’ve filmed him in London (see my youtube site of lots of great free improvisation concerts – link on the right).  I’m going to a festival in Oslo next week that he is organising. 

The Romsdal Museum here in Molde have invited me to sleep on Hjertoya - the island that Schwitters lived on.  I don’t feel well enough to go today but Espen the caretaker is going to take me for a recce just to check the place out when it stops raining.  I move to a bigger room in the hotel that has a view over the fjord.  Its more expensive but I can film from there.  Schwitters stayed at the Alexander. I’m staying at the Fjordstuer Hotel which is the best in town apparently, and more than my budget,  but I feel so rough I am happy to be here.  I’ll stop moaning about the cost in a couple of days.  I’ve actually got a very generous arts council grant for this project which came through at the last minute thank God.

(later same day) Oh my God Hjertoya is wonderful!  I am so very, very lucky to be able to stay there.  There is accommodation there as they rent it out.  The place is seriously beautiful and the sun came out just as we went across the water.  The light was wonderful but of course I didn’t have my video camera.  (still felt too exhausted to do very much but Espen picked me up from the hotel jetty in front of my room).  Here’s some pics taken on my iPhone.  I could see all sorts of Schwitters like textures and colours.  And the driftwood here is the same as the painted pieces he made.

And here is the Schwittershytte the original.  Its like a miniature of the Merzbarn.  Both have sloping roofs and are bulit on sloping land.

Espen is waiting for me to go again to the island for the next couple of days.  No electicity and no internet.

I spent a couple of days very nervous about the weight of my bags and my ability to move them about.  I’m not going to say carry them as I don’t - I wheel them and depend on the kindness of strangers to lift them if I need to.  This happened on the flight here and the man concerned turned out to be Kanye West’s stage manager here on tour.  He has worked with Prince who I saw perform a few weeks ago and we had a chat about that.  He also used to work with Michael Jackson.  You meet interesting people in Norway.  He was so L.A. show biz!

Getting to the airport was going to be a bit of headache for me but in the end my brother picked up my bag and I stayed the night as his house and his neighbour took me to the airport as my brother was working. 

 Note for other mad former hippies who like synchronicity.  I was really nervous yesterday about travelling with such heavy bags.  (I decided to bring a professional tripod and the computer and the bigger camera, etc, etc.  I’m also going to my brother’s wedding in Stockholm at the end of the trip so have clothes for that as well as walking boots and waterproofs.)  I was waiting for some friends to arrive who are staying in my flat while I am away, then I was going to catch the number 7 bus round the corner.   I started to read the new Webster and Cardinal “Kurt Schwitters” book again.  There are some images of work I haven’t seen before.  One was a collage called “Like an Old Master”.  It has an old London bus ticket in it.  A number 7.  Schwitters used to live in St Stephens Gardens - a few streets from my house when he first came to London.  That’s where he first met Wantee.  It really made me feel confident.  I thought if he could travel all that way in his fifties with health problems and in much worse circumstances then so could I.  And I was about to go in the other direction and go from the number 7 bus route in Bayswater to Hjertoya.

 I felt better once I checked in the heavy bag.  The flight was easy.  I shared a cab to the port with a Norwegian woman which made it cheaper and easier than worrying about saving money and getting a bus. 

I’m now sitting in the viewing lounge of the Hurtigruten - the cruise ship I decided to take from Bergen to Molde.  Its not really my cup of tea as it’s a “luxury” cruise ship (similar aesthetic to the Langdale Country Club in Elterwater – ie. 80’s shopping mall) but the route and the company are the same one that I assume KS and Helma took when they first came to Norway and took a boat from Bergen to Molde, so I thought it might be nice to see the scenery which is supposed to be stunning. 

Here’s a self portrait taken in the mirror on the ceiling!

I can’t afford a cabin (£350 for one night!) and I have no idea if I will manage to get any sleep.  Its chucking it down at the moment so sleeping on a sun lounger on the deck doesn’t seem an option. But I don’t think there will be any problem with filming on the deck as its deserted.  I’ll be there at 5am if the skies clear.

I took this late at night

 Day 2

I take back everything I said about 80’s shopping mall aesthetic.  The thick pile carpet was wonderful to sleep on and I actually had quite a decent night’s sleep on the floor of the viewing lounge along with lots of other people too poor to book a cabin.  It was fun.  There was a French family next to me and we chatted.  I speak French and somehow always seem to end up with French people or French Canadians when I travel.  Last year in Nepal I spoke more French than English.

During the night we went out to sea and the boat really reeled about.  Got a bit sea-sick but in the morning the hot-tub on deck and a cup of ginger and lemon tea sorted that out.  Its fun doing this on the cheap as I brought a really nice picnic from London (chicken salad).  And this morning I had a muesli bar for breakfast.  I’m not paying the astronomical prices here yet.  I will have to eventually though I guess.  Still, won’t spend much on Hjertoya.  I’ve brought lots of camping food.  I need to lose some weight anyway.  (It’s the first time in my life I have been overweight and I don’t really feel like I’m in my own body.) 

 We are now getting to the serious mountain and fjord area and there is snow on the peaks.  Its very nice.

and it started to rain heavily but I got a picture of a rainbow.

The boat was late and I got into Molde absolutely exhausted and forgot to post this the next day.

Its official – I can now go public.  My film “Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing” has now become an official Cultural Olympiad commission (the arts festival for the Olympics in London next year) with an Arts Council grant attached.  Phew!  I can now afford to breath again.  And stay in a hotel occasionally in Norway.

Here’s the press release 

Massively busy organising the trip as I leave in 3 days. 

Amy Winehouse has died.  I watch her parents on TV looking at the flowers and tributes to her and totally feel for them.  But also know that they may well feel relieved now as watching someone commit slow suicide (which is effectively what she has done) is complete hell.  And there is nothing you can do to stop it.  What with the Oslo island massacre its been a weekend of lots of bereaved people on TV.  Thinking that this is what got me walking again after being too ill to do it. 

My best friend, and hugely erratic on and off lover, Nik Houghton committed suicide 5 years ago after a life of bipolar disorder made worse at the end by drug problems.  He was one of the first people to write critically about artists’ video in the 80’s and he was very influential in my decision to go to art school after the road accident that damaged my health.  He supported me so much creatively and I miss him like hell.  In spite of the terrible depressions, he was the funniest, kindest, most supportive person I have ever known.  But in the end I had about 5 years of dealing with hospitals and trying to stop him being sectioned (forcibly detained) and then trying to get him sectioned and failing. In between there was lots of crazy behavior which was sometimes also very creative.  He was a performance artist known as John E. Cashmoney (a failed country and western star). Hilariously funny. Great singer.

But to commit suicide was his life’s ambition and he succeeded. He was totally calm and peaceful and looked beautiful  when he left my house to ‘pick up his mail’.  That afternoon he jumped from the 21^st floor of his tower block.

After the numb adrenalin fuelled period of dealing with the police, the mortuary, his friends, his family, organising his funeral - I fell apart physically and emotionally.  After a month at my Mum’s in Yorkshire, I managed to drag myself to a youth hostel in a little village in Crete called Plakias that I know very well.  It’s a great place.  I could be alone when I needed to be but never lonely.  I was frightened to sleep alone and liked being in a dormitory with healthy, sane young people.  Chris the hostel warden understood and let me cry for a week under his lemon tree in the lovely garden.  Then one day I got up and walked and walked along the wild wind-swept coastline.  Up to a little chapel about 5 miles away on a cliff overlooking the sea where I lit a candle and cried again.  And then I walked back to the village – absolutely exhausted - with some kind of sanity and peace.  I had a new tiny stills camera with a video setting (this was very new 5 years ago) and I discovered lots of great rhythms and textures like my paintings in the wild landscape there on my route.

I travel and, when up to it, also walk now as part of my art work.  I had spent about 10 years just painting.  But I was scared to paint now – its too solitary and I have to be outdoors.  Last year I went to the Himalayas.  But Nik is the person who first got me doing this.  It keeps me sane and I like to think he is watching me.  I hope all those other people who have been bereaved this weekend find some kind of peace eventually as well. Walking is a great healer.

Nik Houghton 1955-2006