Fluffy flame

Between gigs in Switzerland, Stockholm and Hamburg I have been locked up in a beautiful studio trying to figure some things out.

But I managed to find time for an interview while I were in London.
Here it is.
An interview with myself.

2016-04-29
It is a gray day in London and I am meeting myself on the Gatwick Express going to the airport.
I am flying to Norway to entertain at a barista competition in Oslo.

Hello David. Lovely to meet you. How is your day so far?

Hello. It´s been a lovely day so far thank you. I am really excited about the gig that I am doing in Oslo tomorrow.
The theme is black coffee and the whole event is set around black metal imagery by Kaffikaze. The theme suits me very well since I was baptised into the Church of Satan by my parents an an infant. And like with any other religion it will stay with me for the rest of my life. Unless I make a conscious decision to find my own way out from ridiculous things like that.

Yes. I guess that is a pretty standard outcome. I always wondered how parents can baptise their kids into a way of life when they are too young to understand anything except food and poop?

Yes. Ha ha. It is crazy. *

But we are not here to talk about religion today. We are here to talk about your recent project. You did a residency at Subtopia in Stockholm for 12 days. Can you tell me a little about that?

With pleasure.
I have been trying to research an artistic path between pleasure and pain which are two things that really interest me. I have been looking for a way to find balance between them.

Muting monsters

Hmm. That sounds extremely interesting. What is it that you have been doing exactly?

It is kind of hard to describe without sounding wierd but I will give it a go.
I have been running on a treadmill with watercolour pigment is a latex swimming cap collecting sweat to blend with the pigment and create a paintable liquid that I have been dripping on canvases while doing handstand.

That makes perfect sense.
What is it that you have been trying to get out of this project?

Like I said. I needed to find an artistic path between pleasure and pain.
In this case running is the pain. Because simply, that ´s what it is sometimes.
The painting is the pleasure and my way of channeling the pain.
But the most important and fulfilling is the process of creating images out of random patterns. The drops of sweat that falls on the paper are out of my control. My task is to see how I can find life in the arrengements that they make.
I say to myself:
“I am thankful that I can’t paint. Because it forces me to find other ways of creating the images I want to show.”
That is kind of the backbone of my study.
My need to create images without really having the traditional skills to do so.

My head is full of monsters so I am creating heroes

David shows me one of his painting on his phone. He tells me that the first and only thing he saw was monsters. And that it became important to him to find a counterpoint to that. A protection.

Wow. You sound very clever. How have you been doing it exactly?

Ha ha. Thank you. I have put an extreme amount of thought into the project. Running on this treadmill for 10 k a day, staring into a wall, forces you to think.
It is not only sweat that has been seeping out. A lot of anxiety and and other garbage has made it to the surface as well. I needed to collect that too.
The project started with an idea to merge two of my passions. Training and creating. This time I wanted to use painting as a tool. A quite unexplored way of creating art for me.
My need to create a concrete piece of art has alway been very strong.
It frustrates me sometimes that what I produce as a stage artist has wings.
Once the show is gone, so is my art.
Some audience members will remember me and what I did but there is no poem on a paper, no sound in their ear or a picture to bring home and hang on the wall.
I felt that I wanted to create that. Something resistant.
It was either that or merchandise with my face on. I choose a unique piece made out of my own sweat.

Sweat collected from David´s head during a 10 k run

Mmmm. It all sounds like a beautiful saga David. I am mesmerised. Please continue.

Thank you. I am so glad that I manage to grab your attention. For me it is really quite difficult to capture all this with words.

Trust me David. I work with words and you are really good at it.

David is looking out through the train window. Trees, houses and highways blends into a blur. I see how David is reaching from his deep inside before he continue.

All this. What you see outside this window, holds a million pictures.
The concrete ones of course; the houses, the cats and the cows.
Those are the things you can see.
And then there are the hidden ones. The ones that you have to use your mind to see. Remember how you looked at the clouds as a kid? You saw shapes and faces and your imagination started to dream up stories and characters.
I am revisiting that when I see my sweat drop to the floor while I am in a handstand. And by adding colour to that sweat I can see more elaborate patterns from where I can find mystique.

SEX

And have you?
Have you found mystique?

Yes I have. But I have found more. I have learned about myself.
Or… I always knew these things.
But I have learned not to be afraid to listen to them.
I have had messages from the parts of me that is vain and from the parts of me that is full of quilt.
And I have decided to take the punch and go 10 rounds with them.

So the project has grown?

Yes for me it has. It is still something quite personal and I haven´t completed the full experience yet. From an audience point of view.
But I know already that it is going to look really good. I think there might be a few elements of shock in there.

That sounds awesome. Our readers will be delighted hear the rest of this story.
Thank you for letting me speak to you in your busy schedule.

Angry bee police

My pleasure. I love talking to myself.

*(Later David explained why he was ranting about religion. The reason is in this video. And yes, it was scary.)