I thought Finland would be a gloomy kind of place.
In winter dark and unpleasantly cold.
I absolutely did not expect it to be so beautiful; or that winter would be so amazingly diverse a season.
With the temperature one day at minus fifteen, and at plus two the next . One moment snowing the most magical flakes of snow; one moment grey and rainy; one moment intensely bright and still.
I’ve discovered that winter can be as beautiful and as magical a season as autumn, summer or spring; with each moment suffused with the intensest and most extraordinary beauty.
Perhaps this has to do with the project I’ve been working on here: a theatre event that helps me and the audience look unflinching with open eyes and begin to lose our fear of death.
Perhaps this is Sister Death, then, teaching me to appreciate the beauty of life.
The beauty of life and the ruthless, inexhaustible creativity of nature.
That, and our shared humanity.
The other day a fellow resident made me porridge. She is from Crimea, spent her adolescence in Moscow, and then moved with her family to Australia. And there she was, making her version of Scottish porridge ad offering it to me, a Scot, in Finland.
And somehow that simple gesture of kindness embodied the new world that is, so slowly, so painfully, and in spite of such terrible setbacks, in the process of being born.
This new world that will not tolerate for much longer the grotesque injustices caused by a financial system that has outlived its purpose: a system that allows the free movement of capital and denies the free movement of people.
It’s so strange to here in this artists’ refuge surrounded by such beauty; and at the same time to be witnessing the displacement and dispossession of still more millions of people.
Their rights cannot be denied for ever. We will have to open our borders sooner or later: and that time is coming soon.
How far away from us it all seemed last night. With deep darkness all around us we were dancing.
Four of us, in the kitchen: an artist from South Africa, a film-maker from Australia, an anglo-argentinian photographer from Buenos Aires, and me.
Dancing to amazing, life-filled music from South America. Dancing to love, to life, and to creativity.
Dancing to the breaking down of walls. Dancing to the one world in which we all belong together.
While to the south and to the east of us on this continent of Europe bombs were falling on the beautiful cities of Ukraine. Tanks were rolling into city streets.
Pity the poor conscripts, hungry, frightened and cold, driving the tanks, and firing the artillery. Compelled to fight in a war they did not ask for and cannot be especially concerned with winning.
Entering the streets of a capital knowing that sooner, rather than later, they will be forced back out again.
They, too, will not accept their suffering for ever.
Pity the poor tyrant who is ordering all this catastrophically stupid carnage.
Pity him, the frightened little man, cowering beside his grotesque furniture.
The lonely man who cannot inspire love or affection, and so is surrounded by fear and by hatred.
Pity the man who cannot create anything that does anyone any good. Who can only spread suffering and destruction.
Who lashes out in his envy, his frustration and his rage, thinking perhaps that will somehow ease his suffering.
But the suffering he inflicts on others only intensifies his own, and only leads him deeper and deeper into self-destruction.
And his life and his power will end in ignominy, humiliation and shame.
Pity such a man.
But love and solidarity and strength to the people of Ukraine.
Love, solidarity and strength to everyone, everywhere, who resists him.
He is stuck in nightmares of the past. We are creating the dream of the future.
And we will prevail.
The first time I went to Finland bought home to me just how close we are to places that always seemed so far away, St Petersburg just over there. I was offered the chance to visit Russia a couple of years later but the visa application form was so complex, and they sent it back asking for more details like; where did my father go to school? I decided it really wasn't worth the hassle. Maybe one day I will visit Finland and look at the sign saying St Petersburg and just be able to pop across on a whim with no border guards wanting to know where my dad went to school. That prospect seems a long way off today.
I'll dance to that dear Jo x