Home is where the heart is, or so they say, because no matter what I do or where I am a chunk of mine is always in Greece. Kardia/καρδια is heart in Greek, I think of this while realising, I have a votive of a heart, I bought some years ago in Athens, hanging from my desk lamp together with a handsewn heart, my mum made as a Christmas ornament before I was born. Is that why Greece and Athens always pull in me in, as if I’m on an attachment string of it, my veins reaching for Greece.
A family friend the vibrant photographer Kitte Fennestad wrote and photographed a beautiful book called ‘Cuba in my Heart,’ she gave me a copy. It resonates. For me though it has always been Greece. I have never been to Cuba, hope to go there at some point and experience her ‘home away from home.’
The Danish Institute for Arts and Science in Athens has had me as a very happy resident several times, an absolutely wonderful place and opportunity to go there as an artist, playwright, actress etc. and every time I’m there my mindset and emotional reach grow, expand and I am in love anew with the city in an abundance, always. I miss Athens whenever I am not there, have visited Greece so many times. A city and a country forever inspirational for me, also for drawings, artwork, theatre history wise, and especially within the last years with writing. I have written and am finishing right now a tetralogy of illustrated dramatic texts in Danish inspired by Athens and the old ancient Greek playwriting. Connected, maybe not so much in style or language as in subject matter, humour, despair, and in the thinking of resistance, especially within the arts.
On the Island Leros when I was a child I instinctively went into the sea and stayed there for hours on end, already from the age of three the sea called to me and all swim-geared up I toddled directly out into it from our commune rented house on the stoney beach and went straight into the waves and remained.
A close friend of mine once told me ‘there is much more Mediterranean blood in you than Scandinavian!’ it’s true I constantly have the longing for the south of Europe and the Middle East, and being close to the salty sea, heat, and wind. The Mediterranean is too far away right now, my intestines turn because I am not there. Talking and thinking of Greece every day, I notice that most of the books lying by the bed, are books about Greece. So, unconsciously I have decided to leave books of Greece up against my dreams and wakings-up.
Having been a lot in Athens alone, walking the streets preferably in the mornings, when the world is still slumbering. I have this sense of cities in the morning before children go to school, to be the time, when cities reveal their secrets. I know it’s not. What is a city without life. Shops. Workplaces. Meeting points. Traffic jams. Noice. Festivities. Yet, the secret early hours always invite me in. maybe because I have always woken quite early, and don’t normally need much sleep, these morning walks of understanding the layouts of a place is crucial. In Athens also, because don’t walk around midday in the thundering heat, at that point stay inside!
There is no theatre without the ancient Greek theatre, all stories are built around it. The Odyssey will forever be one of my favourite stories, the life’s journey to come ‘home’ is fantastic and all the obstacles that life, others, and nature bring, I love it and hate it and am forever drawn to it. Greece is the core centre for all our European culture, I don’t think I will ever get tired of exploring it, the now, the history, the culture, the pulse, the chances, the fights, the arts, the people, I want to travel there now!
Dreaming of one day moving there for good, hopefully soon my home away from home, Greece in my kardia.
Different photographs from Greece.
We, bySaabye and I, did this song and musicvideo in 2019-2020 on the walk from the areas Plaka to Psirri in Athens.