Hot on the heels of Jane Siberry’s new album, Brian Eno has a new album too, The Ship (Eno produced tracks on Siberry’s 1993 album When I Was a Boy). I walked around downtown Malmö this afternoon in a disconnected ethereal haze listening to it.

Of the album, Eno writes on his website, in part:

One of the starting points was my fascination with the First World War, that extraordinary trans-cultural madness that arose out of a clash of hubris between empires. It followed immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, which to me is its analogue. The Titanic was the Unsinkable Ship, the apex of human technical power, set to be Man’s greatest triumph over nature. The First World War was the war of materiel, ‘over by Christmas’, set to be the triumph of Will and Steel over humanity. The catastrophic failure of each set the stage for a century of dramatic experiments with the relationships between humans and the worlds they make for themselves.

From the third track, Fickle Sun (ii) The Hour is Thin:

Well lad, you’ve taken my heart away.
I shall miss the grin of the cold, black sea.

Before ever there was writing, they were taking up stones
To hurl at last stroke,
But nobody looked back.

There were soldiers,
There was a cradle.

The universe is required.
Please notify the sun.

It is a bracing, brooding, symphonic album best listened to in a contemplative state. Recommended.

I have been an unremitting fan of  Jane Siberry since the very beginning. She released a new album, Ulysses’ Purse, earlier this year, a release that, despite my unremitting fandom, I did not discover until earlier this week.

My favourite track is Five & Dime; it is hard not to love a song with this line:

But lead her to a ledger of a hopeless nightmarish accounting mess
and she can bring the columns back to life with her numerical tenderness

As is usual and right with Jane Siberry, you can both buy the album and download its various components freely, as your needs and abilities dictate. You can also simply send her money via Paypal, which is the easiest way to complete a transaction: no shopping carts or registrations required.

Whatever way you choose to confront the album, I recommend you do so: it’s complicated and lovely and rich and melodic and confusing with a dizzying arrange of talented collaborators, including David Ramsden, Rebecca Jenkins, Mary Margaret O’Hara, and kd lang.

At the end of an afternoon of wandering around Malmö discussing, among other things, the IndieWeb and its various glories, it seemed vital to place a marker here for the occasion.

I began the day with neither coffee nor food in the house; fortunately I am staying in the same neighbourhood as I did during my 2013 visit, and I recalled that the excellent Café № 6 was nearby. There was some doubt, what with Swedes gathered in solemn recognition of the Ascension¹, that it might be closed. But it was not. And so by mid-morning I was enjoying a hearty cortado and croissant and feeling that, suddenly, all was right with the world.

Once sated, I joined [[Olle]] and [[Luisa]] on a walk about town (it’s 17ºC and sunny here today), followed by a stop for lunch near the train station. Luisa decamped for home midafternoon and we were joined by special guest star Jonas at Te & Kaffehuset where more excellent coffee was had. We then walked about in the late afternoon sunshine through Slottsparken where the aforementioned IndieWeb was central to our discussion.

As I type it is after a brief respite of potato salad and roll before I rejoin my party for an early evening cocktail.

Postscript: This photo, taken by [[Olle]] (who’s in the foreground) got posted here during a demonstration for Olle and [[Jonas]] of the system I’ve set up to allow me to email photos to the blog. Alas, because it was taken on an iPhone, the issues raised here manifested themselves, and the photo is upside down. I’ll leave it so-oriented as a reminder to update the code to make allowances for iOS-sourced photos.

I came across this phrase in a city guide to Malmö yesterday in a description of the genesis of The Malmö Festival:

Which (proving its point), led me to this Matthias Claudius poem from 1786, which starts:

Wenn jemand eine Reise tut,
So kann er was verzählen;
Drum nahm ich meinen Stock und Hut,
Und tät das Reisen wählen.

The poem, as it happens, was set to music by Beethoven in 1805:

My wise brother Steve told me once that he thought I travel as widely and as often as I do primarily to accumulate good stories; I think this is what he meant.

Three years ago, at Alibis for Interaction here in Malmö, I met Andreas Ingefjord, who told me about Garaget, a library, community centre, meeting place, and café he managed the creation of. A 2009 article in Scandinavian Library Quarterly describes the spirit of the facility well:

When Garaget opened it was more or less empty. Different activities should, it was thought, develop naturally and not be presented as a finished product. Garaget is a continually ongoing process. Subsequently, a great deal of effort has been devoted to meeting the requests and needs of patrons. One of the first objectives was to find furnishings that allowed Garaget to be flexible and open to change and at the same time be regarded as homely and inviting.We decided to use antique furniture to establish a cosy feeling and at the same time accede to requests that we be ecologically aware. The library was provided with bookshelves on wheels so that they could be easily moved as needed. A part of Garaget has floors of sprung parquet so that dancing, gymnastics and other physical activities can be performed without the risk of knee injuries. Movable walls in the form of screens on wheels and flexible curtain walls make the creation of rooms within rooms possible without preventing the production of larger events. The foundation for an ‘open workshop’ has been laid: handicrafts and simpler activities can now be worked on in a corner of Garaget; we supply tools, equipment and space and our patrons supply the material and the ideas. Garaget has even invested in technical solutions such as a film projector and sound and lighting systems. This is the way we always try to work in Garaget. Everything we do should increase usability and flexibility and be based on the real needs of patrons.

Yesterday, with a free afternoon in Malmö, I had a chance to visit Garaget for the first time and experience this spirit for myself.

Garaget does a remarkably good job at simply being a library, in the traditional sense: it has a broad collection of interesting books, in multiple languages, displayed invitingly as one might in a bookstore. I spent a pleasant hour reading a David Byrne book on music and a Ben Goldacre book about bad science. There are newspapers and magazines and graphic novels and guides to the city and books about Garaget itself.

There’s also a tool library, where you can borrow anything from an electric sander to a caulking gun:

What’s most remarkable about Garaget, however, is that it is a library that has been debugged to remove typical barriers to true engagement of its community:

Anyone wanting to do something in Garaget has entirely free hands. Furniture can be freely arranged as long as it’s put back afterwards, and all of our equipment is at the disposal of patrons. Garaget costs nothing to use and in certain cases we can even assist with event financing if the activity in question is relevant for others. Employees are there for support when needed but, with rare exceptions, do not organize events.Many activities take place outside of ordinary opening hours and those organizing these activities are responsible for the premises. This means Garaget is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Anyone with experience with library bureaucracy will recognize how challenging it must have been to defy the institutional inertia to allow a philosophy like this to live. In my 2009 talk at the Access conference I talked about libraries as a “book and reading management application” vs. libraries as a tool to “extend knowledge capabilities,” and about how libraries do more of the former because that’s the kind of application that runs on the traditional library operating system:

Garaget is living example of a place that’s managed to upgrade the library operating system to take on a much broader, expansive role for what the library can be; it truly is an enhancement to the neighbourhood’s knowledge capabilities.

It’s a model we would all do well to follow.

I’ve arrived in Malmö, Sweden after an overnight flight to Copenhagen. A little bleary-eyed, but none the worse for wear. I’m waiting for the sister of my Airbnb host to get home from work so that I can check in and start the day properly; in the meantime, I’ve secured a Swedish SIM (a Telia, from The Phone House) and am drinking coffee in a shopping mall that could be in Minnesota as equally as it could be here. Shortly I will emerge into the daylight.

When you have a layover at an airport en route to somewhere else, my number one recommendation is to leave the airport.

You need to have enough time to do this — 3 or 4 hours is the minimum.

And somewhere to go.

But there’s almost always somewhere to go. Even if it’s old bridges and free manure. Or a nondescript place to type.

For my 7 hour layover at Pearson Airport in Toronto today I was able to call upon my helpful Ontario family — [[Mom]], [[Dad]] and [[Mike]] — who generously fetched me from the airport and drove me out to the McMichael Collection in nearby Kleinberg. It was a nice, crisp spring afternoon. We breezed to the gallery in 20 minutes, enjoyed a pleasant lunch in the restaurant in the gallery’s Great Hall, and then spent 90 minutes touring the collection.

I was back at the airport by 5:00 p.m., through security in about 30 minutes, and then faced with another three hours until my flight for Copenhagen departed.

What to do?

It turned out that Pearson’s international jetty supports a ”sit at a table in a comfortable chair, use our iPad for free, and we hope you’ll order some food” model throughout.

I set myself down, plugged in my various devices (each seat has two mains outlets and two USB ports), and ordered up a sandwich and a cup of peppermint tea from the ordering app on the iPad. I didn’t have to talk to anyone (there’s a credit card terminal at every table too). And about 5 minutes later my food arrived. I tapped my laptop into the free airport wifi, and enjoyed a pleasant, if exorbitantly-priced, supper while I surfed the net. 

Which is to say that my number two recommendation when you have a layover — or, indeed, any time to spend at the airport — is to do whatever you can to construct a non-airport-like situation.

Sit at a table, not one of the uncomfortable, stress-inducing lounge chairs.

Plug in some headphones.

Do anything you can to avoid sucking in the anxiety that courses throughout the ether of the airport.

And pay $24 for a mediocre sandwich and a cup of tea. Believe me, it’s worth it.

Flight 882 to Copenhagen leaves in another two hours.

Circumstances have pleasantly conspired to take me to Europe for the next two weeks, something that came together only on Friday last.

Everything has come together so well, so quickly, that I’m prompted to think that I should never plan travel with more than a few days notice (as my friend Igor wrote when I pinged him news of my imminent visit to Berlin, “I like short feedback loops like this”).

So tomorrow morning just before noon I’ll hop on a jet for Toronto where I’ll have a chance to catch up with my parents and my brother [[Mike]] before jetting off to Copenhagen (the first time I’ve ever flown direct from Canada to Denmark in the decade I’ve been making the trip; how odd it will be to not be making a bleary-eyed transfer through London or Frankfurt in a catatonic state).

I’ll spend the rest of the week, and the weekend, in Malmö, Sweden, helping to mark the 10th wedding anniversary of our friends [[Olle]] and [[Luisa]].

Monday next I’ll fly from Copenhagen down to Berlin. Mostly because I’ve not been to Berlin in three years, and I’ve lots of people to catch up with. Also, it’s Berlin in the spring, and that’s pretty nice all on its own.

After four nights in Berlin I’ll spend the last weekend of my trip in London, where the St. Bride Foundation Wayzgoose is taking place on May 15th, an event (and a facility) I’ve wanted to visit since I started printing letterpress (“home-made cakes and pastries,” to boot).

Because openness and repatriation is the theme of the year, you’ll find my itinerary not on Dopplr, but right here.