In the city where I grew up, there were several shops selling funny combinations of goods. One of these stores sold paint, wallpaper, flooring and; perfume. The owner’s son was a few years older than me, yet we were very good friends. He was someone I really looked up to as a role model. He was righteous in every way. He often told stories to explain a point. For example, that you should never leave a friend in anger even if you disagree on an issue. His older brother had perished in a cabin fire at a young age – and one thing he carried with him as a consolation in the grief over his brother was that they had been good friends the last time they met before the accident.
He was quite handsome and girls found him attractive. He got married relatively young and became a father of two daughters. I met him occasionally both in our hometown and in the city we both moved to as adults. We always exchanged good and funny stories – and his stories often had funny twists and turns. He had studied economics and bought part of an old hotel in a small rural village, he once told me. He worked as a hotel manager there for a while. The next time we met, he had sold and invested the money in stocks. If I remember correctly, there were so-called dot.com shares. We all know how it went with that bubble, so I did not mention shares the next time we met. But he was in a great mood when we meet at the baggage claim at the airport. He said that he had sold out of dot.com just before the bubble burst and that he was loaded as a result of the sale. He laughed about his luck and looked almost a bit guilty. He told me he had made a couple of other life choices. He was a fairly skilled artist and painter in his youth – and now he had joined an artist collective and painted pictures full time. When asked if he had exhibitions, the only answer was that no one should ever see what he painted. It was the process of creating the image itself that was the intention, not to create a name or show the result. He had also divorced and found a new lover. A man, he said, in a way apparently intended to shock me. But I was not affected by this information. Both because I did not perceive this as something special and because he had always been too good to only play on one team.
The next time we met, he had bought a cabin. Right near where I lived. In town. He lived a little further down in the city – so the distance from his home to the cabin was about 20 minutes walk or 5 minutes by tram. The idea of a cottage was for him to have a place that was different than home. And different did not have to be far away up in the mountains. The cottage was a relatively small and cosy apartment with a wood stove and terrace in the middle of the city. Completely different and much simpler decorated than the apartment he and his partner lived in downtown. He also had a new project underway. It was an artistic travel project. He laughed as he explained. He tried to rationalize the project by saying several times that even though this seemed completely crazy, he did not hurt anyone. – And I get to travel a lot around the world. As long as my daughters think this is cool, I may not be completely crazy yet.
The idea for the project had arisen when it piled up with paintings in his studio and something had to be done. Since he did not sell or give away paintings, he had decided that they had to be destroyed. Even he felt that it was a little over the top to just throw oil paintings in the trash, so he came up with the idea of burning them. But in order for this to be something more than burning pictures, he took a photograph of the painting before setting it on fire, and another while the picture burned. These two pictures were then placed in an urn along with the ashes from the painting. The last stage of the project involved him traveling to various parks around the world and burying the urns with the pictures and the ashes from the burned painting. Part of the humour was that someone might find the urns many years from now and what they might think about the find. A crazy idea and so typically him! But he did not hurt anyone and had a lot of fun with his projects.
He is gone now – but his stories are still alive and inspiring. At least he and his stories still inspire me!
Billy Bronco is telling you 