Käbi and Ingmar - in the name of love...

From a review on Käbi Laretei's last book about her marriage and love affair with Ingmar Bergman you can read:

”Käbi Laretei writes insightfully about her relation with Ingmar Bergman.“

The title of the book would be something in the style “Where did all this love disappear?”

“In the foreword Käbi Laretei gives a brief afterward perspective (where she with touching empathy tells about a couple of visits 2007 to the dying Ingmar Bergman).

As to the rest this fragmentary but nevertheless suggestive book is based on chronologically lined up letters between the lovers, and some extracts from a diary Käbi Laretei seems to have written in secrecy (reminding about Ingmar Bergman's mother, who also wrote a diary in secrecy about her problems living together with the strict father).

Käbi Laretei stands out as a clear-sighted and reflecting human being, where the difficulties combining art (piano-playing) and married life in many respects resemble Ingmar Bergman's.

Even though those two artist natures immediately are drawn to each other and feel a deep attraction and kinship, one have a feeling already early – in both parts – more or less articulated trials to protect oneself from a too complete association (or fusion) with the other.

The marital troubles are there built-in from the first moment. More and more it stands out that Käbi and Ingmar are engulfed by each other – as if they paradoxically enough were suffocated by the love they both are longing for.

Time and again light is shed upon how Ingmar Bergman both is longing for and avoiding nearness.

Käbi Laretei writes motherly in one of her letters: 'My little son, have confidence, assurance (??), patience – you have it in your art, also have it in love.' Ingmar Bergman replies with describing his demons and his struggle to get rid of them.”

Käbi Laretei was my piano-teacher for four years in all... She stimulated my intellectual interests (whether you notice it or not). Käbi mentions Alice Miller in one of her books!!! I wonder if her son with Bergman, Daniel, introduced Miller to her??

Scenes from a marriage - Ingmar Bergman and love...

Käbi Laretei in a TV-programme last Monday on her new book about her marriage with Ingmar Bergman coming next month and the TV-series “Scenes from a marriage” from 1973.Also see here and here about this series.

The contracting parties were described as “the self-absorbed Johan and the self-effacing Marianne”.. Illustrated with a scene where Johan and Marianne met a therapist for the first time, and the therapist asked them to describe themselves. Johan started and expatiated himself about how fantastic he was, as a father, husband, employed, citizen etc, though with a a mix of slight self irony and seriousness. Marianne tried to intervene, lame and feeble:

“But...No... But listen...”

When it was Marianne's turn she had almost nothing to say about herself:

"Well... I am mariied to Johan... And we have two children... And... Well... I don't know what to say more..."

It was also established that the children don't exist in this series (from 1973), except from the beginning of it, compared to today when the children are at the center.

Something other people have established. Earlier (for those born 40-50 years ago or more) it was the dad who decided what the family should do: The mom helped realize and support this. Today the children decide, what to eat (parents make different dishes to the children and the parents), where to go on holidays etc.

Erland Josephson characterized the series with the words “being shut in” and “egocentricity”, not being seen by each other..

Käbi's new book has the title “Where did all this love disappear?”

When she had returned home after the funeral of Ingmar Bergman, almost two years ago now, she started to wonder “how it actually was” and recalled that she had almost 250 letters from Bergman lying somewhere, letters they wrote to each other from everywhere after their first meeting till they broke from their marriages and got married.

Bergman had visited a rehearsal in Malmö with Käbi playing the fourth piano-concerto by Beethoven, and he immediately fell in love, the start point for their relation.

Reading those letters made her surprised over the passion, a passion she had forgotten for the most part, and she got inspired writing a second book about her love relation and marriage with Bergman.

The reading of those old letters was also quite peculiar she said.

They met 1959 and broke up ten years later.

Käbi thought her pianist career was a main reason for this divorce. She couldn't think of giving her profession up and just be Bergman's wife. Not just support the genius.

The young male programme-leader also pointed out to Käbi and the audience that those letters are remarkable, that he and his generation-mates don't know how to write such paper-letters. It's quite different writing emails to each other...

I had Käbi as my piano-teacher for four years in all during my education and she awoke my "intellectual interests," and made me interested in Ingmar Bergman. She didn't only stimulate my piano-playing, but also other things...

I was struck by her continued admiration of him, an admiration that to a great part was mutual.

Their relation came to a fantastic friendship Käbi means, a friendship with both Ingmar and his last wife Ingrid.

Girlishness - a defence?

Ingmar Bergman and his father and mother…

In an article about Ingmar Bergman and his self-biographical book ”Laterna magica” or "The Magic Lantern" it stands about

“…the father’s capricious temper [lynniga temperament]. Sometimes his temper was good the whole day, sometimes the demons caught him up and he became taciturn [fåordig], turned away and irritable./…/

…the enclosed, dogmatic father.”

About Bergman:

“…on the one side overprotected, on the other defenceless, on the border to abandoned.”

“Ingmar Bergman spent his childhood summers in a big, beautiful house, built 1909, on a hill along the Dala river, between Gagnef and Borlänge. /…/

Karin Bergman [Ingmar Bergman’s mum] sold the summer-house Våroms [“Ours” in English] 1956. The son Ingmar seemed to have wanted to buy it, but the mother said no. It’s possible this is a loss he never came over.”

A person in the neighbourhood said that Ingmar as child was looked for by a nursemaid and seemed to have been very hard held at home.

Våroms lies on a hill called Gims klack in Duvnäs.

Read ”The Demon-lover” by John Lahr in The New Yorker.

Articles in Swedish here. And about what Magic Lantern is here.

The lust and the demons...

Ingmar Bergman.

[Updated June 26]. From the book about Ingmar Bergman “Lusten och dämonerna” or “The Lust and the Demons”: In many interviews Bergman invited to an interpretation of his work as direct results of his life. With this not said everything is univocally (entydigt) biographic the author Mikael Timm thinks.

Timm writes about different models for interpretation of Bergman’s work (phew! Why not the simple explanation?); the Marxist, the psychoanalytical, the structural, the semiotic… Using any of them one risk missing as much as if one uses the sole biographic method he thinks. Phew again!

When Bergman himself described his own work-method he said he threw the javelin (spjut) first right into the dark and then went to look where it landed. First intuition and then analysis.

The more one penetrate into his work the clearer it becomes that he has had as his starting point something he has observed, either in his own life from very early or in other people’s lives. Bergman said to Timm that he had never made anything up.

A Herbert Grevenius tried to explain why Bergman had a special ability to wake attention among (or compared to) his contemporary:

“Ingmar Bergman who has caused so much commotion (rabalder) the last decade, is now a 34 year old man with many children but is seen by judges (bedömare) as a high school student (gymnasist) in pubertal crisis still. Why? Maybe because he stubbornly writes about the confrontation between the life and the childhood idyll, between young vulnerable people and older in armours and masks, about love and death. The wiser and more careful of them just wrap things up (lindar in saker) a little more or express it a little more complicated. Ingmar has never done that. Even if he could have. But he is too impatient.”

I have thought and am thinking again if it was (or is) acceptable for a woman devoting herself so to her work as Bergman did to his?? And to have 9 children at the same time? Leaving them to the other parent too? Not that this would have been my model…

Women in a similar position would choose not to have any children?

And some have neither a career nor children…

Reading this was a little comforting for me: as the spontaneous, quick, impatient I am in a way! Behind shyness, a certain guardedness? Why I have chosen the work I have? To be allowed expressing things, being spontaneous, alive? Throwing out things first, and then returning watching what I have done (sometimes with blushing cheeks), rewriting, changing...

Addition June 26: See the article “Ingmar Bergman: A morally flawed recluse, but a director touched by genius” by Geoffrey McNab in the Independent July 31, 2007.

What parents are actually capable of doing…?

the serial killer Thomas Quick with twin-sister at 2 years.

as grown up.

The fourth part in a series, where you can find the other three here, here and here. It's another extremely warm day here. But now a bike-ride to pick the last lilies-of-the-valley!

Pincus writes at page 212-214:

”For example, one person who had just said he had never been abused told me he was once severely punished or running away to avoid discipline for having broken a window when he was six [did he deliberately break this window? And this boy was ONLY SIX YEARS OLD!! From where came this “urge” to break that window one can wonder too? That need to abreaction?]. His sister and father immobilized him and burned the soles of his feet with a lighted candle to prevent him from running away again. In his opinion, this punishment fit the crime. He considered it to be reasonable and not abusive.

Another telling indicator of abuse is bed-wetting. Many abused children continue to wet their beds at night until adolescence. The physiological reason for this is not clear, but bed-wetting is one manifestation of stress. The response of parents to this behaviour can open a line of very informative discussion about abuse. Some children are beaten daily for wetting the bed [how un-stressing??] or are humiliated by such disciplines as being forced to wear stinking, urine-soaked clothes to school, being tied to a post at home like a dog, or recording bed-wetting on a calendar so the whole family and visitors can see whether the child wet his bed the night before.

Other childhood behaviors are also hallmarks of abuse, like fire-setting and cruelty to animals. When there was a fire in the house, who was thought to have set it? This is important because virtually every child who sets a fire to his bed or that of his parents has been sexually abused [but all sexually abused children don’t set fires to their own or their parents’ beds??]. Victimizing helpless animals is also a way a child can direct his feelings of hatred and his desire to be in control without fear for retaliation./…/ …the association of this behavior with abuse has been empirically proven.

‘Who was the main disciplinarian?’ and ‘What were you beaten with when you were spanked?’ are very useful questions. Even violent inmates who have forgotten severe abuse may remember what they consider to have been good parental practices. Some of these practices are clearly abusive by my definition, like the use of a belt or wooden instrument directed elsewhere than their buttocks, spanking with the buckle of the belt, breaking of the skin, and punches to the face [but ALL spanking is harmful! Both physical, literal, and emotional! And spanking always leaves bigger or smaller damages in the brain recent brain-research has proven!].

Being locked in a closet for an hour or more or in a room for a week can be quite terrifying to a child. Uncovering these extreme punishments raises other questions, like ‘What was the punishment for leaving the closet or the room before you were given permission? What happened if you tried to run away during a beating?”

When I am sitting writing this I come to think of what Ingmar Bergman has written about his childhood. Bed-wetting children had to wear a dress when they had wet their beds. And children were locked into wardrobes, dark wardrobes. Their father (the Lutheran priest) also beat his sons, Dag and Ingmar, so they bled. And their mother washed them afterwards with cotton-wool (she was nurse). That she didn’t intervene? Noone of these children became criminals though. Dag, four years older (and the oldest) became diplomat I think, and Ingmar director. Dag died at 74 I think, in a disease that suffocated him. And Ingmar used his creativity to survive.

Their sister Margaretha (four years younger than Ingmar) married an Englishman and moved to England and got four sons. She suffered from severe depressions. She was held VERY hard by her mother and was her father's good little girl? Her creativity was suffocated. She wanted to write, and also tried with this, but Ingmar dismissed her writing (felt shame – and contempt - over how she wrote), thought it was too superficial, no wonder? Something he regretted later. Thought he should have supported her instead and help her develop her writing, and thus also help her develop personally, and survive better than she did. I think she made a suicide attempt (to free herself? She saw no other way out?).

He later thought he had silenced her and stifled her voice instead of the opposite. And it wasn’t because she revealed horrible things about their family (because it had nothing with that to do is the impression I have gotten), but because of how she wrote, the way she wrote and what she wrote about. See Jenson on the roots for shame-feelings. Even for shame-feelings on behalf of other people!!!! (very, very ironically!).

Pincus writes further:

“I always ask about the worst punishment the person ever received for misbehaving. Some patients have told me very disturbing stories. Some children are forced to kneel on dry rice and salt for an hour; the more the child moves to try to relieve his pain, the more grains dig into his raw, bleeding skin, leaving permanent and verifiable scars. Abusive parents use electric wiring, broom handles, and other cruel ad inappropriate tools to beat their children. Some parents even use lighted cigarettes to burn their children or hold their hands over an open flame as punishment.

The circumstances in which physical scars were sustained provide a window into the world of the violent individual. Linear scars and round scars on the back are usually caused by whips and cigarettes and cannot be self-inflicted. Almost every normal person remembers the incidents that have caused scarring on the portions of the body visible to him and can proudly tell the stories of how the scars were sustained. But frequently, violent people cannot identify the causes of many of their scars which are clearly the result of burns, knife wounds, bullet wounds, and other trauma.

Such memory lapses suggest that the person may be engaging the kind of psychological mechanism for forgetfulness that is used in dissociation and that bespeaks severe abuse. This is particularly telling when the cause of scarring is stated in the medical records.

When I ask about sexual abuse, I try to make it sound as if many people are sexually abused and that it is no big deal. I often start by saying we know from watching television programs like Oprah that a lot of children are asked to d sexual things for grown-ups. Then I ask, ‘Who did that to you?’

Because the anal penetration of children damages the rectum and colon, common symptoms in victims include lower abdominal pains of unknown cause, painful bowel movements, bloody movements, and constipation. Asking if the person has ever had these symptoms is accepted as the ordinary questioning of a family doctor. A similar approach is taken to determine whether sexual abuse of bys was inflicted by putting objects into their penises. As the memory of such experiences maybe repressed, it is often more revealing to ask, ‘Did you ever have blood come out of your penis? Did you ever have bladder infections?’ These questions are interspersed with benign questions about nose-bleeds, earaches, rashes, and so on.

The family may provide [???] convincing details of abuse that the patient has forgotten. For example, one convicted rapist-murderer on death row, who did not remember his crime, denied ever being sexually abused as a child. However, his older sister testified that she had seen him being repeatedly anally penetrated when he was eight by their uncle, in whose home their family was living. She described her brother crying and screaming while he tried to escape from his uncle. Although the rapist-murderer recalled that he did not like his uncle, he did not remember being raped by him.”

Practician…

The letter
(which one of our students is going to sing in the church at the concert tomorrow evening).

According to a test on what blog type you are the result for me was that I am a practician! I was moderately flattered by his.

I have been out for a bike-ride before lunch, sneezing and coughing, recovering from a cold.
Yesterday I watched a TV-programme (I had a TV-evening yesterday!) about a new book on Ingmar Bergman. The author, Michael Timm (in my age I guess), said about Bergman, with whom he had developed a fairly close friendship, that he was lively, changeable, energetic, quick, very curious, after an interview on half an hour Bergman got tired and started to ask the interviewer a lot of questions instead of the opposite.

I also came to think of how extremely organized Bergman was. He was always extremely well prepared in his work. He had a fixed schedule every day for his writing at Fårö; for his walks, when he visited his cinema and watched films each evening and so on. He needed to keep his demons (or “dämoner” as he called them in Swedish) in check.

And he avoided psycho therapy (but what sort would he have gotten then?) because I guess he believed that his neurosis was the prerequisite for his creativity, that he would loose it if he came to terms with them. As I think many creative people thought then (and maybe still think too often). But what was he actually afraid of? The truth lay just under the surface and he was aware of it, on an unconscious or subconscious level, and was in touch with the panic connected with it?

During the tax-affair (round 1975) he got a psychic breakdown and landed on a psychiatric clinic and was heavily medicated, so he walked there like a zombie. But he decided to quit all medication, and did that abruptly too, and met all the anxieties. He has described this in one of his books. And left Sweden with his wife Ingrid (by the way the author of the new book on Bergman thinks Bergman had had women who could measure up to him actually, and contribute to his work. Know that he and the pianist-wife Käbi Laretei inspired each other a lot, but they had a mutual respectful fear or each other? And Bergman later said that they played roles to each other, didn’t dare to meet as real, genuine human beings, meetings between two genuine , true selves, or how one shall express it).

Yes, maybe one has to be organized with artistic works struck me. Boundaries are more important there than in many other works and occupations? We need limits, in our work. And all artists aren’t bohemians, as maybe many thinks? Because for the first you need a lot of discipline to come where you have come! To develop the skill you have developed. And for this you can’t be too bohemian? If you aren’t lucky having someone a housekeeper and mommy?

k. – the spontaneous! Not always weighing the words, hmmm… Spontaneously expressing things, thoughts etc. Behind a certain amount of shyness. Not having a censurer - and having one. Blushing red sometimes (or rather often): but what did I say? And how? How childish! How stupid! How stupid, childish ideas!

Also struck me the other day about an older friend who has known me for long, who said she thought that people maybe could react on my quick thinking… That they didn’t really keep up with it. I don’t know if this was so good telling me however.

Yes, only a word or expression can trigger a lot of thoughts and feelings. And when I write I can start in one end and end in an entirely different, with a million sidetracks?

And after having worked with young people for so many years my language has also got coloured by that sort of language? When I studied pedagogy once (beside full time work) I expressed myself differently, adapted a bit to that language? The same when I was student at a tutor-education at the Royal College of music in Stockholm (5 years ago, 7, 5 international academic points).

No, now I need to practice for 2, 5 - 3 hours. And it would be nice getting time on the balcony with a cup of tea with honey (need that for my cold). Have thought of taking the bike to town and the pharmacy to buy something for my nose, Renaissance I had thought of.

More on responsibility…

a young Ingmar Bergman in the archipelago of Stockholm.

Madeleine Åsbrink writes in her book (see earlier postings, here and here) how she made her and her husband move from Stockholm (a small town compared to the really big cities in the world! :-)) to a part of Sweden where it was cheaper living, where they maybe could experience some calm and peace - at the country-side. She was a high-achieving individual, had worked for many years already as engineer (college, a 4-year education?). More or less aware of it she wanted to change her life. She had already started seeking, by reading books on "spiritual" topics.

But her husband wasn’t satisfied in their new home (he hadn't communicated this either?), their relation slowly got worse. She writes that there was no safety, tenderness or nearness in their relation. She didn’t question it but continued struggling. Later she understood that she hadn’t experienced much of this in the family where she grew up, so she had no frames of reference and nothing to compare with in this respect. She, as we say “gillade läget” or “approved of, or ‘liked’, her position,” and continued struggling.

She thinks she had no good model for how a family-life or relation should (or could) be, even though she felt somewhere that this was wrong. She started to think on divorce.

One night when she laid their cogitating (grubblande) over her relation she got a thought and without reflecting over it and its meaning she suddenly heard herself saying:

“You behave like an egoistic pig, one could believe you have another (woman)!”

Her husband didn’t say a word. She got silent too. And the world stopped. Then all of a sudden she realized the truth there in the bed. She was right. Her husband had an affair with another woman.

She writes that at that moment she lost herself. She let herself down. She let her son down. She wasn’t armed for this quite simply. She had an enormous outer strength, but not the inner which had been needed to handle this message better than she did.

She thought it was her fault that her husband had got in love with another woman (and also followed that feeling by having a love-affair with her) and let both her and their son down. She shut her feelings off and now her life became about unraveling what SHE had done. Her husband blamed her and they found a lousy therapist taking side with her husband and saying that it wasn’t strange her husband had got tired on her and all her nagging, as if that should justify treachery (svek) and unfaithfulness (infidelity) she writes.

When she calls her mom to tell her what had happened she starts by saying that now her mother will be disappointed with her. Afterwards she wonders how her mom could become disappointed on her for something her husband had done! At that point she hadn’t realized yet that it’s impossible to take responsibility for another human being (and her/his actions, what/she says and does?), that the only real responsibility as each of us have is for ourself. And now she thought that it was this sole responsibility she didn’t take then.

To unravel what she had done they decided to move back to Stockholm.

In parallel with full time work and now two kids she started to retrain herself to Rosen therapist (writing this I have to add that by mentioning it I don't advocate Rosen-therapy though; can't this therapy be manipulative too, depending on who's performing it? There are reasons being careful when one seeks help! How attractive the therapy even looks or sounds).

She clenches her teeth and works on. Of course she ends up in a breakdown, with a total exhaustion. And has to work herself up from the bottom really.

She blamed herself. Her husband blamed her. And their therapist blamed her.

On my bike ride yesterday afternoon I came to think of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who has written in one of his books that when he saw his pregnant wife and her eyes filled with sorrow and despair (pregnant with their fourth child, or third and fourth child, a twin-couple?) there in their double-bed when he had come home an evening or night telling her that he had a new woman, he decided to skip all guilt feelings. They were so (too) painful?? And Ingmar Bergman wanted to have his women for himself, not share them with any kids, neither own nor his women’s… His mother had held her kids very tight, instilling guilt and shame in them I get the impression after having read her diary and what others have narrated. As their father, the Lutheran priest did (see earlier postings on Ingmar Bergman here and here), who also beat his kids bloody and threatened them with the hell (and probably was burn-out a couple of times, he in turn with extremely high demands on himself, not being good enough to his parents in law either. Phew!!).

I have grown up with a mom thinking our female way of reacting, (over)sensitively, is worse than men’s power and capacity (in general) to let things run off them (as water on a goose) as we say. But if we as girls/women behaved in this way, how would that have been met? Would the environment have seen through their fingers with that? Men/boys were (and still are?) allowed this to many parents and grown ups between too? So we are taught very early to be overly responsible or the opposite? Or the latter adult reacts against those high demands (as Bergman did)? And it is true that men also take too much responsibility generally or in some circumstances! But when a woman does we are not allowing it in the same manner?

Men are a (the) superior sex, that's what I grew up with (or both looked up AND down on to be honest)? Women and girls are less worth as human beings (in all however). No wonder all ones struggles? And believes one isn't worth a nickel... (hopefully this is A LITTLE better). Having to work much too hard to earn the right living and existing, having food on the table, somewhere to live, an own car etc. etc. Yes, there ARE grains of truth in these feelings, that I feel so is no joke honestly (and maybe sad to say)! Striving to be good enough.

The Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch talks about a defence she calls the Primary defence, which is about blaming oneself. She thinks we all use this, but all don’t admit to it, neither to themselves nor to the environment (some are more in denial about this? Some deny they have any such feelings both to themselves AND to the environment). Women tend to be more prone admitting to it, men less.

Bosch writes somewhere that this tendency in some, more or less obvious can be very convenient for the environment. If someone is prone to blaming her/himself. And the environment can at the same time react with contempt over this person:

“Do you always have to…!!!”

When we react in that way we don’t want to admit to ourselves our own low self esteem? How we are blaming ourselves? We don’t want to admit to our own vulnerability? Don’t want to get in touch with feelings of powerlessness and helplessness underneath? Not get in touch with suppressed feelings from early, when we WERE power and helpless?

To come back to Åsbrink above. Her decision to go to technical college wasn’t her wish, but her father’s she realized. But she was very clever and efficient in that work and very much appreciated in her work. Earned A LOT OF money.

But she paid a high price for her struggles to live up to demands and get loved.

Her husband wanted to develop to, and also entered therapy of some kind, and with a ot of struggles and efforts they managed staying married in a much better marriage. But the path there was hard and tough she writes. Very, very tough in fact.

Hmmm, men are often (or was even more before) treated as they were kids and not grown up men? With no capacity taking responsibility??

“You know how he is…!! But he loves you anyway!”

Oh yeah, that’s what “love” is??? A pure lie? Even though the mom was "convinced" there was "love"? What she in turn had learned about love and had to believe in? Passing these confused and confusing ideas further to her kids (and probably not begrudging her kids other experiences either to be honest).

No wonder kids grow up confused about what love and this and that is (quite ironically)…

The responsibility lies entirely on ones shoulders? Don’t both (and all) parts have responsibility? And the same responsibility too? Shouldn’t both?

But if nothing (or very little) happens, shall one continue beating ones head bloody? In a false hope changing something tat isn’t possible to change? Re-enacting something that wasn’t possible to achieve then – the too painful realization that love didn’t exist (or the degree to what it didn’t exist)?

On my other blog I have blogged about "Charity and gratitude..." (in Swedish). Yes, what one grew up with? Being grateful, bowing ones head, being ashamed, feeling lousy etc.?

Torment....

from the movie "Torment" or "Hets".

Time to blog after a hectic work period, but there are so many things I am reacting at… Listening to Stabat Mater (the recording with Claudio Abbado), the sun is shining and it was minus-degrees this morning. I don’t have anything booked today. Can do what I want.

Yesterday two of my siblings children (10 and 17 years) “borrowed” my apartment, but I didn’t meet them, unfortunately.

When I wrote on my other blog I was reminded about the movie “Torment” or “Hets” in Swedish where the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman made his début as script writer.

In the Swedish introduction on the site about this movie it stood something which didn’t stand on the English site, namely that this movie is a classic about a rebellious student of secondary school (gymnasist in Swedish).

On this site it stands in the end:

“’Torment’ provoked intensive debate in the press. Aftonbladet published a letter from Henning L. Håkanson of the Palmgren School where Ingmar Bergman had been a pupil (the statement referred to in the following quotation was made by Bergman and published the day after the premiere of ‘Torment’, on 3 October 1944):

‘Mr Bergman's statement, that his entire time at school was hell, surprises me. I clearly recall that he, his brother and his father were all very satisfied with the school. After his final examinations, Ingmar Bergman came back to school to attend our Christmas party, bright and cheery as far as one could tell, and not seeming to harbour any grudge, either against the school or its teachers. In all probability, the fact of the matter lies elsewhere. Our friend Ingmar was a problem child, lazy yet rather gifted, and the fact that such a person does not easily adapt to the daily routines of study is quite natural. A school cannot be adapted to suit bohemian dreamers, but to suit normally constituted, hard working people.’

A few days later Bergman replied: ‘Let us start with the '12-year hell' (coarsely expressed, by the way. Not a word used by me, but by the person who interviewed me. I recall using a milder term, which is somewhat different). Indeed…I was a very lazy boy, and very scared because of my laziness, because I was involved with theatre instead of school and because I hated having to be punctual, having to get up in the morning, do homework, sit still, having to carry maps, having break times, doing tests, taking oral examinations, or to put it plainly: I hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticise my own school, but all schools. As far as I understand it, and as I clearly pointed out in that unfortunate interview, my school was neither better nor worse than other institutions with the same purpose.

My revered headmaster also writes (somewhat harshly): 'A school cannot be adapted to suit bohemian dreamers, but to suit normally constituted, hard working people'.

Where should the poor bohemians go? Should pupils be divided up: You're a bohemian, you're a hard-working person, you're a bohemian, etc. Would the bohemians be excused?

There are teachers one never forgets. Men one liked and men one hated. My revered headmaster belonged and still belongs (in my case) to the former category. I also have the feeling that my dear headmaster has not yet seen the film. Perhaps we should go and see it together!’”

Bergman was the second child in line. He had a four year older brother Dag (who died in a disease which "suffocated" him to death literally?). He was allowed to rebel a little more than his oldest sibling, and as his four year younger sister Margareta? A sister which was really "crushed"?? All these siblings hard held by their mom (and a father who worked himself to exhaustion, to measure up to his parents in law, being good enough to them. Bergman's parents probably married in rebellion in the first place, and as a protest? And the life in their home was about hypocrisy really? They showed a facade to the environment, as a perfect priest-family, but the life inside the house's walls was stormy and neurotic. Bergman's mom had a love-affair with a ten year younger priest-colleague to her husband... And in the middle of this the children grew up...).

I had one of Ingmar Bergman's wives as piano-teacher for four years, Käbi Laretei, she has written books, quite honest books about herself and her professional and personal life, and her last book is about her stormy life with Bergman (though a fairly "kind" book it felt to me!!?? She is less open in this than in her other books I think). Käbi writes in Swedish, despite she moved here from Estonia (where her father was diplomat) as 18-year-old, during WW2, and uses the Swedish language much better than many Swedes!! She is probably VERY talented in many areas (even language matters). She speaks German and English fluently too??

Bergman was very impressed by her and her intelligence he has admitted, so he put up a mask he thinks, playing a role... He did to her he thinks - the woman he was married to!! He thinks they played roles to each other. There was a kind of wall between them? As if he was afraid of not measuring up to her, as he wasn't good enough!? And Käbi in turn admired Bergman a lot, and went on admiring him a lot after they were divorced. She reffered to Bergman when we had lessons for her. Bergman had said this and that, for instance about body-language. I think Käbi awoke my intellectual interests - and my curiosity of Bergman?? (how it is with them now!! Quite self-ironically).

Both these two persons suffered from severe sleeping-problems... Laretei walked in her sleep, even when she was pregnant with their son Daniel (even fell in a stair during her pregnancy?), and she still walks in her sleep now in her eighties.

Yesterday we had a masterclass with six of our students from the Higher Music Course (only boys or young men, no girls struck me!!) with the Swedish violinist Nilla Pierrou. She wondered whom I had studied with. I mentioned Käbi.

"How was she?"

Nilla asked.

"She worked on the music and interpretation, not on technical things..."

"I saw a TV-program with her (long ago) where she was taught (probably a form of masterclass), and she was no good pupil!"

"??? Did she argue against the teacher?"

I asked, a bit surprised (or not) and a little amazed.

"Yes she did."

Nilla replied. But we didn't argue with her as students I think (the very well-mannered girl! Trying to measure up, really, straining my whole body to do as she wanted, as I did to all teachers, the model-pupil/student really!!??)... But I think Käbi isn't (and wasn't) easy to live with? Not Bergman either (with all his women! And children here and there)...

A blogposting about people who aren't performing on top - who aren't performing MORE than on top, this person gets a diagnosis explaining why she (he) isn't perfect and more than perfect. There was an article in a Swedish paper about a woman releived getting the diagnosis ADHD...

This diagnosis gave her an explanation to why she for instance was cronically late to everything... But as the blog-owner wrote: but then she was on time in a way, because she was ALWAYS late!?? Why was she never too early?? The blogger wondered if there couldn't lie something deep down... I just sigh... Yes, can't it?? (you can and/or shall "cure" everything that stands out?? Or that is standing out too much?? Not being so visible, but not invisible either!? Clever, but not too clever! Being enough clever and visible? What I have tried my whole life? Yes, if you are depressed you have to take medicine to "cheer up", and if you are the opposite you have to take medicine to calm down! A female colleague, 9 years older than I, takes, or took, calming medicine! She doens't drive car, which is very unpractical in our work *, but have drivers-license. You have to be enough you know!! Not too much or too little!)

The blogger went on describing her own small habits quite ironically and in fact quite fun, so I had to laugh... The laugh not reaching my eyes though??

I would like to draw a blanket over me and disappear totally...

* Driving here and there with all my working-material with me (NOT a piano though, thank goodness!!), using my own, private car, sitting in all sorts of "rooms"... Glad and grateful that we are allowed to work with this... Think of all freedom we have... Yes, and despite all this I am still interested in this (fooling myself?).

Horowitz playing...

Sonata in C major and Rondo in D-major (I think). Played by Vladimir Horowitz. He was silent for many years… Couldn’t play. A great pianist really...

The Swedish pianist Käbi Laretei couldn't play either during a period of her life, when she had just passed 50 (she was round 52 or older?), a period when her parents died (a year between)... Her first book has the title "Who am I playing for?" Yes, who was she playing for and whom did she go on playing for later? To earn her parents love?

She also seemed to have had a relatively extensive love and sexual life. Her first love was a much older man. And she got her first child, Linda when she had passed 30, in her first marriage with a Swedish conductor... And I wonder if some of these experiences have marked her? Or she hasn't been able to process them and what's maybe underneath?

She has written quite openly about all those things, so they are no big secrets!? Yes, she has (and is) a bit diva-like, but at the same time she sat at a fire-place where we lived and drank tea in cups of all shapes and sizes and forms... She was quite self-centered, but could also show interest in us!? So there was and is both/and in her?

We, young women (over 30 years younger), admired her a lot, when she, a middle-age woman (56 years or something?), came in a sari a warm summer's day to the classes. Colorful and beautiful still in her middle-age. She looked better by the years (but was good-looking as young too).

But I guess she wasn't easy to live with!?? I don't think I should have wanted to live with her, even as a woman, and even if I am not drawn to women...

In her last book she is mentioning Alice Miller, but I don't think she has understood Miller really... Maybe it's some of her kids that have introduced Miller to her? Daniel or Linda? Käbi was no good mother, least to her oldest child, a daughter. She abandoned her for Ingmar Bergman. Bergman wanted to have Käbi for himself (needed a mother?) and no kids around really!! Not even his own?? And Käbi found herself in this!! I am not sure I would have...