sbodman-flowers

Sarah BodmanFlowers in Hotel Rooms Volume IV

The series has become a set of journals, documenting my own actions as well as those of characters in novels, or writers whose work I admire. Working in Poland, meant a stay near the home of the writer and artist

Radoslaw Nowakowski

so we could interview him and film his books. He lives in Dabrowa Dolna, a tiny hamlet, and as I sat outside at dusk with the dogs barking (reading

Ethan Frome

by

Edith Warton

) I noticed the garlic that had been nailed up for protection outside the front door by the wonderful B&B owner. In Minneapolis last winter, with long, cold corridors but no snow, I’m reading

The Shining

by

Stephen King

, and set about typing “all work and no play” on a portable plastic typewriter. In Glasgow, reading

Chuck Palahniuk

’s

Survivor

I amuse myself in Palahniuk fashion by asking Tom if he can write “kill yourself” in the steam on the bathroom mirror of the hotel room he is sharing with a friend of ours, who is never fully awake in the mornings, and of course he doesn’t even notice it. In Frankfurt, reading

Haruki Murakami

’s

After Dark

, I can create my own night-time take on the novel with the ink stamped on my arm from visiting

Takashi Murakami

’s

©Murakami

exhibition that afternoon. In Whitby, England as the mist rolls in from the sea, I willingly watch it envelop the window as I read

Nosferatu In Love

by

Jim Shepard

, 2009