December 2013, Helsinki. Two years after I saw my 'Premonition about Syria' dream. I had filmed them for a year and a half and they had become friends, with whom I spent more time via Skype than my Finnish friends. We talked several times a week, for several hours at a time, cooking together etc. Hearing the news of war was more normal than Finnish reality TV or other daily 'nonsense'.
One day my thumb started twitching on its own and I remembered stories about 'automatic writing' so I picked up a pen. Pen started to move quite wildly right away and it was really difficult to support. First came a couple of sentences in Finnish and English, 'rakastaa' or 'love' was in both. Then it changed to Arabic. I don't know that language at all.
I asked Syrians what I'm writing about -or is it even Arabic. Lots of 'writing' was just nonsense (as said, supporting the pen was hard and I did not know when to lift up the pen to start a new word), but there was also names and stories what had happened to them. Every writing had the word 'love'. At that time, I continued to 'write' regularly for a few months.
I went to Beirut to continue filming in August 2015 and lived there in an international commune with mostly Syrians. We tried it with one roommate for fun. I asked him to think three words and we'll see if they come on paper. The first two words I wrote were 'love', written in a different handwriting. But this also happened to be one of the words Oweiss (my Syrian friend) thought of. I wanted the other roommate to 'mislead' me at the same time, not to pay too much attention to the pen and we talked about other things while the pen did what it did. The phrase 'Omar should not disturb' came. And then again a few words that could not be understood. In total, within about 20 words came all three that Oweiss thought: Love, work, travel and that sentence about Omar. I don't know where that writing disappeared. Along with the papers on the table, I guess I threw it to garbage I think.
Only now, in 2022, I came across a YouTube video that mentioned that in automatic writing there are always angels nearby letting us know that they love us. I try once every couple of years to see if the pen still moves. Yes. At some point I will make a video with slow motion so people can see which one moves first, the pen or the hand supporting it.