The Castle - October 20th 2008

There once was a boy who lived in a castle. The castle was full of rooms of different shapes and colors, dark chambers, long hallways, bright halls. There where towers and pinnacles and little places way below the ground. The boy would walk around in his castle, and though it was a complex structure, he knew it quite well. He would take snapshots in certain rooms, then he would stand on the castle wall and toss them down. Any one who passed by could pick them up and look at them. Sometimes people did. They would see what it looked like inside the castle and they would sometimes feel amazed, or amused, or curious, sometimes they just wouldn't feel anything at all and would walk away.
The boy's wish was for someone to enter the castle, someone he could show all the rooms and chambers and hallways and towers.
There were those who had seen the pictures and their curiosity had been aroused and they had walked around the castle, wonder-struck, but although the gate had been open they did not enter, they soon turned around and left.
There were also those who had seen the pictures, walked around the castle, found the gate, but no matter how much they had been knocking it had remained closed.

There once was a boy who lived in a castle. Or was it the castle that lived in him?
This is all true, said the wind to the tree. Fiction is for fools.

We spend so much time trying to figure out who we want to be we forget what we want to do. And when we have finally found things to identify ourselves with we live in that illusion until the day we die. - May 14th 2007

February 12th 2007

Again and again, somewhat forsaken. Who gave me all this useless time?
I want to help, I want to work, feel needed, trusted and respected. But most of all... [paus] I dare not even speak the word...
I begin to understand those who chase illusions, for they have truly been bereft of their dreams. I feel sympathy for them, no longer disapproval.
I got tired of starting conversations with people who don't seem to care about me. My problem seems to be I care too much. Now that there's less to care about I turn to more worldly goods, things that provide a fulfillment nobody can deny me. I'm still waiting for the heavens to fall down, all I can do is wait. Meanwhile I will lay me down. - Stay around! and you'll see what I mean.

Without you I'm as a boat without a rudder, aimlessly drifting.   - January 14th 2007

The Sounds of Silence... October 30th 2006

It's funny how people seem to take you for granted, or are they afraid of telling you what they really think?
You always have to ask, sometimes beg. If someone ever tells you, without being asked, "this is good" then you know for sure that you have made an impression.
People should stop thinking and start feeling. And be more honest with what they feel. Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence, to me, feels more up-to-date than ever: "People writing songs, that voices never share, and no-one dare disturb the sound of silence".

Apple made me mad for the first time  October 11th

I was downloading/purchasing a song on the iTunes Store, it's not the first time but I wouldn't say I'm a frequent user either. So I put the song on my iPod, went down to the studio, where my music-making computer is, plug in the iPod and double click the song to play it. What happens? iTunes asks for my authorization code. Sure I have the code but it's no good as long as the computer does not have an internet connection. I went just mad! I could just about accept the fact that Apple has not made it possible for songs to be imported from the iPod into a computer, but this!? I just want to play the song from my iPod using my studio computer and it is not possible. Mr Jobs, I'm not gonna use your nifty little music store, no, not anymore.

The power of the free press as it is exercised by the tabloids - added 27th of September

I regret a lot of things I have said or done, or even more, things I haven't said or done. But when it comes to songwriting I have no regrets. Everything I have sung is the most crystal reflection of my heart and mind that I have, at the time, been able to put down in words.
Sometimes it is subconscious - the heart feels what the mind does not understand, and it may take years before the mind catches up.    - September 2006

Commercial radio   21/8

During the past year I have from time to time listened a lot to radio. It strikes me how mainstream and commercial radio has become, or is it just the fact that the quality of music has become worse that annoys me? is it even a fact?
One of Sweden's biggest commercial radio stations, 'Rix FM' can really drive me mad sometimes. I think I even tried to count once how many times a certain song was played during the day. I must have lost count at ten or something. They play the same fifteen songs all day long! Some of the songs are actually not bad, but when you hear them ten times during a day for like half a year then they are trashed completely. And the most annoying thing I ever heard; The pretentious, over articulated people who talk on this station have, from time to time said that: "We will continue the search for new great music... blah blah blah". As if they had anything to do with that! We all know, ladies and gentlemen, yes indeed, it is not a secret, that record companies pay the radio stations - not only the commercial ones - to play exactly the music they tell them to play and exactly how many times each song should be played. Still the people at Rix FM say that they, themselves are in some kind of a quest for finding new music, when the truth is actually nothing like that at all, they are mere puppets, folks!
Now some of you readers may think: "What are you wining about? Just turn it off". James Blunt might have said something like that in response to all the criticism he got for invading British radio. (I'm not on his side, nor against him really.)
Sure I can turn it off, most of the time, I agree. What makes me mad though is the fact that there is such a vast amount of good music being made today that is never played on the radio, be it established artists or unsigned ones.
The 80's was mostly tasteless, the 90's was the time of awakening, today we are seriously beginning to find what we must have left behind from the late 60's - early 70's era. And it's not a sound, it's a state of mind, it is, perhaps, letting go of selfishness. Anyway, I hope that's what's going on now.
The record companies and the radio stations are doing very well feeding people with simple, easy to understand, catchy, sometimes even badly produced mainstream pop.
I'm not a businessman, I know they try to be, but I can't really see what's so clever about what they are doing, where is the big money? It would be better business in the long term if they tried to invoke peoples interest for music instead of just feeding them junk and keeping expectation levels low, because I happen to think - contrary to them - that there is no such thing as a "market" for music as for other industries, so to speak, where the demand can reach a limit. I think music could play a much greater part in peoples lives, be them musicians or listeners, than it does today.

If I paid attention to all the things people tell me that I should or should not do with my music, I wouldn't be able to make music at all. 15/8

About audio quality 5/8

It is often discussed and debated whether or not music should be free to all or not. I personally have no interest in making money that way so I let you download my songs here. As for other songwriters, who have that interest, I respect them. But an issue which is often forgotten by some so-called music lovers who argue that it should be legal to share music over the net is that of audio quality. I just want to make this clear to you people: There is a significant difference in sound between a 128 kbit mp3-file played through cheap desktop computer speakers and that of a real CD played in Hi-Fi stereo. To me this is so important I sometimes turn the music off because the bad quality doesn't do the song any justice. Recording artists spend so much time and energy doing their utmost to make the music sound good, tweaking the sound to perfection, it is an insult on their work to convert their songs to low quality mp3 and then share it to everyone. Just think about it: if you create something, would you like people to deteriorate that which you have created? The songs I share here are 192 kbit normal stereo mp3s, for me that is still a compromise.

Creating 28/5 -06

I need to be in a creative environment to create.
Now most of my time I spend light years away from such an environment
and when the time is spent there is not much energy left.
I am giving away my life to something completely and utterly ridiculous.
I can sit with a guitar on the weekends singing and playing, improvising, and the most wonderful things can reveal themselves.
But they remain fractions, there is nothing to hold the spell, nothing to keep me in tune with what I feel.
I believe most poets/writers are trained in their ability to create, and for a songwriter in particular, the ability to create with structure. Once this skill is learned it needs nurturing, if you leave it too long you become rusty, not certain of how to channel your energies, and it all ends up in mere fractions. Nothing useful at all. This is me now.