My treasures

At the back of the storage. Underneath a box of Christmas decorations and behind the fold-out table we only use if we have more than five people over for dinner. In a tattered cardboard box that once, many years ago, carried “quality baking potatoes” from some, to me, unknown farmer in Ireland to a small greengrocers in the West End of Glasgow, Scotland.

That’s where I keep them, my treasures. My songs.

On coffee stained, weatherbeaten pages that almost fall out of their covers I read the blue and black ink. I travel in time to the days and the places I wrote them down. I feel the love, sorrow, anger, elation and excitement again. I hear the melodies and feel them play in my heart. As clearly, as if I had just put down the pen after writing them down.

I’m a firm believer of living in the present, but I can’t help to notice how much of what I do now takes power from what I have been through. Every page of my novel comes out of what I did “back then” and my songs all focus on the past.
I don’t see anything wrong in this but it sure makes me wonder when the songs about the present will come and what they will say.

“Some day we’ll look back at all this and laugh” doesn’t cover it. All things are not funny in retrospect, but they are easier to understand. I smile and place yet another fully scribbled notebook in the box.

I was digging for treasure today and found it. In the margins of the over-edited renderings of a conquest, I found gold. Very frank notes that spoke so much louder than I had ever imagined they would when I wrote them down.

At the back of the storage I hide my treasures once more, until the next time I will need them again.

My 10 favorite singer/songwriters - Part One

These are 5 of my 10 favorite singer/songwriters, as before in my lists, they are in no particular order. They are not the only musicians I look up to, like listening to and admire but merely a few of the many I see make an incredible contribution to the way I view how music should be.


1 David Bowie
He has successfully written songs in more genres than I thought it was possible for an artist to do. Multi instrumentalist, painter, actor, producer and much more... No matter what he endeavors, he knows his stuff.

2 Alanis Morissette
From Canadian pop-star to world wonder. In my opinion she has a song that corresponds to every feeling I have ever felt. Honestly, there are only two songs of hers (since she stopped being a Canadian pop-star) where I can’t say, this song is about me... And that’s a lot of songs to take to heart.

3 Freddie Mercury
Queen - Do I have to say more? Even if I don’t have to, I will. Freddie Mercury was a genius. He not only had a voice with tremendous power, he also had an ear for producing. He revolutionized modern recording as we know it today by inventing ways to make his creative ideas possible. A true perfectionist who was never afraid to do what he believed was best for the songs he was working on.

4 Dolly Parton
I have to admit I’m not specially fond of country music, but Parton is on this list because she is one of the most amazing songwriters ever. She has written over 3000 songs (almost 600 of them listed with BMI) and plays at least ten instruments that I know of. She more than rightfully deserves her place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

5 Trent Reznor
The heart and brain behind the industrial rock project called Nine Inch Nails. Industrial rock is surely not everyones cup of tea from what I gather but Reznor has done so much more than taking care of his own career He also happen to be a big fan of David Bowie and Queen, just like I am.

Wednesday Musings

My dictionary says

“ Muse n.
1. Greek Mythology - Any of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science.
2. muse
a. A guiding spirit.
b. A source of inspiration.
3. muse A poet.”

The original Muses were from Greek mythology. They were goddesses or spirits who gave inspiration. Much argument and discussion about the number of them has gone on through the centuries. Three, five or nine. How many the “correct” amount is doesn’t feel like an urgent question to me, but most people seem to be of the opinion that there are nine of them.

There are so many things and people that inspire me to write. I have written notebooks cover to cover filled with songs about the things I see happening to those around me. It’s my way of processing the surrounding world. My way of trying to understand why people are the way they are and through that figure out how I can change myself for the better. Most of the songs I write are far from great, but every now and then a melody attaches itself to the words in a very special way and it feels just right, I feel blessed. Those instants make it hard for me to see it as my composition. I was merely there at the right moment, in the right state of mind, to scribble it down. The sensation that it came from somewhere that wasn’t of my conscious thought is so strong that if I didn’t know better I would have guesses it was nothing but pure luck.

My muses are usually my closest friends and family, who are most of the time unaware of the inspiration I find in them. Everything I write has a root in reality, I wouldn’t be able to write anything remotely interesting if I just pulled it out of thin air with no reference to my surroundings, my feelings, my dreams and my past. The question of if what I’m writing is a literal or metaphoric rendition of events, I will leave that unsaid for the time being. I think interpretation is half the fun of any kind of art and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you.

Despite all this, I will try to make my ramblings here on the blog a little clearer than my songs and stories, let you know when I’m making things up so you know when I’m trying to keep a dialogue. I’m an old dog stuck in her habits, trying to learn this new trick called blogging.

Thank you for the inspiration

My life, my languages

Since this is one of my first blog posts here I thought an introduction was in order. I am a song writing/tune singing, amateur novelist and wannabe linguist. People ask me what I do for a living and to be honest it’s not easy for me to give an answer to that. Most of the time I answer that I’m a singer/songwriter, because that’s what I have always been and always will continue to do until the day someone decides to press mute (and then I will continue anyway).
To pay for my bills, on the other hand, I do various translating jobs and have just got involved with a small business to be their official photographer of online goods.

I was born in the north of Sweden in a little house in a big forest and has to days date moved 14 times, a fact that I blame on my traveling ancestors. My native tongue is Swedish and thanks to the Swedish educational system I started learning English at a young age and quickly became proficient in this. I was not terribly gifted in school so I was happy to discover that I was at least good at music and English. I also started studying German and Spanish but quit both classes for various reasons. Let me just say that a bad teacher can severely ruin the pleasures of learning.

After the normal run of school years I was tired of homework and exams and decided on a sabbatical year. I worked teaching little children to paint and sing and spent my days reading stories and playing, which was fun until it got to the end of the day and I had to go home to an empty apartment, without any friends, in a town I didn’t know. In hindsight the year passed quickly but I know it felt like an eternity. With my sabbatical year finished I couldn’t wait to get back to studying and I thirsted for singing something else than “Twinkle, twinkle” all day long. I applied to a Rock Musicians College and got accepted after auditions. Another year passed and I applied to study abroad, English speaking places only. I got accepted to two very good universities but chose the one in Scotland since they offered one-on-one instrument tutoring.

The following is complicated but please bare with me. I managed to understand the Scottish accent and got my diploma in Music Performance. I got myself a boring job as a switchboard operator for an international computer company, just so I could make enough money to get away from the constant rain I had endured during my years in Scotland. By a series of fortunate consequences I moved to France. I didn’t know a word of French before I arrived here less than two years ago and now I’m close to fluency level of understanding and speaking but in writing things are a little slower. But I am still learning and I enjoy it tremendously.

I’ve always found languages very interesting and my dad always told me that people will listen to you if you speak in their own language, both literally and metaphorically. I call myself trilingual plus extra and I try to constantly learn more in as many languages as possible. I’m not sure, but I suspect my love for languages is closely linked to my firm believes of the notion that music is a universal language that can speak straight to our hearts.

There you are, the factual me. If you want to learn more I guess you’ll have to stick around and read as I update.

Tack, thank you and merci for reading.