It's All Gone Pete Tong

Saturday night. EdTV is on one of the channels and it pretty much sums up what's all happening today. Cameras following some average Joe around even when he's taking a crap.
These days you really don't have to do or accomplish anything to get famous, you can get famous for...eh...being famous. Here, in this little pond called Sweden, we have a handful "celebreties" that are on every tv show there is. Whether it's a dancing elimination contest or a quiz show, they're all there and the next day we can all read about it in the tabloids - who did what and to who when the cameras weren't running. It's Big News here if somebody makes out with somebody or if somebody twists his or her ancle while dancing. I don't know how, but apparently they can sell a lot of papers with headlines like that. Another popular show is the one where lonely farmers are searching for love. "Farmer Seeks Wife" is the name of the show.
It's just so stupid. Stupid and a bit sad, because it kind of diminishes us all into beings more stupid than we really are. I for one don't need to read about these things and I'm pretty sure most of us aren't if we think about it. Are there not more interesting and important things to see and learn and talk about? What is it that makes gossip so valuable?

There was a big demonstration today here in Malmö, against Israels war on the Gaza strip. Everybody is against Israel here and - hey - I'm not one who support a strong nation killing innocent people, but it seems a bit strange to totally neglect the fact that "good old Hamas" are firing missiles into Israel totally randomly, trying to kill as many as they can. I don't get it.
There's an old saying in Swedish that goes (if just translated as it is): "they are both equally good cabbage drinkers". It's a very strange saying even in Swedish, but what it means is something like "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone". What I mean is that none of the sides seem to be the better part in this - it's all gone Pete Tong.

Well, I'll hang up the laundry to dry now and then I'll enjoy a glass of white organic wine.
Cheers!

A boring blog

Uuhhrg...I'm in a downfall with practice again. I had such great energy after I took that Jason Winn seminar in november, I started blogging and practicing more. I had fun in class even if it was a good one or a really tough one. I even thought of making it to teacher training this spring. But now...it's no fun, no energy and I have to face reality - there's no way in hell I could afford going to teacher training. So what to do? Right now it feels like I only practice because I have to, since I help out cleaning the studio four times a week for free practice.
I'm going to Stockholm for a week soon and when I'm there I thought I'd practice and see if it puts the fun back in bikram.
I guess I'm just fed up with working and nothing more...I feel bored and uninspired right now. And I never have any money so I can never just decide to do something or go somewhere, because I can't pay ffor anything else than bills and rent and food.

Hot Humid Hell!!

I had a hell today. It was just soo hot and humid, I thought I was going to pass out. I'm not proud to say that I walked out of the room during class, but I did. Twice.
Now, I've been down with a cold for about a week and I haven't been able to practice since the studio has been closed a lot during the holidays, so as I stepped out of the room for the second time tonight I thought it had to do with my cold. I was a bit bummed out for being such a wuz, walking out of the room like that, but I didn't think about it all that much. I went back in and I finished the class. I even did two camels that I thought were pretty ok.
After class I found out that the fresh air system had died in the middle of the class and the humidifier had gone berzerk, cranking the humidity up to a nice 75%! No fucking wonder it was tough in there, no wonder half the students were lying on their mats and walking in and out of the room. It was a sweet (sweat) relief to know it wasn't just all in my mind - I actually did pretty well concidering what was going on in there!
Hmm...maybe practice again tomorrow...?

I finished writing a new song today after I got home from work. Sara - my wife - said she saw me drumming on one occation in class today...oops! I didn't even think about it, but it's always hard to completely let go of a song when I have been working on it just moments before.
I wrote the song after I had read "the Memory of Running"by Ron Mac Larty. The first 50 pages or so, I thought the book was just "ok", but as I kept reading it really grew on me and now - 4 - 5 days after I finished it, it is stuck in my head. I really liked it a lot, and I wanted to write something about it so I came up with a song. I think I'll call it " You'll Wake Up In America".
I guess all of us has some waking up to do in one way or the other...

Flight of the Conchords Saved Christmas!

Thank god for Flight of The Conchords. They totally saved Christmas from being a re - run of last years total disaster of a Christmas Eve. Without going into details about stuff, all I can say is that my mother in law - who I love and respect a lot - has got some anger management to work with when it comes to christmas. Every year she says : "I don't want to fix a big fancy christmas dinner with a hundred different things to choose from..." and we all say that's ok and where happy with little and so on. And still each year she works her ass off fixing all these things that nobody is really asking for and by the time we all come over to her and her husband's apartement, she is so angry and mopy that there is no end to it. Irritable and...well, just not very pleasant to be around. Last year was a disaster and I had to tell her to shut up and start acting like a grown up, which of course didn't cheer things up.Yesterday I felt like it was about to turn down than crocked old dead end street again, but instead we put on the Flight Of the Conchords dvd that my wife and I gave to her sister and boyfriend. Me and my wife both love the Conchords, so does her sister, but I was pretty surpriced to find out that the one laughing the most was my mother in law! Both her and her husband were laughing hard all through the 6 episodes that we watched. Yep, instead of talking - we all sat down for hours watching Flight Of the Conchords on Christmas Eve. May be a good recipy for the future - don't sit down around a table, just put that dvd on and laugh together instead!
And we did. Laughing, drinking beer, eating dinner and afterwards way too much chocolate.
Tomorrow I'll be doing double bikram yoga classes to set straight my poor body from all that meat and candy. And the beer, let's not forget about the beer...

Christmas Eve

On the 17th December, I turned 34 and when I think about the fact that I am really this old I feel scared. Don't get me wrong - I don't mind turning 34, I like being in this age and I feel confident and calm within myself - it's just so hard to grasp all the time that has just come and went again. I can not believe that it is over 15 years ago that I moved out from my mom and step dad to go to a school where I would study art for two years. 17 years old I was. I had red colored dreadlocks, jeans that were broken in a grunge kind of style, a shirt, a vest and a bandana. I was a bit scared to move away from home, but I think I was most of all releaved since my mom was in and out of mental institutions all the time. She came home feeling pretty good, but after a couple of days she always started getting weird and wander around the apartement asking the same questions over and over and over, with her shaking hands, her battered body and her hair that grew more and more grey every day.
It was a crazy time - pardon my joke - living with a crazy mom at the age of 14 - 17. I was pretty glad to move away and start my own life, even if I felt like I betrayed my little brother leaving him behind as I left.
To make a long story short - I moved out of the cuckoo's nest and I started my own life and now I'm 34 and I have done all these things and I have seen the years come and go and I sometimes feel a total panic crawling over me when I think about the time and how f***ing fast it flies...
I talk to guys at work that are 18 - 23 and I suddenly remember that I am more than 10 years older than them...and it just feels weird...

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we're going over to my wife's mom to have dinner and a drink and hang out for a couple of hours and I hope it doesn't turn out the way it did last year where mother in law got stressed out and had a baaad temper...

I have worked my last day for a week now and I will thoroughly enjoy being free. I will read, play the piano and practice playing the bass for my next recording session in Stockholm at the end of January.
I listened to Arcade Fire "Neon Bible" fora while today and I love the production of it...if I could ever do something that good...!
If there is anyone reading this blog (except for my wife) I say "Merry Christmas" to you. Hope you have a good one!
P.S. Be kind to each other, you never know if it's your last christmas together. I miss celebrating with my mom.

Money, money, money...

For the past couple of weeks, I've felt like doing more yoga everytime I've come out from the yoga room. Even after classes where I've been lying down for long periods, I've felt the urge to go back into the room and do another 90 minutes. Since I can only practice in the evening during the week, the oportunity hasn't really come up. So last Sunday I decided to go with the flow and obey my body and take two classes in a row. I did, and it was the best two classes I've had in two or three months. Finally I was able to let go of my expectations and disconnect my brain from my practice.
I find it very hard to take a step back and not push myself, to allow myself to do the poses without burning all the rubber in the first 20 minutes - but last Sunday it worked perfectly. I started the first class thinking " shit - I better take it easy, or I will never be able to pull of two classes in a row.."
So I started out a little more relaxed then what I usually do, and from pose 1 all up to the final breathing, I felt strong and flexible and when the class was over I felt really happy and that energy took me all the way through the second class as well. I was strong, had good balance and most importantly : a good mood! I could almost smile at myself in the mirror and not feel like I was faking it. I have tried to smile at myself before in classes where I have felt and looked like shit, but that smile looked more like someone who is about to cry. Not very confident at all...
I came back to practice again the next day and there were all the expectations again...I tried not to let them in, I tried my best to just ignore them, but they jumped up and down screaming "yaay...yesterday was soo good, I bet I can do it again today...!" And of course I couldn't. I had a decent class, but no way near the double ones on Sunday. But I didn't let it get to me and as I came back again the next day, I had a great class again. And I am so glad I did. Now I know I can do it, I am confident that whatever problems I sometimes have in class, it's in my head and not in my arms or legs - it's all a matter of determination and being able to not focus, but just go with the flow...
For a while now I have had thoughts about going to the teacher training - both me and my wife have talked about it. It's pretty new to me wanting to go, but my wife who has been practicing for many years talked about teacher training about several years ago and included me in the process a year ago. I wasn't up for it then, but the more I think about it, the more appealing it seems to me.
If I could teach Bikram yoga classes, which I am starting to think I could - it wouold allow me to focus on my music as well. Instead of spending eight hours every day at a job that I don't really like and that isn't giving me a shit ( let's face it - I deliver mail and 90 % of it is commercial and bills and stuff - people don't write old school letters to one another anymore expressing their love and inner thoughts...), I could teach yoga and play music. Two things that hopefully would give both me and other people some meaning.

The big question is: how, in the name of the lord, would I ever be able to afford going to teacher training? My wife has no job and no income, so we both feed off of my lousy mailman salary - it's not considered a high status job being a mailman in Sweden...
In short - we have no money saved and to be honest we have no possibility to save any either. We are already planning on moving to the states - Austin, Texas to be more precise - and I think it would be a good thing to have a teachers exame when we go. Maybe I could take a loan, but that feels like a pretty risky thing to do in these days.
I can't just sit around waiting for life to change, I need to take control of it and be the change myself, instead. But it's hard to do when it all comes down to one thing : MONEY

I will have to think about this a lot and come up with a decision soon. In the meantime I will continue delivering crap in the daytime, and practice in the evenings.

A Bikram Addiction

Hello darkness, my old friend... you make me feel like I'm drowning..
oh, the darkness in Sweden in the winter...
I go to work - it's dark
I sort the mail and then I am lucky enough to get a few hours of daylight as I'm on the route. Then, if I'm lucky, it's still light when I go home around four, four thirty. Then of course - darkness all around until next day when I go out on the route. I long for a life with a lot more sunlight in it. That's why where working on moving to Austin, Texas. I've been there twice with my wife since she's got family there and both times I've felt so much happier and easy going, much because of the humid and warm climat, but maybe also just by being far away from the every day life of work and duties. I was born on Dec 17 and when I was a kid I loved the winter and the darkness and the snow, yes we had a lot of snow when I grew up. We don't have that anymore, I think the climate is all fucked up. In Malmö where I live, winter mostly consist of darkness, wind and rain from November until March/April when things start brighten up a bit again. I used to love the winter, but since a few years back I just feel trapped and sad because of it. Not depressed, just indifferent. And that scares me more than being really sad.

I just had a brief look around the blogger world. I just clicked on one of the bands that I have listed on my profile and a long list of other bloggers with the same taste in music came up. Isn't that really pretty cool when you think about it? I've never thought about the chances of making internet friends before - but man if one wants to find friends with a similar taste in music, books or art or whatever - there sure are a million people out there to start talking to. Weird.

Anyway. Yesterday's class was pretty lousy most of the time. I gave up, felt totally worthless for long periods, but I also managed to push myself in a few poses which was good. That's my biggest problem - I can't find that extra little energy to push myself through certain poses. One of the poses I struggle the most with is half locust. That bastard of a pose does not work for me. I have tried to visualize myself doing it, going up all the way, and in my head it's always very easy to go up into the full expression of the pose. In real life it's another story. As I was laying there yesterday evening trying, trying trying to find a way to just lift up a little more than the few centimeters I usually manage - the guy lying in front of me all the sudden go up all the way into the extended, full version of the pose and the teacher stops the class and ask everybody to take a look at him doing it again. So he does and it looks good and I am happy for him 'cos he's a nice guy and I see him struggle a lot with many poses that I manage pretty easy.
Still, right there and then, it was just a disasterous blow to my self- esteem and I felt envy instead of happiness for him. Watching him so easily go up while I lay there like a fish on land, like a jumping jack....oh man...not good.
I am a bad person for having those feelings. At least I admit it, right ? ;-=

Oh, shit...next time I'll do better. That's the weirdest thing of it all when it comes to this practice: no matter how much I feel I want to leave the room and the studio and never come back again, while in class - I still return time after time for more self torture. I felt pretty sad and down when I came home last night, but now I feel like going back again. I am building up an addiction.
A Bikram addiction.