At the New world bank-conference, Östersund.

Stockholm needs to reboot.

After seeing Alex Schulman launching the site “1000 apor”, seeing, “Filip & Fredrik” starting yet another TV-show in an endless row of series in the same style and generally watching the overall media-scene shrinking into itself in a kind of “introvert-perverted-blog-expose-me-and-recycle-the-desperation-mode”, i can only state the fact that “Default City” is close to crashing and needs an urgent reboot of its system.

The painful lack of hight and creativity is oozing like an embarrassing odor around every little mediahouse in our capital city. The conformism, nepotism, shallowness and stupidity is limitless.

This will of course cause a counter-reaction in society eventually, turning the audiences in new directions. You can´t keep human minds hostage feeding them empty and narcissistic stupidity alone. Not forever.

I do not watch TV anymore. At all.

I had to clean my mind.

I had to detox from media pollution. TV and tabloids are so very 1998.

But, there are constructive alternatives;
-The internet is still a free arena for the mind, as you make active descisions every minute of what to feed your brain. You are active, hunting, exploring, choosing, participating, contributing.

Reading books is also a way of giving your mind a rest and an excersize at the same time.
It doesn´t matter what you read, as long as you just read, keeping your mind active in creating images and scenarios from the text.

Blogging s good. If you do it from a perspective where you explore and reflect on your day, your relations, your, future, your opinions and your life.

Healthy evolution of your mind. Taking control of your environment, your power, your free will, your future.

But if you stay in the shit, settling for the latest news on Paris Hilton, Alex Schulman and the rest of the illusionary famous, you will turn into a freak sooner or later. Living a poor excuse of a life. Drinking too much, playing Internet-poker, growing a sex-addiction, getting weirder and weirder in the hands of the market. I promise you. It´s a fact.

/Stefan

Our honored Guests from Frankfurt.

The lord grooves in mysterious ways!

Well… all of the sudden i got a request to record something i have never stumbled upon before.

The Art- and contemporary culture-cmpany “Färgfabriken” asked if they could send a professor and some students from an artmusic-academy in Frankfurt to record some music in my studio, for the grand opening of their new facility in Östersund on April the 4´th.

The music is to be played in big PA-systems outside, as a soundtrack to the vernissage.

I told them “why…sure” I´d be honored!”

We have a concert piano and all the equipment and expertise to make it happen so… tomorrow it´s time to….rock?

I am looking forward to a very interesting day.

/Stefan

Into book publishing?

Things that just fall into my life.

Last week a friend asked med if i would conscider reading a script for a book that he just finished.

I said “great, shure, what´s it about?”
He said “just read it”.

And i read it. Cover to cover. Totally blown away. It was like reading a mixture of “Tolkien”, “Harry Potter” and “The Spiderwick Chronices” only with new characters, new worlds, new angles and new adventures and with a completly unique voice and style as an author.

I knew that i was holding undiscovered new Swedish Fantasylitterature in my hands, that has great potential and absolutly makes the cut into the major league.

So i suggested a collaboration where my role is as an agent. Finding a publisher, negotiating the deals along side of him. I also serve as an editor and co-worker on illustration issues, finding the right way to bring this piece to the market. I´m so excited!

This book is not only a “lame debutant trying to imitate his idols”. Noooononononono.

This. Is. The. New. Shit. This is for real.

The author is a man that has been living eating, sleeping and shitting Fantasy-litterature since the age of twelve. He´s been writing scripts for computer adventure games for a lot of years, and just now pluinged into the world of “real” authors, using all his knowledge about the genre to write an extraordinary piece of litterature! I was consumed.

But, quality alone does not make a success. There is a long way to go still, overcoming a lot of obstacles before one can get to the point where one can say “now it´s published”.

This part of the project, is exactly the distance where my skills gets useful. Tactics, marketing, building hype, teasing publishers, collaborating on the details of finalizing the book and so on.

I´m so thrilled, just to get the opportunity of moving into this new, still very well known territory. I am very proud that he had such confidence in me, that he trusted me with this. I won´t write too much about the progress in this blog, as there is a point in keeping a low profile at this stage, but i just had to write about the fact that it exists, and that the project is moving.

Shit, some days i really love my life.

/S

Outgrowing my hometown…again?

.. i don´t know. Mabye it´s the same in every town of small proportions.

Last time i moved south, it was because i got a high position management job in a large public Internet company and i was so bored to death with the envorinment around me that i just jumped on the first plane end left.

This time the longing for something bigger comes out of the conclusion that there is nothing more to discover at home really.

I know i won´t move anywhere soon this time since i have my daughter here, but…hell…when i spend most of my days working over the Internet with Russians (in my computergame business) Englishmen (same) and Americans (promoting albums for the recordcompany) everything regarding small town issues and culture is starting to feel so…well…”dull” really, when i hear my foreign collegues go on about their everyday life in big distant cities.

The local papers in my town are full of micro-issues repeating itself in a very predictable way. Writing about the same subjects over and over and over and over. The local politics are all about the usual small town corruption and protectionism, since everybody is sitting in someone elses knee, defending positions. It´s hard to keep motivated really, experiencing this. It´s hard to respect it, having a completly different opinion on how things should be done.

It´s not like there´s even a power-trip to be found in running a county with less than 60 000 people, governed by people in political stagnation and locked positions. It´s just to god damn bloodless to tickle my lust and creativity. What would the satisfaction or motivator be in it? Getting a bridge built? Getting a name of a street changed? Oh, please.

I´ve done all the kinds of trips one can do in this region already. On every level, with every company or county/ govermental function. In the late nineties i was selling advertising-services to them from the Advertising bureau i owned. Then i was an organisation consultant for a lot of local companies for a couple of years. Then i ran a Theatre/conference facility for another couple of years. I have also been into politics for a few years, finding it to be a dead end street.

The thing is; it´s the same small group of people to deal with over and over again no matter from what angle or business you´re working from! LOL You understand?
Not that there´s anything wrong with those people really, they are pretty friendly and go about their lives as everybody else, mostly settling with the small portions of life they´re handed, but there is definitly a lack of broader understanding, ambition and vision among some of them and that frustrates me.

Anyway; -Now i run a computergame-business and a record company. Mostly, i think, just because i want to find out what it´s like really. It´s ok for now.

But…where to go from here? Where can i challenge and benchmark all the extreme knowledge and experience i´ve gathered over two decades? Is this it?

-Maybe the answer lies in expanding into more Internet-based relations, as we are beginning to do this period. Maybe that will keep things feeling fresh and motivating. Maybe.
God bless the Internet, that lets me bend the borders a little, working with talent from all over the world. But i have a longing after beeing able to change environment for a while. Mabye a vacation or a trip to a foreign country for a few weeks would be enough. I don´t know. It´s just a restless feeling.

I really love my hometown, and i have a lot of meaningful relations and businesscontacts in it… but some days… it´s just not enough, when my eyes stray to the horizon, knowing what´s there.

Well… my daughter has been away for a week. I bet these feelings will fade away when she returns, helping me keep my mind off things. I´ll be content when she´s back. For shure. I hope.

/Stefan