Easter
You live, you learn.
I went helping my friend “Kingen” on saturday, as a driver and also playing rythm guitar on a gig. It was kind of fun. It´s been fifteen years since we sat in a tourbus together… and so much time and life has passed.
The experiment was putting myself in that context again, exposing me to the routines of touring, beeing a different man today.
I found that what i liked the most was to go out on the ice outside the hotel, playing with my dog (yeah, the dog was also on the road with us ha ha.) Great company.
I also enjoyed spending some time in the Jacuzzi, the sauna and watching a movie on my room.
“God i´m really getting old” i thought to myself. LOL 
I enjoyed the Hotel dinner and of course the gig. It was fun.
But…i could have done without the neurotic company of some other musicians trying to get a party started the whole time. It felt like beeing surrounded by 18-yeard olds (while them beeing in their late thirties, they behaved like kids). I, who do not drink at all these days, made a sudden exception and had a few medium beers, (never getting drunk though) and went to bed in time unharmed, but i noticed as usual that alcohol makes me dull, slow, unfocused and a bit confused. I just got caught up in the moment and found myself sitting there at a table with the rest of the crew, and for a short moment i fooled myself that i belonged there.
Of course i didn´t. Of course i don´t belong there. How could i? That lifestyle really hurt me quite a bit when i was younger and was definitly part of what brought me down for a while, years ago.
I do not belong in that universe. I don´t want to be in it. A beer does not belong in my hand. It felt like a stranger. Still, i got caught up in the moment. No catastrophy in itself, but a very clear reminder of the huge difference between the path i´m walking now, and the path i have left behind. The culture that musicians surround themselves with seldom leaves any room for a healthy soul to exist.
This understanding made me feel so happy about where i am right now.
The whole episode made me think, react, understand a lot of things. It made me see how far i have travelled from what i used to be. Making me see it in yet another perspective.
I enjoyed spending private time with my longest and dearest friend a lot. We had long talks on the road as we drove there and back again. But still…i realized i´m a stranger to that world, while knowing him so well.
I get more out of hanging with him in other environments. Don´t get me wrong, i wouldnt want to change anything about the weekend at all. It was educating and a lot of it was fun.
But the premises of what a touring life depends on are not acceptable.
It is a dark world i can tell you, remembering it from my younger years.
Imagine beeing away from home for about 180 days a year. Driving between hundreds of cities, repeating a tiring routine again, and again, and again and again.
Imagine that a major part of your day, 180 days a year, is spent among drunk people in dark, crowded rooms.
Imagine not knowing what town you are waking up in.
Always in transit. Never stopping. Never resting. Never growing. Never reflecting.
Imagine that there is always a few people in those rooms, every night, that are prepared to have “sex” with you, without knowing anything about you, never actually caring for who you are really.
Very painful to a concious mind.
Imagine, as i did up until fifteen years ago, giving in to it all.
-Jumpin into an ocean of neverending destructive life in all dimensions and aspects. Just because it´s there. Just because you can. Just because there is no other options presented. Nothing else to choose from.
For some people (to many), it´s a romantic dream of constant sensations and party. Well shure. But for how long do you think you can sustain that behaviour without destroying you life? 104 gigs? 230 gigs? 400?
I did over 800 gigs in five years between 1988 and 1993. Imagine the magnitude of self-abuse that followed with that. 800 dark rooms, each one presenting you with limitless access to everything on the devils Smorgosboard thank you very much.
It was fun the first 2-300 times. We were just young boys playing the field in our innocense. Then, after a few years, i became numb and couldn´t see the point in it anymore, but i still continued because i had no other offer or choice.
You see, there is no real life to be found inside that existence. None. Nothing. Nothing real. Nothing caring, true or sustainable. Just quick shallow fixes of stimulation. Egoboosters.
It really is the shortcut to hell in every aspect.
It ended for me in 1993. I got tinnitus and had to walk away from it from one day to another. I think that saved my life. I then made a U-turn and went into the booming Internetbusiness in the nineties for almost a decade, but that´s another story.
This blogpost has no point. None at all. I´m a thousand years away from it all now.
And now i´m gonna take the dog for a walk.
And i Miss my daughter Molly, who´s away at her grandparents.
Still, i think this will be a good day.
love
/Stefan
Sveti Stefan
Oh.. today i happened to read about a place i visited in 1990, namely “Sveti Stefan”. It lies in Montenegro and was bulit in th 1400´s as a fishing camp/fortress.
In the fifties, emperor Tito converted it to one of the world most luxurious resorts, that made celebrities from USA and Monaco crawl all over it for decades.
In 1990, the war on the Balcan had not yet started, and when i visited Sveti Stefan for a few days stay, it had lost some of it´s glamour, but still presented an incredible experience to a traveller.
Every move i made was assisted by a waitor, a butler or some other function from the staff. If our glasses became halv empty (i travelled with a woman) it took about two seconds and someone was there to fill it up. You can understand the feeling. The staff were used to serve Elisabeth Taylor, Sylvester Stallone and the Kingdoms of Monaco… and there were we, a couple of curious tourists from Sweden, enjoying the afterglows of the rich.
Here´s a page about the island/hotel:
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Republic_of_Montenegro/Sveti_Stefan-719499/TravelGuide-Sveti_Stefan.html
Yes, it´s an island. They have preserved all the little fisherman cabins (about a hundred) and while leaving all exteriours of the island intact, the interiours was carefully renovated into the most luxurious of suites. Rocky stonewalls from the 1500´s meeting azur-blue swimmingpools and James Bond-Style Restaurants and an international Casino.
It was a thrill, and i´m so glad i visited in 1990, because it was the last year that the place still existed in it´s industrial faded, romantic innocense.
Then the war came, the island was closed for some years, and now, some Big Finance are renovating it to be a major Jet-Set-Hotel once again, only this time, focusing on hard, cold money, leaving none of the old aristocratic charms of it´s history.
When we were there, we could still sleep in the same bed used by Sophia Loren and her lovers, feeling the Jackie Kennedy-like historical wings sweeping around us. Now, i guess, its lost.
I have a lot of pictures of us, lounging around beeing the ONLY guests at the huge hotel at the time. We had the iland almost to ourselfes, as it was off-season and every little corner of the facility seemed to be only ours to explore.
So, today, i brought out the photo-album and enjoyed a moment on memory lane.
It is a fine memory.
/Stefan
Where are you heading?
Do you know that?
Do you at least know if it´s in a good or a bad direction?
Do you know if you are treating yourself good along the way?
Do you know if you treat others with love, care and respect in your everyday life?
If not, then shouldn´t you?
Do you have an an excuse for not doing so?
If then, what?
How are you treating your parents, kids, siblings or friends?
Can you tell if it´s in a good or bad manner?
Maby you feel they don´t deserve to be treated well.
Why?
You want revenge?
Does revenge make you feel good?
————————————
..you can all tell where i´m heading as usual. But;
-I will keep hammering this message on all ya heads until you understand that there are no rational grounds for not treating yourself or others with unconditional love, care and respect.
Today, we are going to disect evil. Putting it under the microscope, looking at it closely for a while;
I´ve been wondering about some things.
-What if i suddenly one day walked up to a terrorist with a bomb taped to his waist, about to make some hideous deed, and asked, “Hey mister, you really want to see all these people dead?”
I want to look him in the eyes. See what mechanisms are broken in there, in his mind.
Where did it go wrong. How could a person justify killing anyone at all? How does the motivation build? How does the chain of descisions look like in his mind? What beliefs can be so strong, that it´s ok to massacre other people, including oneself and a lot of unknowing bystanders?
Is it a mean of power? Over what then? Over blood and dead meat on a dirty street in the middle east? Over some innocent lives extinguished? Over some media about it?
Not much to have power of.
But…to have the ability to stop it and make a peace of the mess.. now THAT´s power!
I feel i must learn so much more.
You see…..a person with a mental diagnosis i can at least understand. Serial killers and psychopaths i can understand. They have a condition. It´s completly expected they going off and slaughter people. It´s the nature of their disease.
But i can´t understand people killing, abusing and supressing eachother in the name of subjective morality, religion, ethics, values, money or power.
This is the darkest side of humanity.
Well… i CAN understand it.- But the underlying mechanisms of it is harder to grasp. The evil greed and selfishness that seems to be hiding in so many people.. easily provoced to surface, turning the person into a monster.
——————
Again: Where are you heading?
Are you going to add or subtract to the shit of the world today? In any aspect. Big or small.
Just for example; -Will you do good by doing the dishes, or will you be doing bad by spreding a bad rumour about someone.
Will you hurt somebody, abuse yourself, or will you do something constructive?
Every second holds an option of making a better choice, in every situation.
Really. I´m serious.
What´s it gonna be?
Statisticly speaking, sooner or later a rapist is gonna read this blog. “Hi rapist! Had fun did ya?”
And also, someday, statisticly speaking, a man beating his wife will read this. “Hi mister, i bet you slapped her around real good this weekend right?, Kids were watching? Oh, nevermind, you can slap them around too”.
(Now that was some pretty scary stuff to write… and i figure it was reading it also.)
But i was making a point by overenhancing something important:.
Do you do harm? In what situations? Of what kind? Who gets to suffer from it? Only you?
Do you drink? Gamble? Steal? Cheat? Lie?
All i say is that everyday presented, represents a chance to stop it and start to do constructive, caring, meaningful, honest and loving things instead.
It´s just a matter of how you choose to live.
You are completly responsible for the choices you make, and also, the choices you avoid to make.
Completly responsible. In every second awake.
It´s you.
/Stefan
Today i fell in love with myself.
Again.
The feeling is often mixed with a bit of melancholy and determination.
It happens from time to time. This feeling showing up, of a warm love for what i am.
Especially those times that i´ve managed to take care of myself, resting and taking it slow.
Then my soul seems to catch up with my mind for a minute, and i understand that nothing is more important than treating myself with love and respect. Keeping clearminded, healthy and awear.
I need this strength to handle all the obstacles of life while caring for my kids at the same time.
It´s rough times out there in many aspects right now. I´ll do my best to see it through.
If i can´t solve it all, i´ll solve what i can.
That´s the only way to handle it.
/S