Jag sitter och tänker på hur många olika människor jag egentligen har att tacka för att jag är där jag är nu: så lycklig, rent musikaliskt, med min alldeles vackra, fina sångröst, min genrebredd, mitt intresse för nästan all musik jag kommer över och min överlag rent musiska inställning till livet (det där är ett citat från min lärare i ensembleledning. Kan ni tänka er en finare komplimang?).

Jag tänker att jag inte hade varit här om det inte hade varit för Björn, som introducerade Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Air, Stina Nordenstam, Ben Folds Five och många fler, men framför allt Leaning Into Mine av Jonas Knutsson som har kommit att betyda så mycket. Jag tänker att jag inte hade varit här om det inte hade varit för lindyn, som lärt mig sjunga jazz. Jag tänker på Markus och Bersa, utan vars hjälp och pepp jag kanske inte hade vågat söka till musiklinjen på SVF. Och många fler. Det är en betryggande tanke, den på hur mycket det är som har lett mig hit. Allting har ju lett mig hit, även det svåra.

Maybe what I need do to is combine acrylics and collage and put it in a book.

I need a small book, Moleskine-sized or a little bit wider, with not to many, but sturdy and nicely smelling pages. A small photo book maybe? Yes, I think that's what I need.

Collage from early January 2007; I think this is one of the last I made while I still had that urge to keep going - that need to create. Dear, is it that long ago? Apart from a burst of inspiration in April (and then I had to force it to get started, really force it), I haven't made anything worth to mention since January. Something really must be done.

This collage is my most popular one on Flickr. Before I started thinking about it, that fact was a mystery to me. I've made several collages that I've been more happy with ... Collages that I thought people would like more. But out of the 129 collages I've put on Flickr, this one is what people like the most. But it's really nothing, I thought, it's just a list of things I love (go to the flickr page to read the notes), and some squares of color. And then I thought that that might be it: It doesn't get better than what happens when I let anything happen.

In a spontaneous comment on the collage's flickr page, I wrote this: "I am so amazed that there are so many of you liking this and adding it to your favorites. It is my most random collage, my most spontaneous and unplanned, I had no intention whatsoever to make anything beautiful. Now it is my most popular one, and it seems to be inspiring, too. I think there's a lesson concerning my worries and efforts about 'making something beautiful' for me there."

Just wanted to put that here too. That lesson is one I should think about more often. Hm ... I have a feeling there will be more on this subject later on, once I've found the cure for this collage drought of mine. Or maybe thinking about that would work as a cure?

The most amazing thing just happened.

(Maybe it won't seem that amazing to you, but I'm a person who tend to think of the most ordinary, everyday things as amazing things.)

I was watching this movie, Stranger Than Fiction - my friend Robin said I'll love it and when he says it like that, you know dead sure, then he's always right. And in it, Professor Jules Hilberg asks Harold Crick if he aspires to anything, but he says no.
- Harold, Hilberg says, you must have some ambition.
- I don't think so.
- Some underlined dream. Think.

And right there, my head and heart filled up so quickly (I felt it almost physically, my heart filled to the brim with some shimmering liquid that was dreams, hopes, ambitions and small G-clefs), that I had to turn the film off and open a new notepad page on the computer (just like this one - I always write everything in Notepad first, did you know that about me?) and write them down. They're all about music of course: get to know more exciting and talented people to sing with, form new groups (jazz bands, pop groups, a new singer/songwriter duo), sing with a big band on lindy hop dance nights, work as a singing teacher at Hvitfeldtska (where it's close to impossible to get a job because if you ever get one you don't leave it), go out and dance more, take a year off school to sing more jazz, and many more like that.

And then I saved it, sighed happily (knowing that since a musical life is what I want, I will have it) and turned back to the movie, where Harold's first line after I turn it on again is:

- Well ... I've always wanted my life to be more musical.

Photo taken early May on a school yard close to where I live.