When I listen to Over There by Terence Blanchard, I feel like my heart is going to burst with all the emotion. There's so much love in my life, so much thankfulness, so much beauty, I can't even explain. I feel that I am the luckiest person in the world to be able to feel everything as much as I do. I listen to it and I know, I know that I could never do anything with my life that is not music. I listen to it and trust you, I trust God, and I trust my own abilities to make the most out of every second that I have been given, in my own way. I listen to it and there is more room for air in my chest then there was before, and I know that whatever I want to do with my life is possible. I couldn't live any other way.

I just had to tell you.

So here's what happening:

I danced with Kristian on Wednesday; we were planning the first beginners-indermediate class, and I had decided not to dance too much, just do the necessary talking and then go home early, and then he put on Hayburner and we were in the big ballroom and had all the space in the world ... and I was like ... "oh well, one song can't hurt". And we danced, and it may have been one of our best ever. Gah, I'm so incredibly lucky to be his partner. Luck is what it is; we didn't really decide to be partners, it just happened, we just knew that it would work out. It's that magical connection again: I know very well that not everyone would work as well with him as I do (even though I've never heard of anyone disliking dancing with him), and I know lots of people who do not work well with me. But I don't care ... as long as I can dance with him a little bit now and then. Ooooh, it was so good I kept laughing and laughing. You know, when the momentum's so perfect that your stomach loves it. That's what I'm dancing for, those moments.

Afterwards I felt out of breath, weak and feverish-sweaty, so I guess it wasn't a great idea. But for that one dance it was so worth it.

So well, I'm still sick. Nothing's changing there.

Been doing some painting, in my journal. Just colors. Don't know yet what will come of it. Parts of me feel like leaving the spreads like they are, light blue, bright blue, gold, light yellow, some orange, a little bit of beige. But my fingers really want to add something to them ... I don't know what yet. It's exciting, to leave them open on my desk to dry, and go do something else (stand on the balcony, play betapet, write a blog entry, stalk someone on facebook), and then go back and suddenly see what needs to be done (at least that's what often happens, so I'm kind of hoping that's what'll happen now, too). It's a beautiful process to be part of ... when it's working.

J was here last night, to cheer me up a little bit (and make me some food). It worked of course, sometimes just being around him works. Sometimes it astounds me that we actually met on a bus (on a regular city bus, not one going far, I don't know what you call buses going between different cities and such) and that we're still best friends five years later. Sometimes it's the most natural thing in the world - how else would I get to know such an amazing, interesting and surprising individual, if not in an amazing, interesting and surprising way?

It struck me today that I'm probably sick now for a reason. I had it all planned out, you know, what I should do with these days to be super perfectly prepared for school; maybe what I need is to not prepare at all, maybe what I need is just go there in two weeks and sing, with my own voice, like I always do, and enjoy it, like I always do (but in different ways).

That felt good. This summer didn't turn out quite as I had planned ... but not in a bad way. It never does, does it?

I'm listening to Tides by Nitin Sawhney. So soothing, always. I waste my time (because I need to use it up somehow) by surfing internet pages that are all about looks: collage art (of course), but also what to wear, how to live, and I keep thinking that that's all just fine, but there is nothing like music. You will have to forgive me this. I can see a marvellous compostion, colors that make me feel like I want to lay down and die right now because they are so perfect, but it will never be like singing.

And I haven't even been able to sing, or play, for two weeks, it's killing me.

Not that I don't enjoy collaging anymore. (Actually, I haven't enjoyed it as much as of late, but more on that another time. And also, note to self, do write something about how I've been feeling like a lousy photographer wannabe lately.) But it's like - collaging, and color, and beautiful clothing, it will just have to come secondly. Collage is what I do to describe my life, express it, in a way; music is it, it is the core. I think that's what have made it so easy for lindy to take over the time and emotion I used to put in art journaling. I have to struggle to make my collages look like music, but it is not hard at all to make dancing look like music. If it doesn't show the music, it is not dancing.

Photo taken at a camp with my friends, 1999, and scanned for facebook photo albums.

I have now officially retreated to the parents' house. Because it always sucks to be sick, but it sucks a little less to be sick here. For several reasons:

1. Company. We don't talk much, my throat doesn't want me to (but then we've never really talked much), but that doesn't matter. It's just nice to have someone around.

2. They have a TV. Normally I hate television and almost everything shown on it, but when I'm sick, a TV is some sort of company, too. It's good to just sit on the couch and doze off a little.

3. I can eat luxury food that I can't (or I guess I could, but there are other things I want to put money on, too) afford to buy for myself! Such as ... cherry tomatoes and cashew nuts with (almost) every meal.

4. They like to spoil me a little.

5. My lungs have started to hurt in a most unpleasant way. No, actually, it doesn't really hurt, it just feels - well - unpleasant is a good word. It's like a pressure, it's heavier to breathe than normal and it makes me uncomfortable.

6. It's not far; I live just south of and they live a bit east of the city center. When my mother called yesterday to see how I was feeling, she just asked if I wanted to come here, and I said yes, and she came to pick me up. It's great, to still live in the city where I grew up, that I love more than any other place in the world. But then, why would I ever leave Göteborg.


I called Robin earlier today, to tell him I can't go to Stockholm tomorrow. I haven't seen him since April. I hate that.


Some good things too, so that I won't feel too sorry for myself:
- School starts in no more than two weeks. Hooray!

- I just got the most beautiful message on flickr, from a person who said that my collages and thoughts said I inspired her, and "i don't know what else to say really, just please don't stop, what you're doing." These comments and messages just leave me out of words. What do I do to deserve them?

- They just put the Fall 2007 program of lindy classes (they = WCJ, the lindy hop organization that I'm part of) online. Wohoo! There are so many amazing classes I want to take, like: "Fast and Slow - dancing both faster and slower than we mostly do requires musicality, timing, body awareness, balance and the ability to really listen to your partner and use all of the music [...]." Doesn't it sound super exiting?! And the Taking Over and Stealing classes with Marcus and Ellen! I'm fairly good at taking over, but there is always more to learn. Ooo, I want the classes to start NOW! No, wait ... I want to get well first.

The photo: a tree, growing on a school yard close to where I live.

I have become so used to standing on my balcony, looking at the view, thinking about things, at all times at day, that is actually scares me that I'll have to move in February. sometimes people call me and ask me what I'm doing, and I answer "I'm standing on my balcony", and they are surprised: is that something that can be done, an active choice? Like reading a book or writing an e-mail, standing on my balcony is something that I have come to do. It's such a good place for thinking. It's such a good place for looking at things from another perspective ...

Julia walked me to the tram stop a couple of days ago, after the last night of the Gothenburg Lindy Exchange. We talked about how Herräng and the Lindy Exchange had complemented each other to improve our dancing:
- Herräng showed me that I'm actually a very good dancer, I said, and the Lindy Exchange has shown me what wonderful amounts I still have left to learn.
She nodded. I paused.

And then it dawned upon me, not suddenly like something falling, but rising inside of me, like something waiting underneath, something that I have known for a while, maybe since my first six months of lindy: I need to stop hiding behind the fact that I've only danced a year and a half. I've been using that as a shield, a safety, so as to make it easier for me to accept failure; like when I don't follow something, I have been thinking that it's okay because I've only been dancing for a year and a half. Why can't it be just okay? Not okay because. I don't always follow everything. It should be okay. I should be able to accept it without needing to explain it. Why do I always need to have a reason - no, more than that, an excuse - for every mistake? I am human after all, we make mistakes!

And the reason I cannot hide behind that fact, any longer, is because it doesn't fit. I don't fit in that part anymore. I am better than that; I am better than most people who have been dancing for the same amount of time. This is hard for me to say, I am not used to talking about myself as better than most; nonetheless it is true and it will not do me (or anyone else, for that matter) any good to deny it. I need to know it and accept it, to be able to move on from here.

Naturally it is easier for me to learn faster since I've danced since I was ten, and also because I am a musician, it is not at all difficult for me to feel the music, and become a part of it. I can choose to step inside it, sometimes. But the reasons shouldn't matter: what matters is that I am on an advanced level - in classes quite obviously, I did the audition and they didn't put me in indermediate-advanced, they put me in advanced, I earned my place in that class - but also when social dancing.

It's a suit I've been wearing, the "I've been dancing for eighteen months" excuse, which I need to step out of; into the "I am an advanced dancer" way of thinking. It is time. Because I need to know where I am, to find out what to work on. And like I said, this weekend has given me wonderful ideas of all the things I need to work on. I love that feeling so much, that I could dance forever and still be learning, evolving, growing.

A drawing of la Victoire de Samothrace that I made at the Louvre when travelling in France and Italy last summer.

I have heard that the songs that matter the most to us, are the songs that we associate with both happy and sad memories; the songs that make us want to laugh and cry at the same time; the songs that make us nostalgic; the songs that remind us of someone, someone that we loved, before.

That's what I have heard. And I think that whoever said this (I don't remember) was right - to a certain point.

Because there are songs, in my life, that don't make me sad at all. There are songs that are connected only to happy memories. Passing By by Ulrich Schnauss is one of them. I first heard it when I saw Elizabethtown, a movie that everyone else hates but that I love. You hear it as they drive to meet each other in the middle of the night, and it's so perfect, it suits me so well; seeing as I love going someplace by car in the middle of the night.

I made this collage in my Moleskine as some sort of tribute to this song; because I love it, and because it makes me happy, and because it makes me think of last April and how I changed my life, then. How I decided that I deserve to be loved.



In other news, I am sick. It's just a cold, and a slight fever. The days are okay. The nights are worse, I don't sleep, I am cold and sweating at the same time, I wake up every thirty minutes, coughing.

I have only myself to blame - I knew already last week that I was going to be sick (I didn't allow myself to be sick during Herräng, I just thought "afterwards you can be sick, not now"), I felt it in my throat, but still I went to the lindy exchange. Oh, well. I intend to be well by Friday, when I'm going to Stockholm to visit Robin. You hear that, fever? I intend to be well by Friday.

I'm thinking about ending my summer holidays and getting back to school tomorrow. School doesn't officially start until September 3rd, but it doesn't do to come back to school and not have practised for weeks. Actually I haven't practised at all during the whole of July. Oh, dear, I'll have some work to do with my voice! But I know better than to try to do serious singing practise when I'm still not fully recovered from the Herräng flu. It would do more harm than good to my voice. I'll have to wait ... But I long to sing. And I miss my school. The grand pianos on the 6th floor, the light that floods into the corridors, the music swimming through the windows when I walk up from the tram stop.



As if yesterday's (or actually "this morning's" would be a more accurate way of putting it) post didn't make that clear, I might be more into dancing now than I've ever been.

I met this guy in Herräng who explained that dancing to him was all about trying to get better and better. I was like, "wait a minute, where's the fun?". Of course, he enjoys it as well, but there's still that lingering thought of always improving, dancing with better dancers, dancing more, more often, practising ... And as I listened, I knew that that's how I was, before, when I was a contemporary dancer. I pushed myself all the time, I was so competitive, I had to have others confirming me all the time. In the end it was no fun at all.

So I've done that for TOO LONG, doing stuff only to try to be the best. Nowadays, I try not to do things to get better at doing them, ever. I do them because I love them and because I feel like doing them. My opinion is that everything that I really love doing, I will get better at, sooner or later. Because the only way to really get better at something is to enjoy it, profoundly. I want to be a good dancer and I want to learn more, but it is not my goal; my goal is to live the music (as is with everything I do in my life). The rest will all come, as long as I'm having fun.

I've been having fun dancing for more than a year now. I feel like a want to dance forever.

He also said another thing: The day that you start thinking about what other people think of your dancing, you're done. That's it. From that day on you will never enjoy it as much, unless you can stop it in time. If you think about what others think about your dancing, it will become less and less fun, and you'll worry more and more, and you will stop dancing.

He is so right. Lindy hop for me has always been because I love it, not because I have to force myself to get better. And I will do everything I can to keep it that way. I hope, I hope, that I learned that lesson when I was a contemporary dancer, but maybe I have to be careful. I cannot, I will not, fall into that gap again! I will dance for myself and myself only. And if others enjoy dancing with me, I'll love it. But I won't dance for them, nor for them to confirm or compliment me.

When I danced with a guy yesterday, I had to ask him why he looked so bored. Unfortunately someone had told him that I'm some sort of wonderful dancer. And I hate to disappoint people. And he looked bored. And I thought that I was boring. And I hate to be boring.

And he just smiled at me and said I would not have danced with you for that long if I had been bored with you. And I trusted him, instantly. And that's that.

Photo taken during a Lindy in the Park in July this year.

Oh, the Seattle blues -

- I felt like a feather tonight, but not as fleeting; I am not vague nor undecided, I am solid, one body, one movement, chains of movements, dancing. Still I am a feather.

Compared to years and years of feeling fat (although I never was), this lightness is heaven; this acceptance of my body and my weight the way it is, this new way of being, dancing, living - because I have the right to it, this space, I do not take up too much. The floor is mine, I own it, it belongs to my feet and through my feet my whole body. I used to wish I was neat. I have longed for pretty, secretly. I don't need that anymore. I'd rather be colorful, outrageous than meek. I will never be one of the pretty girls, not as long as it means what it means today: it means eye candy only; silent, well-mannered eye candy. I have too much to say to be pretty. Cute girls do not sparkle like I do.

It has happened that leaders have made it difficult for me, they've let things slip, without meaning to hurt me of course, but nevertheless - "I'd like to take the aerials class with M because she's light" - what does that make me other than heavy? But no, I am not heavy. They were wrong to say these things. I am light as a feather tonight, but not fleeting; comfortable in my skin, in my body, with my weight. This is me. Every part of my body is dancing.

I should make me some dinner. I'm no good at cooking. Always the same dishes. But the ones I make, I make them good. My friends like my lentil soup.

There is something very liberating about English. There are so many words. I once read that English has a lot more words than Swedish - not surprising of course, since there are so many more English speakers than Swedish speakers - and I wish now I could remember the exact amount. How many words does a language hold? How many of them are necessary to communicate? What is poetry? Most of the poetry I've read in my life annoys the hell out of me. How important is communication to us? To me, everything.

I should make dinner, instead I sit at my table (I usually don't call it my desk, it's not really a desk: it's a kitchen table, a really large one, that I use as a desk, I bought it because of the size and the color, a very warm light shade of brown, maybe it's oak or something supposed to resemble oak, what do I know) making collages. I painted over an old one, about courage, that was too pale to be about courage. Then I wrote "Things I love about myself, part 1: My ability to love. It's the best thing about me". I mean it very much. There is nothing better about me. I have been let down, cheated on, deserted, ditched, dumped and just simply left behind. Still I love. I am very selfish (working on that), but I love.

I'll show the collage to you later, when the paint's dry.

I listen to Nando Lauria. I listened to him a lot during Herräng, too; every time I took a nap I started by listening to music in my headphones - it's a way of spending time with myself, being alone, even in a gym full of people sleeping or resting or whispering. Taking care of myself and my own thoughts, if you wish.

The painting above is called "piano". I made it for my brother as a birthday gift last year. 50x60 cm.

We were on our way home from M's birthday party, about an hour ago. The night was dark and the highway ahead of me looked yellowish in the light from the streetlights. J drove fast, very fast, and we listened to José Gonzàlez (the Crosses EP), it felt a little bit like flying, and I felt very safe.

We started talking about music and singing, and of course my education was mentioned. K said that he has only heard me sing a few times, and I asked him when? He said "well, there was this one time in Syria when we were singing the whole group together, you sat on my right and I remember hearing your voice". I was stunned. "And you remember that?" I said. "Well ... yeah", he said.

It was just such a beautiful compliment. I didn't need him to say anything at all about my singing. The fact that he remembered the moment was more than enough.

I just wanted to tell you. The night felt like velvet, it sounds silly but everything really was soft and dark and comforting like velvet. It was a very beautiful ride in a car, one of these random moments that seem to pass other people by, but that I collect like treasures.

An interesting thing about Herräng is that I met several people (about seven, I think) who very quickly in the conversation said something like "no, you wouldn't do such a thing, it's not in your personality" or "I can tell you'd like/dislike this or that" or, worst of all, "I know your kind". Excuse me?! All of these people are American. Somebody Swedish would never say a thing like this; we may think we know something about someone, but we don't say it until the person is a friend - or an enemy, if that turns out to be the case. The people telling me stuff about myself were complete strangers.

It annoys me very much. What bothers me is not that they were wrong, or right (mostly they were right, since I wear my heart on my sleeve) - that doesn't matter. But it disturbs me that they think they know me better than I do. Why, then, is this disturbing? Because they haven't been through what I've been through! They haven't lived my life! And darn it, they wouldn't want to, at least not some of the years!

Ouch, where did that come from?

Anyways ...

It's not hard to tell that I'm social, outgoing, talkative and spontaneous. People guess rightly that I tend to like people instantly, that I fall in love easily, that I take an interest in strange people or things, that I'm creative, that I love music and arts, that I've suffered from wild moodswings and still do sometimes (though not at all as often as I used to). Those things are easy. But there are other things to me as well, things that people don't see, or don't see until I tell them.

And even if they do! Even if they do understand things about me, please don't tell me in such a know-it-all way! It's my life after all, and even if I don't know myself completely (only God does that, anyway), I defend the right to choose what I want to be like. I may be this or that, but I can change. I am not stuck this way, I will change and evolve and travel to new parts of myself, I will see new things in my soul every day. So don't talk to me like I AM one way or another and have no way of changing it. Parts of me that I do not appreciate, or that make it harder for me to reach my goal - which is love and happiness - I can change. I've done it.

That was hard in English. This blogging in English is really good for me. Oh, and speaking of that, I've had some really lovely compliments on my English during Herräng! Some people actually thought I was a native English speaker, that's pretty awesome.

And speaking of God, I haven't been to church for weeks. I'm beginning to feel the need. I really like that need, too. I really like being Christian. It gives me solid ground, a ground from where I can go wherever I want. And some people actually think that true religion locks people up in cages! Mine doesn't, for sure. Mine sets me free.

It's getting blue outside. I remember writing that as part of lyrics for one of Sebastian's songs, when we were seventeen: "summer nights don't turn dark, they turn dark blue". I'm resting. I haven't been outside my door at all today. It feels really good to just sit here and wait, wait for me to catch up with my life ... or for my life to catch up with me. Either way I expect it to happen in a few days' time, it always does. Until then I'll just sit here.

I've got the post Herräng depression. I've heard others talk about it, and since I'm fairly overemotional about everything, I figured I'd get it too, so I thought I was prepared. How wrong wasn't I! I'm completely paralyzed. Everything is so different here: It's silent, to begin with, and not everyone I meet are dancers. Why aren't they? Let's just dance, here and now, in the middle of the street, like we do in Herräng!

It's going from a place where things happen literally all the time - there is just no time for sleep, people dance at all hours - to the soft calm of my summer holidays. June was like this too: slow, calm, cosy, nice. I was happy then. How long before I get used to the slow mode of living again? A whole month to go before school starts and things start to happen again.

Still I'm sleep-deprived and worn-out and I don't think I could have taken much more, so ... It's good to be home too, in a way ... Just so very different. I already miss all the people I met, the discussions and games.

I think I'm going to go out and stand on my balcony for a while. Everything is purple and pink and greyish blue there now; I live ont he seventh floor, and I often stand on my balcony when the sun goes down. I like to be a part of it.


The photo shows my friend Hanna, walking from the last dance night at about four in the morning. When we came up to the school area wew we sleep, they had already started to take down the tents were classes were held.