Invincible

Some times I feel like this:



I like days like that

No more Mrs Nice

It's beginning to dawn on me that this course I'm taking, a course that's really very important for my job, supposed to make me a better teacher and lasting four very long semesters of my life, is not at all what I was hoping for. It's very frustrating.

I love to study and learn, I firmly believe that the day one stops learning is the day one stops living, and I never wish to go there again. It's a cold and hard and lonely place! I love to spend hours, days, weeks and more on discussing things, to turn and twist and toss thoughts around and gain new perspectives and insights.

But I also need to be able to balance this course and my work, which means I really need to know times and places and workloads ahead, to be able to plan. When deadlines move and workloads shift without warning it's not just me that's affected, all my students are too and that... is a bad thing. A really bad thing.

I'm very very proud of my students, you see. They work hard, they grow, they learn, they develop wings and learn to fly, and to be able to help them in that process I can't afford to keep too much focus and energy on keeping track of the unproffessional behaviour of my teachers. I'm also rather protective regarding my students. Therefore I'll need to talk to my teachers about this.

It feels really stupid, but it needs to be done. I need to protect my students from the consequenses of my teachers' unproffessionalism.

Boom Boom

Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Mood swings

I was in a good mood this morning:



but then my teacher came along, indirectly, and my mood changed drastically:



*sighs*

Confusion

When my phone rings it doesn't sound like many other phones around here, and that's, of course, the purpose. For the last few days, though, I've been hearing it going off again and again, even though it's not ringing. Very confusing!

And just now I realised there's a TV commercial that uses exactly the same tune!

Such a relief, I'm not crazy!

Is he dying?

I hear rumours that the great nobel savage, the impressive, the strong and mighty and seemingly unstoppable Zakk Wylde is dying, and it breaks my heart. His kids are so young, and his wife - oh she's such a sweetheart and they seem so happy together!

I hope it's just rumours!

The artist and the Internet

This was originally posted in Swedish, but since I was inspired by and am using quite a lot of the words of somebody who does not, to my knowledge, read Swedish I've decided to translate it and post it again:

The relationship between artist and fan is changing if you haven't noticed, along with the way we consume and experience music and even communicate since the internet arrived.

In the forum on the NIN homepage Trent Reznor, the voice of Nine Inch Nail, talks amongst other things about how the cultural landscape have changed, and still is changing today:

It's been an interesting experiment over the last couple of years or so. Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world - I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.
The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there. They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it. There's no real plan, even - it's just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That's the goal - a mutual and shared respect.

Not everybody chooses to follow the same path but it is my belief that the path chosen by NIN and many others is wisely chosen. It's better on so many levels to participate in this new thing, be a part of it and dealing with it from experience and insight rather than desperately hanging on to what no longer is, or even allowing some of all these self proclaimed experts or gurus take command.

Of course there's a price to pay for the intimacy this sort of interacting brings. The world is a huge place and here be all kinds of people, including the ones who may not always be able to grasp the concept of perspective. Reznor tells about people who are unable to fully distinguis between reality and imagination, about people who express anger and hateful feelings due to the fact that he's not the same man today as he was in 1994, and about people who attack the fact that he's in a relation and his girlfriend. Yet, he forgrounds, even if they are both intrusive and stubborn, and sometimes threatening and scary, the only a few of them.

Reznor with NIN, like many artists, writers, musicians etc have chosen to be part of the new social arena. They choose to communicate directly with fans all over the world and generously share both time and other things with their fans. They are rewarded with loyalty, attention and their works, records, books etc, are sold and bring pleasure to many. The artist who chooses to stay out of the arena may achieve some fame as a hermite but accepts the risk of ending up out in the cold, forgotten. Choosing between works from somebody who's generously shared his or her thoughts along the process, replied to questions etc, or the works by somebody one's never heard of most of is would choose the first one.

The world is not out of joint, it has changed. Artists have nothing to loose in getting of the high horses they cannot handle and instead follow in the path of Reznor and many others. It's not that dangerous, and it's worth it.

Emilie Autumn

I learnt to walk in the backstages of theatres and opera houses, amongst the beautiful chaos of costume changes, circus performers, sweaty ballerinas, dripping make-up, and far too much glitter. Then, I went mad and was locked up. What did you think that would sound like?

Emilie Autumn says about her music. The child-prodigy classical violinist grew into a very special artist. She played with Cortney Love on her debut solo album and toured with her for a few years, worked a while with Smashing Pumpkin's Billy Corgan before releasing her own solo album, Ohpeliac, in 2006.

To me Emilie Autumn is the kind of person who is so pretty, so adorably cute, so strong and so vulnerable it breaks my heart, the kind of artist I cannot not love! Her music is funny, rich and elaborate, her way of performing it so light in touch it dances all around the room. Her lyrics are beautiful, poetic and slightly bizarre, she follows the gothic tradition in her choice of themes and sings about death and madness as phenomena rather than as threats.

Give her a listen, I don't think you'll regret it.

Adrian Heath

Some of you, who know me away from keyboard, out in real life, might be a bit surprised when you listen to Adrian Heath. He’s a singer/songwriter (see, I told you, not what you’d expect to read about here, but go on, he’s worth it) living in New South Wales in Australia.

His lyrics go beyond the simple storytelling too often found in this genre. The kind of lyrics one could read and reread as poetry, finding more in them each time; a quality further foregrounded by his distinct British pronunciation. The music is soft, often dreamy, yet intriguing enough to keep me interested.

Check him out, I think you might enjoy the experience.

September Mourning

This is a young band from New York worth keeping an eye on, wouldn't you agree? Colourful, interesting, vivid music, rough enough to keep me happy, yet at the same time as sweet and sparkling as youth itself.

Never heard of them? You will! A good start could be to go to their MySpace page! This is how they describe the music they make:

We make music for the light in us all

no matter how small....

the beat down or the forgotten
the broken hearted or the alone
the lost or the scared
the weak or the strong
the loved or the hated
the dreamers......

We make music to give you hope.

Your dreams. Your vision of who you want to be.....

Never give in.

Never give up.

We make music for you.

Sounds beautiful, doesn't it? Here's a sample of what their music sounds like, more to be found, as mention, on MySpace: