nuzzaci - an online journal

When I’m away I tend to read more then if I’m at home. I always have one or two books next to my bed that I’m currently reading, and they seem to take ages to finish; doing 5-10 pages every now and again before going to or falling to sleep.
When I’m away, these never-ending books often reach an end and new ones get started. Guess it has to do with distractions and priority.

During my week in Sweden, I brought (and finished) the book Stumbling on happiness by Daniel Gilbert. I think it is my first book in the Psychology gender, so my reference point is probably not the widest.
The book in general is a bit of a mind-fuck - a big catch 22 psych game on your brain.

An contextual example:

apparently, the describers’ verbal description of their experience ‘overwrote’ their memories of the experience themselves, and they ended up remembering not what they had experienced but what they had said about what they experienced.

So what you are reading here and now is not necessarily what happened, or how I experienced it while it happened, more what I now think I experienced when looking back on what happened. And therefor what I’m saying here is not as related to what actually happened as we might want to think.
I found the book to be very interesting, well written and funny. But this is all I will say about it. I will not post a long review of how I liked it while reading it.

This post suffered from a similar syndrome as the books next to my bed. I started writing down notes on this post when I was still in Sweden, and since then (end of october) I have written a bit here and a bit there.
The post ended up being so long and in such detail that I decided to start all over and summarise the original post, and spare you details, such as, what the population of the village my dentist comes from.

Let’s jump back to Sunday the 22nd of October. It’s 2am and the Formula 1 qualifying ends with Michael Schumacher 10th on the grid due to an unknown error during the last stint in qualifying. With a nose full of mucus (also known as snot), I go to bed.
5 hours later, 7am, I wake up, pack my bags and take bus 48 to Liverpool street and then the underground to Heathrow.

That was how the journey began (might not be the best beginning, but all journeys need a beginning). And that set the tone of the whole week in Skelleftea - rapid, quick and a bit stressful.

Flying… Flying… Flying… I have said before: “Flying feels less glamorous then eating a egg and mayo sandwich.”, and the fact that it’s bad for the environment, unpleasant, and this time (again) anything else than a smooth procedure (checking didn’t work since my electronic ticket didn’t exist, and on top of that extremely long queues due to extra security etc etc), just makes flying the most unpleasant, stupid and uncomfortable way to travel.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in 15 years time or so airplanes will be voted to wear the crown of the worst invention ever invented, and looked upon as something as stupid as the atom bomb. According to Sir Nicholas Stern report, it actually seems like it is a commercialised atom bomb in disguise.

Snow!! My family picks me up at an airport that was covered in snow (note: the photo above is not taken at the airport). And it was cold. But since they no longer serve food on the plane - I was dead hungry at this point, and the only worry I had was whether I would have time to get some food in my stomach before the last F1 race of the season.
It was one of those moments when I am extremely pleased over the fact that Skelleftea (pop approx. 35397) has the same ratio on pizzerias as an English village has on pubs.
The first pizzeria we went to was rammed with people. So we went to another one further down the road. At first it looked perfect, with only a few people inside, but it took ages. Turns out that the guy in front of us had ordered 31 pizzas for a junior hockey team… can’t put my finger on it, but there must be something to learn from that experience.

When the last F1 race of the season began, and the last race ever for the great Michael Schumacher, I was sitting comfortably and digesting a very tasty sandwich kebab pizza, on the sofa in the warm house of the Kontro family in Ursviken (pop approx 4060) just outside Skelleftea.

After the race, that didn’t really end the way I had hoped, I went to Skelleftehamn (pop approx. 3123), which is the small village 16km outside of Skelleftea were I was born and raised.

I slept like a soft toy.

As in every city, there’s always a local current trend; a bag, a way of wearing something, an artist, a way of life. As an “outsider” visiting you notice these trends quite quickly, since there is an abnormal and unnatural amount of something that, where you come from, is not seen as special or trendy. This time it’s: baby carrier, big bellies soon to deliver baby and the Crocs beach sandal.

The whole baby boom, big belly and Crocs invasion reminded me a bit of the white headphones and iPod era two years ago.

During the following 5 days I manage to (among other thing):

• Visit the dentist twice
• Have a lovely wine and cheese evening with friends
• Two schedule lunches
• Four evening dinner parties (one in Umea)
• An afternoon at my old job as a Lifeguard
• A bowling competition
• and of cause my sisters 30th birthday party

It’s not often that you find yourself coming back to London, from the north of Sweden, looking forward to get some rest.

Lets go back in time. Back to 1996 and the year that I bought the album ‘About to Choke’, by Vic Chesnutt, from the record shop ‘Rock On’ in Skelleftea. I loved that album from day one, and within a year I owned all Vic’s albums: Is the Actor Happy?, Drunk, West Of Rome and Little. My good friend Marcus Burman and I were totally absorbed and adored Vic and his albums to bits. Even thought they were all good, About to Choke remained the favorite.

Then in 1998 we found out that Vic was playing in Stockholm, and within a few hours, the flight and concert tickets were booked. Moonspell and Therion was also playing that same weekend, so more tickets got booked and another friend, Johan “Jorra” Radstom, decided to come along as well. Even though I really like Moonspell and Therion, the trip was all about Vic.

It was the 3rd of October 1998. As we arrived at the venue a poster said that the special guests for the evening were Calexico and Lambchop, and, to our surprise, that Vic had released a new album called The Salesman and Bernadette.
The initial thought was: F**k - I didn’t know he had released a new album! The initial hopes were: I hope the new album is as brilliant as the rest of them and that he will mostly play songs from About to Choke.
It turned out that Vic did not only play songs from the latest album The Salesman and Bernadette, the album was also far from anything similar to any of his other albums. Instead of a naked acoustic singer songwriter sound, it was an experimental music cooperation with Lambchop and their 21 piece band. I hated it.

Still today - 10 years later - About to Choke is one of my absolute favorite albums. Vic Chesnutt is still one of my favorite musicians and song writers. But my so far only Vic Chesnutt gig is one of my worst and most disappointing concert experiences.

I think we all have had similar experiences, maybe not to that extent, but I bet we all have been to a concert where the band didn’t play ‘That One Song’. That song that is a bit special to you. The song you think is better than the hit song that made the band famous. Your song. That song.
I have many times gone to a concert and wished they would only play songs from ‘That One Album’. You know - you don’t care about the latest album, even if the latest album is ok, you prefer if they could promote it some other time, and not when you have made the effort to attend the show.

It’s a bit of a Catch 22 - you need to know an album and it’s songs to truly enjoy a concert , and once you know the album, the tour to promote the album is over and the next time the band is in town, they are already promoting the next album.

Now let’s go back to 2006 and last sunday when I arrived to the Barbican with Willow, her friend Lucy and Lucy’s boyfriend Scott, to see Tindersticks. This time a flyer said:

Welcome to the second year of Don’t Look Back, the season that invites a diverse range of artists to preform a retrospective of one of their works. In most cases this means seminal or great albums live in their entirety. This is all about records we endorse - not necessarily how many copies they have sold, but more about how they have touched our hearts and minds. In the age of the iPod where many people pick and choose tracks, Don’t Look Back encourages fans to preserve the album as an art form.

Tindersticks, will be preforming Tindersticks II.

I pinched my arm. It can’t be true. It’s to good to be true.

When they all came on stage, the singer, Stuart A Staples, leans towards the mic and says;

I think we all knows what’s gonna happen next.

It was amazing. Breath taking. Blown away. Stupendous. Electrifying. Non stop action. Thrilling. World class. A masterpiece. A triumph. Truly compelling. Superb. This year’s most sumptuously enjoyable gig. Expansive and radiantly generous. A transatlantic epic.

No need really for me to write a review in detail. If you know the album you know what you missed, if you don’t, you don’t. And if you don’t, just try to imagine one of those albums you just totally adore and imagine you seeing that album being preformed live.

What I found out as well, that I didn’t know, and that adds even more value to it, is that the Tindersticks don’t longer exist as a band. The lead singer, Stuart A Staples, have gone solo. The concert was a one-off.

I feel privileged to have experienced this, and I would like to thank Tindersticks, my lovely girlfriend willow for purchasing the tickets, and the organiser ATP for making it happen. The concept of getting an artist to preform an album is just brilliant. Me like it a lot and me will definitely keep me eyes open for the 2007 brochure.
It says on the ATP Don’t Look Back website that they take suggestions on future artist and album… maybe I will get to see Vic Chesnutt performing About to Choke after all. Knock on wood.

Exactly three years ago, I wake up at my ex girlfriend parents / formally our old summer cabin outside Skelleftehamn. The night before this morning some of my friends had held a farewell party for me there - waving me goodbye as I was about to leave for my 7 month long internship in London.

That was three years ago.

So I arrived on Tuesday the 19th of August 2003. Karl Tyselius meet me at Edgware Road tube station and told me the latest gossip of the flat and London as he walked me home to the flat at Frampton Street.

My first evening in London was spend with really nice friends in a Italian restaurant on Edgware Road. I had carbonara, a glass of red and it cost me £7.

Below is a piece of text I wrote for my then current website a few months after I arrived… or more exactly 890 days ago. I quite like it, and I do believe it belongs in this post.

If you are about to call someone in this country, and you not happen to be in it yourself - the story begins, like this one, with 0044.

In this weird 0044 country, were people still insist on driving on the left side of the road, I will stay (not until they realize that driving on the right side can be quite a good idea, nor until they start to use the metric system I, or others by the way, can understand and find useful, but…) for a while.

The hard truth is that you will not find me back in my beautiful home country, country 0046 (normal traffic, metric system), for the next -890 days.

Until then - take care, and don’t hesitate to begin the 0044 story sometimes to drop a “hello” or a “how are you feeling today my good old friend?”, because I may need it from time to time (It’s not because I believe I will miss 0046, my friends and family that much - I’ll survive, it’s more…) to make sure that everything is still fine outside the protecting walls of the land where people like Blair, Tracy Lords, Liam and Noel pay their taxes, the land of James Bond and Roger Moore, the land with the number zero zero four four.

As I said last week - I been to Skelleftea. Im now sitting in my sofa watching a recording of the Canadian grand prix, waiting for my parents to call from the airport saying; we are here now. Ferrari and Michael Schumacher are currently quickest… but as we all know - he didn’t win this past weekend.

Midsummer was good. It’s just so nice going back and meet all my lovely old friends. They all are truly an amazing bounce of people.

We (Willow, Mr Tall, Henrik and I), rented a car in Stockholm and drove up during Thursday night. I love driving. Especially during the night. And especially Swedish summer nights. It was a pure pleasure.

First thing on Friday morning was a lunch involving fish. I had fish. I just can’t eat it. I did my best. Thanks to the lovely company it went down alright. Then we were of to give my sister a warm hug before finally going to where we the last 4 years have celebrated the midsummer weekend - Olov Nilzens cabin in Boviken. HUGE amount of love and cred to Olov and Carina for putting up with everyone every year.
One of the highlights was definitely when Anders Norberg sang ‘far jag kan inte fÃ¥ upp min kokosnöt’ at the end of a long karaoke session.

On Sunday, we (Willow, Mr Tall, Henrik and I), drove to Burea to play Football Golf with my half brother other brother - Marcus Vaneryd, at Myggvalla (translates to Mosquito Valley).
Football Golf was very very fun. I definitely can suggest that to anyone in any age and any sex.
It is/was a lot more fun then Frisbee Golf, which we played on Monday evening before once again hitting the road to drive down to Stockholm again.

In Stockholm I had a tight schedule. During the day I had plans to visiting Vinh Kha, Simon Kallgard, Isak Wikstrom, Staffan Lamm, Karl Thyselius, Karl Ringman and my brother - Jonaz Vaneryd… turned out to be a bit to tight of a schedule (woke up way to late after the long drive down), so I never manage to get to Karl Thyselius and Karl Ringman =(.

Overall it was a very nice weekend.
And I’m looking forward to next year.