I will finish what I start...

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...always. Echoings of the naïve voice in my head which told me my last trip to Stockholm would be a simple "get in, play the gig and GTFO" venture were silenced forever this past weekend, for not reckoning with the fact that I was amongst some of the best company known to Zeiburaland and in a city which I clearly had to get to know a bit more simply for being the home of said company. So off I went on Wednesday and in a nutshell, the next 4 nights unfolded to become a test of endurance in every respect with an all-round win for a result.

The fun began as we left Birmingham airport and I got chatting to a few fellow musicians, swapped myspaces and drank vodka and coke along the way (with little sachets of vodka that resembled spacefood). After an epic bus journey from the middle of nowhere Ryanair airport to the city, which I spent sleeping and listening to Silicone Soul mixtapes, I met up with Sanna and Ama in the city, Ama and I went back to the apartment while Sanna went off to teach a few dance classes. It was pleasantly nostalgic being back in Södermalm, which was considerably whiter than from when I was last there (though nowhere near as deep in snow as the UK was a couple of weeks ago). We spent the evening watching the film 51st State and when Sanna got back, it all began.

Our first night out took us to a hip hop night with a good vibe - in my experience this is extremely rare in London, and I was amazed to find myself actually dancing to it! Not that my skills could match those of the 2 seasoned dance teachers I was in the hands of, especially in the cream crackered state I was having woken up at 6.30am that morning to get going on schedule. The night was drawn to a close for us when I made an innocent but apparently disastrous mistake of not knowing another country's etiquette - apparently, and take note of this if you ever consider travelling to Sweden, signalling to bar staff to come over if you feel they haven't realised you're waiting to be served makes you look like a drug dealer, and will get you blacklisted for the rest of the night. So with this and my tiredness under my belt Sanna and I went home.

The next morning we went off to see the city. Due to a little crisis that meant Ama had to run off, it was left to Sanna to show me the sights of Stockholm, and we did, starting from the most central island Gamla Stan, which was historically all the city comprised. We amused ourselves in one viking-orientated tourist trap shop as I kept instinctively attempting to read rune stones, and then headed onwards to the island Djurgården, which basically seemed to be like trying to fit Regent's Park onto an island - with lots of open space, a zoo, a few museums and a general feeling of being a tourism spot, and also a few houses scattered around evidently owned by insanely rich people. This was a great venue for a walk and a chat until we really began to feel how cold it was under our 3 layers apiece, so we eventually turned back and went for a coffee.

After this I suggested trying to find some warmer clothes for me to wear out and to take home to blighty in its current freezing state, thinking that clothes shops in Sweden would probably harbour more hardcore defenses for those who live a hundred miles or so inland or north from Stockholm currently experiencing temperatures lower than -10*C. I was wrong - H&M and Topman in Stockholm were basically the same as in London, and even the Swedish department stores were nothing different from somewhere like Debenhams. Since serious clothes shopping really hurts my head, I lost interest quickly and we just found a vintage retro stall in a department store and amused ourselves trying on crazy things for a while, and then eventually went to a supermarket to stock up on food and lots of drinks, ate and drank, and spent the night dancing to a familiar electro house DJ, Noir, who pleasantly surprised me by playing a few quite obscure tunes I remember playing on E-Stim Radio a few months back.

We woke up the next morning completely exhausted in every way from the night before, which for me especially was very emotionally draining - being away from everything, as ever, offers a time to think deep into processes and really get going with the routine of fighting to accept things and letting go. I woke up fresher but feeling extremely passive, and we just spent the afternoon chilling. In the evening as Sanna went off to teach another class, I was just pondering what to do alone for a few hours, when Ama returned from her crisis! We laughed ourselves silly watching Monty Python "And Now For Something Completely Different", and then later that night went out to a club night headlined by Dada Life - another familiar name, who absolutely smashed it with some fidget house and electroclash madness. Amazing fun. When the club kicked out at 3am we still felt like going on and on, but not so much when we got home after a sardines-style tube ride claimed by some rather loud viking-looking metalheads.

So, onwards, Valentines day morning of 2009. A day which I had been told about by an astrology-wise friend of mine in the shop, and upon researching her allegations further, realised it had infact also been covered by this old chart topper:

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

I woke up naturally just as the hyped Aquarian alignment between Mars and Jupiter at the north node, trine the Libran moon in the seventh house subsided, from a very vivid, energising dream. Feeling fresher than I had in a long, long time, thanks to this and (most likely related) me achieving a few rather more taxing accept-it-and-let-go tasks the night before, Sanna took me out again to show me Södermalm, which was a really enchanted experience. We climbed a hill on the island up to an old commune of little bungalows historically inhabited by rock blasters, shadowed by the magnificent Kyrka Sofia, which we decided to try and go inside. It was indeed open to the public, despite currently hosting a dress rehearsal for a choral concert that afternoon, which lost me and Sanna in the flow of time for a good half hour. The perfect size and the acoustic treatment offered by the marbled walls of the church's interior made sweet, sweet love with the sounds of the choir, so much that you could not even tell it was coming from the choir while watching them, sounding more like it was simply playing from an invisible loudspeaker floating in the air.

As they took a break, presumably where the interval was supposed to come, we left and continued walking around the church, to a hill overlooking the harbour. As we headed home, we stumbled upon a box which fittingly bore the words "I'm so fucking happy, I can't believe it's true" stencilled on, a perfect representation of how we were both feeling at the time! Drastically more inspired, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working on a hilarious new track, which you can hear a clip of at both http://www.myspace.com/zkatmusic and http://www.myspace.com/sannahartfield. That night after Ama returned from her day of classes, we all headed out for my last night in Stockholm to a deep house night, which we resisted in a scarily synchronistic fashion. The music was fantastic, reminiscent of Prague, reminiscent of losing myself for hours even having been awake for three days. The atmosphere was good, the people were beautiful (and not just dressed up because it was valentine's day) and the mood was calm. And the protagonists of this story were all starting to feel incredibly faint and sick at the same time for no simple, rational reason. We kept our heads up long enough for me to hear my last pleasant surprise of the trip - the DJ dropping an old track by my friend Maya Jane Coles, which is something you don't hear every day. We ran for our lives, went home and slept.

There's no real way of summarising this experience. All I know is, I came in constantly going for sharing sessions with my lower self, feeling pessimistic, creative blocked and stressed out, and thanks to the experience, the distance from everything and the company I've been in, I've come out with the task of making an album in 3 months looming ahead of me and on the speedy yellow express train up to Arlanda airport for my flight home, I was listening to this album in my head, despite the tracks having not been written yet. This is a fucking good sign. As we got that spectacular aerial panorama of London as we landed, I knew I would, as Sanna had pressed me, be back in Stockholm again - after this work is done.

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Photos

stockholm's skyline take 2
no, srsly, this is actually it this time.

flickorna
they know how to move

don't feed the trolls.
or the vikings. or both.

wut
marketing under the influence of hallucinogens?

i feel love
dada life stylee

Z-Kat and Sophia
brrmmmm - BA BA BA BA - wrrraaaaaaa - wawawawawawa. or something.

aquarian street art
"I'm so fucking happy, I can't believe it's true"

this ain't over yet.
brb