As I wrote a few weeks back I thought it seemed like a good idea to set up a few rules for this blog. My self-censorship somehow related to me seeing people subscribe, which made me feel responsibility not to spam. Well what happened was that I stopped writing. So I’m lifting all regulations to roam free again.

It’s ok to drift off-course, to fall off the horse or fail with any other metaphor. At least it’s what I’ve come to believe. The resilience comes from the ability to pick yourself up and get started again. I knew the music side of me would lose steam in February, life and snow gets in the way.

So, I’ve been on a break. In February all Swedish schools close for one week of “sports-holiday”. So we packed the car, drove to the mountains up North to a rented cabin and went skiing. Responsibly, with great care taken to keep distance etc – not really that difficult when you’re outside on a slope. I did bring my Op-1, but couldn’t/didn’t bother to do anything.

Starting new I decided to wire up my gear a bit better. I’m a natural talent when it comes to creating a mess. I keep proving it in every kind of room, on any kind of desk, and I knew far too many people willing to testify to this. In some way, I don’t seem to mind messiness – from an esthetic viewpoint. On the other hand, it really slows me down. It makes “starting up” creative work difficult, it blurs my thinking. My trick is to make a 5 minute cleaning of my studio space a daily habit, just before going to bed. Hanging back cables. Putting things back on shelves etc. This works reasonably well, the problem is the piles of papers.

The gear though, the idea is to have every device using midi connected and ready to go. I recently received a Blokas Midihub to replace my Midisport 4×4 that goes numb every time OSX is updated. The midihub offers a lot … of possibilities. Or speedbumps. Or detours. We’ll see about that. I also hope to patch everything audio with my patchbay and Mackie-mixer. I just might build my own angled studio rack.

What else?

Just started listening to the Barrack Obama/Bruce Springsteen podcast on Spotify. Really liked it!

“Tiny Habits” is a methodology and a book by the behavioural scientist BJ Fogg. I just learnt about it the other day, watched a few nice talks on TED. He shares a lot of insights into how to make good habits stick. Advice easy enough to act upon straight away, but I suppose I might order the book anyway.

David Lynch keeps popping up as an inspiration. I just discovered he’s had a youtube-channel during the pandemic with daily weather reports and explanations of stuff he is building in his workshop (carpenting!). There is creativity in every creation, and the ethymyologists wouldn’t have it any other way of course. Reading about his meditiation practise got me interested too, just might order his book Catching the big fish. Reading up on TM, though. Hmm.