go to latest: 10/30/2008
Welcome to my blog
This is where I’ll share my thoughts with you about music, song writing, life, love, travelling, good books, and other subjects. I thought I’d start chronologically, by telling you a little bit about myself, and how I got into music in the first place.
I grew up in a cute little town by the sea in the South of Finland. When I was two years old, my mother and grandmother took me to a folk dance festival in a nearby village. There a big group of musicians played schottische and polska the whole day, while folk-dancers, dressed in traditional clothes, danced for hours. I so enjoyed the music, and violin has been my favourite instrument ever since.
Some months after we had attended the festival for the first time, my mum heard me singing one of the folk music tunes we heard that day by heart. She was surprised that I could still remember it, and reckoned I had to be musical. After this she always had me singing on family gatherings.
Me singing on my grandmother’s birthday. I was so shy, I used to hide behind my mother’s back or my grandmother’s bathrobe.
Once I was old enough I started music school, and at the age of eleven I began studying classical singing. My dream of playing the violin did not come true at this point. My father did give me a violin shaped plank of wood with nylon strings on it for Christmas, but you couldn’t really play on it.
I picked up the idea again as an adult, however, and started taking lessons. It may not sound all that pretty (yet), but it gives me a lot of pleasure to try to play those old folk tunes. And who knows – perhaps I’ll be a wicked player by the time I’m 50! (:
10/30/2008 This autumn the urgency to Get Things Moving, regarding record releases and such, has risen to alarming levels inside my mind. Which is probably a good thing. For years I’ve dreamed about some prince to turn up and take care of all the music business stuff for me. But, alas, it was merely a dream (sigh)! Sure, there have been princes along the path, but their talents lie more on the musical side than on the business oriented one. And within today’s changing music industry, an independent debut artist like me can pretty much only dream about a record deal – at least in Finland. I have no sales figures, I don’t sing in Finnish, and I don’t make music designed for the local hit lists. Also, the record industry doesn’t have the urge to take chances with their money, which is quite understandable. Thus I’ve had to get started by myself. This has been a scary process, but at the same time, an exhilarating one. I’ve met a side of myself, that doesn’t get to surface very often – Business-Eva!
Last night I dreamt that I was in a tall building full of people in suits. I had to climb up a rickety ladder, dressed in a short skirt, through a hole in the ceiling to get to the next floor. Meanwhile a group of effective businesswomen were right behind me, urging me to go faster. Climbing some dodgy construction is actually a recurring dream for me. It might be a hill that all of a sudden turns into a string of chairs and clocks and things, carelessly stacked on top of each other high up in the sky. I usually freeze, in fear of falling, and am unable to go back or forth.
In one of these dreams, a good friend of mine, who’s a therapist, was climbing right behind me. When I froze, she said: “Don’t worry”, simply climbed over me, extended a hand, and helped me up. Afterwards I wrote and told her about this dream, saying I was so grateful to have a friend like her. She immediately replied that the people we see in our dreams generally symbolize different parts of ourselves. She said that, although she was flattered to have represented this specific part of me, the strength and courage to move forward in spite of my fears actually lies within myself. I found this a very comforting thought!
However, in my dream last night, I had neither the time nor the guts to freeze. The thought of another woman’s face so close to my naked thighs got me moving fast, even though I was terrified of falling. I managed to haul myself up to the next floor somehow, and immediately forgot about my fears. I’d sneaked in trying to get an interview with David Allen, the author of the best selling book Getting Things Done. But unfortunately he was on holiday, a woman told me. I asked if maybe she could help me instead. She took me aside and showed me a black satin pillow. “This is Indonesian embroidery” she told me. “Follow the pattern. You can make it very detailed, and keep going for as long as you like –up to 3, 4 days!”
Thinking back on this dream, I find it rather amusing that I went to see a guy who’s basically the symbol of efficiency. Instead I met a woman, who’s telling me to focus on the small details, and that it’s okay if it takes a long time to finish, as long as the result is as pretty as possible.
My debut album has definitely been concocted according to the latter recipe. But now that the artistic side of the record is finally finished, some businessperson in me has emerged, and she doesn’t look lightly upon perfectionism and stalling. She has me climbing up rickety ladders, in spite my fears. And, hey, once you’re up there, it actually feels quite nice! (:
“Leap, and the net will appear.”
- John Burroughs
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