Teatime in Stockholm

I wish I could translate theese ones for you. Theres nothing better.

(*)

Life on the beach is easy

I've been in Sardinia for a couple of weeks, driving around mountains, shores and harbours with local friends, and looking for wild places to put down the tent. We ended up renting clean rooms from very kind old ladies who live in the country and who had decided that cheap Bed & Beakfasts are more lucrative than sheeps. They talked to us in hard dialect and friends translated for me.
I spent all the time under the sun and into the sea. I've never been so much suntanned in ages! After many years of "indie holidays" I had forgot how good I can feel living just this way. The smell of salt on warm skin getting dry when you lay down after a long and quiet swim.
One day we arrived in Scivu, a long line of white sand in the south of the island with nothing around for kilometers except hills and dunes. There were just about fifty people all over the beach, but it's that kind of place that makes you wish there was absolutely no one.
The wind was strong from north-west, but the waves were lazy, as if the sea had a hung-over and was going to fall asleep. The sky was bright and blue like a photoshop effect. A girl was slowly walking in our direction talking with a boy. I couldn't see her well because I had the sun in my eyes, but for a second I really thought it was you. Impossible, there, but still a surprise and a memory so clear that made me hold my breath for a while.
Hope you're having good holidays too, and eveything is fine up there.
I'll write you soon, ciao.

>>>(video) Envelopes - Life On the Beach

Tonight I Have To Leave It

The other day I found in the letter box the little packet from Bengans with the new Shout Out Louds album. Have you heard it? I'm listening to it on repeat, and I'm not sure I should. I feel a lump in my throat. There's a deep sense of loss and distance in these songs, but somehow they shine. They're just not sad or slow, and they don't have particularly brilliant or original words. It's just that they sound like the mood I am in.
Everytime I hear a Shout Out Louds song, I remember the pictures of Emmaboda 2004, when we met them and we didn't know they were already quite famous, the party at the bar with spanish girls, all those drunk laughs at the camera, everybody dancing. And now there is this song, it's saying "I don't want to see the same pictures all over". Yeah, true.
You stop missing something when something new takes its place. When you get just used to the lack of it, it's a different feeling.

I've just spent 36 hours with Frida Hyvönen and I don't know how will I manage to come back to reality.

You could call it a studentroom or some kind of wardrobe, my new appartement. The thing that makes it worth living in is my red bicycle that I take everywhere these days becouse yes, spring has come to Stockholm too.

Obviously, since I wrote the last post it started to rain and it still keeps raining.
I've been to a little festival with a lot of swedish bands, I had a lovely dinner with Cats On Fire (gorgeous new album out now) and Loveninjas, I've heard five billions of times the word "Emmaboda", I've helped the singer of Mixtapes & Cellmates to walk on the stairs when he was too drunk.
I didn't get drunk, I played records, I went to work the next morning with the smell of the backstage in my hairs.
I will be in Brussels this weekend. That would be almost a halfway meeting point for us.

It's been so long since the last time we wrote on this page, that blogger changed the way to login...
Anyway, another spring is here, and I think I should welcome her somehow ("springtime" in italian is female), whatever mood I am in.
So here is a little song. It makes me smile and make me want to go out and feel this longer afternoon in the streets, this new fresh light. Hope it's going to be a good springtime in Stockholm too.

I was just wondering if you received my reply to your last email or it went lost, or maybe it was not worth an answer, when I came across this song, and I felt I had to post it here.

Julian Nation - Lost Swedish Penpals

Dirty Dancing

Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Donnie Darko and Parker Lewis. It's all about what we never reach and keep dreaming of.
The dirty choreography of fictional love.
Celebrate this Friday (Tomorrow, that is!!). Democrazy @ Allhuset, Sthlm. I will bring the best of my loved ones. I hope you do too.
See you tomorrow
Love
Parker

Maybe it's late, but I just wanted to let you know what Emil wrote me from Göteborg today. If you happen to be at Demokrazy tomorrow, please say "hej" to him from his italian support team.

We are having an incredible warm winter down here, and it's not raining since months.
They say it should change tomorrow, but I will be in Cologne for work for three days, so I'll miss the rain. At the moment I'm enjoying a lot of fog.
This is a picture of the street where I used to live since last year.

So, nothing much to do right now. Waiting for a train, watching the sky, listening to this italian post rock band (it fits quite well with this fog). I just wanted to say hej before leaving.
Hope you're ok, kram.

Remember walking here?

Copacabana is just a few meters forward on the right.
Kvartersbion is next.

Hornstull cinema (2)

I was wondering if that Horstull Cinema was the one near the Copacabana Cafè, and Johan from the Indurain band answered my e-mail:

Hey Enzo, you are absolutely right. I used to live in Hornstull as a kid and my family went to Kvartersbion for matines.
It's still a sweet place, has genuine character but seems doomed for gentrification sooner or later - according to the poor worked out owner.

It's late.
I can't sleep these days. I don't go out. I stay here inside, reading, cooking some pasta, watching old movies with James Stewart, wasting time on the web.
I just can't fall asleep.

It's funny to see american music blogs falling in love with Frida Hyvonen, or important magazines talking about I'm From Barcelona, after all this time.
I found this video of Jens Lekman, Erlend Oye and El Perro del Mar touring in Brasil, and it makes me really smile.

Nytt Datum! Emmabodafestivalen kommer nästa år att ligga på 26-28 juli.
I'll be working in July, so, as I said last year, I will not come back to the festival.

Your photo blog is ljuvlig. Oh, maybe I'm not sure I should have said that. Maybe forgive me.
Is that you and your sister? Such beautiful pictures.
Searching "ljuvlig" on google one of the first answers is this one.
It's late. Hope it's not too late to fall asleep.
Kram.

Nostalgi

And I'm back at work again. At least for a couple of weeks.
It's really strange to sit in the small office again, although they've moved to another part of the same building now. It's still underground with a few pieces of sunlight coming in from the window near the sealing, bluegray walls and a lot of dirt.
What's a bit surprising is that the strangest thing about being back is listening to the music I didn't even remember that I had on this computer, that I guess I used to listen to a lot last year. And I really don't know how to feel about it. Should I be sad or happy? Nostalgic or just feel the same way about it as I did then, since it wasn't that long ago? I guess it's impossible to feel the same way, so many things have happened during this time and I'm in a totally different part of my life now. But thinking about it, this part is better in a way.

So did you have a nice christmas this year? And new year? I wasn't able to wish you a merry christmas, so I'll have to do it now instead;
Buon Natale Enzo, och god fortsättning (as we say here).

Gud Jul Eva!

I just finished a long morning at the radio and now I'm going to visit my parents, so I'll be off line for some day. I hope you're having great christmas holidays, and that everything's ok up there, and that Russell & Ludwig will bring you some nice present too. I leave you a little christmas song, made by dear friend Emil "Parker Lewis".
He wrote it's about "When Harry met Sally, Home Alone 2, Frank Sinatra, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire". And that sounds perfect to me.

Parker Lewis - Xmas-Carol, NYC

"I've made a X-mas song for you to play late at night on Christmas eve, when your relatives have all fallen asleep and you invited your best friends over for a Christmas cigarette on the balcony. From now on your troubles will be out of sight. Merry Christmas from Parker Lewis, Love.»
And from me too.

"Let's catch a movie or two at the Hornstull cinema"

Do you know that cinema? Does it still exist? I can recall a subway station with the same name.
Well, I fell in love with another new band from Stockholm. Its name is Indurain and it has a sort of "out of time" elegance.
They are the two young guys behind the music blog L'amour à trois (lamouratrois.blogspot.com), and reading the songs' lyrics on the myspace page I guess they are truly indie snob like once we used to pretend we were.

Hemstad band of the year

Do you remember the Hemstad concert at Emmaboda this summer?
It was raining hard, and we were dancing in t-shirts like there would be no tomorrow, drinking that horrible and frozen wine in box.
It was one of the best moment of the year, for me.
Yesterday Hemstad sent me a sort of Christmas present.
I put it on polaroid myspace page. Well, maybe it sounds stupid, but I'm so happy and proud.

Absolut Teatime


(found here)

Dear silent swedish friend,
I'm not becoming silent too. I'm just late and busy and late, as usual.
You see, in the past months I found that "the doing nothing project" couldn't work for me, so I thought it was better to keep myself busy as much as I could, and I filled my agenda with all those stupid things that always come my way. So I took more work at the office, I accepted every invite to play records in the clubs, I wrote more, I went to the radio station on festive mornings even if I slept just three or four hours, I drove a lot around this foggy land for every reason. Also, I had to do a lot of boring things for my apartment, and I started to discover the wonderland of italian burocracy (I guess this is just the beginning).
And I am aware that I'm doing all these things just to not stop and think about myself. So, not much fun, after all. No more fun in my dayjob, or writing, or dj, or the nights out, or the people you meet in clubs, or the girls that shout their names over the music. Somehow, I feel that everything I can do has no point at all.
Well, no big tragedy. Maybe sometimes you just come to a moment of your life when you have to begin all over again.
Sometimes I thought that maybe falling in love could have helped me, but it didn't happen. I've been tempted to let me fall in love for you, but all the situation was too complicated, and maybe this was something I really shouldn't ask you.
I have thought a lot about the reasons why I'm not really interestd in other people around me, even when they show interest. And I said to myself that maybe sometimes you just come to a moment of your life when you have to "learn to feel" all over again.
As I wrote you some week ago, I met Laura again. It was strange to meet her, because even I knew her very well, somehow it was like to watch her from outside. She seemed to get on with her life not too badly: good work, nice new house, new places, a lot of supportive friends... It made me feel even worse, because I realized that even if one could say that I had some little success with my own stuff, I know it's all a fake, I don't care about my things enough, I didn't build anything for real, and I could not call many people as friends. Anyway Laura and me talked a lot, and it has been quite good. There are still moments we really can understand and get along with each other. But there are also too many things we have to explain to each other.
Now I'm still confused and I'm keeping myself busy to not think about the future and I don't know, it's not easy. All these things are implying that I know what I want and that I'm not scared to say it. But I'm still looking for answers.
At least, today I finally have telephone and internet here at my house. So I can look for them on Google.

Un grande abbraccio,
enzo

Another season and a lot less hair.

So now Christmas has arrived to Stockholm.
My philososophy course is ending in just a few weeks and right now I'm trying to wright a (small) bit about Wittgenstein and Russel. (And I'm really just to tired, that's why I'm at Stinas appartment baking lussebullar and drinking glögg instead.)
And I'm sad to say that I kind of look like a 17 year old boy, since I was really really angry (and a bit drunk) a few days ago, and cut all my hair off with a really blunt scissor. (I'm telling everybody the haircut was really exclusive and expensive, and pretend to be really proud)

And the next thing now is the spring. I acually have absolutely no idea what to do. I don't know if I'm going to stay in Stockholm and in that case study practical philosophy or genderknowlege that semester, or go to Gothenburg or Uppsala to study there. And I guess the easyest option is to just stay here and take the second term of the theoretical philosophy now, not having to take any difficoult decition at all. (that's what I really want to study the most, but I don't want to take the second course right away now)
I hate when it feels like you just have to make the least bad decition, and not that you're chooseing among a lot of good options. (that i guess that I'm really am, i't just don't feel like that)

But anyway I'm feeling pretty good right now, and both Sara and my twinsister is comming home to Stockholm over christmas in just two weeks to stay with me, and I guess the only thing I can do right now is ro go home and read and read and read some more about this logic.

So is it winter in Bolognia yet?
And what do you say about trying to build one of those hugmachines for christmas? I think it sounds like a great idea!

Some more kramar /Eva-Maria (the 17 year old boy)

Kramar (2)

Quite funny: I'm reading JPod, the latest novel by Douglas Coupland, and one of the main character is building a sort of "hug machine" for his geeky friends.
Via Google, I discovered that something like that exists in the real world.
It could be used for people who suffer of Asperger syndrome.

How do you say "see you at the bar"?



Juta Sthlm: den bästa indiepopen fran Sverige, enligt SoneekMX (AntennaUno Rock Station), speciala gäster Enzo (polaroid blog) och Lucio (officiell fotograf). Lördag, 18 November 2006, från 19 till midnatt, @ Juta Cafè, Via Taglio 91, Modena.



(well, I hope it sounds quite ok in swedish...)

Kramar

I found an interesting magazine article about the end of the "kramar" in our society:

«The Hug Shirt is a shirt that makes people send hugs over distance. Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one. The Hug Shirt is a Bluetooth accessory for Java enabled mobile phones. Hug shirts don't have any assigned phone number, all the data goes from the sensors Bluetooth to your mobile phone and your mobile phone delivers the hug data to your friend's phone and it is seamlessly transmitted Bluetooth to his or her shirt. Sending hugs is as easy as sending an SMS and you will be able to send hugs while you are on the move. The Hug Shirt has been nominated as one of the best inventions of 2006 by Time Magazine».

(I realized that in my over twelve thousand words report from Emmaboda, the word "hug" is the one I wrote more often.)

Remember Metropolis

Wandering on the web I found these two videos from the last night of the club. Can you spot yourself?

-

«The release date for Parker Lewis "No Boys Are Asleep" is set to 24th October. The release party for the EP will be at O-Baren (Stureplan 2) and on stage you'll see Parker Lewis and Kalle J. It's free!»

Well, if it happens to you to be around there next tuesday, just say hej to Emil "Parker Lewis" from me.
He writes beautiful songs and he's been lovely when he came to Italy this summer just to play two unplanned crazy gigs.

Apart from that, I can't really say nothing more clever. I feel exhausted.
Hope everything is working better for you. Kramar.

I don't feel the seasons shifting can change this feeling. But I guess it's going to change. Everything is allways, and I'm just trying to keep up. To live.

(but The Essex Green played at Debaser last sunday, it was the best thing I've experienced in a long time, you really should have been there)

Busy doing nothing

Saturday I got the keys of what is going to become my new apartment. So I went there, with my radio and a bag full of cleaners. I stepped inside and I stood in the middle of those two empty white small rooms. The furniture will not arrive before a couple of weeks. It was warm and dark inside. I took a breath in silence. Since the apartment is on the ground floor, I could hear all the people above flushing. Oh, lovely crumbling old buildings. I opened the windows. Outside there was one of the last bright and sunny afternoon before autumn. I listened for a while to my neighbours talking loud and laughing. I think they're russian or something. Then I decided to start working. I went inside and turned on the radio randomly. And the first song that has been played in my new house is I Saw Her In The Anti-War Demonstration by Jens Lekman. Damn, and it was my radio station as well! A song about being sixteen and falling irreparably in love and feeling alone... I really wonder when the whole thing about being adult will begin (if it will ever).

I'm happy about what you wrote, and it's good that "The Doing Nothing Project" is working. Maybe one day I'll learn too.