s p r i n g . i n . m y . h e a r t . i n . m y . h o m e

Finally tucking away the Christmas decorations. Hello February, here I come.

Glenn's fusklapp.

 A two years celebratory weekend is over, and as always - it seems when we became an item we sorta became kids as well, at once - I'm chocked it's Monday. And as so many other Sundays to Mondays, I can't sleep.

Our gig was... super duper. So many friends and very few slip ups.

I'm so happy it's over, not meaning I wouldn't do it again or that I didn't like it, just that it feels like now that it's done, I get my life back. The day before I was so nervous I more or less spent it watching figure skating, painting things black. At least that's how I remember it.

The gig was an enjoyment, standing there with closed eyes and trembling hands, my face (apparently) "showing as much emotion as Celine Dion's", as someone said afterwards (I can't remember who).

Pictures will come.

Thank you all friends for being there. It wouldn't have been the same without you.

Sunday we went to the movies and watched Sound of Noise (watch the trailer here), a movie that I recommend to everyone who likes films about a city, music and civil disobedience. As everything that Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson makes it's funny and suggestive, and set in a current 50's handsome style of their own design. If you take a look at their web page (Kostr film) you'll see what I mean. Or watch their famous short Music for one apartment and six drummers.

(A link for the picture.)

Now it's 5 am. I think I'll stay up a while longer, drink water, surf and listen to the Glenn's gentle snores. Life is funny. And good weird.

t o n i g h t . i s . t h e . n i g h t

Glenn getting ready in our temporary at home studio.

Tonight is the night.

Our two years anniversary - thank you babe for moving into our building and asking me out, without you it would be nothing - and our very first live. A live that just happens to coincide with our anniversary. None of us realized until later what date we'd booked ourselves. Silliness.

Wish us many broken legs. I've been so nervous these last days I actually look forward to it being over and done. (Only so we can start preparing for our next live gig, in Edinburgh...).

a . l i t t l e . b i t . o f . y e l l o w

...to start my day.

This is one of my favourite Sthlm houses. I like the fair bubbly ones.

Birds in high places, a secret favourite category of mine.

Jeeekla jeeekel.

I don't wanna dramatize, but it feels like I live in a countdown, and right now we're at - no matter how you count it - 2. Rehearsals go slicker and bouncier for each day. Yesterday we even gave ourselves an open book night out treat. The sweetness.

What I'm most concerned with is what do I do with my body? Dance along? Sway gently? Stare stiffly? Hide? Go into a coma?

And what will I wear? Life is narrowing down into a pointy point. Or. I'll just go with my instincts.

I wish we had a smoke machine.

Today, silently inside of me, I listen to Tarnation - Destiny, an old, old favourite track of mine.

c o l o u r o ï d . b e s t . i n . s h o w

This Saturday we play our first ever live and I'm so nervous I just might fall over. But please, come anyway. I'll incorporate it into the show. The DJ of the night is the ever excellent Komatrohn.

Here it is: Saturday January 29th, FlexiWave #26, Babajan, Katarina Bang 75, Sthlm. Welcome!

And you know what? February 12th we're on again! This time in Edinburgh at Substance (a place I've seen on TV!), together with old school rave warrioress Cynthia Stern. And here you can listen to our latest song Gang.

Oh.

The last thing I heard this morning before waking up, was a female voice saying: "The vintage devil eagles are ready now."
To which I replied, after slight hesitation: "Oh, you mean owls."
I wonder what that was about.

It could be the beginning of a book.

MAKE ME A MEMORY

One of the most fascinating bits in the Moon Machines series about the people behind the Apollo moon landing (watch it!), is the making of the memory for the Apollo systems navigation computer.

It's dry, it's extremely... tangible and tactile. If you're fascinated by memory and remembrance, in a wider sense, this piece of equipment is quite beautiful, in itself and in how it was made.

The Apollo systems memory could, in modern terms, only hold 72 KB and the computer disks that stored the programs were fragile and unreliable. When in space nothing must go wrong. So the solution was core rope memory, which means you sent the program to a factory where women would literally weave the software into this core memory.

"The rope is made up of rings and wires. If the wire goes through the core it represents a one and if it goes around the core it represents a zero", Margaret Hamilton, one of the very few female software engineers of the Apollo mission, explains.

The software engineers, dismissing the women who made it, called it the LOL-method, the Little Old Lady method. One program could take several months to weave and if there was an error it was a nightmare to correct.

Beside the mission in itself and all that it entails and the beauty and clumsiness of the core rope memories, what fascinates me the most, is the combination of what's usually thought of as male science and female craftsmanship, and how it's applied and valued.

There's also the poetic aspect, the weave of time and the making of memories. I would really like to have one of these memories.

a . y e s t e r d a y

Waiting for a meeting.

Me, being me.

It was...

...the greyest...

...of days.

And I found this.

Yesterday was one of those days when you stare and drool, to tired to lift your bum off the chair, and fascinated watch the day go by, bemused by how different things might be. A lovely evening (casserole, snuggle, rehearsal, candy, Beautiful Losers and the beginning of Moon Machines) and a good nights sleep means today anything could happen. Yesterday made me so inspired and in my apathy gave me time to think things through. Who knows, I might even (begin to) take down the Christmas decorations, that I've let stay up like the reluctant tinsel struck child I am, making place for new sheer improvised springier ones...

a . l i f e . w e l l . s p e n t

Oh, the sleazy 80's college film references.

Looking at these, it seems I only go out at night, but don't forget the early dark. My life is not a life wasted, but a life well spent. And today is not a Monday, it's the day when I want to disappear into the blanket fort world of Community (look at the handsome pajamas!):

Instagram, found at Petit Pot. Free and tawdry fun, let's play.

I have three reasons why I can't wait for February to begin. A trip, an agent, a lomo.

This blog - this girl - has the best titles, and sometimes the best sentences. I get so inspired I get a taste in my mouth of uplifting inadequacy.

MY GREAT GRANDFATHER'S PASTRY COOK BOOK

Swedish Pastry Cook Book.

Something royal that I can't read, but that looks kinda nice and Important.

Picture 10. The pastry cook guild's gavel.

The pastry cook society's book of protocol's in the year 1798.

Picture 38. Dummies from The House of Gunnar Carlsson, Stockholm.

Picture 122. Chisels made of bone from from The House of Gunnar Carlsson, Stockholm.

The mix all machine "Swedo".

5. The making of spettkaka.

Picture 179. Sixteen templates for croquembouche flourishes. 

CAP cat tongues, made of Palmersy chocolate.

I'm so sorry for the poor quality of these photos. Little did I know when I last visited my mother that she would pull my great grandfather Ernst Krook's pastry cook textbook out of the bookcase, a book I didn't know existed. I'm quite fascinated with old books of facts, they are so boring, safe and nice, permissive and rich with detail and illustration. (These are the black and whites, the ones in colour I'll get to another time.)

I never met Ernst, but I would have liked to. I know he was quite short and bossed around by his wife, Agnes (that I've written of before). He would play the fiddle "like a gypsy" the story goes, and one day he smashed it and didn't play no more. Agnes hade forbidden him to take snuff, and when he had died, of cancer, the people at the funeral parlour found under his lip the smallest ball of snuff, so small that it wouldn't show on his face. That was his secret rebellion.