Merry Christmas from a winter wonderland at the end of the road!

To be filling my lungs, lifting the tones of Christmas up under the church vaults, that’s food for the soul and stars for heaven!

One really fine thing with being a choral singer is the fact that Christmas doesn’t come as a surprise. Like, oh, is it here, it’s too soon, I can’t find my Christmas spirit! No, a choral singer starts feeling the spirit already mid fall when we begin rehearsing for the Christmas concerts, looking at well known favourites as well as having a first glance at new material.

The name of my choir is Kammarkören Sångkraft / Sångkraft Chamber Choir. I’ve been a member for 29 years, split over two periods of time. Choral and vocal group singing has been and is an important part of my life.

Umeå is known as The City of Birches, the same way as Seattle goes by the name The Emerald City. That’s why Kammarkören Sångkraft’s Christmas concert is called Christmas in The City of Birches.

We usually give the show at three occasions, and this year in three different churches. Thus, this week turned out a Christmas tour in Umeå! Three concerts in just a couple of days is a lot to take for my body. As I can’t stand up for more than a little while I am sitting on a barstool while singing. Still, it’s difficult. 

Therefor, I am so happy and grateful that I could do it. All three of them! My voice wasn’t letting me down either which is always nice. Landing on my couch last night after the final concert I was filled with joy and contentment, the way you feel only after a well done job. Surrounded by my US-inspired densely dressed Christmas tree from my woods, as well as the more minimalistic Swedish white stars in my windows. And embedded in the most perfect snow landscape you can ever imagine.

It’s been snowing most every day this last week. Feather-light snowflakes slowly falling from the reservoir above us serving us the exact amount of white fluff we need and can handle. It’s a crisp -14°C/6,8°F outside tonight and the full moon lights the landscape up as the big spotlight it is.

My need for carolling is satisfied, the outside setting is perfect and tomorrow my house will be filled with me and my sister’s families. The conditions for a successful Christmas Eve seem optimal, and so I am wishing all of you out there just the Christmas you need as well! 

In the arms of an angel choir

Coming to life looking in to familiar friendly faces. One checking my pulse. One lifting my legs to get the pressure up. Silence. Realizing the concert is put on hold by me falling.

It was in a way a magical experience. During my choir’s Christmas concert. I didn’t feel well. Kind of sick. And a bit dizzy. And the next thing I knew I woke up surrounded by all these faces. And arms. They caught me. Like I was in the arms of a down comforter.

So, I didn’t get to sing the concert, other than the first third of it. But I got to listen. They put me in a pew and covered me with blankets. It didn’t help. I had the most terrible chills. But I got to listen to a wonderful concert. An angel choir.

Lying there I was mostly worried about what would come afterwards. In the church I was safe. Surrounded by people. But at home by myself.

Then a different angel sat at my side. Linda is a sound engineer who is on my film crew. And she happened to be there. She sat down with me and told me she could stay with me over the night if I wanted. Thank you Linda, thank you.

Back home, finally, it turned out I was running a fever at 102° (39°). That’s extreme to be me. No wonder I was freezing into my bones. I am so terribly grateful to Linda taking care of me, and she will be until tomorrow morning. My pressure is dropping just by sitting up, so the most basic things are dangerous to perform, even with support.

And if I would give you one little piece of advise at Christmas time: when you are about to faint, do it in the arms of an angel choir.

400 friends/distorted self

Christian became my number 400 Facebook friend! It happened this week. As the winner of this title I offered him a delicious chanterelle dinner here at the end of the road. He accepted. It might be a while though since Christian lives in Paris.

I was a reluctant Facebook joiner, and it didn’t happen until 2010. I have a tendency of feeling invaded and the idea of a lot of people who I might even not know showing up on my computer was appalling to me.

The decision to join came with starting singing with my choir Kammarkören Sångkraft (Sångkraft Chamber Choir). It was after the cancer and a long time being out of context and community. In 24 hours I was befriended by about 30 choral singers, quickly added by Sångkraft alumni and some close friends finding me.

I did feel invaded though. What were all these people doing in my home? And I really hated the design of Facebook. Yuk! So ugly and totally without any sense of style and finish. 

Trouble 2 taught me how to handle the “invasion”: Mom, think about it as you are taking a downtown walk. You see all these people and you might hear what they are saying, but you don’t need to take notice of them or say hello if you don’t want to.

It was a good advice. I learned to handle this new situation in my sacred home. Early on I also decided on only making friends with people I knew or had met. Except for a few exceptions when it comes to professionals in my field, I am still keeping that rule.

My relationship to Facebook is somewhat conflicted though. I know I am not the only one fed up with all the happy successful lives painted on peoples walls, and there are even scientific research proving that Facebook makes people depressed.

That’s not my biggest concern though. Trouble 2 was the one teaching me who to be on Facebook. Because that’s the thing. You need to learn not to be yourself. I can’t be Maria the complete person. I need to be only a part of me. And hide the most of me. Facebook makes us be half persons. If even.

It’a a peculiar situation. On the one hand we are living in this time of brutal transparency where people are turning their private lives inside out like it was a casual t-shirt. If you are not transparent ( especially as a public person) you have something to hide and are not reliable. On the other hand we learn the tactics of covering ourselves and our privacy by putting up a glossy facade, dispatching our difficulties and failures down in the darkest corner of our mental basements.

Is it really that bad? I actually think it is.

Facebook and social media really is a downtown square where we are meeting and displaying ourselves as in any other community. It is a reality as real as IRL. Only, with very little room for nuances, subtext, grey shades and context. We create a window reducing ourselves to a few black and white (mostly white, hide the black away) letters in a simple font. And where is the rest of yourself?

Well, hopefully most people have other communities. Other squares where they can be more real. Where there is time and space for a conversation that goes beyond the simple font. Where a person can be valuable in all his/hers complexity.

But if you don’t have that kind of environment? If you don’t have everyday people around you? If you don’t have a family? No friends showing up at you door step? If you don’t have a “how was your day”-conversation as an natural ingredients in your life?

If Facebook and social media is your connection to the world? What a distorted picture that world is. And what a distortion it will make out of you. 

The 30-some friends who found me in my first 24 Facebook hours quickly increased to my first 100 thanks to the Sångkraft alumni and former work places such as Swedish National Radio and Television. 200 came pretty easy, when I reached 300 though I thought I had attained my limit, considering the only-people-I-know rule. But what do you know, here I am celebrating Christian, my 400 Facebook friend! And I just love when someone from my former life who I had forgot about shows up, and hey, here we are again!

I am distorted, of course I am. Most of the time I keep quiet down in my mental basement, to look after myself but also to not pollute the world out there.

For me though, physically limited as I am, not being able to get out and about, Facebook is a great asset. I can’t walk downtown squares, but I take my morning and evening Facebook stroll and get a sense of what’s going on out there. Even though the contact with former work colleagues and choral friends is mostly superficial, it is still a contact. And I have been moved to tears by people offering me the most unexpected help in my helplessness.

There is one really nice thing with my only-people-I-know rule: scrolling my friends list I am doing it with a sweat little smile. Most every face that shows up makes me happy and grateful. 400 people who are or have been a part of my IRL. And those who I don’t meet in person any more, well, we are still sharing a tiny corner of our lives.

Today Facebook delivered it’s 10 year anniversary film on my wall. And yes, I can’t help being a bit moved. A bit moved by myself, how is that for a proof of this self reflecting time and age… anyway, enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=656946267703529&set=vb.100001644844611&type=2&theater&notif_t=video_processed

And beyond 2014?

I sometimes wonder if there will be a 2015. For close to a decade now the focus here in Umeå has been set on 2014. First it was a fantasy, then a vision, then an application, then The Win, and after that years of planning for taking on the incredible and challenging assignment being The European Capital of Culture 2014.

It is incredible indeed. Every year, within the European Union, cities are carefully chosen to be the Capital of Culture. To start with it was one city (1985, Athens) 1999-2000, at the Millennium there were multiple cities, and after that mostly two a year. Sweden has carried the title once before, Stockholm 1998. 2014 Sweden was on the schedule for the second time, in pair with Latvia. And in competition with three bigger cities in Sweden, teeny-weeny Umeå way up north in our skinny country grabbed the title!

I once heard Fredrik Lindegren, artistic director of the year, bending his head, covering his face in his hands, saying: I wish it was 2016.

I can easily understand that. Putting together a cultural year by rank, all Europe watching, would make anyone sweat. Then organizing it.

The title has affected Umeå in major ways even though it hasn’t yet started. I think we are experiencing something along the lines of what happens in a place which is getting ready for The Olympics: gosh, this is going to be a big party, we have invited a ton of guests and we need to make room for them (nice rooms!) clean everything up and make our city a show case!

A bit like when you are having a party at your house; you suddenly have a deadline to change the towels in the bathroom and maybe you get to finally hanging that painting that’s been sitting on the floor leaning against the wall for months. And yeah, a new bulb over the front porch so they can find their way in!

The front porch in Umeå is what used to be the downtown port at the Umeå River many decades ago. Since then, it’s basically been a big parking lot. Not anymore though. The new building for cultural arts, Väven, has been under construction for a couple of years now. The Norwegian firm Snöhetta (the Alexandria Library, the Oslo opera house) is the architect and the exterior (the lower part of the building will be for the arts, the tall part a hotel) glass plates inspired by the black and white graphics of the birch stem. http://kulturvaven.se/#/start/trailer

Big changes always cause concerns among people, and this building creates a lot of change. First, it’s the building itself. Some perceive it as big and loud and out of proportion compared to the city center. It changes the skyline (we still have a very modest skyline though). Then it’s the content. The city library is going to move in to the building and this is making people very emotional. Its’ current location is optimal to many, and why change a winning team?

Cultural arts are also theater, dance, photo, music, film and crossovers from most anything you can think of, now spread all over town. Will they afford the rent in this new flashy city front porch?

During this fall it turned out that the City’s budget for the building only will cover the costs for running the place, there will be no money over for the different art scenes in the facility. This might sound like an incomprehensible problem to an American. But you see, in Sweden cultural arts are to some degree sponsored by the government, and we are relying on that subsidy for our operation. For example, my choir Kammarkören Sångkraft (Sångkraft Chamber Choir) is sponsored with 100 000 Skr (today about 15 000 dollars) a year by the City of Umeå. No strings attached. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

So, there is no wonder people are concerned about the future of the culture in the European Capital of Culture 2014. Also, the City has failed spectacularly when it comes to digging up private sponsors for the year, which leaves the question: what will happen 2015? Without a doubt 2014 has to deliver, so will there be any money at all left for the different art scenes in the future? And that’s how we are entering this big year of events. This New Year.

Hey, will there be a 2015 whatsoever? I feel a lot like I did before the Millennium. It was such an event. Nobody talked about an after in other terms than all the computers would be crashing and it might even be the end of the world for all that we knew. I was in Seattle (people over here were concerned; if something bad would happen, wouldn’t it be safer for me entering the Millennium here in the woods than in a big American city?) since I imagined that would be really cool.

Well, what happened? Some guy with explosives in his car was caught at the Canadian border heading south, and the big celebration at Seattle Center was cancelled for security reasons. Roomer had it that there was no money left after The Battle in Seattle. At 00.00 I was standing at a roof in Wallingford with family and friends watching a pretty lame fire works at the Space Needle, ousted by Bill Gates’ at the Gates residence on the other side of lake Washington. I would say it was an anti climax, and then the world continued with no fuzz.

2014. In only two days. Umeå European Capital of Culture. Will it be an anti climax? And will time go on beyond that like nothing happened? Will there be a 2015?

Josephine

Her plan for this afternoon was to cut a tree in my grove. But it’s poring down outside and I wonder if she got it done.

Her name is Josephine. She is the grand daughter of my beloved neighbor Alida, 96 years old. Josephine moved back here this fall with her little baby girl.

Her dream, since she was a little girl herself, was to have a horse. To have a horse you need somewhere to keep it. And you need to take care of it. You need to be mature and responsible. Josephine is 22 years old and she takes care of two horses, a baby daughter, her grandmother and me.

Alida has been here for me all my life. For my sons all their life. For my mother all her life. And for my grandmother a big part of her life. Alida remembers and tells stories of great-grandmothers and grandfathers. And she is playing with her great-granddaughter. Alida is carrying every generation within her. She is a dear friend and the one I go to for grounding myself, and when she for some reason is not at home I feel like my back bone is gone.

Josephine tells me she always wanted to be a young mother, and she is. She feels her home is here in the woods and so she moved back here when her baby turned one. She is taking a break from school and is working for Civil Care, the home care company that takes care of Alida and me.

Her horses are Daisy and Grevinnan (The Countess). Daisy is young, only two years old, and Grevinnan ten, a bit more mature. Their winter home is an enclosed pasture basically on her front yard and my backyard. I can see them next to my Big Barn when looking to the north. They are so beautiful! I have never been a horse person and never been close to horses, but I love having Josephine’s horses as neighbors.

Josephine is the one now fixing my breakfasts. It’s such a treat! She comes here every morning, cheery and always in a good mood. We share our every day stories, big and small, high and low. I love it, and I know she enjoys it too. Sometimes her baby girl comes with her, and I love the idea that she is now getting familiar with my house the way I got familiar with Alida’s house when I was a baby.

I so admire Josephine. I have seen her with her grandmother since she was a teenager, always warm and caring. And now I see her with her daughter, such a natural mother. She doesn’t have a manual and yet she does everything right instinctively. I didn’t. You would think it’s in your genes how to take care of your children, but it isn’t. It’s trial and error. Some seems to be equipped with the right tools from the start though, and Josephine is one of them. Her baby girl is very fortunate.

Boy, it’s raining. I am not a big fan of snow, but for Christmas I would like some. Now it actually looks like we will have a Seattle Christmas, wet and foggy. I am thinking about last year when our Seattle-Becca was here for two weeks over the Holidays. Did she pick the right year for visiting her Swedish brothers and family! 5° F (-15°C) 3 feet of snow (90 cm) and clear skies. My place in the woods was an out of this world Christmas card and brought Becca a Holiday memory she will forever cherish. I am glad we don’t have any foreign guests this year; Sweden isn’t delivering!

Gosh. I am crashing on my coach. My choir Kammarkören Sångkraft (Sångkraft Chamber Choir) did just close the season with our traditional Christmas concert. Three full houses. As my back keeps being difficult I had no clue if I could do the concerts. Through this fall I have only been able to attend like every other rehearsal. My plan was set for two of the concerts, the one yesterday and the second today.

At the end of the one yesterday I had to be lead out by my friend and alto colleague Agneta. Today I was in such bad shape I was thinking it had to be the worst decision this year heading off to Umeå stads kyrka (the Umeå City Church) to stand up singing for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Yet I did it. And yes I did it! I did the whole concert and was even able to be present and enjoy welcoming the Holiday together with my friends in the choir and an attentive audience. I am so happy and grateful.

Trouble & Trouble cut our tree some days ago and it’s all dressed and very beautiful. We will spend Christmas here together with my sister’s family, all together 13 people. Not since 2007 there has been a real big Christmas Eve celebration here at the end of the road, and I am so happy about it.

And at my neighbors Alida and Josephine will celebrate Christmas with their family. I feel safe knowing they are there. Knowing that our families will continue being interlaced with each other. Alida has been such a safety in my life, a warm and solid point. I am hoping that I can be Josephine’s. The woman in the house next door. The one who is always there.