Post festum

Somebody asked me, “Maria, do you feel liberated now when you have turned 60?” It was kind of a funny question, and I am not sure I really understood what it was about, but it made me reflect on the subject.

When I woke up on March 14, my actual birthday, the wonderful spring sun was kissing me through my bedroom window. I looked out at my bare winter trees, pondering the fact that this was the day. Kind of waiting for some panic to hit me.

Then I remembered the question. Liberated? In what sense? I let my thoughts and feelings wonder for a bit. And found that… yes!

At 60 you are officially old (I mean for real, every decennium switch is a crises, and you might feel old already at 20) in the eyes of society and in your culture - depending on which culture is yours, of course. Let’s face it, you have passed expiration date on most arenas in life.

And instead of panicking, to my surprise I found that thought liberating! There is nothing to prove any more! What I didn’t achieve, the goals I didn’t reach and all the dreams that didn’t come true I can’t do anything about and that’s history now. I am free!

There is no bitterness here, and of course I can still have dreams. But all those expectations for a fulfilled life connected to the productive phase in life, the phase (and it’s a long one) when you always have to answer the question what you are doing professionally, if you are married, do you have kids etc, that phase is over. I will be under the rader, I am old, and I think I like it! 

The weird thing is, I’ve always felt old. And too old. My first memory of feeling too old was at age 14. It was too late. In that case, and many cases, too old for something I wanted to achieve. Now I am finally officially too old, and everything (nice) happening after this will be unexpected bonuses!

And you know what, I am so sick and tired feeling too old I will refuse to be from now on! I am carrying every age in me, as well as no age, that’s who I am and that’s how I am going to act.

Officially though, I am old, and when you are old you can go eccentric. Oooh, I like that. When I was working at National Swedish Radio, one day we had this little news bit on a study showing how people usually emphasizes their trait of character when they get older. We were sitting at the news desk discussing this, looking in to our futures. I said, “Okay, I wonder how short my skirts will be when I am 65?” “Yes”, my colleague Hans replied, “and how tall boots you will wear.”

I’m just saying…

Celebrating Maria at Maria's!

When I finally was home I felt sad. How is that even possible?

I am turning 60 tomorrow. Amazing numbers. Hard to grasp. I have decided to embrace it though, and why shouldn’t I, I have every reason to! And the best way to do that is a real party. And the best place for a Maria party is Restaurant Maria!

Today is the day after. I am stranded on my couch having a hard time verbalizing my feelings and the events of the event. I guess the one word that would work is amazed. But let’s add overwhelmed. Happy. And incredibly grateful.

26 out of my friends and family had chosen to come celebrate this day with me, having a three-course sit down dinner at Restaurant Maria in Umeå, conducted by the devoted and shamelessly flirtatious owner Sirwan. That’s a good start just there!

My evening though took off with Hawkar, who works for my home care company, picking me up in his Kurdish birthday/wedding decorated car, that’s the first surprise! Pink fabric draped over the hood, flowers at the front and on the mirrors. I laughed my head off and was so moved by this loving gift. And that’s how I arrived at the party, actually wearing a gorgeous fair coat I am hiding at the far back of my closet. In company with my bodyguard.

My guests were a motley collection from all through my life. From my oldest friend Ulrika and my sister who both have been there since I was two, to Hawkar who started working with me in October. They all got to know each other over the chèvre toast, the beef tenderloin, the char, the salmon and finally the cake, specially delivered from the patisserie in Nordmaling where my father was a pastry chef and composed this special cake, Martin’s Special.  

As my fundamental feeling about myself is that I am toxic and I feel sorry for everyone who has to be around me, inviting people to spend time with me is a hard thing for me to do. Add to that, asking them to pay part of their dinner, and the anxiety attack is close.

Imagine my astonishment when Hummerklubben (my friends who gather once a year after Christmas for the famous lobster soup) performed an Acrostic, a piece of art on adjectives describing me, on the letters of my name! And the adjectives were all…nice…and that’s an understatement. My sister and brother in law had written an initiated and fun chronicle of my life in ten verses, which everybody joined in and sang to me. Trouble 2 told the long and entertaining story about my father’s cake, and Trouble 1 and his middle school friend Anders performed for the first time a new song by Trouble 1, Storm Bells, which left everyone, and especially me, breathless.

I couldn’t believe this all happened. It was actually hard to take in.

Then everybody who wanted and was able to danced, I had worked long and hard on the perfect playlist, that is, perfect for my generation. And why, anyway, are the youngsters so lame when it comes to dancing?

At around 2 AM Hawkar and his friend Nihad drove me back home. I had started my day with my back pretty much acute not knowing how I could get through the day. It surely wasn’t a day to be on stage. And here I was, having had the most amazing evening. I was so tired, nearly falling asleep to the beautiful sounds from the Kurdish language, which I don’t understand. Like a lullaby.

But back in the house I suddenly felt sad. And my Post Social Anxiety hit me. Which always happens when I have taken up a lot of space. As on this occasion I was the space, I was the stage, the PSA was severe.

About the sadness, I remembered once hearing a musician talking about the on tour life and the hotel rooms after the concerts. He said, the greater the show had been - the more connection with the audience, the emptier the hotel room was afterwards. The discrepancy became a hole. I think that’s where I ended up in the early morning hours.

Tonight i have landed in a feeling, a picture. A loud shooting stars falling softly on me. It might have something to do with Audrey and Agneta’s beautiful dressing of the table in silver and white. Loud from all the people being there at my night. Falling softly from all the wonderful things they did for me. I am forever grateful.

A healthy Facebook diet

1,5 month ago I had a bad stomach flue. I was totally down-and-out. At one point I slept all day in my bed, like numb. It was a Saturday. Hours passed and I didn’t notice. That’s never happened in my current bedroom where I’ve been since 2006.

This was during the extremely intense final sprint of the documentary I was working on. In the midst of all that I had one day when I couldn’t do anything at all, not even think about the project. It was so bad, Trouble 2 spent 24 hours here taking care of me as I fainted every time I tried getting myself to the bathroom.

So, I had this one day when I could let go of everything. Work and myself. The day after, Sunday, I felt a tiny bit better. Before Trouble 2 left we synchronized our calendars for further work - we had lost a lot of time. I immediately felt my brain go red, the adrenaline rushing through my body, breathing stopped and heart pounding. I realized I was seriously over worked. There was nothing I could do about it though, I had a deadline.

In the evening I took the big step moving over to the couch. It felt like going on a journey. So much information in my living room. Just lying there. To prepare for the Monday coming up I finally put the TV on, watching the news. The sound very low. Pictures flickering. Letting the world in. It wasn’t a good thing.

I would have needed many days in my bed, all numb. But I had a film to produce and finish. Was there anything I could change at all to make my situation less stressful? Yes, I could stay out of Internet.

I am not a big surfer at all, apart from what I need in my profession. I read Seattle Times every day, I check in on Trouble 1’s Instagram and I take my Facebook walks morning and evening. And short strolls in between, waiting for a phone call, a file to down load, a text to arrive, an email to come through, things like that. I have never felt stressed out or affected in a bad way by that. It turned out I was wrong.

The time following the stomach flue I couldn’t even read Seattle Times. The scrolling position of my hand made the adrenalin rush. The opportunity clicking on a link made my brain spin. I realized I had to monitor myself hard to stay on only one thing.

Which is easier said than done when you a producing a film and the client is tapping his fingers, waiting for you.

So, I focused on my work - at least trying thinking one thing at the time - and I stayed out of Facebook. Completely. For three weeks I had no clue what was going on in the world except from what the news was telling me. It was strange. But also a relief.

I’ve never been a friend of the Facebook jargon with the constants smileys and thumbs up, the traveling luggage and the beautiful food, all of us showing only the bright side of ourselves. Often there are no smiles and thumbs up in my life and I feel estranged and lonely watching that happy world out there. It was nice not being the spectator of all that for a while. And what a lot of time I suddenly had on my hands!

Eventually I started to make cautious visits there. I have a tendency of easily feeling invaded (which was very physical when I first joined Facebook), so I needed to go very slow. A short stroll a day. Closing. Taking a deep breath.

Now, 1,5 month later I am most days back to my morning and evening walks. My scrolling is very slow though. I am trying to remember breathing. And I am not interactive. I am not posting status. I am not (in regular) commenting or liking. I am a Peeping Tom. Which makes me feel bad. I’m the old lady hiding behind her window curtains watching her neighbors.

So why am I doing it? Why do I even want to be there? Well, a lot of people doesn’t use email any more and I am afraid I will miss a PM from someone who tries to reach me. And there might happen things in my extended family which I wouldn’t get to know any other way.

So, we’ll see how long this Facebook diet of mine will continue. It feels good though not bursting out in a random “The sun is finally out, how wonderful!” Or going publicly upset about something on TV. Or Donald Trump. I feel like it is a matter of hygiene. Social media hygiene. I feel cleaner. Not crying out my feelings about this and that. And not listening to everyone else doing the same. I actually think it feels a little more grown up.

It was the morning after Kjell’s 30-year birthday party

I was lying in my bed. It was a slow Saturday morning, waking up from my brother in law, Kjell’s, 30-year birthday party the night before. In 1,5 month I would give birth to my first son, I was big and my back did hurt. My husband had been out in the white February morning picking up the newspaper. Came back. Said “Olof Palme is dead”. I don’t know if he crawled up in the bed with me or if he stayed in the kitchen making us breakfast. All I know is me lying in bed reading the words looking at the pictures. Not being able to take it in. Like every Swede that morning.

Olof Palme was the Swedish Prime Minister shot and killed on the street in Stockholm on his way home from the movies Friday evening February 28 1986. A man born conservative upper class joining the Social Democrats, becoming a skilled controversial politician, admired by many and highly criticized by others, even hated. Olof Palme left no one indifferent.

The police investigation, 30 years later still ongoing, is the most extensive in the world. The data base includes 87 318 personal documents. 10 225 persons have been interrogated. 133 have admitted the shooting. No one has been convicted. The murder weapon was never found and the murder is unsolved. And I don’t think Swedes in general have hope that it ever will be.

The investigation, conducted in the Palme Group, has worked on different tracks or leads through the years. The PKK track, the lonely shooter, the police track, the South Africa track. Today there is no main track that we know of, although the investigation claims to be very active, still putting in a lot of effort on tracing the murder weapon. Time is working against it though. Locations changes, memories fade, people die. All three investigators will retire within the next couple of months and the director is thinking about an early retirement too.

After 30 years, would it make any difference if the case was solved? It would. The Palme murder is to Swedes what the JFK is to Americans. A country needs a closure. 

It says Sweden lost it’s innocence when Olof Palme was shot. I think that’s true. And it’s a trauma. Like every American (and many many other throughout the world) knows in detail where they were and what they did when President Kennedy was shot, every Swede recalls their exact situation as the news about Olof Palme reached them.

September 10 2003 our Minister of Foreign Affairs Anna Lindh was stabbed shopping in a mall in Stockholm. She died the morning after. I was at work following the news casts with my colleagues. I know exactly where in the room I was sitting. It happened again.

Can you loose your innocence more than once? I think you can. One definition of chock is when something happens that completely alters your perspective. Of yourself, of the world close to you or the one spinning in the solar system.

I think the next time the Swedish innocence was lost was when the nationalistic Sweden Democrats had 9,7% of the Swedish vote in the European Union. Being followed by a 12,9% vote in the Swedish Parliament the same year. It had been unthinkable, but it happened. Who had we become? And this fall and winter Sweden has closed it’s borders to refugees in great danger and despair. Who have we become? Is this my country? Who are we in the world? What had Olof Palme been thinking about his party the Social Democrats following in the foot steps of the racist and xenophobic Sweden Democrats? What had been his stand? We will never know.

But this was a Prime Minister who’s opinion about the United States’ actions in the Vietnam war was so strong the U.S ambassador in Sweden John Guthrie was summoned back home. We can be sure he would not had hold his tongue.

Today my (ex)-brother in law is turning 60, now a grand father. My oldest son will be 30 in 1,5 month. A generation has passed. Media is remembering, contemplating, finding new angles, telling the story, over and over again. As they should. Doing their job. But also giving the country a chance to grieve and morn. As we need. As we must. Again.

The portrait of an entrepreneurial life

We are there! It’s a bit hard to take in, but we are really there!

I first met Krister Olsson in 2004 when I pitched a film to him, the story about a city design project his company Balticgruppen and the City of Umeå had launched together. Staden mellan broarna, The City Between the Bridges, a dramatic change of the waterfront scene at the Umeå River. We were about to get a new front porch!

Krister Olsson didn’t know me and I’m sure he had never seen anything I had produced, but his response was positive! The result was a 25 minutes long documentary about an extremely exciting project involving the most prestigious Nordic architects… that never happened. The City didn’t do it’s part of the job. Or, according to my footage I can be very blunt here, claiming our most powerful politician Lennart Holmlund didn’t step up to his responsibility. Coming to that man, it’s hard to say if it was strategy or if he was just plain stupid.

Back then, in 2004, Krister Olsson and I also decided on a film portrait about him. Telling the story about his life as an entrepreneur. About the boy who wanted to become a pilot, but chose not to when his father, a pilot himself, died in a plane crash, taking off in the Swedish mountains. Krister was 19 years old. Instead his choice became taking care of the family business, a small plumbing firm which he over the coming 50 years developed into a business- construction- and developing company worth of today around 3 billion Swedish crowns - I am trying converting into US dollar but getting different numbers, and since me and math isn’t to trust I am staying out of it. Krister Olsson’s total focus today is developing Umeå.

Anyway, the years passed. He didn’t have the time, or didn’t make the story of his life a priority. Until summer 2013. For me, as a storyteller, the timing was great. The collapsed city design project was to some degree replaced with the creation of a new cultural center down at the waterfront, and one of the architects from 2004, Norwegian Snöhetta, was hired for the design. The name of the building is Väven, The Weave - or The Fabric.

My idea was to tell the story of Väven parallel with the story of Krister. About twenty people around Krister and Krister himself are weaving his tale meanwhile Väven grows to change the Umeå skyline as well as the waterfront.

It’s been 2,5 interesting and tremendously fun years. And the reason I have been able to follow it through although I’ve mostly been tied to my couch is my wonderful and competent crew. I can totally trust them on doing a creative and professional job and I am always confident they will bring home the material I need. The two cinema photographers Tomas Olsson and Martin Gärdemalm, sound engineers Johannes Oscarsson and Linda Iro Näsström, Trouble 2 in charge of the post production, Fay the graphic designer, and Trouble 1 as composer of the original music. I am blessed to be working with these people: my children and their friends.

The result is a film, just shy of two hours. A portrait of the boy who wanted to fly, but instead came to make Umeå take off for a different level. On Wednesday Trouble 2 and I executed the solemn hand over to Krister Olsson. 2016 a two hour film is delivered on a tiny shiny USB-memory engraved with the film title. And in this case packaged in a custom made blue box, crafted by the bookbinder Åsa Bergqvist - my ex sister in law by the way.

The review came the day after. The portrait was well received. Our work is done and I can allow myself feeling proud and happy. But most of all I am incredibly grateful for the trust Krister Olsson gave me, laying the story of his life in my hands.

Crowded, good or bad?

Seattle often occurs on lists. Of different kind. I am sure the one the city takes most pride in is Most Livable City in the U.S. according to Forbes. 2015 Seattle was ranked nr. 6, but has had higher numbers earlier on. The list of Worst Traffic might leave the city in shame though, nr. 7.

Now, for the first time, Seattle ranks in the Top Ten for population density. With 7,962 people per square mile in 2014, Seattle leapfrogged Baltimore into the No. 10 spot among the 50 most populous cities in the country. Seattle’s population density has increased by nearly 10 percent since the 2010 Census. And if current growth rates continue, Seattle will bypass No. 9 Los Angeles within five years. Here is the list:

• Nr 1  New York City 28,056 (per square mile)
• Nr 2  San Fransisco          18,187
• Nr 3  Boston                     13,586
• Nr 4  Miami                      11,997
• Nr 5  Chicago                   11,959
• Nr 6  Philadelphia            11,635
• Nr 7 Washington DC       10,793
• Nr 8  Long Beach, Calif.   9,416
• Nr 9  Los Angeles              8,383
• Nr 10 Seattle                      7,962

Now, is this a good thing? Well, it depends on who you ask. Worst Traffic, bad, that’s something nobody is arguing against. Most Livable, yes, that’s a nice thing. Population Density, somewhat unclear.

Looking at the Seattle map, Capitol Hill is the most populated. Still, the area is mostly true to it’s modern origin. Old beautiful brick walk-ups, may be four stories, garden apartments at the lowest level, the neighborhood fabric is wonderful. You can walk to the grocery store, there are parks nearby. That’s some of the densest part in the city, yet  it doesn’t feel overwhelming. It’s very human-scale. The densest part of Capitol Hill packs in about 55,000 people per square mile — actually comparable to Greenwich Village in New York.

The fastest growing area in Seattle is South Lake Union, and we all know who to blame. Amazon. Invading a sleepy warehouse and small business area transforming it to a crowded glass and steel construction. That’s the general opinion, which makes it ok to to say density is a bad thing. 

Then again, we have neighborhoods like Madrona which needs people to make it’s little center going. That’s where I stayed my second visit in Seattle summer 1995, and I loved the cafés, the barber shop and the cute restaurants on 34th Avenue, all in walking distance. But of course you need a loyal crowd for the business to work.

There is something though, everyone can agree on. Something drastic needs to be done about housing and traffic. Or else the ranking on the Most Livable City- and Worst Traffic lists will be numbers no one wants and nothing to be proud of.

"You really are a storyteller"

I’m not sure what would be the best picture to symbolize the feeling. But maybe giving a long concert with no applause until the end. If the applause arrives.

This Thursday was the day for showing the film to the client. Or more correctly, to my contact at the client. The documentary, a film portrait of The entrepreneur/ developer of Umeå, Krister Olsson, that I have been working on for the last 2,5 years. http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2016/01/the-joyful-process-of-film-making.html. 

Three weeks ago there was a film in one piece. Which doesn’t mean it’s done. It only means it’s in one piece. Since then different persons have been working on there special expertise for the finish. And it’s practically been a family affair. Trouble 2 does the grading. Cousin Johannes the audio editing and sound design. Audrey is the graphic designer and Trouble 1 composes the original music.

So, Thursday Trouble 2 and I welcomed my contact (his name is Staffan) to my place at the end of the road for a screening. Me on my couch, he in my most comfortable sofa chair. He had only watched a couple of clips before, so taking off for a two hour long documentary was… well, exciting is an understatement. I would rather say nerve wrecking. 

There were a couple of spontaneous positive comments. And some giggle. To keep the focus up Trouble 2 served coffee and warm Danish after an hour. I was extremely tensed. Would it work? Had I got it all wrong? Imagine getting a two hour long documentary wrong!!

Staffan used to be a TV and film producer in his earlier days, so he knows the field. And I would say praising and giving random credit isn’t his thing. In other words, if he didn’t like what he saw he would let med know. That I could trust. 

The sunny afternoon had faded into dusk when my logo ended the film. And Staffan told us he liked it. He really did. And he praised (!) the photo and the cutting. Trouble 2 and I exhaled simultaneously out, of relief. He had comments, of course. We will do a few adjustments, so this week will be some re editing and trimming, but nothing that weighs on us. On the contrary, we are excited to take on the final polish of this film that’s been our companion for a long time now.

I am so relieved. And I am incredibly happy. The applause arrived. But what really made the day and will for all my days ahead is Staffan’s comment on me and my work: “You really are a storyteller Maria.”