Today marked another ‘first’ for me…

A little less than a year ago I was blessed by the first of what would prove to be very many fan emails. I always take the time to answer every single one, and I truly believe that if another human being took the time to write me, after taking the time to consider writing me - me of all people? - the least I can do, the very least, is to write back, and be as polite and friendly as I possibly can.

But today was a different story. Today marked the emergence of my very first - hate mail. A very unfriendly piece of mail, explaining to me just how unworthy I was of everything I had.

For a person such as myself, who takes pride in always being friendly in my replies to people, such a thing is new. What brings a person to feel so much unrest to write such a thing?

There are a lot of things one fails to understand.

Today we celebrate the feast of St Lucia in Sweden. It’s the start of the true holiday season, as evident by the Santa Claus hat, and Christmas CD present at the time of me writing this.

It’s been an interesting few days. I’m deep into my winter depression, and have rarely felt as useless and crap at everything I try as I do now. The days are dark and short, the nights bitterly cold. I also read lately that December is the month when we put on almost all the weight we end up keeping, due to overeating and stress, and that lesson makes nothing better or easier.

I finished mixing the Zleipner demo today. A great bunch of young guys whose career I hope to have given a small puff in the right direction. There were a few recording technique snafus, but I truly hope that the finished product will be something they will be proud to play with their friends. And so I am magically transported through the looking glass into the shoes of the people mixing OUR album. And realize where they’re coming from.

I also seem to have invented, according to a few emails, a new guitar technique - and I’m pleased about that. It’s important to leave some sort of imprint of ourselves.

I just received two phone calls from HÅkan at the studio in Gothenburg. I feel so good talking to him. He told me that they would do their absolut best to rectify some of the problems that have happened somewhere along the line between recording a perfect take, and not hearing it in the finished product. They would do everything they could.

In the limited time available to them due to our constrained mixing budget, I really believe and trust they have done their utmost. And I hope and believe that in the end we will have made a record we can all be proud of. If someone had told me I’d be here, releasing my second official album - and such a great one at that, when I was seventeen, I would have sold my soul to be where I am now. So You know what? I’m going to kick back and enjoy this for a while. And worry about all that stuff some other day.

A guy emailed me today saying he thought my last name was much cooler than his *lol* First time for everything, I suppose. A good day.

I spent all day watching Mr Petrucci’s excellent Discipline video. Warming up the muscles, programming positions into muscle memory, stretches and so on. It felt so wonderful, like being back in the days when guitar was still all about discovery and amazement, when improvement was daily and the sky was the limit. Off to the practise room, to sweat.

Tomorrow’s another day, time to play.

Why does the music industry always leave such a bitter aftertaste in Your mouth? It seems that in those two words, ‘music industry’, the focus is so clearly shifted toward the latter, away from the former. It is so easy, so frighteningly easy, to lose track of one’s creative process and spark when this is set against the insurmountable institutionalized obstacles that the reality of music production represents…

The album is nearing the end of the post-production process now, finally, although as so many artists before us we are being put into a position of needing to accept compromise as a way of getting our music out. For one of us in particular this will be a personal blow both heavy and ultimately unnecessary.

But You know what? That’s life! We’re in a place so many other people would give anything to be. We can’t lose our hunger over needing to compromise with people who are, after all, depending on us to give them their daily bread. Perfection is a luxury bil-payers can ill afford. So go ahead, life, meet me half way, I know we’re both working like animals to make it. In the words of the great Don Dokken: I don’t mind, and I don’t worry. I will survive.

I’ve just come back from the rehearsal studio having witnessed one of the most horrifying snarling pig noises a keyboard could make… A new song is coming together and it feels so good to be a part of the creative energy that is so alive and vibrant when so many minds meet and create music together. It is these writing sessions that remind me that life is worth living - the wonderful feeling when one is writing, of the fact that noone in the world knows how these songs sound, except us… Like witnessing a miracle in so many ways.