Not twenty minutes ago, I saw a lorry (truck) knock over a lamppost that hit a passing woman. The lorry just drove on. I am so shocked I don’t know what to think. Did he not see what he had done? It made a noise loud enough to break through my headphones and make me turn around, because I was facing the other way and saw most of it in a reflection. The lamppost fell over onto a young Somali woman, knocking her off her feet.

Loads of people rushed to her side, taking out their mobiles, etc. I considered running over as well, but figured it would have been redundant, and this happened 100 metres from the emergency room. I did try to wave at the lorry-driver to get him to pull over, but he drove off. I hope someone else caught his license plates. I suspect he was too afraid to stop. Maybe he had stolen goods in the back… Or maybe he was just scared of being fired by whatever company he was driving for. Regardless of whether he was afraid of the police or simply oblivious, I hope they catch him, or that he turns himself in.

I’m just shaky now… After failing to stop the lorry or write down the plate numbers, I got on my tram instead. I still can’t believe it happened… that poor woman! She was conscious, though. I hope there’s nothing worse than a concussion and a broken bone or two, but that really looked quite awful.

It just started hailing…

EDIT: I have done my public duty and called the police with information about the appearance of the lorry, and the brief glance I had at the man behind the wheel.

A friend sent me this quote today. Just wanted to share this little piece of inspiration and motivation:

All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you’re not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you’re the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. They will tell you no, a thousand times no, until all the nos become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. And you will tell them yes…

–Unknown

As I have previously mentioned, us musicians are procrastinators by default; we simply won’t do things when we should. Studying for exams is no exception. Not only did I not start studying for the exam I had today until yesterday, I was such a scatter brain that I didn’t even realise the exam was today until Monday night.

Today’s exam was a written one. The only written exam I have this year, in fact. The subject was aural training. For those of you who aren’t in the know, this is an area of musical theory dealing with being able to translate what you hear to paper, and vise versa. This includes writing down melodies, chords, scales and rythms that are played or sung for you. In general, I am quite good at this without even trying, but this year things have steadily become more difficult, as they tend to do, and I have steadily become more lazy.

I still do well with melody without flinching; I have after all been reading and writing sheet music since about age nine, so this comes very naturally to me. I’m pretty good at recognising chords, and the scales and modes you just have to find little clues for and recognising them becomes easy (for instance, the Dorian mode has a minor third and seventh, but a major sixth). What I’m really bad at is rhythm. Don’t let that make you think that I have a bad sense of rhythm or tempo when it comes to performing music – I play tightly enough, and I’m good at feeling the rhythm when I sing – but the bits that they sing to us are not logical. These are not rhythmic patterns you’ll find in most songs. site down . They’re made to be difficult. The only ones that are simple and logical are the ones in 6/8.

I think I did well enough, and I’m glad to get it over with anyhow. Now I have three exams left. I have my vocal exam concert on Tuesday (at 4:30 pm if anyone in the Oslo area is interested in dropping by, at NISS). Bit nervous… There are a couple of songs we haven’t rehearsed yet. I’m doing one of them tomorrow and the last one on Sunday. I had two rehearsals today, which left me rather tired, both physically, emotionally and vocally.

“Forty Six and Two” is going great, I think. We’re gonna go through it a few more times Sunday night, but it already sounds great, so I’m not worried, so long as I can learn the lyrics for the bridge properly… So many words. “Teardrop” will be fine, we know it from before because we did it at a previous project. Bit worried about “Alive”, which is from the last project and a self-composed tune, because we’re missing one guitarist and that’s the one I had to change drummers on, but it should be fine; we’re rehearsing it tomorrow. The last song (or, it’s the first in the set) is “Good Enough”, which I played at a house concert last autumn. I’m doing it with the same pianist. Last time, we rehearsed it for an hour and it went great at the concert. He’s such a good pianist, and since he’s played it before it should go well.

Then I have aural training oral and piano in the beginning of June. Feels like weeks away… I’m gonna have to focus on one exam at a time. When this one’s over, I’ll worry about the next.

In other news, I found out today that I’m not the only one who’s applied for a third year at the University of Wolverhampton after all, so yay! I’ve been worrying about not getting to know anyone or making any friends there; now there will be someone else I know there. Not only are they people I know, but people I like. I hope we all get in!

I think that’s it for now… I’m dead tired. Probably gonna go to bed soon. Good night, world!

Today is Norway’s constitution day. On the 17th of May, 1814, a bunch of men signed our constitution in Eidsvoll, outside Oslo, as we stopped being part of Denmark and into a union with Sweden, under the Swedish king. Oddly, our independence day, the 7th of June 1905, when we shook the Swedes off our backsides, is rarely commemorated.

But yes, today is our day. Congratulations, Norway! We’ve come a long way, and our constitution has been revised any number of times. Among other things, we now have freedom of religion, which wasn’t originally in there. Or, rather, the bit about the state church has been reinterpreted and no longer means that we all have to be Lutheran. Or something.

To me, this day is a bit sad, because I always spent it with my dad. When I was little, he played in a brass band and was always marching with his soprano sax on the 17th. After he died, when I was eleven, there were several years where I spent the entire day indoors, didn’t want to be in the parade, didn’t want to be part of anything. But after a while it became easier, and I guess I sort of realised that just because he’s not here, that doesn’t mean I can’t take part in the festivities anyway. And besides, I get to spend part of the day with him anyway, if I want. I’m going to visit his grave later, give him flowers, light a cigarette (no, I don’t smoke, it’s just part of the tradition; dad was a chain smoker, so we always light a cigarette on his grave, every time we visit), tell him “Happy 17th of May”. It’ll be the third time I go there this spring. For some reason, I’ve been drawn there a lot lately…

When I was about nine or ten years old, I wrote a 17th of May song, for my school. It was all about sunshine and happiness and waving flags and marching bands and grandmothers, and it was based around what we used to do at the school I went to back then. It was about waiting for the parade to start, marching up to the castle, and then going back to school to have ice cream. I made the melody myself, my mum helped me a bit with the lyrics and made chords for me. I wish I could remember it now… It would have been a good 17th of May post, if I could record it and upload it. Oh, well. Maybe next year.

Oh, yeah, the photo is of an arrangement I made today, with apple blossoms and plum blossoms, in honour of the holiday.

So, my drummer situation is now sorted. Now I just need to get everything else in order. A good start would be getting a reply from people on when they have time to rehearse… I guess I’m just gonna have to get brave and pick up the phone rather than relying on text messages, Facebook and e-mails.

It’s kind of hopeless trying to be a musician while having social anxieties, I realise. Especially when you’re a singer. As a drummer or a bassist, people will always approach YOU. Even as a guitarist you have an advantage. But as a singer, YOU have to take the initiative yourself, for everything, all the time. This is problematic when first contact freaks you out. Just “getting over” ones phobias isn’t quite as easy as it sounds.

In other news, I have a new mobile. It’s a fancy mobile; a “green” mobile! As in, not the colour, but in the being nice to the environment way. Shell made of recycled plastic, no dangerous chemicals in the battery, no “bad” metals, all friendly, no nasties. I love my new mobile! It’s a Sony Ericsson Elm. I call it Freddy. As in Krueger. As in “Elm Street”. Clever, right? Obviously, not my idea.

Anyone who’s ever hung around with musicians knows that we are mad. Not only are we completely bonkers, we also always do everything at the last minute. And even when we try to do things on time, our plans are foiled on account of everyone else doing everything at the last minute. We finish songs the day before we’re meant to record them, we finally learn to play something by heart the day of a concert, we change the lyrics a second before we enter the studio, and we generally make things difficult for everyone around us.

Which is why I’m sitting here, less than two weeks before my final vocal exam, with no drummer for the last song.

See, here’s the deal: I am going to play a song from the latest project at school, an original tune, but the drummer for my group leaves the country or something the day before my exam, which creates one hell of a problem for me. So after asking everyone in sight and making a pleading post on Facebook, all to no avail, it seems I have exhausted my resources and will be forced to go back to the first drummer I asked and beg on my knees. This wonderful human being told me that if I really couldn’t find anyone else I could ask again and he’d think about it.

So I will bribe, flatter and grovel until he says yes. It’s the only option I have left, because at this point, everyone is busy. Drummers are in short supply and everyone wants the best ones. I’m sad to say that there’s at least one person at school I wouldn’t dream of asking because I know by second hand account that he just isn’t up to snuff.

The one I really want, the one I’m about to beg to take it on, is one of the very best, and thus very busiest. But maybe, just maybe, it will be possible to persuade him. I’ll promise him beer, or wine, or whisky, and if that doesn’t work, eternal gratitude and a million favours. Because if I turn up at my exam and say, sorry, I can only play three of my songs, that’s not gonna look so good, and I really, really meant to get an A this year. At least a B.

Oh please, world, pretty please will you be on my side just this once at let me manage this? I need help!

It’s just passed midnight, and a new year as begun for me; I am now 22 years old. There are so many things I want to do with this year, and I know I won’t accomplish all of them. I really want to get back to my writing. It’s been a long time since I really did any of that, any significant amount, at least. I keep thinking I should get back to it, sometimes I even pull up a document with something I’ve worked on before, but it never gets anywhere.

Sometimes it’s just because I’m lazy. Other times, I’m just not inspired. I know, the eternal complaint of the creative. “I have writer’s block; I’m not inspired!” You can’t say that in other professions. You can’t really say that in creative professions either, which makes being a writer, song-writer or artist so very difficult. You can’t go around missing deadlines, you can’t always wait for inspiration to strike. Sometimes you just have to muscle up the willpower to go out there, start something, anything, and see where it leads. Sometimes you have material to work with, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you stare at a blank page for hours and sometimes, alas how rarely, inspiration just flows from your fingertips and everything turns out right on the first try.

You can’t always expect that to happen. And you have to work hard for it either way. You can have all the creative ideas in the world. It doesn’t mean squat diddly if you can’t harness them and make them do your bidding, turn them into a product that others want to see. That’s how it is when you write a book. That’s how it is when you write a song. That’s how it is when you paint something. You have to develop the skills necessary to harness your creativity. Which is why this not writing thing is so bad. I need to keep at it, become better, in order to create something. And at the same time, I’m working hard at my singing, hoping for something great to happen so I can get my break, but you have to work for that too.

Maybe I’m not cut out to be a professional… Then again, I’m still young. Although I’m older now than I was an hour ago, I still have time to figure it all out.

I had a talk with an old friend today. He said that I need to figure these things out before it’s too late. That I have to figure out what I want in my professional life, not just my personal one. And maybe he’s right. I just don’t know if I’m ready to take that step yet, to commit to one future.

At least not today. Today is my birthday, and I’m gonna live in the moment, and celebrate!