During Covid, I walked the empty streets of Stockholm a great deal. It was in this eerie time that I made Under stjärnvalvets drömmar (Under the Starry Future), which can be listened to here


One of the contested structures in some wave of Stockholm re-building is called Elefanten (the Elephant). This is a brutalist parking structure near Nordiska Kompaniet (a grand old department store, also sometimes called “NK”). As Christmas of 2019 approached, I walked downtown after working at the Skandia organ, and everything was deserted. I decided to go and look at the NK windows … and they were so beautifully done that year. I did not take photos, but I can describe them! Every diorama featured a deep blue twilight sky, this one over far off trains, that one with distant, lit trees beneath, another over a city, sleeping with warm, gold lights in windows over empty streets, decorated quietly in wreaths or ribbons. As the world went into lock-down, an ephemeral dream of sleeping Christmas greeted me from those windows, usually so flashy and colorful. It was a world asleep, dreaming of next year. As I turned the corner, the music was also hushed, delerious and sad at once. The recording above is what I heard. And so the ephemeral city I built inside parts of Under stjärnvalvets drömmar also has this distant, pensive quality.

Elefanten (The Elephant)

NK Christmas music along the sidewalks outside the store, during the Covid-19 lockdown.