Background
In this short chapter, I will mention the circumstances that lead me to define this project.
This part has a personal angle, to a degree that I find relevant.
Why is this important? It’s necessary to get some background in order to understand the project and interpret the outcomes.
Why is this urgent? You need this info from the beginning.
Garden of Eden
I guess I should start start when I realised that music was going to be a big thing for me, when I was in my preteens. Music was the only thing that really hooked me, and I felt an urge to do. I still feel it in a very similar way today.
Yes, it was around that time. I was playing piano, guitar, drums and singing, and I felt I could do it all, almost effortlessly. I didn’t see myself from outside, didn’t judge my competence. It was wonderful. I played the drums and sang in the band Heavy Heaven. A year before I had had a vision of myself playing the drums and singing Looking Back (Over My Shoulder), and naturally, this vision became a reality in a band with my friends Raimy on bass and Nicklas on guitar.
This tape is a bit earlier than that, recorded in 1995. Hjalte plays guitar and I play the drums.
To me, this is what pure creative energy sounds like.
When I made the sticker for the tape, I decided that the band was called STAINLESSSTEEL
Cause and effect
At this time, I had trouble in school, but musically, it was a garden of eden scenario, and of course what happened next was one day we were rehearsing with Heavy Heaven at the youth club, and a pedagogue told my bandmates that my singing was awful. They were kind enough to pass this information on to me, and the second they did, everything changed. Embarrassed, I stopped singing altogether, and focused my creative energy on the piano; one thing I knew I could do well. I started seeing myself in a negative light, and my inner censor grew very strong, pushing me to practise and become skilled, but stealing away much of the joy and freedom that I had felt as a completely natural thing.
I know that this is a common story. Quite often, someone tell me how they used to love playing and singing, but at one point stopping it, because of a feeling of inadequacy. My guess is that they met someone who made them feel judged and ashamed, and they internalised the judgement, like I did that day in 1997.
Next 19 years with music
Music never felt like Eden again, after this coup of the superego by my inner Joseph Goebbels. I would always judge myself while I was playing, creating a wall of thought between the music and myself. I would break through momentarily, entering back into the stream of freedom, but never for very long. There would be a wordless experience of something deeper, after which I resumed banging my thoughts against the keyboard.
Luckily, my self esteem was so low that I believed music was the only thing I could do, so I carried on, and through hard work, and with the help of good teachers, I gradually reemerged in a place of creativity.
But on the inside, the propagandist didn't let go. Instead he masked his operations in a sense of pride, and a pursuit of ‘the sublime’. When I finished my Master in 2012, he forced me to sit for 4 years in a tiny, airless room in Nørrebro, listening to the same 10 songs over and over again, recording and perfecting, deleting and starting all over.
In 2016 I finally released an album with my solo project, ØYA, and soon after, I was hit by an avalanche of stress and blocked energy that unhinged me completely.
In short: This way of creating, with my superego as producer and manager, turned out to be unhealthy.
August 2016
Having finished that album, I started on the soloist programme, and so the report of this process can begin.
