Opportunity

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to shoot one of my photo assignments when Four Real recorded two new songs in a studio here in Stockholm. Here are some of the pictures.

Welcome to the colors

November.

A couple of pictures taken in the photo studio at school.

Still life.

Portrait.

 

 

Home

Finally I have a bunch of pictures from my apartment. I have been living here for three weeks now, but not until today I finally got rid of all boxes, crap and cleaned the entire place enough to take pictures. It’s a great place, really. I am not quite done yet, the next step is to fix some old holes in the walls, make some new ones and put some pictures up, as well as curtains. It feels like a home. I’m making it mine.

The giant flower on the wall is some kind of wallpaper that was there when I moved in. My plan is to put up a big piece of black fabric to cover it, and then use velcro to put up pictures.

I love the bathroom. It’s not very big, but it IS very nice. There is also a giant rubber duck. Yes.

There will be photos or paintings on almost every empty wall. I will put up more pictures when everything is done =) If you’re passing by Stockholm, please come visit!

Once in a blue moon

Hey world. 

Right at this moment I am in an apartment in Dayton, Ohio, together with three awesome people; Jen, Carrie, Finke. Carrie just called Delta Airlines for us and yelled at them for charging us THREEHUNDREDANDTWENTY dollars to bring our bags from Ft Lauderdale to Dayton earlier today. It is kind of stupid actually, cuz if you travel within the US you are not allowed to bring any luggage without paying. First bag – 15 $, second bag – 25 $. But then for international flights you can bring two bags for free. Um wait, so if you go here from Sweden and you bring two bags for free you can’t bring them on your roundtrip within the country? Weird. Well thanks to Carrie we are all set and everything will work when we travel Dayton-Atlanta-Copenhagen on Saturday. Awesome.

These past months have been crazy and I will put up pictures from both Fallen and Lovewell Sweden Junior. But not right now.

Me and Jen have been in the US for a little more than 15 days now. It’s been fun, overwhelming, weird, fantastic, and I have had time to think a lot of stuff through. We started off in LA on Tuesday, two weeks ago. Jessie picked us up at LAX and we drove to Santa Barbara. We spent the next six days hanging out, going to the beach, walking dogs, watching movies, sleeping, shopping, eating and going to Disneyland with Orlando.

Jessie and Jen =)

Jen and Orlo at Disneyland.

We flew to Ft Lauderdale on Monday night, after a day in Hollywood. I was too tired to sleep (weird but true) and so the flight wasn’t nice at all actually. We arrived at 6am and slept for two hours before Kaitlin and Melissa took us to Lovewell =) SO awesome to meet everyone again! Even more awesome was the surprise party that Kai and Melissa had planned for us that night. I was so happy!

The week in Florida consisted of following:
gettingtanneddrinkingsmoothieshangingoutwatchingbrainstormsmangofestival
harrypottershoppingsleepingeatingicecreamandsoon

More to come.

Follow Your Heart

Summer plans. Life plans. 

I’m going to Stockholm next weekend to do a couple of interviews and audition for two programs at Kulturama. One for photography and the other one for directing/scenography and such for the stage. I have also applied for film studies at the university. I will be looking for a place to live. I am excited.

My summer schedule is almost set. Or well it is, but I have one week when I don’t know if I’ll be in Skåne or Stockholm depending on some stuff. Well here you go:

May 27th: Last day of work.
May 28th: Going to Stockholm.
May 28th-30th: Six Fallen shows.

June 4th: Helene’s and Benji’s graduation.
June 5th-12th: Don’t know.
June 15th-28th: Lovewell Jr Sweden.
June 30th: Going with Jen to LA for a week in California (LA and Santa Barbara).

July 6th: Leaving CA for Ft Lauderdale, FL.
July 15th: Leaving FL for Dayton, Ohio, with plans to attend the Teen show on Friday night.
July 18th: Leaving the US.
July 19th: Arriving in Denmark and going to Sweden.
July 20th-August 8th: Lovewell Sweden.

August 24th: The semester starts.

I am excited.

—–

Follow your dreams, follow your heart
Or else you will fall apart 
     (Follow Your Heart; 360 – A Musical Connection; Lovewell Sweden 2004) 

Extravaganza

In the beginning of last week I had been to London once in my life. When I was 12. When I almost didn’t know any English other than “Hello, my name is…”. Before I got my glasses. Before everything, really. We saw Mamma Mia! and I didn’t understand anything. We went by subway and can still quote the loudspeaker lady; “This train terminates at…Stratford”. Um that’s about how much I remember. Soooo…

…I went back. 
Me, Jen and Tom met at Heathrow on Thursday, April 2nd. 
We spent four days in a sunny, awesome, feeling-like-Sweden, London.
This is kind of what happened:

We took a bunch of Jen-w/-flowers-pics. (= Here with some almost overblown daffodils.

Three Swedes. Two cameras. Guess who’s in most of the pictures =)

One of the main purposes of this trip was to see a bunch of musicals. Three actually. The first one out, Thursday night, my b-day present to those old fellow travellers of mine; Billy Elliot – The Musical. I got the songs from Jesper a year ago and I really liked them and if you ask him this musical is a must-see. So we did. And it was good, very good. That little kid playing Billy – I think he was 13 – was AMAZING. He was dancing like I’ve never seen anyone dance before. Especially not a 13-year-old. Unfortunately the sound sucked, but I would definitely recommend the show anyways. 

The weather was really nice all the time! Spring-ish and sunny and awesome. We went strolling in a couple of parks and there were lots of flowers and people eating ice cream and playing with their dogs and just having a good time. 

Friday was Jen’s birthday. Happy birthday. =)
We went to see some tourist stuff. Big Ben. The London Eye. Westminster Abbey. Piccadilly Circus. Buckingham Pallace.

We also took the underground to King’s Cross Station to be nerdy for a while. Platforms 9-11 were closed because of reconstruction, but kindly they had moved the entrance to platform 9 3/4 outside that area.

While Jen helped an American woman who wanted pictures for her grand kids, me and Tom spent some time taking pictures of each other…


 

When planning this trip six months ago our plan was to see all the Swedes that moved to London in the beginning of fall; Natalija, Tea, Johanna and Cristine. Well, Tea and Johanna moved back again before we got the chance to visit them. And Natalija spent her spring break in Sweden… But after some communication problems we got to see Cristine for a while, eating ice cream in the park. Random thing; the ice cream guy was Swedish..

Enjoying the grass.

This photo should be used by a travel agency to get people to go to London in April.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures ever! Very funny.

 
Musical no.2, the one thing that we all said we wanted to do in London, without having to think about it; Wicked. Our expectations were high. HIGH. Everyone has been talking so much about this show and the music is awesome. And it was great. It was awesome. It made me want to do musical theatre. There were a couple of wow-moments, but I think there would have been more of them if we didn’t have that high expectations. I want to see this show again though, for sure.

Imagine this: you are in a foreign country. You are walking the streets of the huge capital of this country. Suddenly you see a familiar face. “Wait, wasn’t that…?” But the others haven’t seen what you have. You start running after the person trying to hear if she’s speaking Swedish. You’re about to give up but can’t really let it go. So you take a huge step up next to this person who at the same time turns your way. Imagine her face when she realizes that all three of you are there, at the very same street at the very same time in the very same country. What are the odds? Well it was fun! =) And we got picture evidence.
 

The third musical we saw was We will Rock You. It was more of a concert/show-feeling than the cheesy musical-feeling. But wow. It was very very cool! The song numbers were amazing, great singing, dancing and yeah it was cool!

We had a really good time! At least I did =) 
Great company, nice weather, awesome shows, Italian food.
Let’s hope I’ll return within the next 8 years…

When the lights are low, and the stage is set
All the actors race, to begin their plays
It’s all burning, like magic everywhere
Tonight is the night, when you must prepare
     (Extravaganza; Backstage Story – Ett Spel i Spelet; Lovewell Sweden 1996) 

I’ve Been Dreaming Lately

I want spring. NOW. I don’t want this mix of promising sunshine, smiling at those adorable spring flowers, and random snowstorms and -8°C. Spring is being such a coward, I mean COME ON! Fight that stupid Winter, everyone is on your side, what are you waiting for!?

I want summer. No, I will not be writing another part below this one that starts with “I want fall”, because I DON’T. But summer. My summer will be very busy. Very. Busy. If everything turns out as I want it to. I will tell you my whole schedule later, when everything is decided, but it will involve Lovewell. Um… a LOT of Lovewell! These are the latest news:

June 15th-28th a Lovewell Junior workshop will be held in Lomma, Skåne. 
Kids from 3rd-6th grade will be very welcome to join this program and write a musical.
For more information check out www.lovewell.se, the application is linked from the first page.

Oh, and I’m going to be an INTERN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =D I am SOOO excited!!!!!!!!! Me and A and J. Awesome! N will be the director, and A the music director. Aaaaaaah!!!!!!

So yeah, spring, summer. Where are you guys? I miss you… This is the only sign you have given us and I think they are all dead by now since they don’t really enjoy the MINUS EIGHT DEGREES CELSIUS. 

I’ve been dreaming lately
Of happy, pretty things 
Like rainbows in the morning
And flowers in the spring
     (I’ve Been Dreaming Lately; Fallen – One Hell Of A Musical, Lovewell Sweden 2007) 

I Tried It Once

When I was..um..12 or something I wanted to play the saxophone. We went to an open house for Kulturskolan and I tried it but then I gave up. It didn’t sound good. I don’t think it sounded at all… I think I have given up on playing piano three times. I give up on the guitar after five minutes every time I try, because my fingers hurt. This is probably why I think it is SO cool with people who can play instruments! Seriously! I wish I had the patience and the self-discipline to practise.. Who knows, maybe I could seriously rock on something. Like a lot of people I know rock on their cool instruments. If you want to win my heart, play for me! : ) 
Like this awesome lady did last weekend. Cool cool coooool!

 

I’ll teach you to play the saxophone
I tried it once, I had a really bad tone 
     (Slothy Business; The Road To Eville – A Dead End Musical; Lovewell Sweden 2005) 

For All That I Have Seen

For quite a long time I have planned on having a photo shoot with my angel, C. And so, finally, a couple of weeks ago I spent a day with C and E and my Fallen wings, and we got some pretty good pictures. I think the weather was perfect (poor C was probably freezing…), because I like the theme of the angel being lost on Earth. And everyone knows that Swedish summer is like heaven and that would have given the wrong impression. So yeah, perfect. 

For all that I have seen
This is not a place for us
And I never think it will be
     (Still; Fallen – One Hell Of A Musical; Lovewell Sweden 2007)

Turn Up The Music

Here is an update about my last week off from work. Yup I’m back. And it’s pretty good actually. Counting down to summer =) Well, I spent five days in Stockholm and it was great! A short summary:

Lunch w/ J and T and C and N in the very unfortunate absence of Oompa-z.

Fika w/ A. Mm muffin!

KMH w/ T. Wow cool awesome!

Män som hatar kvinnor (The girl with the dragon tattoo). Excellent movie! One of the exceptions where an adaption to the screen actually works very well. (see it! and read the book!)

Fallen rehearsals. I can’t find words for my excitement about this. I finally met the person who will play my part, C. I mean seriously, the part I wrote for myself 1,5 year ago. The dialogue, the speech, the song, everything. How amaaaazing is that!? J will play A’s part and the two of them together are just great! You should all go to Stockholm the last weekend in May if you can. It’ll be GREAT!

Sleepover at S’s place. Making music videos to Hope & Glory and Cara Mia. We are such great coreographers. You will hopefully never get to see it =)

And then of course Melodifestivalen. This is the third time I’ve been to Globen w/ E and S and this time J, T and S joined as well. It was the rehearsal right before the finale so we got to see it on TV later. There were some really good songs this year and I’m happy with the result, as I would have been if almost any of the others had won. The pics didn’t turn out that great but here are a some of the best:

Turn up the music
Feel the rythm in your heart
     (Turn up the music; Peace of Mind – A Life Altering Musical; Lovewell Teen 2003)