passion. mine.

So, what then is my greatest passion? 
I have answered that question several times, just to erase the answer. There are so many things that excite me and make me happy. But if I have to choose one thing - it is music. I also wanted to say "creating art", but I will stick to just the one thing. And that is music. Listening to it. Making it.

What is my first memory of my passion?
I remember being maybe four or five years old. Standing next to my father in the living room. He is sitting on a chair, playing the violin, and I am singing. About the spring birds filling the heavens after a long winter.
My father was a musician before I was born. He used to play the violin in the Gothembourg symfonic orchestra. He gave it up to become a surgeon so that his family would never be poor (he grew up poor), but he always kept playing. Still does so everyday. So classical music was a part of our lives from the beginning. I remember him being able to tell the name and composer of a piece after just hearing a phrase or sometimes even just two notes. I was impressed and wanted to learn to do the same. Never did though. My relationship to music is very different to my father's.
I also remember listening to a record, running around and around in our livinroom, completely absorbed for ages, feeling free, completely free.
I also remember, at a very young age, when I thought about what I wanted life to be like, I pictured a room filled with instruments from all over the world. And I could play with them all.

What about it is it that sets me on fire?
Everything. I love listening to it - how it can evoke so much inside me. Feelings. Images. Words. It can open up an entire new universe inside me. Singing. Never do I feel closer to a higher being than when I sing. I love how my voice is free. How it can pick me up and fill me with joy no matter how desperate I may feel. I love how my singing voice can light a shine in the eyes of others, and for a moment we share eternity. I love that there is such diversity - there is so much to explore and experience! And I love that it is an experience that is not intellectual, but emotional and fysical. I like how listening to music prompts my body to move, and how I can immerse myself in the sound and forget about everything around me. It is absolutely a spiritual experience for me. It deepens my experience of life.

What part does it play in my life as a whole and in my everyday life?
As I wrote, it is a spiritual experience for me, to listen and make music likewise. So it is my connection to something greater, a way to enter into "trance" or "expansiveness", meditation. It helps me gain access to my imagination and my strength. In my everyday life, it is an area that wakes up my inspiration and my curiosity. Two things that are much needed since I often feel the everyday life is too much of the same, which makes me panic from time to time. Music connects me with a sence of meaningfulness and inspiration.
Also, I sing with my children all the time. Children's songs, classical music, improvised jazzy stuff (usually makes my son go NO! Not that! Not like that!), hihi. I feel it is a way for us to connect emotionally.

How do I feel other people could approach it to get the best experience?
Most people allready have some relationship with music. But so many people I have met have a fear of singing. Most because they have been told that they can't sing, or because they decided for themselves that their voices are not beautiful enough. I would so much like for those who carry these beliefs to reclaim their voices! Singing doesn't have to be "beautiful", it is so much more rhan that. And I would like to inspire people to listen to things that are outside the frames of what they normally listen to. I believe it to be so enriching. I is an experience of something totally different for a couple of minutes! Listen in a meditative, open state, maybe lying down with your eyes closed, wearing headphones. Allow yourself to be washed over, filled, and just let your thoughts, imagination and feelings stray!

I think, if you have spotify, you can follow the link below to listen to some good stuff.

passion

Enjoy!