Finally the weather caught up and it’s high summer at long bloody last. Since “moderation” clearly is out of the equation what it comes to changes in climate, it’s now ridiculously hot after weeks of below-average temperature and rain. I have a very demanding long weekend behind me, spent in Finnish countryside, at the Loved Ones’ mothers’ summer place, accompanied by various other relatives including my mother. My mother-in-law-to-be is fabulous but unfortunately the same can’t be said about my own mother and the way we interact with each other. Things came to a head on our way back, in a scorching heat, in a car without air-conditioning, with us two exchanging opinions, mine reasonable and hers mostly not, in a mode of conversation known as “shouting”. This episode of raised voices with not much content reminded me of how lucky I am not to live in my hometown anymore and fortified my resolution never to move back there. It also reminded me never to relent in my struggle to rise above the (to me unwanted) qualities so evident on my parents I’m entirely unwilling to let surface in me.

All in all the weekend still held some moments of peace (mostly when my mother was elsewhere) and tomorrow we head towards more peace and tranquillity as we start our two weeks in Spain and the empty house of my future father-in-law.

The Dog is feeling hot hot hot. And the option to comment on this blog proved as fruitless as I thought it would so it’s now duly removed. I might tinker with the layout once I return from Spain, if I can be bothered.

RECENT EXPOSURE TO RECORDED MUSIC:
For the past several weeks it’s been either ”Skyforger” by Amorphis or ”Abnormally Attracted To Sin” by Tori Amos. Both albums are excellent in my opinion and both albums have already grown so dear to me that I can’t really start analysing what makes them so special. Obviously it’s easier for me to be overwhelmed by Tori’s album since it’s, you know, Tori after all, and the album is clearly a lot better than the ones she came up with at the start of the decade. But I’m still deeply impressed by Amorphis too. There are no weak songs on their album, at least none that I’m able to detect, and to hear lyrics that passed through me turned into songs adds a level of intimacy. Brilliant albums and brilliant songs with melodies that stick to my head and refuse to leave. Normally this would be a problem but with these albums I don’t mind.

So how was my Midsummer? Helsinki turned into a ghost town for the weekend with people heading towards countryside in droves, seeking out mythical, unattainable pastures of calm tranquillity and the metaphorical womb to return to, probably in vain. I knew better and stayed home. It rained a lot, our first floor apartment got infested with ants, the lightbulb in our bathroom reached an almost-terminal kind of point where steady no-frills illumination is replaced by surreal flashing and flickering, just as the shops had closed down and acquiring a new lamp had become impossible, and my computer monitor reached a terminal kind of terminal point where everything that normally shows up on the screen is replaced by utter blackness. We had some pretty decent wines though.

I tried typing on the Loved Ones' laptop, after three evenings of moderately sampling some pretty decent wines, with my frankfurter-like fingers, a thin film of sweat decorating my troubled brow, and in not the best of possible moods. This hapless attempt did not avail to much, apart from solidifying my already deep suspiciousness towards portability in personal computerism. My own monitor continued to stay in the terminal point of utter blackness and replacing the cable didn’t help either. I suppose computer monitors belong to a group of home electronics that, once the warranty has expired, wither rapidly like a non-Finnish person in a sauna, before blinking out of existence completely and for good. In my case the warranty expired on March and the apparatus expired on June so that’s rather rapid I´d say.

I then went out and bought a new monitor, as soon as the stores opened again, some days later. I swore not to get another LG Flatron since the old one was a LG Flatron but I got another LG Flatron anyway. It’s wider and broader and generally more stupendous than the old one and it cost only half of what I coughed up for the previous one, three years ago. If this new one croaks too in 3 years, 3 months time I might consider looking into what other manufacturers have to offer, but until then, or at least for the duration of this evening, I’m happy with and continue to be amazed by my new monitor of expanded specialness and more width than is possible to perceive in one go.

So amazed, in fact, that the typing of this blog entry must stop here.


Still Life With A Skull. How very seasonal in a summery kind of way.

I’m starting to lose faith regarding the positive qualities of this year. It started badly enough, with an exceptionally lightless and gloomy winter, additional frosting provided by the onslaught of recession. If there was a springtime I failed to notice it and now, suddenly, it’s June and ”midsummer”. Supposedly. With outside temperatures circling around the magical 10 degrees mark and gusts of wind whipping rain in all directions the notion of summer solstice at the end of this week feels absurd and far-fetched. The bleak weather is, of course, fluently in line with the general spirit and prevailing mood of 2009. If last years’ attitude was that of careless over-optimism and Icaros-like soar, this year lies slumped in a corner in quiet resignation, with broken wings and an empty purse. To put a somewhat pompous and melodramatic emphasis on it. But that’s how it feels to me.

This surly kind of feeling might partially stem from the realisation that lately I’ve been swallowing a total amount of ten pills a day, of various sizes and shapes but mostly uncomfortably large and foul-tasting. And I hate swallowing pills, always have and probably always will. Luckily this pill-swallowing is not a chronic state for me, and the recovery room mentioned in the title is my living room, whereupon I ponder, upon other things, the unfairness of the weather and, seemingly in vain, wait for it to get better. The pills have been antibiotics and painkillers to calm down the upheaval in my tooth department, and some bogus ”herbal cleansing tablets”, allegedly detoxifying my body without fasting, with results so far best described as ”nonexistent”. Woe unto me to have fallen unto such folly.

And woe unto this year of 2009 for it might well be doomed to fall into the category of lost causes. It is halfway through soon, and in principle there’s still plenty of time to pick up speed and start getting better. The first thing to do would be to bring forth a decent summer at once. This mostly failed to happen last year, and if it fails to happen this year too I’m prepared to Take Steps To Rectify The Situation. Like petulantly stamp my foot in impotent rage, and possibly also hold my breath until things go my way. And I will too!

RECENT EXPOSURE TO VISUAL ARTS:
”Defiance & Melancholy” is an exhibition of ”German masterpieces covering a period about 200 years, from Romanticism to the present”, in Helsinki. It looked promising on the ads and was utterly boring on the spot. After failing to be impressed by any of the paintings on display, I briefly glanced at the gift shop on my way out and saw this postcard:

I was transfixed by the circle of owls, gathered around a shaft of light, seemingly coming from nowhere and casting a most eerie and arresting illumination on the forest clearing. It’s called ”Valkoinen Alue”, probably translates as”White Area” in english, and it’s by a Finnish artist called Pekka Barman. I couldn’t find much info of him on the net, nor pictures of his other works but I don’t really need to. The postcard is here on my table for me to stare at and although my scan of it doesn’t really reproduce all the tones and depth it’s still haunting enough to be engulfed by.

RECENT EXPOSURE TO WRITTEN WORD:
”Giants, Dwarfs And Other Oddities” by C.J.S. Thompson, M.B.E. (presumably meaning Member of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). Originally called ”The Mystery And Lore Of Monsters”, it was released on 1931 and tells of legendary and real human abnormalities, with refreshingly non-modern and unembellished language and terms that continuously raise eyebrows of a 21st century reader. The most interesting chapters are probably the ones dealing with conjoined (Siamese) twins of the past several centuries and some older deformities before the time of photography. Source after source is quoted, in a manner of ”Aldrovandus tells of..” of just plain hearsay, but it’s all very entertaining and not meant to be too scientific. The pictures are quite hilarious too, with even mr. Thompson at one point, while quoting lenghty pieces of text from couldn’t-fathom-out-what-ancient-book, dryly noting ”it is evident that the artist who illustrated this book had a vivid imagination, and drew his portraits from the quaint descriptions given by the author.”

It gets a bit tedious when the book goes on to list heights of famous giants and dwarfs, although some dwarf descriptions are amusing, along the lines of ”is very small indeed but perfectly able to beat a drum on time and simultaneously sing with a loud and clear voice, as well as sewing with a needle as well as any normal sized person (also is very mild-tempered and wears his own hair)”.

In addition, the book offers an explanation to most of my personal shortcomings: ”Tall men are generally much more weak and slow than short men, with exertions both of body and mind. Tall men are mostly tame and insipid, like watery vegetables; insomuch that we seldom hear of a very tall man becoming a very great man. Little men manifest a character more firm and decided than those lofty and soft-bodied people, whom we can lead more easily, both morally and physically.” This must be the reason why I can’t seem to be able to update this blog as often as I’d like to, being 193cm tall (that’s 6.332 feet). Not exactly a giant alright, but a lot taller than, say, mr. Tomi Joutsen, my friend and colleague in Sinisthra. Who is an international rock star whereas I am anything but. Oh how the world would be my oyster, if only I wasn’t this tall and therefore like a watery vegetable.

Here’s a list of some other books by mr. Thompson. Their titles are insanely exciting and I’d sure like to read most of them, if not all. Lure And Romance Of Alchemy!

Recently I’ve been forcefully reminded of the fact that the planned two year interval in checking the state and health of my teeth had somehow stretched out to four years. This became painfully obvious a few weeks ago during the small hours of the night when my sleep was coldly interrupted by a very unwelcome eruption of toothache. It coincided with a new, demanding and extremely busy-scheduled work assignment starting the next morning. Since then life’s been just tremendous. The dental inspection revealed a wisdom tooth so filled with caries that it needed to be removed as soon as possible, in this case meaning next week because there wasn’t any open slots before that. So I had to make do with painkillers for 5 days. I’ve known all kinds of pain in my time, some of it physical and most of it emotional, being a bit of a poet after all and a former Refugee of Romance, but this was a new kind of pain altogether and something I didn’t look forward to experiencing ever again if possible.

After the tooth was removed it turned out the neighbouring one needed some tending too. This came in a guise of root canal therapy, performed on me a few days later in a most brutal and relentless way, by a dentist I’m sure knew very well what he was doing and did it in an utterly professional manner, with all the necessary little details like squashing my nose from different angles and injecting the aesthetic haphazardly here and there. After the anaesthesia wore off the real pain started. The tooth started throbbing horribly during the night (these things always start at night don’t they) and this time painkillers were rather useless. I popped what seemed like several packets of them down my throat but the pain didn’t go away, it only reduced for a while. I also developed a very painful sore inside my mouth. Eating presents previously unheard-of challenges when you are forced to skip the mastication part of it.

After the irritation on the dental nerve had subsided the ache also went away, to be promptly replaced by another kind of pain caused by a hugely swollen cheek. This phase lasted several days, as too had all the previous phases, and required antibiotics in the end to make it go away. At the moment I’m dubiously free of aches but I’m positive it won’t last since the next part of root canal therapy looms only a few days ahead in the future. Yay.

Here’s a tooth-related Happy Tree Friends video presentation.


RECENT EXPOSURE TO WRITTEN WORD:
“Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer” by Russell Hoban. This is the first book (not counting the one-offish “Medusa Frequency” published 12 years earlier) of a loosely connected series taking place mostly in London, and also my least favourite of his books. The whimsical and singular elements I like so much in his books are there, budding but not yet in full bloom as in the novels that followed this one. The main character is dumped by his girlfriend after his countless infidelities are exposed and in losing his “destiny-woman” crashes down hard. He spends the rest of the novel trying to win her back, and reading their conversations is at times almost painful as there is very little hope of reconciliation. He is unable to justify his deeds and his betrayal of trust has effectively ruined the relationship. In the end they patch things up enough to go on living together but clearly things are not what they used to be (“she doesn’t use the L-word anymore” writes the main character in the last page).

I’m not very fond of the way mr. Hoban continually portrays men in his books as very well-read and with a wide knowledge of arts and philosophy, but pointedly in the mercies of their sexual drives, only capable of making decisions based on which way their penises happen to point at at any given time. I understand his stereotyping sadly stems from cold facts and probably from personal experience too but I still find it hard to just accept it as a law of nature since I’ve spent most of my adult years avoiding the most obvious and unwanted aspects of maleness, with variable (but also considerable) success. This struggle with traditional masculinity has been the source for most of the lyrics I’ve written and will write in the future.

The story has other sides too. I didn’t find them as thought-provoking or stirring as the attempts to build a bridge over the chasm of unfaithfulness but since those “other sides” form the main part of the plot I might as well paste a brief description from Hoban’s home page:

”Mr. Hoban's 1998 novel is the tale of twenty-eight-year-old Jonathan Fitch, who's been dumped for infidelity by his girlfriend and thinks he's ready to die. As he sits despondently in the Underground, he's approached by Mr. Rinyo-Clacton, an immaculate, aristocratic opera buff who turns out to be a kind of aficionado of death (he tells Jonathan that his first initial, T., stands for "Thanatophile"). Mr. R-C calls Fitch's bluff by offering him a million pounds for the pleasure of "harvesting" his death in a year's time. Fitch is soon in an agony of fear, remorse and guilt as Mr. R-C's web ensnares not only himself, but a kind, sixty-something psychic named Katerina, as well as Fitch's estranged girlfriend Serafina. Although any synopsis of the plot (not to mention the book's cover) immediately calls to mind Faust, Mr. Hoban has said that he doesn't see the book as a Faustian story, and of course he's right. It's not a story about greed or temptation; it's about death, power and the complexity of human relationships.”

Despite my criticism Russell Hoban remains my favourite author for the time being, and when I grow up to be 70-something I would most definitely like to resemble him slightly in the way I see things (but not necessarily look like him). This wish has covertly replaced my earlier wish of some five years ago, to grow up to be a 50-something who might bear a passing semblance to Robert Rankin. And I wouldn’t mind the badass satanic high priest look either. Or maybe I would, we’ll see.

And speaking of looks and books and authors and satanism and whatnot, pictured below is the current 30-something me, with Sinisthra in a library (after the more heavy metallic photoshooting location of a graveyard wall), sharing a moment with mr. Mäkinen, both absorbed in ”War And Peace” we casually skimmed through in between posing maliciously for the camera. To make it more satanic we decided to read the book backwards, in search of hidden messages, but in the heat of the (shared) moment, actually read it upside down instead. As can clearly be seen from the big picture, with luck and a magnified enough view: the book is inverted, undeniably, like a cross might be, in a most satanic way. Sorry about that mr. Tolstoy.

Well you have to start somewhere if you want to write something and I started by typing a title, utilising the good old ”first thing that springs to mind”-method. I like the sound and feel of ”flummox”, it wouldn’t be out of place as a name for a hostile extra-terrestrial being invading the Earth in a low budget science fiction movie made in the 50’s (”Flummox wreaked merciless havoc with the death rays of his flying saucer, only to land afterwards in a parking lot and enslave the surviving remains of mankind for all eternity!”). As for ”oubliette”, you can’t go wrong with such a gliding-off-the-tongue word probably no one knows the meaning of these days without looking it up. It’s a totally fiendish innovation of supposedly French origin (explained here) but fiendishness of this calibre must have required at least some consultation from Satan himself. And the reason why Sinisthra is mentioned is because the process of finishing our album seems to drag on and on. We’re still not ready to pass it on for mixing because some vocal tracks need to be revisited and maybe altered and more guitar needs to be added. All this happens in an infuriatingly leisurely pace, as always. We’ve been at it for 11 months now and several months still lie ahead before it’s done. Highly frustrating, but can’t be helped. When you operate outside a proper studio things take a lot more time.

So that’s the title neatly summed up and explained away. I’ve been meaning to write about the incident when Sinisthra startlingly played a live gig a few weeks ago but haven’t really got around to doing so. Maybe I’ll do it now. And because by now it’s already lifted from The Chest Of Unsure Memories Embellished By Time, it’s best presented under a subtitle I introduced earlier this year with so-far-very-unsuccessful plans to make it a regular feature.

HAZILY REMEMBERED ROCK’N ROLL MOMENTS part 2

In the course of a small-time rock band sources of instant reward are scarce and far between, and getting scarcer and harder to come by as you grow older and music no longer is the absolute central point of your life. Practically the only way to get a bigger rush without unnnecessary delay these days is to play a gig to a receptive and responsive audience, and this we did on 15th of May in our hometown Lohja, in a club called Lojo, to a little over 100 people. The last time we played live was on July 2005 so I honestly didn’t know what to expect and was even a bit unsure of my own capabilities and whether I still was able to do it. We rehearsed moderately but not enough to take the unsureness away. In rehearsals, sometimes the music happened and sometimes it didn’t as it always has been the case with Sinisthra.

The soundcheck had been the usual unsoothing blur of noise but once we actually walked on stage at midnight and started doing it, all the doubts were wiped away, the monster reared its’ head and roared and after that it was out of our hands. The adrenaline and the music took over and it was fierce, sweaty, breathless, mind numbing and also vaguely dictated from above. The songs guided us onward and there was no need to try and remember the structures and durations, everything flowed and the tremendous energy held us tightly until suddenly the last song was over, much sooner than anticipated and we staggered off the stage to gasp for air in the backstage and listen to the audience demand more. We’ve never been very prone to playing encores (and usually there’s been no need for encores either) but now it would have been appropriate, had we not already played every song we’d rehearsed.

So it could be said that we performed to the general satisfaction of many of the spectators, and it also could be said that this was maybe our best gig ever. It was good to know that the machine is still in a perfect working and bone-grinding order and with a little oiling can be unleashed upon people unapologetically. A lot of faith was restored and we will play more live dates once the album finally gets released.

Here’s a favourable review of the gig, courtesy of Lady Enslain. Her extensive gallery of live pics can be viewed here. Some pictures taken by Henni here, and below some live footage shot by her.

Here’s some live pictures by Tina Solda, who also shot several hundred promopics of us before the gig, a tiny portion of which might even be usable. When you put six people, all with views of varying degrees of hostility towards appearing in a photograph, in front of a camera, magic isn’t the only thing needed if the desired result is even a handful of decent shots. I don’t know what is needed so I’m not much help. Probably anti-attitude missiles and serious grasp of mind-control techniques. Or a lot of alcohol. We mostly relied on quantity before quality, pure chance and the hope that the incentive of the “humbler you pose the sooner it’s over” will be enough to get us through. We also cunningly avoided falling victim to mass hysteria and uncontrolled giggling by choosing a photographer who is not someone we associate with on a daily basis. In the past we’ve had our photos taken by close enough friends to make us abandon all good manners and decency, ending up with hundreds of shots of assorted grimacing faces and very often at least one person missing from the picture or looking like a complete dork. This time we made the effort and dared not succumb into the most infantile behaviour we’re capable of. So thank you Tina for the best Sinisthra photos ever!