December 23rd, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 20

Hey Jens

I’m in my late twenties and I’m starting to go bald. I know it’s not a big deal, it happens to many men. But It bums me out. Any advice?

Joshua




Michael Stipe on the back of the Eponymous LP



Dear Joshua

I hear you. I felt the same thing. What bothered me the most was the pressure to be proud of myself, to not be upset about it. It didn’t allow for a natural transformation. I remember people shouting at me ”Be proud. Take off your hat. You look great.”  But my face had just made a U-turn. What used to be a frame for the canvas that was me had disappeared. I wanted to mourn.

A transformation is necessary. And if given the time and care it needs, balding is a blessing. How many men around me haven’t held on to their locks as if clinging to their youth? Balding forces you into a pupa. You put on a hat. You stay inside. You think about who you were and what you're about to become. You don’t become a butterfly overnight. First you need to find your bald forefathers and role models. Someone who’s been through it. I looked to Michael Stipe. The curls from his youth on the back of the Eponymous LP. The cap he wore in Shiny Happy People. The hat in Everybody Hurts and his final transformation in What’s The Frequency, Kenneth.

I remember buying a nice black coat that I felt complimented my new streamlined appearance. I started working out and kept a permanent three day stubble. I met a handsome, bald, British man in his 50’s who worked for my label as I did promotion for an album in London and at the end of the night I shook his hand. As I walked back to my hotel I noticed a scent of tobacco and vanilla when I scratched my face. I decided I would now be interested in perfume, that I would find my own scent.

It was as if a new form of masculinity was presented to me but I was free to shape it myself. Become the man I wanted to be. As I now grow older I realize I look more and more like my grandpa, the one I probably inherited the bald gene from. I remember him with warmth when I look at myself in the mirror.

There are a lot of reasons why balding isn’t a big deal. The physical changes the male body goes through usually become positive attributes in the end while women are judged much more harshly as they grow older. But don't be so conscious about this that you feel you’re not entitled to mourn your hair. You are. And you should. Stop trying to be ok with it.

J
x







December 23rd, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 19

Dear Jens,

I have been reading your smalltalk faithfully since, I don’t know, 2005?
To me it is one of those safe havens online that remains unchanged as the whole online world spins faster and faster around it.

I understand digital agoraphobia. Honestly, I put off becoming any part of social media until my absence there started interfering with my offline life.
And even now, I never post anything personal online. No photo’s, no birth announcements, no hobbies, no ‘how was my day’.
The idea alone of sharing these things online makes me uncomfortable.
At the same time I sometimes feel guilty, because I do enjoy seeing other people’s online lives. So maybe I’m a voyeuristic digital agoraphobiac?

There is one exception though, my work life is an open book online. Google me (please don’t!) and you would find anything I have ever done for my work.

Which brings me to my question:
You share parts of your personal life via your songs, which is your work. How do you balance what you share and what you keep personal?

Love your songs and always will.

Take care,

Alicia


/////////////////////////

My question is, if you get some or all of your ideas for songs from events in your life, has there ever been something you've wanted to turn into one, but couldn't?

Cheers,
Malcolm

/////////////////////////



Åsa Grennvall



Dear Alicia and Malcolm

I was in Paris when I read these questions, helping my partner who was painting a restaurant there. One day we were having pizza somewhere in the 2nd arrondissement when I swore Michel Houllebecq walked by. The comb over, the hunched back, the half smoked cigarette. It must’ve been him. I thought of his book The Elementary Particles and his portrayal of his mother in that book as a selfish, sex obsessed hippie. A common advice to writers is ”write as if your parents are dead” and Houellebecq certainly did. He even claimed in an interview that his mother was dead (which she wasn’t).

The advice to ”write as if your parents are dead” demands of the author to position themself outside of family, relationships and society in order to speak the truth. I’ve often envied enfant terribles like Houellebecq because I feel restricted by these things. I’ve experienced so many things in my life that I think could be amazing stories but felt strongly that they belonged to the unwritable.

When I started writing songs I was inspired by the Swedish graphic novel scene of the late 90’s which was extremely autobiographical and kitchen sink realist. The authors depicted their personal love lives more or less like a coroner performing an autopsy. But the fact that these stories were so life-like made them so relatable and human. I brought some of this thinking into my songs. I thought maybe 5-10 people would ever hear my songs so I didn’t reflect on what I wrote. Then things went so fast, the songs were copied over the internet, the labels cheered me on, I got caught up in a whirlwind and thought it’d be fine. It was an awful feeling when I realized that people I cared about had felt exposed. For a while I defended myself, thinking that I had exposed myself as much as them. But it is after all the author who holds the scalpel.

After this it’s been a struggle. And it’s supposed to be a struggle. I’ve written about people close to me or things that are very personal and sometimes I’ve regretted it afterwards. I’ve asked and been granted permission from people I’ve written about only to realize that they could never have anticipated what it would feel like to be exposed like that. But I’ve also tried writing very abstract and that doesn’t work either.

So I’ve landed in an approach I call ”emotionally autobiographical writing”. My usual example with this is my song Evening Prayer. At the time I wrote that song I had several friends who were undergoing cancer treatment. I didn’t feel like their story was mine to tell but the state they were in put our friendship in a new light and that was a story I wanted to explore. I read about a surgeon who used a 3D printer to print out tumors he was going to remove in order to study them first and I used that image as a starting point. I chose the name Babak because I’ve known more Babak’s in my life than any other name. And then I poured all the fear and sadness I had felt for my friends into this story of me and Babak going to the pub with a 3D printed tumor in his pocket.

I think there are times when it’s worth not censoring or rewriting your story. The autobiographical Swedish graphic novel scene was quite male centered when I grew up, stories about dudes growing up and their awkward encounters with women. It quickly got boring. But these days the scene consists almost entirely of women and the stories are more political. I think of the old rallying slogan ”the personal is political” which came from second wave feminism. If your personal life says something interesting about the time we live in, then it may be worth sharing. But my life doesn’t. I’m a boring person these days. That's why I make shit up.

J
x








November 13th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 18

dear J,
i hope you are well!
only after landing i realised i had a question all along.
i've been carrying it with me for way too long and perhaps took too much care of it. it became a part of a pocket i carried it in, and that pocket - a part of me. i almost forgot i had it, or maybe i stopped remembering. nevertheless, i continued answering every day.
sometimes too much care can blunt.
and as i land, i dare ask:
what is home?

thank you,
xxxx
m



Hey Jens
I believe we as humans are all like tiny bells, each one of us ringing at difference frequencies, a different set of notes. When we find music that touches our souls, it hits the same sort of vibrational frequency we run on, and that’s why we jive with it. I think the whole world is made up of these different frequencies, and that’s how what we see as fate or coincidences happen. What do you think causes “coincidences” in life?

Thank you, for everything, your long time fan,
—Faegan




Frances McDormand in Nomadland



Yes, exactly.
What is home?

Maybe let’s start in the other end, what is the absence of home?
I’ve been reading about nostalgia, about the many meanings of this word throughout history before it arrived at it’s current meaning. Beginning in the 17th century nostalgia was a diagnose given to soldiers who were homesick. Especially Swiss soldiers which was explained by the very particular cultural and geographical attributes of Switzerland. Surely French and German soldiers missed their homes too, but the Swiss also missed their mountains. At one point it was seen as a weakness and punishable by death. Other times in history it was seen as a mitigating factor, discharging soldiers from the Spanish Army with ”el mal de corazon”. Young women who had been sent to be nursemaids for wealthy families in the city went crazy and murdered the children they were meant to look after. But as they were sent to the gallows they burst into tears and revealed that they just missed the thick milk of their village and they were instantly pardoned. Everyone understood.
As society speeded up with the industrialization, nostalgia was frowned upon again. The ideal was to be rational and adaptable. But the more society speeds up and changes, the more nostalgic we also seem to become. I don’t think our time is better or worse than previous times. Each time comes with it’s own struggles. But it is a nostalgic time we live in and I think one of the main problems we face in our time is alienation. We're homesick.

As a touring musician I know that home isn’t a place necessarily. When I was on my longest tour back in 2007-2008 I gave up the contract for my apartment and literally lived inside my suitcase for a year. I played music, I met people and everyday I was in the present. When the music worked - when I was on the same frequency as the crowd, when the band felt in tune with each other, when it didn’t feel like I was just delivering a show but I was also receiving something from the crowd, when there was something unpredictable in the air, something I couldn’t control, something new yet familiar - then I felt at home.

On a high speed train between Stockholm and Gothenburg I found two books by the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa left by an earlier passenger in the little pocket in front of my seat. The first book was about modernity and our accelerating world. Due to it’s subject I wonder if someone had left it there on purpose as I was surrounded by tired businessmen hammering away on their laptops. Ironically my first thought was "interesting, but I don't have time to read these, isn't there a TED talk I can watch instead?". Sure enough, there was. In the clip, Hartmut argued that because our current society has to grow exponentially, because the conditions for our lives change constantly, we end up feeling alienated. In a desperate attempt to hang on to the hamster wheel we try to control everything, measure everything, optimize everything. Instead of connecting with the world we treat it as a to do list.
The second book was about a form of solution to this problem, a different way of relating to the world that he calls ”Resonance”. Resonance is when we speak to the world and it speaks back. Sounds like a vague concept but as a musician I understand it. In music, resonance is what happens when for example a guitar string vibrates and makes the body of the guitar "talk back", amplifying the sound. Think of that vacation you took where it felt like you were merely checking off places - there’s the Colosseum (check!), there’s the Fontana di Trevi (check!) vs. that trip that actually touched you. Maybe you got lost and had to ask someone for the way, and that person said ”I’m going that way too” and then you spent the next half an hour having a meaningful conversation with them. You didn't just consume the moment, you lived it.

So Faegan, when I first read your question I thought it sounded a bit spaced out. But the more I think about it, I think you’re onto something. Not in terms of determinism, but in terms of relating to the world.

And m, to answer your question - I think home is something that responds when we speak to it.

J
x







September 10th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 17

dear
 jens,

Reading through these deeply personal messages and your responses to them reminded me of a correspondence that I had with a friend, which eventually just fizzled out. Interestingly enough, around the time I stopped hearing from him, I rediscovered your music - ironically, the album Correspondence, and particularly, the song “Who Really Needed Who”. I oftentimes find myself listening to songs that make me even more nostalgic about my past experiences and relationships. Your music amplifies these feelings in the most moving and heartfelt way. The last verse in that song made me think of when my friend and I first began talking - the coronavirus pandemic was freshly in full swing and it was shortly after everything shut down here in the States. It was nice to have someone to talk
 to, and you know, I really did like what went on in his brain as well. I’m also very selective about who I open up to, so the “maybe not just anyone” line in the song resonated with me. Anyways, he reached out to me a couple of times recently to talk about dreams and life-happenings, but I still wonder why he vanished last year. Why do you think people disappear for stints of time? In “The World Moves On”, you regretfully sing about letting one’s hand go...have you ever disappeared from people, and why?

thank you for blessing my ears, mind, and heart,
amelia




The ghost of Friedrich Jürgenson, caught by his friend Claude Thorlin with a polaroid camera.



Hey Amelia

When I first heard the term ”ghosting” I immediately understood what it meant. I thought. Then I realized it meant the complete opposite of what I thought. I thought ghosting was when you hung around too long, like an ex who can’t move on, like a ghost who’s forever trapped in the moment of their own gruesome death. I understand now that it’s the act of vanishing like a ghost that gives it it’s name.

When someone cuts you off like that it can be worse than death because you’re left with your questions while their continuing presence in this world answers those questions in a deafening way. The person you love continues day by day to choose to not be with you. To be gone from you. Everyday they wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, have dinner with someone they like, fall asleep, maybe even happy that you’re not in the picture anymore. When someone dies you can at least imagine that they would’ve kept loving you. You can ask them ”do you miss me?” and slowly move the planchette across the ouija board to ”yes”.

I don’t think I’ve disappeared or ghosted anyone but maybe someone out there begs to differ. I’ve definitely let things fizzle out slowly when it’s a friendship and that friendship hasn’t felt meaningful. Maybe I’ve replied to texts in a polite but unengaged manner, postponed coffees and dinners until they were no more. Usually people get the hint. And when I’ve been on the other side - the one who’s been fizzled out - I’ve almost never confronted the out-fizzler. I know when I’m not wanted, I mostly prefer not to be told.

But when a friendship hasn’t felt meaningful, to the point where it becomes a problem - when the other person refuses to let go, refuses to be fizzled out, keeps suggesting you should hang out, I’ve sometimes had to have the talk. And it’s brutal. It’s brutal when it’s a romantic partner but when it’s a friend it’s even worse. In a romantic relationship there are rules, there is a contract, and that contract needs to be nullified before you can move on. But in a friendship there is no contract. The whole idea is just that you are here and I am here and we are here for as long as we wish to be. And you can come and you can go. Breaking up with a friend is like getting a restraining order.

So I understand the ghosts. I don’t think they are right. But I understand them. I understand that navigating through a relationship and your own conflicting feelings can be hard to the point where you just want to run away. And over time you hopefully learn that it’s better to be honest and to express your feelings because it just sucks so bad to end up in another mess. If I had grown up in a time that allowed me to block and ignore other people by just pushing a button and swipe my potential future lovers left and right as if they were baseball cards I probably would’ve done that. And then hopefully I’d have matured enough to rethink my strategy.

Why did your friend vanish last year? You can’t ask a ghost that but he’s not a ghost anymore. He came back from the dead, right? So you can ask him. It might not be a big thing. Or it could be a big thing. Maybe a thing that could even make your friendship grow.

J
x




June 4th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 16


Jens, if you had one day left to live, what would you do?

Charlotte
Auckland, NZ



Jonathan, the currently oldest Giant Galapagos Tortoise, to the left.


Hey Charlotte

A month ago I noticed that a birthmark that I’d been keeping an eye on had grown and changed it’s shape. I stood there in my bathroom, in front of the mirror, and examined it. It felt like a bullet hole in my chest. A deathmark. For most people I assume this wouldn’t be such a dramatic discovery, after all birthmarks do change from time to time. If it made them concerned, the colour, the shape, a certain itchiness, they would probably make an appointment with a doctor and get on with their day. But my old health anxiety that’s been haunting me on and off all my life kicked in with full force. The birthmark turned out to be fine but as I was waiting to get it examined I decided to observe what was happening within me. I felt like I needed to document it.

I started looking for a photo of myself with no shirt on so I could compare it but that wasn’t so easy. I rarely go to the beach or take my shirt off in public. I lived in Australia for a while but only swam in the ocean once, late at night after a gig in Byron Bay with Joanna Newsom. It was a perfect night. We had gathered up a gang and we swam out into the moonlit waves, laughing and splashing until Joanna said ”I think something touched my leg” and we suddenly remembered the signs that said to not swim after dark because that’s dinner time for sharks and they come closer to shore.
I’m a night swimmer anyway. I like to lie on my back in the dark water, looking at the night sky. So finding a photo of myself with no shirt on in daylight was tough. Eventually I remembered a trip to Miami and an ex girlfriend who stole my camera and snapped a photo. I look grumpy. But there it was, the birthmark, and it was different.

It wasn’t death that scared me. This became clear as I observed myself trawling the internet for answers that didn’t exist. I fainted once, 12 years ago when I had the swine flue, and the experience calmed me. Being unconscious was like not existing. It wasn’t like sleeping - I was just gone. And then I woke up and I existed again. So ever since then I don’t feel scared of the eternal sleep. No it was other things that scared me. Shame for example. As in hearing a doctor say ”why haven’t you come in with this earlier?”. How this can be scarier than death amazes me but shame is a powerful thing. It was getting stuck in endless hospital loops with doctors shaking their heads. This happened to me eight years ago and it was... Kafka-esque.
And it was not having lived my life.

”Bad habits can kill you (…) but your good habits won’t save you”. Says a chain smoking Fran Lebowitz in Pretend It’s a City. The oldest Giant Galapagos Tortoise - Jonathan - is 189 years old. That’s how you stick around - never leave your shell. The difference between a tortoise and a turtle is that the former primarily lives on land, the latter primarily in the sea. But apart from that they’re mostly focused on laying low and sticking around. And they seem to be fine with that. The most dangerous part of a sea turtle’s life is when they hatch and make their way from the safe nest in the beach sand to the dark ocean, navigating by the moonlight. Electric lights from the shore, streetlights and neon signs, sometimes disorient them and make them wander inland.

Another insight gained: When potential death is breathing down my neck everything feels much more vivid. Death holds up a mirror to life. Colours are brighter. Music is an almost religious experience. Feelings for my friends and family make me teary eyed. My love for my girlfriend takes on Young Wertherian proportions. I can’t sleep so I get up at 2am and sit on my balcony and watch the moon and it hits me that I’ve never truly seen the moon before. It is three dimensional now. I need to learn the names of every lunar sea. Mare Tranquilitatis - The Sea of Tranquility. Mare Nectaris - The Sea of Nectar. Mare Cognitum - The Sea That Has Become Known. What names! I make plans. I promise myself to live my life to the fullest if I just get another chance. But from the point when I find out everything is fine it takes me maybe two hours until I’m watching cute cockatoo videos on the internet again. I remember the exact moment when it passed. I sat down in the sunshine with an ice cream and tried to take in life. Tried to be thankful. But the new Magnum Double Gold Caramel Billionaire was a bit meh… and it was a bit chilly outside. So I went home and sat in my couch with my laptop. Swedish poet and Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer wrote in his most famous poem: ”In the midst of life it happens that death comes and takes a person’s measurements. That visit is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit is sewn in silence”.
And while that suit is sewn you gotta do something. For example, here’s a video I love of a cockatoo barking at dogs.

My aunt passed away two weeks ago quite suddenly. She was diagnosed with cancer just before that and things got bad very quickly. I think this is what triggered my anxiety. I wasn’t super close to my aunt but she was someone who had been there my entire life. The last couple of years we had started bonding over cooking and gardening. She gave me a gooseberry bush this spring and if it bears fruit this summer I will make something nice from it in her honour. Maybe a gooseberry saison. I don’t know if she liked saison but I think she would’ve appreciated the idea.

Today I am 14.729 days old. If I had only one more day to live, Charlotte, I would’ve liked to go for one last night swim. Just float on my back in the dark water and look at the moon. There it is, the Sea of Tranquility. And just below, to the right. The Sea of Nectar.

J
x





June 2nd, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 15


Hey Jens

I’m a songwriter like you. I have a dilemma and I want to see what you make of it. I’ve felt like I’ve had a creative flow for years despite having very little income / budget and two years ago, after I was signed by a record label, I was given a recording budget that suddenly made anything possible. It’s all I’ve ever dreamed of, I can hire a symphony orchestra if I want to. But I feel nothing. I’ve really struggled to write anything at all the last year. Is it performance anxiety? Writer’s block? Have you experienced anything like it?

xo
Someone





Hey Someone.

I have a theory that the city of Gothenburg, where I live, consciously treats their artists and musicians poorly because they know this will make the music scene thrive. Like monsteras and cactuses we want to be neglected, we just don’t know it. Rehearsal spaces are demolished in favour of luxury flats and rent is pushed up until studios are replaced by advertisement agencies. I’m sure it’s the same in most big cities but I’ve always had a feeling that Gothenburg KNOWS. That they do this KNOWINGLY. Bruce Springsteen plays the local stadium about fourteen times a year when there’s no pandemic and the love affair between Gothenburg and Bruce makes sense. Bruce’s songs are about working on a dream, being born with nothing and working your way up. The working man’s struggle. And this still seems to resonate with Gothenburg being a former industrial city. Most of the factories may have shut down, but our spirits are still standing by the production line.

When Gothenburg’s music scene exploded in the mid 00’s, when we went from a town known for Volvo, shrimp sandwiches and BingoLotto to a city known for MUSIC, it didn’t take long for the local scene to implode and vanish. Our big music festival Way Out West, that started in 2007, quickly became known as ”Stockholm Week” because the crowd consisted mostly of people from Stockholm while the Gothenburgians went to their their local pub instead and sat there and muttered. We broke up our bands and cancelled our plans. The few ones who continued fled the city to go somewhere else. We just didn’t know what to do with our success. This is when the city council implemented drastic measures. By creating a sort of Matrix universe, a world where the odds were against us again, the city could trick us into making new music and continue to harvest the fruit of our labour. It's just a theory. But it could be true.

Before psychologist Harry Harlow performed his infamous, horrible experiments on baby monkeys in the 50’s, he performed a more innocent experiment focused on drive, or why we do what we do. He gave monkeys puzzles to solve, intending to reward them if they solved them. But to his surprise the monkeys became intrigued and solved them just for the fun of it. It fascinated Harlow as it was not a drive he could find a biological reason for. ”Solution did not lead to food, water, or sex gratification” Harlow reported. Once he introduced a reward in the form of raisins, the monkeys grew tired and abandoned the puzzles.

Darwin said about music: ”As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed”. Music probably didn’t originate out of a direct need to survive, our fascination with it comes from somewhere else. I saw a documentary about music’s role in early stone age societies. Inside old caves in France they had found flutes made out of swan bones, stalactites that sounded like marimbas when you hit them and paintings that marked where the best acoustics was. I can just imagine a teenage caveman realizing that certain stalactites sounded better when you hit them in a certain order. Or finding a particular place in the cave where the acoustics was just right. For me the fascination started with the song Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. I had picked up a guitar and I realized that by simply plucking the E, G, B and e strings I could play the opening E-minor chord of the song without even using my left hand. It was so easy and the chord filled me with emotions I had never felt before. I had no choice but to learn the rest of the song. Which took me eight years.

We think that when we reach our goals we’ll be happy. But we’re not. Wanting, loving, creating requires a lack of something. In the case of making music it might be lacking the direct means to make music. To have to invent your own instruments, to figure out how music works on your own, to produce a song in your bedroom that sounds almost like the ones on the radio. I was just like you, when I was given a proper budget to make a record I momentarily lost interest and I couldn't understand why. But when my budgets were cut in half last year due to the pandemic my creativity flourished. Having a budget to realize your musical dream is of course a great thing though, I'm very happy for you (I think? Maybe you make terrible music, I have no idea who you are). I think you will need to start rewiring your brain. That money has nothing to do with why you write, you can still tap into that place in your mind, just try to remember what was your own Nothing Else Matters moment and go back to that. Maybe use the money to hire someone, a producer or an engineer, who can help you make this transition. After all, this budget could take you to new places, where once again you will need to invent something out of nothing.

J
x








May 7th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 14


Dear Jens,
 
I recently rediscovered your Smalltalk blog after a hiatus of a few years, and I was so happy to see that you're answering questions and communicating in this way.

I think Smalltalk is really special - it's honest and poetic, and your writing is wonderful. Also, I don't know anything like Smalltalk on the internet - it's hard to find classic blog sites nowadays. As you've said, Smalltalk is much more of a personal space than social media, and more conducive of conversations like this. I think it's fantastic.

At risk of making you feel old, I remember reading Smalltalk when I first discovered your music a decade ago, when I was 13. It's amazing that you've kept up this public, archived diary for such a long time (with some gaps I'm sure) and that you've kept posts online from the very start in 2004 for all to see.

My question to you is this: how do you feel about this huge archive that you've created over the last 17 years, which is a social document of sorts? Do you ever look back on the old articles and reminisce? Finally, what motivates you to keep writing on Smalltalk and has that changed over the years?

From a big fan,
Xanthe x

+

Hi Jens,

I noticed that you mentioned the birth of your friend's son coincided with your finishing Night Falls... and how that has become almost a physical measure of the time between your work then and now.

I suppose my question is about how you relate to work you did back then now, looking back. The Rocky Dennis era was almost 20 years ago now, for instance - does that distance give you a perspective on your own work that you might not have had before?

Personally, I struggle to recall anything older than about a week and actually being able to remember things from 20 years ago summons up all kinds of existential angst but that's just me!

Thanks,
Connor






Dear Xanthe and Connor

Have you read ”Life: A User’s Manual” by Georges Perec? I don’t remember much what it was about or if I even finished it but I remember there's a man in the book, Bartlebooth, who spends his life painting watercolours of harbours and seaports. Then he has them sawed into jigsaw puzzles which he assembles. He glues the puzzles back into paintings, removes them from the wood and places them in a detergent solution that removes the colours. Eventually all that’s left after this whole process is the white sheets of paper that he started with.

I often think of Bartlebooth's undertaking when I think of my own back catalogue. I think of preserving and archiving. Being a hoarder in spirit I know that there’s a thin line between an archive and a dumpster. What is invaluable information for some is clogging up access to invaluable information for others. What is a precious collection for one person becomes a cleaning job for their relatives after they pass away. I remember reading ”The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges, about a library so infinite that it contained every book that could ever be written, every possible combination of every letter in the alphabet. Because of this overload of information, the library was useless, leaving readers and librarians in a state of suicidal despair. We need to be selective, we need to erase things. 15 years ago I erased a harddrive full of songs. Hundreds of songs. I did it because the songs weighed me down. I kept returning to them as if I was watering dying plants and people kept asking for new material and I knew this wasn't it. In order to reinvent myself and make something good I needed a clean slate. Years before Marie Kondo I was asking myself ”do these songs spark joy?” and the answer was no.

I have a complicated relationship to the past. Everyone who writes and has had some form of success does. When my album Oh You’re So Silent Jens was taken down ten years ago due to sample issues, I almost felt a relief. The past had become too heavy. It's hard to explain but it used to bother me when someone said they liked something I’d done in the past. It was like... Imagine you’re 40, like me, and someone said ”I saw a photo of you when you were 21, you looked really good back then”. That's a nice thing to say but it can also unintentionally translate to ”you don’t look that good anymore”. And it feels the same way with a song, especially if you’re still trying to write new songs. So the album was gone and I thought that would make me feel better but the effect was much more extreme than I thought. Because of streaming and the way we've been listening to music the last ten years it was like the album had never existed. For any new listener that album is not even a gap in the record collection. It has no absence, there's no void, unless you know exactly where it was supposed to have been. And over time these old songs have become like new songs. Several times after playing Black Cab live, a young person has come up and said ”I liked that new song you played called Black Cab, when is that coming out?”.

So during this pandemic I worked on restoring a lot of my old recordings from this era to be able to re-release them. Some songs had to be re-recorded from scratch as I’d recorded over the original tapes. Others could be remixed or left as they were. Unreleased demos were dug up and finished. If I was Bartlebooth I guess I would be in the jigsaw puzzle phase. It’s been fascinating, like I’ve had a compassionate dialogue between my current self and my 21 year old self. I think I look a lot better today than when I was 21 but I could write some pretty good tunes back then. It’s made me like myself more. It’s made me understand where I am. To know where you are you need to know where you came from.

Sometimes I’ve fantasized about including a clause in my will about having all traces of myself erased once I’m dead. Placing my songs in a detergent solution and leaving nothing but white sheets behind. But that’s nonsense, I know. Pure narcissism in disguise. What I leave to the world belongs to the world. I donate it to you like I donate my body to science. I will from now on carry a donor card in my wallet that says ”After my death - any song I’ve ever written and anything I’ve ever posted on my blog - may be used for the benefit of others. Take this old flesh, learn something from it. Carve in it. Tear it to pieces. Delete it if you want or frame it in a museum. Read my growth rings like a tree, my musical calcifications. Laugh with me and laugh at me. I was a human. No more, no less."







April 14th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 13


Dear Jens, how are you doing in these times? I been wondering about something I read a long time ago. It was that you consider yourself as an miniature worker in making music. Do you still feel that way? If not what has changed?
 
I wish you a great week full of wonder.
xo
Serafina





Dear Serafina

I think the image of the miniature artist came to me after reading a short story by Steven Millhauser called ’In The Reign of Harad IV’ about a king’s craftsman who makes miniature sculptures. I recognised myself in it. Miniature art in all it’s forms - from the typical hobby railroad models one sometimes finds in the basement of an excentric grandparent, to Hagop Sandaldjian’s microsculptures only visible through a microscope, have always fascinated me. It’s the attention to detail I think. My brain wants to go there, further into the microcosm. In my songwriting it is a form of obsession, I can spend many nights working on details that no one will ever hear or care about. I’ll zoom in on a snare drum hit and curve the pitch of it’s tail for a tenth of a second. ”Amazing” I’ll think to myself. ”That’s just the way it should be”. Or I’ll go into Street View on Google Maps to see exactly where the fire hydrant is situated on a street where I have placed a story. Or I’ll sit for hours researching what songs were in the top 10 in my town on August 31st 1997. Some of these details you will recognize, maybe even appreciate, but most of them are details that only I hear.

I made my first music video with the production team from Roy Andersson’s Studio 24 and while I was waiting for them to wrap up their equipment I got to see a scene they were about to film for ’You, The Living’. They had set up a room, grey and gloomy like most of Roy’s sets, with an aquarium. Inside the aquarium they had put candywrappers on steel wire. I wasn’t too impressed by this, you could see it was just candywrappers. But a camera operator had me look through the lens, he adjusted the focus just slightly, and all of a sudden the candywrapper became a goldfish. They had worked on this for a month he said. I often think of Roy’s films when I write my songs. One aspect we have in common is his attention to what goes on in the background. His films are like living paintings that you can view for hours and discover new details in. I understand why it takes him a decade to complete each film.

As I thought about these things I decided to read Steven Millhauser’s story again. It truly is a great analogy for any kind of writing or creating. But this time it felt more tragic. It reminded me of the loneliness involved in writing and how you inevitably start disappearing into your own work. In the end, the miniature artist is visited by two apprentices who want to see his work. They praise him, tell him that they have never seen ”anything so remarkable in both conception and execution”. But the miniature artist knows that they haven’t seen anything, the details are too tiny. He knows they’re just pretending to see what he sees and that they probably think he’s mad. He returns to his work.

”…and as he sank below the crust of the visible world, into his dazzling kingdom, he understood that he had travelled a long way from the early days, that he still had far to go, and that, from now on, his life would be difficult and without forgiveness.”









March 26th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 12

Hi Jens,

I'm writing you again, this time to have more of a discussion (hopefully, anyway).

Basically, like many of us, my life in quarantine hasn't gone swimmingly. I won't get into things too much, but the short of it is that the life I had planned on living after graduating college last May has been looking ever out of reach - I wanted to get out of my shell after a few years of living like a recluse, and also to gain some concrete direction in my professional life. As a result of the pandemic, however, I've been mostly living at home, rarely interacting with others in person besides my immediate family, and it looks pretty unlikely that I'll actually get admitted to any graduate school I submitted applications to, due to applying in the most competitive apps cycle in history. I feel lost at sea, yet without any concrete actor (even myself) to assign much blame to about my misfortune.

I feel that so much of art is giving attention to where attention is due, whether that's romanticizing the big and small meaningful moments in life or lamenting terrible pains you've experienced. Either way, though, these situations have generally been caused by someone; you have a person, real or fictional, to associate the given feelings with. With your music, for example, even though you have songs with themes and ideas that are off the beaten path, so much of your catalog is about the clearly and obviously emotional - being in love, being heartbroken, supporting/being supported by a friend, etc. It's been a great soundtrack for when I've either experienced those things or wanted to explore those situations vicariously.

But a lot of what actually affects us in life isn't so tangible or obviously personal, right? For me, this pandemic has been one of the most significant events I've experienced, changing my life's direction for the worse, even though I don't really feel I have the grounds or makeup as a person to feel anything other than a general sense of dismay about it. The whole thing reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's quote about how artists refuse "to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

My question - do you yourself ever feel like art is insufficient for situations like these? If so, how do you deal with it? Either as an artist or as an art appreciator.

Thanks for listening,
John




Nighthawks by Edward Hopper


Dear John

Sorry to hear that your life has been so hard lately. Your story reminds me of how much harder it must be for a young person to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Your whole life has been paused just when it was about to start.
As you say, music and art often focus on the events that involve another person, love and loss, while the more difficult and abstract feelings and events remain unsung. I can't stop thinking about the interview I read last year with a guy who had defined himself as an incel but didn't anymore because he had met someone. "How long have you been together?" asked the interviewer and the guy replied "Actually she broke up with me after two months". But it was being dumped that made him stop being an incel because it was an experience that brought him from the abstract pain that turned him into a bitter incel into the more concrete pain of being dumped. Having lost someone, either in love or in life, is a pain that's sanctioned. It's a pain we sing songs about. The dull pain, the pain that seems to have fallen on us, that makes us feel worthless, give up on hope, retreat into ourselves, that prohibits us from reaching out, is often met with indifference at best.

Olivia Laing searches for this pain in her book The Lonely City. After experiencing the kind of loneliness that you can only experience in New York City - the kind of loneliness that seems to make no sense when you're surrounded by 18 million people - she turned to art for consolation and company. She found it in Edward Hopper who in his classic painting Nighthawks saw the big city loneliness like she saw it. She found it in Henry Darger, whose life illuminates the forces that create isolation and loneliness but also the way the imagination works to survive. And in the work of artists who took up arms against isolation, like David Wojnarowicz who fought against the stigmatization of people with Aids in the 1980's. In an article in The Guardian she wrote "There is a gentrification that’s happening to cities, and there’s a gentrification that’s happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amid the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings – depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage – are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice."

I had to look up that Ursula Le Guin quote you mentioned and found it in it's whole to be about the myth of the tortured artist.
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
I think this is from a fictional work so I'm not sure if I'm to attribute it to her or a character in a book, either way I agree to a certain extent. As we hide away the difficult, abstract feelings we simultaneously seem to be obsessed with the recognizable, tangible kind of pain and we are required to always have a good old trauma story in our back pocket to show that we have worked our way up and deserve to be where we are in life. I've experienced this first hand as journalists have tried to squeeze the trauma out of me, because without it - how do you build a story? All stories these days are like this - "something awful happened to me but I made it through and now I'm stronger than before". I did a project called Ghostwriting in 2015 where I asked people to send me stories from their life that I could turn into songs and most of the stories, about 300 in total were like this. Especially the ones from the US. I think it's a way to make sense of the injustice and inequality of our society. To not have suffered raises suspicion. Do you actually deserve to be where you are? Is your story even worth telling? After a while it becomes self fulfilling. The trauma becomes the purpose, not the healing.

I know you didn't write to criticize me, John, but I feel an obligation to think more about these things after reading your mail. You and Ursula are right, us artists need to lift the difficult feelings to the surface and not get stuck writing the same sad love songs and underdog trauma stories. I've often felt like these feelings are hard to go into. I've often said that I feel a responsibility to not leave the listener in the darkness. But what I've forgotten is that when you take a listener into the darkness you don't leave them there, because you're there with them.

I hope that things work out for you.
J
x








March 26th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 11

Dear Jens,

Hello! I wanted to ask, do you consider yourself a person of faith, and/or a religious person? Has that identity changed over your life? Does it influence your art life?

Thank you for offering Life Will See You Now on cassette - I listen to it in my car, and I always cry during Evening Prayer, both because of the story itself, and because I don't often hear other people like me (I'm also an artist, and your sister's age) talk about prayer as a normal part of our lives.

Sincerely,

Miranda Elliott-Rader
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA




Me in the Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic

Dear Miranda

I’m not a person of faith but I’ve always liked people who are, probably because I’ve always enjoyed the discussions. Because I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of immigrants and a lot of different cultures I had friends who were muslims, buddhists, christians, jews and hindus. I loved talking to them about how they saw the world. I did have a short atheist phase when I was 17 but I quickly realized that it was a weak form of rebellion when living in one of the most secular and non religious countries in the world and I dropped it. I suppose I am an agnostic.

I do pray sometimes even though it's not to a particular God and I think every song is like a prayer. It is my longing, my pain, my gratefulness, my joy that I send out into the Universe. And I go to church sometimes. I love the idea of going to church. I often look for places that resemble churches, where an agnostic like me can experience the same feeling. When I was going through a hard time a few years ago I started going to clubs alone, just to dance and be around people. It was a new experience for me and I realized when I was there that I wasn’t the only one doing this.

There’s been a number of times in my life when I’ve longed to belong to a church or be part of a congregation. I remember being in a car ten years ago, on my way to a show, when the driver turned on Bob Dylan’s ”Gotta Serve Somebody” and it suddenly meant something to me. It could’ve been existential dread, a longing for someone else to be in charge of my path. A longing for a parental figure in the newfound chaos of adulthood perhaps. But I think there was something else at play too.

John Lennon released a reply to Dylan’s song, a funny tune called ”Serve Yourself” where he criticized religion and scolded Dylan for taking the easy way out. Lennon had effectively assassinated God nine years earlier in his song ”God” but it wasn’t just God that he had declared dead. The final line of the song, "The dream is over” was interpreted as declaring the end of the 1960’s and its quest for meaning in utopian movements. Lennon was saying that meaning lies within oneself. "If there is a God," Lennon explained, "we're all it.”

I had a friend who was into new age and more alternative beliefs and this was his main thesis - that we’re all God and that we’re here to experience everything that can be experienced, from total bliss to total suffering. We’re ”God’s whiskers”, he explained followed by a look that said "now you probably think I'm some kinda nutjob". But I didn't think he was a nutjob, I kinda liked that thought as much as I like all the fringe theories of a conscious universe. As much as I like the idea of Einstein's "cosmic religious feeling" or Freud's concept of an "oceanic feeling". Freud explained the latter as a leftover from our infant days, the time before we developed an ego or self, when we didn't know where our body ended and our mother's body started. I think Lennon was saying that we should find something else that unites us as religion and political movements often do the opposite. But since Lennon died our society has become extremely individualistic. Religion hasn't been replaced by anything and the grand political narratives that used to unite us have faded away. We're all islands on a vast ocean now. Tiny gods, writing our own bibles.

I think my song To Know Your Mission represents this split between individualism and belonging to something bigger. Serving somebody vs. serving yourself. There’s a conflict between young Jens and the Mormon missionary. Jens isn’t interested in his religious faith. He’s trying to find his own inner truth. He’s an individualist much like everyone else. But the final line is ”I know who I’m serving. I’m serving you.” When I play it live I always gesture with my arm at the crowd when I’m singing that. Because you are my congregation.

J
x









February 28th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 10

Dear Jens. What’s your favorite ailment?

Sarah



Hildegard of Bingen's second vision from her second book


Dear Sarah,

I pick migraines. It's a quite distinguished ailment, right? Almost a bit snobby? Why else would people who suffer from migraines call themselves ”migraineurs”? As if it was a lifestyle magazine. NY Times had an article series a few years ago where respected people within the arts and science wrote about their migraines and something about that series made me feel like this wouldn’t happen with something like IBS. You wouldn’t have Siri Hustvedt and Jeff Tweedy write about their bowels the same way. There’s a mysterious aura surrounding migraines. Pun intended but also not.

Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval Christian mystic and visionary, had visions that in modern times have been speculated to have been migraine auras. Hildegard is said to have taken one of these early visions in childhood as a sign that she was a chosen one. When I had my first migraine aura, when I was about 12-13 years old, it scared the hell out of me. I was in school and noticed a dot appearing in my field of vision that started growing and flashing until it took up most of my eyesight. When the teacher asked me to read from whatever book we were reading I stood up, terrified and replied ”I can’t see”. When I learned from the school nurse that it was a migraine and I wouldn’t die, it made me feel a bit special. I went back to class and said ”It was a migraine!”. My classmates looked at me in awe.

At the same time, roughly 14 percent of all people have migraines. So we’re not special. And some migraineurs suffer in less glorious ways. An old friend of mine gave up on her dreams of becoming an artist since the tension caused by her drawing triggered migraines that would make her cry and puke for days. I am lucky, I get my auras, which are like silent rave parties in my field of vision, followed by a moderate headache, followed at worst by a day of feeling a bit heavy.

I’ve come to almost treasure my migraines. Because they are often the result of stress and the only way to deal with them is to stop everything I’m doing and lie still in a dark room. I can’t even read or listen to music. It’s a welcome break from a rat race that often disguises itself as something that’s not a rat race. I once started running because I needed to deal with stress (that would lead to migraines), it worked for a few years but then the thought slowly crept into my mind: What is the point if I don’t become good at this? And ever since then the running has been a struggle. I know that I just want to run as a form of meditation but I can’t help but focus on results. I bought a running watch two years ago and it started bullying me, telling me things like ”I’ve noticed you don’t run on tuesdays, tuesday is your least active day”. It gave me numbers in form of VO2 max, cadence, training effect etc. I got so stressed I ran until I injured myself. During the recovery period when I couldn’t run I downloaded a meditation app but it also focused on results, it would say things like ”Good work! You have now meditated x hours, you have achieved silver status”.

When everything is becoming centered around performance and numbers, the migraines are like a security system, like fuses being blown when too many toasters and hairdryers are running simultaneously. They just are what they are. When the cure becomes the ailment, the ailment becomes the cure.

J
x






February 28th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 9

Jens,

I read in an earlier post that Kore-eda’s “After Life” was an inspiration for one of your songs.  My wife and I love Kore-eda’s work and the idea of taking one memory “Into Eternity” is something we often discuss with family and friendly.

If you were asked today, and not 2007, for a moment to take into eternity, what would it be?

Best wishes from Washington DC

Jim Valentino





Dear Jim

That would be the afternoon of September 26, 1986, when I got to meet my little sister for the first time.

J
x







February 28th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 8

Hey Jens

There’s someone on Instagram called jenslekman04 who’s pretending to be you. Are you aware of this?

Kindly,
Gene





Hey Gene

Thanks for letting me know, I’ve reported this account and it seems to be gone now. These scammers have been showing up a lot the last year, they pretend to be me and ask for bitcoin donations. Some accounts I can report, others spell my name a little wrong and thereby seem to get around Instagram’s rules. I’m mostly just annoyed at what a poor job they do. I mean if you’re going to do some good old catfishing you need to read up on the one you’re pretending to be. If I would be a scammer I would do my job with pride.

But I guess the scamming business is harder these days, not as fun and innocent as it used to be. I remember once in the early days of the Internet, when me and a friend logged on to one of the major newspapers in Sweden and saw that Robyn, the singer, was going to do a chat with her fans. We logged in to the chat under the name ”Robyn” and one minute before she was supposed to appear we wrote ”Hello I’m here now, ask me anything”. People started asking questions and my friend who was switching back and forth between the chat and her bio answered truthfully, as if we actually were Robyn. Only after establishing our identity as the real Robyn did we start pushing our own agenda. We wrote that her next album would be more industrial, inspired by Einstürzende Neubauten and that she was considering starting an alpaca farm, before the newspaper shut down the chat. We were silly teenagers.

I had my first email address via the domain Tupac.com (I loved the song Changes, still do) and one day I started trying to guess people's security questions. I would try a common username like John or Emma and then see what their security questions were. One guy had the question "when is Tupac's birthday?". Hm... well I was on Tupac.com. Guess I could just click on "biography" and see... June 16th, 1971. I typed it in and all of a sudden I was in this guy's mailbox. I suddenly felt ashamed, like I had broken into his apartment. I wasn't a hacker or a burglar, I was just intrigued by the puzzle I had been presented. But as I was there I decided to prank him in an innocent way. I wrote from himself to himself, pretending to be him, thinking that maybe he'd at least get the hint to change his security question. I couldn't resist checking in again a day later and... he had replied. He wrote "Hey, did I write this in my sleep?". Because of the time zones (he was in the US I think) it seemed like I had written in the middle of the night. I still feel kinda bad about this but I kept corresponding with him for a week, pretending to be him. And I still don't know if he believed I was him, or if he just acted, amused that someone would play this game with him. He told me he had a rough time in school and I told him to keep his chin up. Then after a while I told him I needed to go, that I wouldn't be writing anymore. And next time he had changed his password.

J
x







February 17th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 7

Hi Jens,

It feels a bit odd to write to you in english, since I'm also from
Sweden, but if you are going to post this on your Smalltalk page I
guess it's the easiest.

Anyway, I had this dream last night: I had recorded five or six albums
with what I thought was really great pop songs (I should mention that
I do not see myself as an artist, though I have written a few songs
over the years, but I haven't recorded many of them). But I was too
scared to show the songs in my dream for anyone so I kept them for
myself. But then I did post a link to one of the songs in another
swedish artists guest book. Somebody there commented and said that the
verses were beautiful but that the refrain sounded like "somebody
stuck a pin into your head" ( I wasn't sure if I should take that as
something positive or negative...). But anyway I was glad that
somebody had taken the time to listen to the song.

Then I woke up at half past three in the night with so much
inspiration and a line to one of the songs I had written in the dream
stuck in my head. I wrote it down and actually wrote a whole song, or
maybe poem, before I went to sleep again. In the night I thought the
lyrics were awesome, but now, in daylight, it doesn't seem so good any
longer...

Now for my question: Have you ever got the inspiration to any of your
songs in a dream? And would you like to tell us which song/songs and
what you dreamed?

Take care,
Valdemar






Hi Valdemar,

I was quite interested in the dream world as a teenager. But one cursed day I went to buy a book on Surrealism and another book about Carl Jung and a guy from school was there and snickered at my choices. I became self conscious, realized I looked like a typical pretentious 16 year old, trying to look deep and I didn’t buy them.

I have a friend, Bill Wells, who sometimes writes his songs in his sleep and I’ve always envied that. He wrote a melody in his dream that I still hold as the most perfect melody ever written. In the dream he was on a bus going to a Beach Boys convention. The sun shone through the windows and everyone started singing this melody. Then he just got out of bed and played it on his piano.

I wish I had access to that ability in my dreams, I wish I was that free. My dreams are often boring. I often dream about reading articles on Wikipedia. Or doing my taxes. All my life I’ve had dreams about being able to levitate, float in the air, but deciding in the dream that it'd be unwise to do so, taking precautions to make sure I stay on the ground, putting rocks in my pockets.

But then one night, just after I had released my first album and probably felt a great relief, I had the floating dream again and for once I thought ”I’ll give it a try”. And I flew up into the sky and headed south, to Spain, where I spotted a family having a barbecue party in the countryside. I descended, picked a flower from the top of a tree before I landed and gave it to them. I introduced myself with the phrase ”Establo Jens” which was dream spanish for ”Hello, my name is Jens” (Interestingly ’establo’ apparently means barn in spanish, interestingly because the barbecue party was next to a barn).

There’s one song I wrote that was entirely based on a dream - Postcard # 49. I had a dream where I had been DJ’ing in a club, I stepped outside and found myself in a jungle. After walking for a while I found an ancient temple or a church of some kind. Tigers were lying on the ground around it, they were the guardians of this temple, but one cheeky monkey was painting graffiti on it’s walls, disregarding the tigers. And I remembered in the dream that I had read a scientific report about how the monkeys who did so were the ones who had the longest life expectancy. And I thought to myself: I need to be more like that monkey.

I remember those two dreams very clearly because of how I reacted to them, how long they stayed with me afterwards. I couldn't shake them. And I guess dreams are like Rorschach tests, our brains holding up random images that we react to. I’m not that interested in interpreting my dreams, but I’m very interested in interpreting my own reaction to them.

Not to read in too much into your dream, but I’m wondering if you’re a self critical person? Maybe your dream offered you to wake up while your inner critic was asleep? Maybe you found a place where you could be free? I sometimes go back and look at old lyrics I wrote, especially in my teenage years, that I thought were brilliant at the time. They weren’t. They really weren’t. But for a moment back then I seemed to have caught my inner critic off guard. And it made me continue writing until I became better. If that’s the case, then maybe go back to what you wrote in your dream. Maybe it wasn’t so bad?

J
x





February 17th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 6

Do you consider yourself a film bluff? Have any movies been particularly impactful to you, be they campy, pretentious or even silly?

Michele






Dear Michele

Gothenburg has a wonderful film festival, I try to catch 5-10 movies every year there. This year, due to the pandemic, they let one person in to each movie. One lucky person who got to watch it all alone, in either a big empty theatre, an empty hockey stadium or on a tiny island out in the sea. I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the empty theatre, all alone with 712 empty seats around me. I had smuggled in a halloumi wrap and as the movie started I quietly tried to unwrap it, like you do in a normal screening - you wait until there’s a loud scene so no one can hear you fiddle with the wrapping paper. Then I remembered I was alone. I looked back at the big dark empty theatre around me and I felt grateful I was not watching a horror movie.

The movie I got to see was Limbo by Ben Sharrock, which was great and quite fitting since it was a quiet movie taking place on a fictional remote Scottish island. After a while I settled into the movie's theme of isolation and I felt glad to have the film’s characters as company.
My other favourites from the festival included Gagarine, Tigers and Persona Non Grata.

Apart from the annual film festival I can’t say I spend much time or energy following what happens in the film world. But I do love a good movie. Movies are often the place I find inspiration for my music. 'Into Eternity' was inspired by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ’After Life'. 'The End of The World is Bigger Than Love' was written after I watched Barry Hines gruesome nuclear war depiction 'Threads' and found a strange relief as it shifted my focus away from a broken heart temporarily. My friends in The Tough Alliance made a video inspired by a scene in Abbas Kiarostami’s ’Close-Up’ and after that I was hooked on Iranian cinema for a while which in turn inspired my music and lyrics.

The one movie that's affected both me and my music career the most must be Peter Bogdanovich's 'Mask' from 1985, as it inspired my song 'Rocky Dennis Farewell Song' which in turn created a misunderstanding that Rocky Dennis was my artist name. I first saw the movie when I was 11 and I loved it. Then watched it again when I was 17 and this time I identified with Rocky, maybe because I was a teenager and I felt a bit like an outsider. And I was especially touched by the impossible love story between Rocky and Diana. So I wrote that song, as a form of fan fiction, to get closure on a love story I had taken on as if it had happened to myself.

A few years later I watched it for the third time, just when my music had started happening, and this time I became a bit uncomfortable when I noticed the title sequence read "based on a true story". I didn't know there was a real Rocky. And I felt weird that I had identified with this guy. I had been a quite normal kid after all, no craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, no single biker mom with a drug addiction. It felt sentimental and seemed to have that Hollywood perspective of looking at people who were physically different in a patronizing way. I felt a little embarrassed that I had written the song and after a while I stopped playing the song live.

Then quite recently I watched it for the fourth time. I like rewatching movies because it allows me to see both the movies characters and myself in a new light. And this time I saw something different. The story of Rocky Dennis is simply the story of being a teenager, of being an outsider, of feeling that otherness. Rocky's appearance in the movie is like a physical manifestation of what every teenager feels on the inside, what they think they look like. And Rocky isn't only portrayed as humble, kind and intelligent, the typical traits given to a character you're supposed to feel sorry for. He's also flawed which makes him human. He tricks his best friend to give him a valuable baseball card, he only helps his classmate in exchange for money and he loses his patience and acts like a typical teenager a lot of times. Most of all, the part of Rocky I had identified with was not so much as an outsider but more as a charming romantic. Not that I was charming, I wished I was. But I was definitely a romantic. And Rocky was my role model.

J
x








February 1st, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 5

Dear Jens

I’m excited that you’re willing to answer some questions and share with us what you’re thinking. My question is…why did you/do you wear a key around your neck? I noticed it eons ago when I saw you play at the synagogue in Washington, D.C. (in 2011 maybe??) and wondered. I’ve imagined that it is about a person or perhaps a nice experience you had (unlocking the door to the sea monkey kingdom??), so can we know the story?

Leah






Dear Leah

Around 2008 I was looking for something to unite my band visually on stage as we were from such different backgrounds and had such different styles. My drummer at that time, Tammy, showed me a picture of the singer Scott Walker wearing a key around his neck and I liked it. We bought some old keys at a flea market and gave one to each member. People started asking about them, what they stood for, and I gave cryptic answers as I had no idea.

Around this time there were a lot of stories about The Jonas Brothers and their purity rings that symbolized a promise to abstain from sex until marriage. I started joking that the golden key was the opposite of the purity ring. But, I added, not in a sexual way, but rather as a promise to live fully and not abstain from anything. I got so many emails around this time from shy, young people who had a secret crush on someone but were so inhibited by their shyness, I guess I made it for them.

No, actually now I remember, I also made it for me. I also had a crush on someone at the time, someone who felt out of reach, who required a certain amount of courage to contact. That crush never became anything, she wasn’t interested. But I was still proud I reached out.

I found this one guy, I think he lived in Italy, who offered to manufacture actual golden keys with my name inscribed, so I had them on my merch table for a while until he dropped out. There was also a song written called Golden Key which you can probably find live versions of on Youtube etc. I’m still quite happy with that song but I couldn’t find a home for it and it belonged to that era so it doesn’t fit on a new release either. We’ll see if it ever comes out.

J
x






February 1st, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 4

Hello Jens,

I had an idea about a certain subject I might be brave enough to e-mail
you. It was a subject I talked over with a couple of friends and some
beers, and without masks. The next day I stopped by to see if you had
written something and there it was, an invitation to write to you. About
anything.

Since artists don't get paid these days because there are no gigs and
physical records are out of style and streaming doesn't turn into a
living - I get a monthly report from my feeble works uploaded on Spotify
etc. and the income is about 0,01 a month - how could artists like you,
Martin Carr, whoever who's without a doubt done more great music than
anyone could have asked for make ends meet on the same scale as in, say,
2005 (my favourite year)?

My idea, as stupid as it may sound, was that what if people like me
could ask artists for a cd-r of their music. The music could be demos or
whatever that's not easy to find but the artist deems worthwhile. The
music would be sitting there on a laptop, then click clik transferred on
to a cd-r, tracks handwritten on the sleeve and off to mail. Instead of
the monthly about ten euros people spend on streaming, they could spend
a hundred on this kind of thing. And if there was ten thousand people
who wanted to do this, then... that's a proper pile of cash.

Then the talk slided off to wrong rails about copyrights, people passing
the music on to youtube (because people usually fuck everything up),
people having a different standard income in different countries meaning
this would not be fair globally and people also having different income
inside every country, and so on. But the simple idea didn't leave me. I
don't know the right way to this, but I kind of see artists having
possibilities doing something similar to how things used to be hundreds
of years ago. The great painters and composers, they got the money
somehow even though there wasn't a capitalist process whit all the
middle-men and marketing in-between.

From your work I listen mostly to At the Department Of Forgotten Songs
which you gave away for free. I would easily purchase something similar
for, I don't know, 50-100 euros. But the main thing I'm thinking about
here is that it's nice to be able to listen to Andrew Oldham orchestra
for free via Spotify, but artists like you, I would really see in a
better position.

Last thing, I don't know anything about your position although I read
smalltalk. But the little bit about Spotify last year suggested that you
were not completely happy with the way things are going in the business
these days. Would be interesting to read more about your thoughts on the
subject.

Have a good year,

Jussi



Still image from 'K Foundation Burn a Million Quid'



Hello Jussi

I understand what you mean and I actually think a lot of artists, myself included, have moved in this direction. The question has become: What can not be turned into 'content'? There is a small but significant demand for the authentic, the handprinted and the exclusive. I do a fair bit of this already, I’ve played weddings for over 15 years for example. Like most people within the arts do. Weddings employ photographers, musicians, designers, seamstresses etc. I think it’s quite beautiful, it’s a big moment in people’s lives and they don’t want to play songs from their laptop, they want an actual singer. And there's an understanding that this person needs to be compensated for the job.
I’ve also made a limited edition perfume and a few months ago I opened a temporary webshop where I sold signed and exclusive items. That was a direct response to the pandemic reality.

But I’m also concerned about this direction because it reminds me of the culture around Patreon, which I think works for some people but for others just becomes an endless job of producing ”exclusive material”. At some point you start to feel like an old historical monument that’s being picked apart by tourists who want to bring a rock home for their collection.

And I love Bandcamp but sometimes it feels like charity, like the idea is that we are to be kind to the poor artists, not pay them what we owe them. Charity is a good thing when disaster strikes, like the pandemic that has been devastating to artists and musicians. But it can’t replace a broken system.

Neither charity nor making exclusive material addresses the actual problem. Which is a complex problem in my opinion (scroll down to my Aug 12th entry here for an exhausting read). It’s not just that we’re not being paid enough, it’s also the monopoly that companies like Spotify have that prohibits us from making demands or boycotting them. You can go your own way but if you want to exist as an artist you need to go through them. Not even Taylor had much luck.

What’s the solution then? I joked in my aug 12th entry that we should use a sort of scorched earth tactic and make music completely worthless until the tech companies abandon it. But as much as music is slowly being turned into a scented candle due to it's current dependence on tech and energy drink companies, we’ll never be able to ever reduce it to worthless. We still need it to dry the tears on our cheeks, sing our babies to sleep and seduce our romantic interests with. I think what we need is some sort of consciousness raising and a tipping point where enough artists, musicians and listeners refuse to be part of the big platforms. I’m not very confident it will happen in the near future, if ever, and the question is also what comes after. If Spotify disappeared today it would just be replaced by another tech company. I’m drawn to the idea of an artist owned streaming service or making music part of our public domain somehow, like a public library. For me, the value of music and the possibility to be independent is more important than how and how much I'm compensated. We have to accept that we won’t be making much from streaming, regardless of the platform, as internet has changed everything and we can't go back to how it was before. It would just be nice to not have our hard earned pennies fall into the pockets of venture capitalists.

I really appreciate your input on this one, Jussi, as it's an issue that very much requires an understanding of both the artist's situation and the listener's experience. Despite all this though, I don’t want anyone to worry too much about me in particular. I’m getting by because despite my hatred of the entrepreneurial demands placed on artists these days, I’m actually the entrepreneurialest of them all. And a prepper at heart. When the pandemic hit I just shrugged my shoulders and thought ”ok, well this is what I’ve prepared for”. I didn’t expect any help, I had money saved and hardly any monthly expenses after rent and food. I had awesome recipes for lentil soup and a freezer full of homegrown vegetables. This is what almost two decades in music has made of me.

J
x









February 1st, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 3

Dear Jens Lekman,

 

I read your post asking people to write to you with questions. I think it’s a nice idea. I have always admired your writing, so here is a writerly question: What are your favorite words or names?

 

Yours truly,

Erin McPherson





Dear Erin,

My favourite word is 'ö'
Apart from being a letter in the Swedish alphabet, it's also the word for island.

J
x









January 25th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 2

Jens,

Interestingly, I first came across your small talk page only after deciding to remove myself entirely from social media a few months back.  This past year I made a huge effort to start writing letters to keep in touch with friends, I've actually written to you a few times, and decided not to send at the last minute feeling that what I had to say was underwhelming.  However, your most recent post has encouraged me to follow through with actually messaging you.

I strongly identify with the feeling of digital agoraphobia, which might be even stranger in the sense that I work in laboratory automation and programming.  Sometimes it seems impossible to imagine our lives without being plugged into the web constantly.  Then I remember it wasn't till 2011 that I got my first smartphone (which truly didn't work very well).  I'm 29 so thankfully I spent a good portion of my life without modern digital technology, but I do in a way fear for future generations that seem to come out of the cradle with a smartphone (at least in the US).

You probably won't be surprised then that I often dream of other lives for myself.  I'm deeply interested in everything and am a little terrified of looking back on my life and seeing a one trick pony of 'Joe the Programmer', or even worse 'Joe who refreshed Facebook 99232312 times'.  We only have one lifetime but I don't think that precludes us from living many lives within that.

This is the long way around to my question-- Do you think there's a benefit to reinventing yourself?  If so how have you in the past 'aimed' towards the next version of yourself?

With Love,
Joe from Maine







Dear Joe

An ex girlfriend told me once about the idea of dividing your life into 11 year periods. That was apparently the time it took to immerse yourself in something, reach a point of skill and comfort and enjoy it for a while before it became a chore. I started by dividing the years I’d already lived into 11 year slices:
0-11 was learning the basics of being a human.
11-22 was liberating myself and stepping out into the world.
22-33 was, for me, learning music and having a music career.
At the time when she told me about this I had just turned 33, the age also known as ”The Christ Age”. The time in your life when you realize you’re as old as Jesus was when he died. The time in your life when you think everyone else has walked on water and turned water into wine, everyone except you.

So I felt like it was time for change. The music wasn’t going too well at the moment anyway. I looked into becoming a gardener. I imagined myself working at a beautiful cemetery in the countryside, a quiet existence in harmony with nature and the seasons. But then I talked to a gardener who said that most work she did was sit by a computer to deal with customers, order pesticide and look for work because most gardeners are independent contractors. And I could barely keep my own house plants alive anyway.

But the dream told me something about myself. I longed to nurture something. And I had grown tired of living at night, sleeping away all the daylight and breathing the exhaust fumes of the autobahn and the smoky backrooms of the venues I played. It was almost like a biological clock, only I saw magnolia trees instead of children. I had stepped into a new time zone and I wanted something to set my clock to.

I thought of becoming a social worker, like my Dad. A thought I’d had since I was a kid. That thought told me that I longed to step outside of myself, be of service to my community, and to be an ear in a world of mouths. I thought of becoming a psychologist but I knew my grades hadn’t improved since high school and I had no intention to study for a whole decade. Instead I started going to therapy myself.

I read that Samuel Beckett dreamed of becoming an airline pilot. Thomas Mann wanted to be a banker. James Joyce toyed with the idea of promoting Irish tweed in Italy.

I’m not sure how I will summarize the 33-44 period. Maybe it’s impossible to know before it’s over? But so far I’ve merely just acknowledged the paths I could’ve taken and made tiny changes here and there. I still make music and I still live in Gothenburg. You refer to yourself as Joe the programmer and Joe from Maine. I think we often define ourselves by what we do for a living and where we live. How about, if you and me are going to reinvent ourselves, that you change from 'Joe, the programmer' to 'Joe, the letter writer' and I change from 'Jens, the pop singer' to 'Jens, the ear in a world of mouths'?

I’ve been getting a new perfume everytime a relationship ends. Andy Warhol used to change his perfume every three months or so and put his old perfume in his "smell collection" so he could go back to remember the lives he’d lived and the dreams he dreamed. Like you, I sometimes write letters and never send them. But I save them in my drafts folder. I write to my lived and unlived lives, check in on them. Nurture them. But I rarely step into them.

I see other people throw themselves into this and that and sometimes I envy them but most often it seems to me like they’re escaping something. Since we live in a culture of consumer capitalism that feeds off our insecurity and prohibits us from bearing our frustration, I immediately become sceptical when people talk about reinventing themselves. We're taught to be fickle and never settle for anything, always keep our doors open. There are of course moments when we have to reinvent ourselves, when we move, when relationships end, when we start at a new job or school. And there's nothing wrong with dipping your toes in some new waters once in a while. But too often I think we forget that if we change we'll never know what it was like to not have changed.

J
x








January 25th, 2021

JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 1

Hi Jens,

My husband and I are both huge fans and we’ve been having a debate for several years now. Being one of the “few who still read” Small Talk, I figured I may as well go straight to the source. I think that looking at “Happy Birthday Dear Friend Lisa” through the lens of Dandelion Seed suddenly makes it a very sad song. HBDFL seems like a song celebrating a friendship for how platonic it is, while Dandelion Seed is set years later and sees the narrator kicking himself for never taking chances that came along. My husband’s official stance is that I have overthought this and Dandelion Seed is a happy song because the narrator has moved on and is reflecting on lessons learned in life.

So what’s the story with Lisa?

(Sorry if this is too personal ... but you did say we could ask anything ... )

Thanks for writing songs that give us all the goosebumps!

-Elise.





Dear Elise

Lisa is my oldest friend that I still keep in touch with. We met when we started high school in the city, we were both from rougher and poorer areas in the north of Gothenburg. I didn’t realise it back then but looking back I see how this probably drew me to her. There was something about her that I understood, something about the way she dressed and talked.

I think I wrote Happy Birthday Lisa for her 22nd birthday. I was unemployed and didn’t have much money but wanted to do something so I recorded it and burned it on a CD-R for her. I thought of Lisa back then as the most fearless person I knew. Someone who would try anything twice. I looked up to her like a big sister I’d never had. She told me how she routinely got visits from Jehovah’s Witnesses who asked if she wanted eternal life, to which she replied, confused ”why would I want eternal life?”. I thought that was Lisa in a nutshell.

She was my first friend who had a kid and when she told me she was pregnant I had an existential crisis. It wasn’t something that would affect our friendship but it made me feel like a child, like she was so far ahead of me all of a sudden. The next day I wrote in an entry here on smalltalk that I felt like a five year old watching the ten year olds shoplifting, a ten year old watching the fifteen year olds frenchkissing, a fifteen year old watching the twenty year olds chainsmoking. That’s how I always felt around Lisa. She had her baby the same day I finished Night Falls Over Kortedala and every time I see him I think ”that record is getting old”.

When Dandelion Seed came out she said she didn’t recognise herself as the fearless one. She thought I was the one who’d taken chances, followed my dreams, catapulting myself out into the world with my music. I had been thinking a lot about how fears had prevented me from ever being really present within my life and my desires and how that was slowly making me bitter. And Lisa said she recognised herself more in the way I had portrayed myself than the image I had drawn of her as someone who smiled and dived into life headfirst.

I think Lisa is my Major Tom. This character that I return to in my songs once in a while to check in on, to reflect myself in. Only Lisa is an actual person so she gets to reflect herself in my character as well.

As for your question, I’m not sure if I understand it correctly. I wonder if you’re asking if there are regrets that nothing romantic ever happened between me and Lisa? In that case the answer is no, we’ve always been just friends.
You're asking if Dandelion Seed is a sad song? Well, it deals with regret but ends on what I think is a hopeful note. I imagined the ending of that song like the end of the first Terminator movie. We’ve all got our dark clouds and we can’t hide from them forever, sometimes we just gotta put on our sunglasses and drive straight into them.

J
x







January 12th, 2021

I know there’s not many people reading these pages anymore. I lost most of you 5-10 years ago as social media took over and I’ve been struggling ever since with how to talk to you. I’ve been quite uncomfortable with social media because the communication there feels like standing on a street, trying to tell a story, while people are shouting random things at you. I feel like the awareness that we are being watched, that others can see what we write, and the possibility to publish our comments instantly, creates a dull and sometimes aggressive space. It’s turned communication into a form of busking and it’s just not where I want to be. Not to communicate at least.

I used to write things here. And then you would write me on my email. And then we wrote a few things back and forth. And it was meaningful. But it also had it’s problems. It took a lot of time, I had to answer many questions over and over and a lot of amazing conversations were kept between just me and another person. And as social media took over and the conversations stopped I started losing interest in writing much here.

But for this year, if anyone’s interested - write me on any topic, ask me any question, and I might post your question along with my reply here. Like Nick Cave does with his Red Hand Files, you know. Maybe once a week. Or once a month. Not sure. If it grows to something meaningful I might expand it, advertise it, but for now I’ll keep it just between me and the few of you who still read this.

Or if anyone has a better idea then write me about that too. Don’t write me on Facebook or Instagram or any of those channels. I post there because otherwise I would stop existing. But I never read comments. I don’t like being there. I quite possibly have digital agoraphobia.

You can ask about anything. Music. Love. Politics. Space. Haircuts. But if you ask about personal matters then don’t think of me as an actual therapist or advisor. If you need actual help, get actual help. What you get from me will not be profound wisdom, expect more questions than answers. But sometimes that’s what we need right? Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.

Email: smalltalk (at) jenslekman.com
Subject line: Jens Will See You Now

Love,
J






January 3rd, 2021

Lately, a few of you have noticed a certain increase in deja vus, incidents that have been slightly too poetic or how my songs have come up randomly at very specific times, making it seem like they’re the soundtrack to a movie you’re starring in. A few of you have pointed fingers at me, calling me out. And so I guess it’s about time that I step forward and admit. Yes, I am behind all this, I have orchestrated your life. The guy you dated this summer. The way the sun just shone through your curtains. The way a maple leaf sailed through the air just as Maple Leaves started playing and you walked home with the pain of someone you’ve lost pulsating in your body like an open wound, like a limb torn off. That was me.

I understand you have a whole bunch of questions.

Like, how does it work? Well, the closest description I can think of is a web design program, sort of. You insert code in one window. In another window you can see the result. The program I use is just something I found online for free, some kind of open source application. It crashes all the time and it’s been at least half a year since there was any kind of update. I tend to make mistakes when I write my code. It’s usually something simple, like I forget punctuation or I repeat a command. Which, as you can guess, can have dire consequences. I’m sorry about that.

I’m sure you’re dissapointed. You believed in free will. In lack of free will, at least a universe written by an omnipotent, all-knowing, all-loving deity. Instead it was me. A 39 year old pop singer who had a minor hit in Australia 15 years ago with a song known colloquially as ”The Avocado Song”. A guy who fixes the soles on his shoes with duct tape and thought the new Borat movie was ”a lot better than I expected”.

You have a lot of requests now. But I don’t take requests. This is not like my encores when I occasionally will give in and play that song you’re shouting for. You think you know what you want but you don’t. You think you wanted happiness but happiness won’t make you happy. You think you wanted love but you don’t know what love is.

Why all this suffering and chaos? You’ll understand. Or you won’t understand. I’m sorry about that too. It’s not personal. I would like to say that you will all have suffered equally in the end, but we all know that’s not true. Either you’ll go through trauma, or you’ll go around worrying about going through trauma, or worrying that you’re worrying too much so that your whole life becomes a trauma. Those of you who go through the worst will be broken but so will most of humanity. This is what it means to be human. The door’s been opened and you’ve been let in.

Yes, I failed. I tried too hard. I started pushing my songs into too many sensitive moments. I wanted them to mean more than they did. Shameless self promotion. I’m embarrased. I guess you can’t recreate reality with fiction, you just can’t make it up. The poetry of reality is disjointed, it doesn’t rhyme, it’s brutally monotone yet simultaneously over dramatic. But, with your permission, I’d like to… I mean… if you’re not completely sick of me by now, I’d like to try again. I have some ideas. It will be good. I don’t promise, I never promise anything. And you may not understand it. But all this chaos that we’re in now - there’s a reason.






Old talk 2020

Old talk 2019

Old Talk 2018

Old Talk 2017

Old Talk 2016

Old Talk 2015

Old Talk 2014

Old Talk 2013

Old Talk 2012

Old Talk 2011

Old Talk 2010

Old Talk 2009

Old Talk 2008

Old Talk 2007

Old Talk 2006

Old Talk 2005

Old Talk 2004