The discontinuation of Hel part VI: Holding on to this feeling

Life is what happens while you´re busy making other plans...

My life capsized when I came to China. It didn't happen on it's own accord, of course, I was the one who cut the thread that had been keeping everything in place. And then up was down, down was up, and I had to work my way back into a sense of relative normalcy again. That was life happening.

This song, on the other hand, was me trying to carry out a plan. I had this brilliant idea for an online company to make songs by order in China, and this was one of the samples. That eventually fell through, as a year after arriving I realised it was going to take a decade at least for me to feel comfortable enough with the Chinese language to actually manage to write lyrics in it. Making them in English was another option, but then... life happened again. Bands, gigs, recordings, demos, album releases, a master´s degree, a new relationship, all nicely sprinkled with part time work in order to make ends meet.

When I decided to release two compilation albums of my previous recordings (which I felt more like doing than actually developing that business idea), I realised I kind of liked the song for The Tick Collector, and decided to pull it out of a project that I suspected was never going to make it to the top of my priority list and just use it as a song in its own right. Have a listen if you're in the mood for something light and carefree.

Things hardly ever turn out the way one imagines, it doesn’t take living very long to find out, does it? The above story is but one of a myriad examples I could give from my own life experience, and a silly one at that. Maybe zen buddhists are right and the problem lies in the fact that time doesn’t really exists, nor the future or causality, all three things necessary in order for plans to have any use. Hence their futility. That’s a pretty radical thought, very difficult to wrap your head around without giving into hardcore nihilism, which I know is not the point behind this idea: the point is to stop worrying, not to stop caring. Easier said than done, but that’s no excuse. I’m working on that. .