It was late at night; probably eleven or twelve. During that time, the tide in Kirkenes had been swept away and the sailors were starting on their work, which would last for the whole night. From my room, I could clearly see the night sky and when the moon was full, the view was beautiful. However, when I suffered a lot of anxiety and couldn't sleep, I would rush out towards the sea. The sailors knew that I was young Ingrid and they already knew my parents. As both they were actors, people consider their profession really worthy, so I would also be given a great worth, as I was the young daughter of Niki and Tomas Sorensen. The sailors also knew that I was going towards the ships to help, as I was in love with the sea, especially at night. And indeed, at the night shift required a hard work, as the ships would be about to sail, as soon as the waters returned. However, I could do that hard work, even though I was a girl. I didn't care. The sea would calm my spirit and remove all of my anxiety.
It was this specific time, when the work was over at six o'clock in the morning and the tide started to move back. Then, although having my clothes on, I would dive in the not-that-clean harbour and later I would return back home, full of salt and a wide smile in my face. That day I opened the door of the house and saw mum, who had just woken up. She approached me and laughing, she said: "Poo! You smell like harbour oil!". Yes, I obviously smelled like harbour oil, as I was diving like a fish inside the harbour's waters.
Then I opened my eyes and realised I was lying in bed. I obviously had a dream. However the story above is totally true and it's all about a real incident, that had happened when I was seventeen years old. However, after all these problems I had to deal with, I had completely forgotten about that and thanks to my dream, the memory came back to my mind after all these years. At night, I used to flee my house and go to help the sailors. And harbour oil was a phrase that my mum had invented. Harbour oil was our motto between my friends and me, because at the beginning it seemed to be a nice and, in a way, funny word to use, but soon it started to become a part of myself. I was a marine girl and it was this harbour oil what I wanted to describe in our third album.
Soon, my new house was renovated. I didn't anyway intend to live in a house, which would belong to me absolutely, due to lack of money and also because I still had the need to be close to my parents. Far from that, the house became really beautiful. I filled it with posters, paintings, old furniture and a library originally belonging to my father and I even turned, in a way, my room into an art gallery. I was even thinking that if I ever move to another house, I should either leave everything back or have to keep an extra room for them. Furthermore, as it was a rather spacious house for a single person, I carried one of our two pianos in the living room. I decided that there's where piano lessons with Lydia would take place.
Lessons started a few days later. I am a kind of person that doesn't form many questions, as I don't want to make others feel uncomfortable, therefore Lydia and I didn't talk about any of the deeper reasons why Kati asked me teach her own student. Lessons went rather smoothly and in a quite friendly environment. Even though I wasn't paid for what I was doing, I tried to create a professional atmosphere between Lydia and me. I consider teaching to be something, which one has to take seriously, so I had to treat Lydia as if she were my student and not just my band colleague.
However, I soon started to feel that this was something pursued only by my own side. Of course, Lydia was always punctual and sometimes she was practising more than she should. During the lesson, though, we'd waste a lot of time, because she was talking to me about her everyday life, even though the timing was bad. So I should often remind her that now it's time for lesson and we can talk about these things later. Indeed, I was a bit annoyed, because she couldn't understand it, as I obviously was her friend. However I consider that since I, as a friend, offered her the chance to teach her for free, she was obliged to have a perfect behaviour towards me. Or am I wrong?
After the lesson we would spend some time together and thus, I hoped that I would have the chance to get to know my "colleague" better, because I was always under the impression that she has always been too distant from all of us --more than I was with people. When I did the mistake to open up to her a little bit, telling her that piano lessons offer us the opportunity to get to know each other better, what she answered me was: "Nobody will ever learn my true ways" and that was followed by an ironic laughter. That time I felt a bit awkward and I remember that I felt warning bells started to sound in my head, which meant something wrong and I was trying to get the deeper meaning of her sentence.
Lydia had her own ways to ask you about things, that you maybe didn't ever want to confide to others, but you couldn't either avoid her questions. Once she asked me about the reason why I was never looking the others in the eyes, when talking to them, or why I always prefer to reply using only a few or even one word, whereas when writing I'm rather loquacious. She was asking me things about my nature, about which not only had I never again talked to others, but I didn't even dare to think about them.
At some point, I realised why she was talking to me like that. She explained to me that she had started to work as a psychoanalyst. Therefore, that was the reason why she was asking me about such deep issues. Was she trying to analyse my nature? And is this a right thing to do to someone who hasn't ever asked you for help? I didn't take any notice into that, however when the time went by, I seemed to have neglected the warning bells and have started to cling into Lydia. I was non-typically teaching her to play the piano and she was non-typically analysing me. And soon I was completely depending on her.
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In the Easter, I went to Gweedore along with Vivian and the others for the Celtic festival and then we moved on with the composition of our third album. As I already mentioned before, this album was dedicated to grandpa Lauri's memory and its topics would be about the sea, harbour oil and sailors' journeys. We hadn't even started writing lyrics, because for some reason I didn't feel like writing in English. Whatsoever it was a very personal album this time, in contrast to our first two albums, that were dealing with social and world issues. That album had strong elements of nostalgia and longing: longing of my old life and mainly longing of my grandpa.
We met with the others in May, so that we could start writing. Main composers were Vivian, Bryan, Dina (who by the way had started to write awesome songs) and me. However, now we considered that it would be nice if Lydia would also join the game. But she didn't have the same opinion. "I am an interpreter", she answered. So, the number of composers was still four. It was a shame, because if we had more composers, the band's sound would be more diverse and complex. Furthermore, what everybody asked me to do was that I would be the lyricist and I didn't deny, of course. I believe that this album was the dawn of the band's great withdrawal from progressive rock. I'm not disappointed by that, because I know that we wrote very nice songs back then and moreover progressive rock is no religion, so we could experiment with more genres, according to each phase of our lives.
Of course, in our first two albums, my lyrics had a more everyday and prosy style, as one could expect from a song. (Remains from my childhood, as I remember Johanna composing like this). On the other hand, on this album they were more Poetic, abstract and lyrical, as if I were setting a Poem to music. I had taken every book from my father's dusty bookshelves and I was reading any kind of Poetry I could find. I can say that I was deeply in love with Romanticism and I was constantly reading Poetry by Coleridge. Indeed, my favourite Poem was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, whose topic was highly related to the album and which I could fit into harbour oil. Thus, I was writing my lyrics as if I was setting Poems into music.
This time, even the sound of the album was much different. While in the two previous albums our music sounded totally like progressive rock, now it was more of a folk nature. For the first time we wanted to make an album, which would also contain traditional instruments. And an instrument, which was necessary to us, was the Irish pipes, uilleann pipes. However, I was living in Norway and I didn't know anyone who could play the pipes. But Vivian's mum had been a piper, that's why I thought I could ask her if she could suggest someone to us. Finally she gave me a girl's phone number, who was a piper, her name was Nicolette and came from Cork. However, when we talked on the phone, she told me:
"Unfortunately I'm in a band and we are constantly travelling. I don't think that I have time to record with you. But my brother, Scott, is a brilliant piper and he's much better than me. You could give him a call".
I took up the responsibility to call Scott and ask him whether he could record with us. Fortunately he agreed, flew to Norway and we auditioned him. I can recall meeting him for the first time. I was nineteen and he was about fifteen years older than me, he had scarce long black hair on a ponytail and a lot of facial hair. He was the typical Irish joker and he along with Vivian and Bryan had the same Celtic sense of humour. Since he first entered the studio, we all rolled on the floor laughing, not only because of his jokes, but also because of his general behaviour and attitude. And these pipes....When he played the first sounds on his pipes, the whole room in the studio was turned on. I had the widest smile ever and was stuck upon him, as if I were a leech. I was enchanted with that instrument!
I had written a song, in which Scott would play the pipes and its name was The Girl of the Seas. It started with an acoustic guitar and then instantly the pipes were on, but the sound was really loud and characteristic. I am under the impression that if someone else were the composer and I were just a listener, I would be enchanted by the sound of the pipes. The story behind the song is of a fully Romantic nature. A young woman falls in love with a handsome lad, who becomes exiled for some unexplainable reason. The couple knows they have to break up and neither of them can stand this. The boy sails off to an island in the middle of nowhere and every day his heart becomes weaker, because of his lovely girl's abscence. The girl, in order that she doesn't go mad, after fleeing her house to the mountains, sails off in a small boat and searches for all the islands in the hope to find her lover. When the night comes and eventually the stars appear, she observes some of them, which follow a specific direction. She thinks it's a sign and decides to follow the stars. (Like the three wise men). She finally reaches some distant island and at the mountain's peak she eventually finds her lover. However, he has tied a noose around his neck and is dead. So the girl ties the same noose around her neck too and kills herself in her lover's arms.
In general, I used to write Poems and songs of this style. But I would mostly write and publish small books of this type, which often were the main inspiration for our album's concept. And they would be written mostly at night. I was going out very late at night and I was heading to the sea. But these days I wasn't going to the harbour to help the sailors. These days I would stay all by myself. I was sitting in the coast, having buried my feet in the sand and I was watching the waves crushing in the rocks. I was usually carrying the book with the Poems and my papers along with me and there's where I would get most of the inspiration. And at nights, when I was sleeping I would often dream that I was swimming in the middle of the Ocean and suddenly huge waves were approaching. But they weren't scary at all for me. I would instantly dive underwater and then I would be in total peace. Down there everything was tranquil, no matter if the storm was terrible above me. These were my own ocean dreams and I knew that this was now the only way for me to feel again the harbour oil. And all this fitted to a T for our album's topic.
For the first time, the album was recorded in Rockfield Studios, which was located in Rockfield, a village of Monmouth, Wales. It's a widely popular studio, because many many bands of the '70s had recorded their albums there. Even A Night at the Opera by Queen was recorded there. And yes, indeed, I played on the same piano, in which Freddie Mercury played Bohemian Rhapsody fourty years ago. Rockfield wasn't like the typical studios at all. To start with it was a big house, in which we were living, cooking, watching films etc, i.e. anything we were originally doing when writing music. And as we were there to record the album during the summer....we also had summer vacations! There was a supermarket close to the village and during that time I also got my driving licence, thus I would often drive fifty miles to Bristol, in order to meet with my Finnish friend, Eira, who was now living there. The most wonderful thing ever was that our own sound engineer was the son of Queen's sound engineer! So, there were many people in the house. The seven of us from the band, our sound engineer and several other friends, along with our best friend, Sofia, whom we take along with wherever we go to, because she's a totally lunatic person and as an actress gives us many reasons to endlessly laugh.
We decided to use many traditional instruments in the album. And we indeed worked with many people: Scott already was playing the pipes and related wind instruments, Vivian was playing the bouzouki, mandolin and related string instruments and I was also playing the accordion and the harp. And of course, we also used violins, violas, cellos etc., which were played by several people from Ireland. Even my own sister Monica agreed to play the violin in one of our songs, but never wanted to perform it with us live. And finally there was a bodhrán too. The idea of working with all these people sounded splendid to me, because the music played solely by us was to my ears a bit....raw. And indeed, I could do all these things myself only with some synthesizers. But now the sound was fuller. But unfortunately we couldn't bring our orchestra live. A lot of coordination, money and space was needed for that.
We spent my nineteenth birthday in Ireland. In the beginning of September, we had a two-week break from recording sessions, so we travelled to Vivian's cottage house at the village. At nights we were sitting at her backyard, where we were grilling vegetarian sausages and playing music, like the good old times. However back then it was summer, whereas now it was already autumn and sometimes there was a slight chill. But then again the leaf colour of the trees was magical. I was having such a good time in Ireland, that I was seriously considering moving permanently there. And indeed, this was something I would constantly show, though in a very indirect way. One night, though, I ended up saying everything out loud. It was our typical barbecuing night, when we were sitting at the backyard and as the time was later than three o'clock in the morning, we had stopped playing music. I was sitting there with the band, drinking beers and sighing heavily. At some point, Lulu turned towards me and told me:
"Hey, Ingrid! What's this constant sigh for?"
"Oh!", I said. "Oh, what a beautiful place that Ireland is!"
Nobody actually paid attention, thus I went on:
"Oh! I wish I could move in Ireland and live here forever!"
Then, Vivian and Lulu burst out laughing and said:
"Don't pay attention to her. She's drunk and doesn't know what she's talking about".
Truth be told I was indeed half-drunk, but I wasn't joking at all. The only effect that the drink had on me was that I managed to say out loud my wish.
"Well, I'm seriously speaking", I rushed out. "I wish I could move to Ireland".
"And why don't you do it?"
"Are you mad? I have no money at all", I said. "And how am I going to find a house?"
"Ask your parents to support you financially".
The truth is that I was embarrassed to ask more money from my parents, as long as I owed to them after the renovation of my house in Kirkenes.
"And as for the house, I myself will help you to find", Vivian said.
My eyes got lit.
"Really?", I exclaimed.
"Of course. If you come, Bryan and I are going to help you".
I considered the procedure of moving to Ireland something extremely difficult and indeed something inevitable to happen. However, the following days I was discussing about this topic with the girls. They were indeed serious speaking, when they told me they were going to help. Vivian wanted to find a house for me, but had to wait until I made the final decision. I didn't even expect them to support me in such a comfortable way, so the only thing remaining was that I would tell my parents. I didn't feel I needed their own permission, however I was restricted, because they had paid a lot of money for the house that I was now living in. I was feeling too uncomfortable just to leave and abandon the house they had just renovated only for my wits. However, I could be coming every now and then and stay in Kirkenes. With these thoughts I would therefore return from Ireland in mid September and I would discuss about that with my parents.
We spent the rest of our days in September in Rockfield, mixing the album, which indeed was released in the 22nd of September, almost two months after my nineteenth birthday. As I said, it was dedicated to grandpa Lauri's memory. For this reason, even though I had written some songs in English, I translated all of their lyrics to Finnish. Even in the end of the booklet, there was a Poem I had written in Finnish and Russian. The album's title was Kansi, which means Quarterdeck in Finnish.
In general, even though I was the original creator of the band, Dina was the one who was trying to make me come to the front. But it was too difficult and she did everything for me, so that I could have a self-confidence. On the other hand and in contrast with anything that Dina was advising me to do, during our piano lessons, Lydia was often preventing me from singing, because she believed I didn't have a good voice at all. So I didn't know which of my two friends I had to listen to, but it seems that I was totally clung to Lydia, as long as she was the one who analysed me. Very often I was feeling that someone else was deciding for me --just like in Johanna's and Dimitris' occasion. But when someone is telling us the truth, we often refuse to accept it and keep on being restricted to our egoism. Isn't it so? Anyway, concerning our musical style, with this album Alexandria turned to pop and folk music and our sound was very common with my sister's songs.
On the 25th of September, I went back to Kirkenes. Then, my siblings had also been there, since the summer, to visit my parents. I told everybody I wanted to move to Gweedore permanently and I could maybe study at University, promising of course that I would often come and stay in Kirkenes too. And indeed, much to my surprise, nobody was opposed to that. But Johanna was mostly glad about my decision, as Gweedore was always in her heart. So, I went and told Vivian I would soon start to search for my own house.
"We have already talked about that", she was saying. "I will be the one to help you. You don't need to do much in a place you have no idea about houses". And indeed she did it! Only within a few days! She found a beautiful house for me in Upper Dore, which had the view of Errigal mountain and Clady river. Then, I had started to search for several musical instruments as well as electronic stuff. I found a Hammond Organ on the ebay, which costed about 20,000 crones and a PlayStation 4 that costed 3,000 crones, so I started considering finding a temporary job in a cafeteria in Ireland, in order to get this money. But I was such a fool that I went and told everything to my brother, who told me strictly: "Don't YOU buy that keyboard!" and as you can expect, I got terribly pissed off. He knew though what he was talking about and this nasty kid went and said everything to my father. And nobody can believe what followed next.
That night before I moved to Ireland, I threw a huge party. Of course, it was nothing like those parties in the clubs, playing pop music and American shitty things. We were the ones who were playing live and we were even doing any crazy thing that was going in our heads. Finally, we ended up playing Despacito in a jazz style with accordion and wind instruments. That night, then, at some point I went in the kitchen and it was then when my dad approached me, as we were left alone. He put into my hands 500,000 crones. And I told him: "Did you just go mad? What do you think you're doing?"
And he replied: "Take these, make your living, buy your keyboard and the PlayStation you want". Well the first thing I would say in normal conditions was It's not a keyboard. It's a damn synthesizer. But in this case all I could stutter was: "But....I don't....."
Then, he turned and whispered to me: "Make your dreams come true and as soon as you become like Johanna, you can return the money back". I was taken aback and hugged him tightly. It was then that I understood why Daniel told me not to buy this keyboard.
"Oh, dad....", I said and stopped, because I didn't know what to say anymore. This was a very emotional moment, probably one of the most emotional moments ever, because I had never had such a relationship with my father. We were usually discussing about history, races, music and practical stuff. There was a wide gap in issues concerning emotions.
So, in the end of September, I left and went to live in my favourite village. However, I had promised everybody and mostly to myself that Kirkenes would always be my hometown, so I would visit the place quite regularly. And in Ireland, I knew that a massive tour was waiting for us with our new sound.
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