48. MUSIC AND COLOURS

Ingmar and I got married on September 27, 2025. Even though our relationship had always been secret, mainly because we wanted to protect our child, this doesn't mean that nobody ever knew anything about us. Of course, many rumours as well as a lot of gossiping was going around, but no one was allowed to invade our private lives. Being really careful with that, that day, Ingmar and I posted a picture of us on the net, without any text above though. That day, I was wearing a straw hat with ribbons around it and a red dress. As soon as this picture was uploaded, we met with thousands of comments. However, I noticed that there were very few people who were proud of us being together or called us lovebirds or similar corny bullshit. Most of us would say that we had to put a record together, something that wasn't a bad idea at all.

In October 2025, I called Johanna (not my sister, but her friend) and I told her I would make it in the studio. Thus, I caught the train and travelled to Alta, where the recording sessions would take place. Since I was a small kid, I knew that Johanna had a distinctive talent for making electronic compositions. She liked mixing weird sounds and create music with these. I think she could perfectly compose a film soundtrack, given the fact that a lot of movies contain electronic soundtracks and not typical symphonic/orchestral music. Artists who compose this kind of film music, for example, are Vangelis or Tangerine Dream.

Johanna and I had a lot of things in common. I also like combining weird sounds and, of course, the favourite instrument of both of us was the Moogling. When I was young and she used to come to our place, I remember that I had just bought my first Moog synthesiser and she was extremely excited about it. She was jealous of its amplifier because it had colourful cables. And far from music, Johanna had also studied Linguistics, so we also had many things in common. We were only slightly different when composing, in the sense that she wouldn't always sketch the songs she was composing. Sometimes she would just experiment with sounds and compose anything that would get out of this. I would never do that. As I've already mentioned, I first became an author and then a musician, thus while composing music, in many ways I work as an author too: there is always a framework, a context first, which is afterwards filled with music. Sometimes, it seems to me as if I compose music for non-existent films, playing in my head.

Recordings lasted a month, indeed. Prior to my coming to the studio, Johanna had planned which ones were going to be my own parts. And I liked these because her album had a beautiful topic. It was inspired by the Planet Earth documentary, which was presented by Sir David Attenborough and her songs referred to parts of the natural world. There were different songs, for example, about the continents, the jungles, the forests, the sea etc. and I thought it was a beautiful idea. And even though, one could expect her to compose symphonic music for that, she only used electronic instruments. My own parts were about the sea, the forests and underwater caves. My favourite places ever!

In November 2025, I went back home, planning to start composing new music for Alexandria. I had come up with a very good idea. During the previous months, I had found an interest in learning the way in which some mental disorders or chemical substances could alter the mind's function. I used to watch videos, which were simulations showing how, let's say, a schizophrenic person experiences the world and their own selves too. These were rather accurate videos and described these situations in such a freaking way. I'd watched a video, in which a schizophrenic person had woken up in the morning in a room, which seemed really dark in his own eyes. Suddenly his phone started to ring, which had a really distorted sound. The melody was a typical i-phone melody, but it sounded distorted. Of course, you could also hear voices whispering things like they're coming after you or you are worthless and why don't you kill yourself? and more freaking things like that. After a while, this person turns on the TV and while the broadcast is about the weather forecast, at some point the presenter turns to the person and says: and the fault is yours because you're worthless. Of course, healthy people can understand that the real world doesn't work like that, but this is all part of a schizophrenic mind. It is a real nightmare for those people to experience the world like that because delirium means that one is absolutely sure that these situations are real and nobody can change their mind. I remembered myself a few years back in Amsterdam when someone had thrown LSD on my drink. If this experience was nightmarish to me, then what else could you say about schizophrenic people?

Furthermore, I was really interested in learning how hallucinogens affect your mind and I'm not referring to LSD only, but in psychedelic drugs, in general. I've mentioned before that I've been a huge Porcupine Tree fan and one of my favourite albums of all times is Voyage 34. That particular album has nothing to do with a space voyage or something like that, as I had falsely assumed, in the beginning. It is an album, segmented into four different parts, which contain psychedelic and experimental music. At the same time, it contains narrations by people, who talk about their own experience, while consuming LSD. The main story, which is narrated in the following: a young man, called Brian, calls his friends at home, in order to make LSD use and observe the effect that the drug is going to have on them. Our friend, Brian, is not scared at all, because during all these 33 LSD trips, he only had to snap his fingers and down he came. But this particular time, on voyage 34, Brian couldn't snap his fingers and terminate the trip. He was terrified and he was sitting alone in his room. What the song describes, thus, is a bad trip. The narrations in the song actually come from a 1966 radio broadcast, whose goal is to campaign against LSD. Voyage 34 feels like a post-soundtrack to this broadcast.

I really loved this album. I think it has been the album that I've mostly listened to during my whole life. There's been a time that I used to play it about fifteen times a day. I would quite often live the experience. I would play the whole album and sit down for an hour, keeping my eyes closed. Sometimes it would work in a therapeutic way for me, as it could make me escape my problems for a while -- and at times, from reality itself. It has always helped me to calm down, whenever I'm going through serious problems with my life. I just keep completely to myself, playing this album and tripping for an hour that it lasts. This is another way, in which I can trip without using drugs (as Jesikka used to say) and indeed, the way in which true escape sensation works better in me. Nowadays I can say that Voyage 34, is my favourite album of all times.

As an avid sci-fi and horror book reader, one of my favourite authors has always been Aldous Huxley (grandson to this lunatic man, Thomas Huxley, a biologist and Charles Darwin's right hand). He has written Brave New World, which is a marvellous book and I suggest you immediately go and buy it.  However, by coincidence, during the same time I was into my psychedelic readings, I had found another book by Huxley on a flea market in Kirkenes. It was a book called Psychedelics. Huxley was a regular LSD user and wrote this book, which refers to his own experience, concerning the effect that this drug had on him. Whatsoever, it is said that just before he died, he asked his wife to give him some LSD, because he wanted to die in a magical world.

Of course, even though all these ideas seemed really interesting to me, they were more or less my own personal interests. I couldn't force the others to spend so many months in the studio, keeping themselves busy with LSD. On the other hand, neither did I want to throw this idea away, because as I said, I really loved it, nor did I want to make a solo album. I hate solo albums. But then, I came up with the solution, that we could record this album with Uaithnia. Both my sister and Vivian were really fond of these topics and of course, Voyage 34 was one of my sister's favourite albums.

Thus, I spoke to the rest of the girls: my sister, Vivian and Nancy. I can say that they found this idea really interesting and they even were very excited about this. I can't explain why, but such topics as hallucinations, illusions, schizophrenia and in general, topics related to the distorted brain function are things I'm extremely fixated on. I know it's a dramatic experience for a patient, but I like learning more about these and they appeal to me exactly the same deep way in which water and the sea do.

Because we wanted to release the album in February, we went straight to the studio and decided to start composing there instantly. I had such a great need to get these beautiful ideas out on paper and keys, that I couldn't care about not being at home. Furthermore, for the first time ever I didn't start composing on a piano, but on a plain synthesiser instead. I suppose I was rather inspired by Johanna's album, as its music was electronic. Our record was going to be mainly instrumental and wouldn't contain so many lyrics. An album I was also inspired by was Dead Can Dance's Aion. Lisa Gerrard has a brilliant voice and especially in that particular album, her vocals are enchanting. During that time I was listening to it a lot at home.

The record would start with a composition of mine, that lasted about 13 minutes. I think it's the most psychedelic track I've ever written. Normally the song starts with an instrumental section, lasting about 11 minutes and during the last two minutes, it transforms into a depressive ballad, talking about death. But exactly because this song was completely psychedelic, we decided to extract that section and move it to the beginning. It perfectly fits there, however, in fact, it's too obvious that this song starts by its end and this is really bizarre. It has been played live before, accompanied by psychedelic visuals, but we don't do this anymore live. First, those images freak people out and secondly it has a clear reference to death, so it's not that pleasing for us to play live.

Some people consider this to be the best song I've ever composed, even though it's not an Alexandria piece. In the past, I think I would think it was too, but I think that we have written happier and less cynical songs. So to say, I believe it was a rather harsh and exaggerating piece, though a lot of effort has been put into it. Just like Voyage 34, this also contained narrations by several people we loved or who were friends of us. Something, which most people might not know, is the fact that some of the narrations are done by my own daughter, Anna, herself, because she has a British accent, due to her father, and of course, she has a cute, childish and fairy-like voice. The song's name is An Upstair Case and it was taken from a part of Voyage 34.

A piece I had also composed myself and I liked is one For Those We Noticed... I wouldn't like to mention why I chose this seemingly irrelevant title, concerning the song's content. People who know me best can probably have a clue. This song refers to a human condition, called synesthesia, which is something I can achieve too and I realised I did, at such older age. It has nothing to do with empathy, as I falsely assumed in the beginning. Synesthesia is about perceiving things around using different senses than you normally do. This is something that you can also achieve through LSD usage, but it's not always the case. This ability can also be innate. In other words, one with synesthesia can be seeing music or hearing colours. For example, you can listen to a word and think that its colour is purple. In my own case, I am a synesthetic person, mainly concerning music. For example, when I read a book, quite often I can hear it, meaning that I sometimes hear melodies in my mind. This is something that occurs to me when I walk in nature too. That's why I can write music in a somehow automatic way when I am thinking of some story, a framework or when I am exposed to a picture. A few years back, I had once challenged myself on purpose, placing a book of pictures on the piano. I was trying to play this picture in music. That's what synesthesia is all about.

The title of the album was The Voyage and it was quite obvious where this came from. And after that, we were about to start a long tour. We were planning to do something really extraordinary this time. Uaithnia would do a common tour with Alexandria. We would divide the show into two parts and we would include an intermission. During the first part, Uaithnia would play The Voyage in its entirety and after the intermission, Alexandria would play their songs too. It was necessary for us to play the whole album because the songs were connected. The album seemed like a very long song and the ending of one song was the beginning of the other, except for the first track, which, as I said, starts from its ending.

The album was released on February 26, 2026, and our tour started instantly. I can say that it got positive feedback and for the first time Uaithnia started to become more popular. My main band had always been Alexandria, while Uaithnia was nothing but an experimental rock project, which my sister, Johanna, and I had both formed during my teenage years. However, after The Voyage, not only did we get more fans, but we heard many people say that they didn't like Alexandria that much, but Uaithnia were a wonderful band. The truth is that Alexandria is a simple prog rock band, while Uaithnia is doing more cinema-like and experimental music.

My mum liked the album too, even though it was about LSD. Mums are not always that excited when their children are interested in that stuff. But I had talked to her about synesthesia before. I was so happy to have realised I could achieve that too because this way I had understood what makes me write music. And the good job I did, because being able to compose music too, I'm not just a plain writer, but I can also put some colour to my stories. (Oops! I just made an indirect reference to synesthesia).