What about that collage? That video? The photoshoot. The video editing.  I’d rather read. The lazy option. But it’s such a good book! I’m not that lazy. Wait, I am. Am I a lazy person or a lazy body? My head keeps going. Even asleep. No wonder we get tired.

Maybe if I accomplished more. When in China I shall photograph all those small moments. Tomorrow I’m shopping. Bras to keep my breasts in place, pills to keep my bowels.

Norway’s too small, too insignificant, despite it’s wealth. Comfortably unnoticed.

The only people who notice our little country enough to want to bomb us are ourselves. Fear us. The people who live here are the only ones who can really think of Oslo as a good target. 600 000 people.

The tiles in the ceiling jumped, the glass panes, in the doors that I spend so much of my time guarding, clattered, the doors practically flew open, despite being locked, the silver cups on  display sang.

I exclaimed something. (Something like: “Det var guffent!/That was uncomfortable!” Before finishing my original sentence.

The silver sang while the rest was silent.

The little man, who had been on the phone according to my control panel, slammed down his headseat and ran down the corridor and leant out to look towards the city centre. The man I had been talking with looked not the least bit flustered and wandered with lazy steps back towards his office.

I shuddered. Suddenly I felt very insecure. A large building with 6 floors -skip? It felt like it had skipped. Just a step. The way I used to half skip when I was younger, rather than run.

Then I watched the news trickle in. And called E to make sure his mother was safe. I begged that it was simply a gas explosion. Then I begged that it was simply some mad man, not a terrorist group that had finally noticed us for long enough to bother. It proves I was lucky. If you can call it that. One single psychopath who managed to create one huge bomb (plus two that were found before they went off) and shot at teenagers as if they were sheep. While enjoying it.

I am no longer sure I am happy that it was all one person, not a terrorist group. A terrorist group would have done it for a reason (that I might understand), such as those stupid Muhammed illustrations, or our participation in some war or other. Hurting people because of that seems more reasonable to me than for the reason that we are too lenient, too open to other cultures, too multicultural.  What kind of bullshit is that?

I didn’t intend to write about all this. But hours of soaking up the news and trying not to think about it changed my mind.

The weather has been the perfect kind of depressing, heavy downpour.

The Second one was more of a hassle. The subway to the end. To a station I’d never been to before. Or the train for  a bit. And then a bus. Either way, a short walk, and then count the identical houses. Rows, then buildings. And cross my fingers after I’d rung the bell. Every time.

Next, it was a different subway line. And then a walk through a valley, and up a trafficked road. Over a pile of snow, later gravel, and then follow a couple of bends and turns. Cross a parking lot, while feeling like I was doing something illegal, and then look through the ground floor windows and look for the mirror and the plant.

Lastly, subway. I’m still travelling in the same direction. Frighteningly similar, yet not the same. Over lapping Venn diagram. Big trees and down a tunnel, under a bridge. Look both ways for the non-existing traffic, then up the road. Smile a the playhouse with it’s mailbox, then check the real mail box before walking on gravel and receiving a welcome kiss.

Now that you’re locked in a room
There is room to assume
You are there for a cause
You’re not sure what it was
When you’re locked in a room

Locked within a room of memory
Locked within a room you stand
Locked up away with no light of day
Locked in a room you begin
To find your way out
You find your way

The house is quiet, except it is not. Because every time it rains you can hear it in a thousand different ways in this house. A thousand-and-ten in the summer when the windows are open, like now.

And I  wait for a thunderstorm because that is my cue to pick up the phone.

My sister moved back to Oslo while I was in Canada. I haven’t seen her yet, she’s in the Mediterranean with the rest of the family. I’m looking forward to finally seeing her on Monday. She brought her violin down with her. Which reminded me that I have my dear violin here in the house as well.

My violin, The Lady, my great shame in life.

I wanted to learn the harp. I begged to learn the harp. From before I could read, I wanted to play the harp.

Allow me to share a bit of Deborah:

Though that’s not exactly what I think I had in mind when I started wishing to play the harp. At that stage, Vanessa Mae was as hard-core as I could get, and her Sabre Dance was too much for my sensitive ears. Enya was to pop-y. Honestly, I did not listen to anything but classical (and Aqua) until I was about 12.

Hottie.

But there were no harp teachers in Norway. Not unless we bribed the harpist in the Oslo Philharmonic. So I started playing the violin.

In the beginning, I didn’t hate it. I brought the instrument home after my first lesson and played through the prep  once, and then told my mum proudly that I had done it. That is not how you do instrumental prep. While for class you have to do all the tasks once and hand it in, here you have to do it daily,  and keep doing it even when you think you know it. (Which is, essentially what you have to do for school as well, I mean, you’re supposed to know it, but it did not feel quite the same.)

It must have taken me at least four years before I started enjoying the violin. And then another year before I could sort of read sheet music.  l liked the orchestra. Not when I played the third violin. Why choose to play the third violin, then you might as well play the viola or the cello? But once I played the second, it was fun. I wasn’t the main focus, yet essential. Once I moved up to play the first violin I freaked out a little. (Only the name is enough: “Concertmaster”. During concerts they are all looking at you, I promise.) Nor did I feel that I deserved to be the “best” violinist there, there were others who I’m sure were better than me.

In the UK, I had a lovely  teacher who made me laugh. My lessons there were more social than musical. And the orchestra had a brass band section, which meant we played other stuff than just classical. Somehow, lead violinist does not seem so bad when all you can hear are trumpets.

And then, when I moved to Bristol, I met this man:

He is a fantastic violinist (and viola-player). He made me cut my fingernails with paper scissors and was a bit too blunt for me to handle. He simply did not understand the idea of playing for one’s own pleasure. I hated concerts, I hated solos, I liked orchestra rehearsals where everyone could put down there instruments after a piece and smile to each other while giggling about how they all messed up the same three bars. Then one day I burst into tears on my way from my music lesson to ICT, and the icy (Snape-like) Dr. Lewis had to make sure I was okay. I decided that I’d rather not play the violin anymore.

And for years now I have complained about how I quit. I used to tear up a little and feel immensely guilty every time I heard a violin, simply because I knew that for every month I forgot how to play it just a little bit more.

I tried playing it. It sounds like a  bunch of dying cats imitating  a suffocating cow. Then I tried again today, I warmed up for quite a while, and then played to my hearts content. #-s are still stuck in my fingers. I like that.

If I wanted to, I think I could pick it up again. Relearn what I knew and then learn more, improve my sight reading and perhaps grow a little less tone deaf.

Tempting.

I went to a lecture by Dancer this morning, which was really just about his experiences as a Graphic Designer. It was really interesting, and quite cool to see all of the logos he’d designed that I see every once in a while…  He focused a lot on strange little habits that he had when he was young, and how he used those skills now. It made me wonder whether I have any such habits.

I dreamt that I was playing the ukulele. I was going to bring my uke home over the summer, but in the end I decided to prioritize and bring my cameras. After all, I can spend the (time that I have over the) summer playing the guitar. So it’s not like I have no instrument at all. Not to mention that I would love to pick up the violin again, but I probably wont. At least not just yet.

I am now doing everything for the last time while living in halls. Which is quite nice to be honest. Last time I washed the bathroom earlier, last time I hovered, last time I cooked a hot meal. Last time I shower in a bit. Have to get up early to move my stuff over to the new place. I wanted to do it today, but I need my towel and bed sheets tonight, so I’ll stress for a bit tomorrow.  Though I have lots of time, really. Picking up my grades tomorrow. Then there is the last ever Design BBQ in our studio (we’re moving to a new building)  which I sort of wish I could have gone to. But I would much rather be on my way back to E- ehr, Oslo.

The sky outside is beautiful right now.

I find it funny how missing people works. At first, it was a constant ache. Then it started to fill the creases when I do not have so much other stuff on my mind, or when I am on my own. Some days I might feel like there is no reason to get up at all, and then pay it no attention at all until I settle down for the evening when it returns. And then there are the days when I have so much to do and all I really feel like doing is being somewhere else. Against those days when I have so much on my mind yet I love it all and wouldn’t swap it for the world.

Long distance because you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing is hard.  But I guess being someplace you do not want to be must be much harder.

Time to shower in that shower for the last time, and then sleep in that bed one last time. I don’t think I’ll be missing this place. Not much, anyway…

And I could write a list of happy things but I’d rather have a shower.

Officially moving tomorrow. Aka: The guitar is being moved.

One of the judges for an earlier exhibition was Morten Krogvold (Omafagah!)  so I got quite excited. I will not mention Juvenarte again unless the incredible happens. Which I doubt.

Meant to post this last night but then my net broke down. I woke up this morning very aware that I made a very stupid comma mistake in my submission text. As in one of those amazing ones that makes the sentence mean something entirely different. I guess I can claim it to be wordplay if it ever comes up in the light of day again.

And on my way home I migth see a lady attacked in an alley and then the robber running for it while dropping his gun and I might pick up the weapon used only to panic and drop it back to the muddy ground again. And once I return home I realise what I have done and get all paranoid about finger prints. And I dare not leave my little room for days and I suffer from paranoia and panic and claustrophobia and and then I start writing a book about myself being stuck in this little room and then I go mad.

Or I might just spend the days doing whatever I feel like while slowly, but surely, packing up my things to move into a nicer place than here.

• Eivind
• Meet up with old friends
• Meet new people
• Read lots of books
• Drink Baileys coffee on the roof  (terrace)
• Walk outside late at night (Ask me one thing I do not like about Glagow: how people generally agree that a girl cannot walk outside after dark.)
• Not wear shoes.

*List is incomplete.

Today, I pretended to be all mature and grown up. We went to the estate agency and signed contracts. I had chatted with the father earlier just to get a clue sort of things I ought to pay attention to in the contract. No insurance, and we can be kicked out at any time. Not quite what I was told to request, but it wasn’t as if I could ask to rewrite the contract either, and really, it all seemed very sensible.

Because it is the 17th of May, (I had a flag pinned to my lapel, just as I used to do on my school uniform. Nostalgia. At FSM, the three Norwegians there (My brother and I and one other shy boy) had to stand up in assembly and sing “Javielsker” while the school watched with blank faces. At Clifton I ran about handing out flag coloured ribbons to practically every girl in Oakeley’s House. I remember finding it quite amusing how most of the 60 girls thought of it as something sacred and special and wore the ribbons for weeks. And my physics teacher told me off for making the girls wear ribbons that were not the colour of our House, which I thought was silly, as we already the house colours on our ties. And I remember meeting a boy who was half Norwegian and used my nationality as an excuse to ask me out on a date. I said yes and then changed my mind when he said Starbucks.) we thought we’d socialise with other Norwegians. Got as far as hearing them coming down the road singing and drunk before I knew that what I had pictured in my head was Nordic people, not Norwegian people. There is a huge difference, strangely. (Another thought I had was that when I am out and social among Scottish people, I feel so much more comfortable, simply because Norwegians are too tall. I have to look up all the time.)   So we went and ate fantastic burgers that made me realise that I make very little food when I cook for just myself. Four hours later, and I am still too stuffed to think.

Lately, (that’s a lie, more like most of my life) I’ve started day dreaming about how I would like to furnish my new room. (I am woman, yes.) In my head I live across dimensions, in one I live in a little cottage with wicker baskets and linnens and plants and jars and dusty books. In another I live in a clean 60s flat with s p a c e . I want a full length mirror (I saw a gorgeous one in a second-hand shop the other day for a painful £145.) And I want a standing hamper. I want a large bookshelf with doors on the bottom shelf. I want two desks, one for practical work and one for digital work. And I want a yoga mat. And one wall to be made of white-board material that I can draw on and stick things to. And proper speakers.

But plants are silly because the flat is left empty weeks at the time (I’ll get a cactus.) and a white-board wall is not very probable.  I think I might focus on hamper, mirror and bookshelf in the first place. Even so, I am very excited to get out of here. Simply to live with fewer individuals each one with their quirky plans and arrangements and likes and dislikes.  Though it is not all negative. I like how Johanna took the initiative to “decorate” yet I think I might have prefered less gross furniture and penis decorations and more space. Less hemp and ashtrays and more cleanliness. Fewer rusty metal objects that she could use for a project some time.

Spent the last hours Photoshopping on my SelfNeg, very excited to see my result on Friday, I hope I end up with something I like. Not as excited for having to have prepared my portfolio of the last two months by 5 on Friday afternoon. (Though, that does mean I am free to do whatever I want after that point.)

I had life drawing today. Amongst many other things. It was odd. The life drawing studios are absurd, fenced off little segments of the incredibly pompous McLellan Galleries, so it is all plain and white and echo-y until you decide to try to track down the toilets. Which can be described as no less than an aventure. There is a double set of pompous marble stairs and chandeliers and echo-y, marbled corridors in all directions, and it is all empty. It’s such an incredible place. I want to do a French Revolution RPG in there.

So there we were, hanging about waiting for the model to turn up. And then she did. And she was apologising about the traffic and her skin looked as if she’d smoked constanly since the day she learned to talk and she seemed pretty stressed out and rushed through the room and out the back. And people exchanged looks. I think most people were a little relieved that we’d be staring at boobs rather than a penis.

And then she walked back in wearing only an unbuttoned shirt, and no longer looking shy or self conscious, not even trying to be modest. And somehow, it was much less awkward with the little lady walking about about practically stalk naked, than it was when she rushed in with her clothes on and everybody silently wondering what she did look like underneath the clothes.

I have done nude life drawing once before, and back then everyone would giggle in the beginning and blush when their pencil got to the awkward bits.

Today was so different. It was incredible. I wish I was better at drawing. Yet, the atmosphere was intense. Everybody was so caught up in the work and within five minutes the model was no longer a person I might run into on the street, but simply this beautiful creature that I had to study and try to understand how worked. It’s hard to explain. She had beautiful shoulders. And yet, meanwhile, I kept wondering why she would ever end up as a nude model. As a easy little occasional side job? Is it selling her body? Is it selling her body if she does it for the kick of being admired by 20 beauty-seeking art students? Is it degrading or is it an ego boost? I definitley admire her for the guts to simply being able to drop her clothes and do ballet-like poses every minute.

And the two and a half hours that I have been dreading passed so quickly. And I got along surprisingly well with the tutor, something I would not have expected. (Considering how tutors tend to like the person skilled in the subject…) But I guess my, what can say, slightly callow attitude to my work was appreciated by a guy normally working with Master Fine Art students, now seeing a room full of stuck up 1st year design students who cannot draw for the life of them…

I got my feedback for my rubber band project earlier this morning, I have never recieved a better response from Dancer. When Dancer disapproves, he stands far away from you, as if the fail is contagious. Today, he was practically rubbing himself up aganst me. (Creepy. Yes.) It was so bad that I ended up trying to crawl up on the desk behind me to get a bit further away from him… It was extreme. But I decided to look at the positive side of it. He liked it. (Yes, that. xD)

That was an art rant.

Exactly a week today until I need to have completed every-fucking-thing for my year 1 assessment. After that, I shall pack, spend a weekend in a castle by Loch Ness, sneakily looking for Nessie over my book, move, receive my grades and fly back …home. Home is where the heart is? Nevermind that, back to Eivind. And my family. And Holiday. Sleep now.

The other night I dreamt that my eyeballs were sliced open. Which is one messed up dream. But then we  are all rather messed up when it is socially accepted to dream that you are losing your teeth or standing naked in public on a regular basis.

I am mostly carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Yet, when those elements are combined in a slightly different combination you get ethanol which when consumed breaks down social awareness slowly but surely until you end up discussing whether your aesthetic skills make you better at fucking.

Here, I wrote a rant about alcohol and society, in which I ended up arguing that I ought to start smoking weed as well as drinking. And it was all logical. Honest. So I removed it. Because I’d rather not convince myself.

I think going paint-balling or rafting or sailing or to a bouncy castle everytime I’m stressed and sick of my current project might be just as good a solution as drinking.

And I am so frigging sick of my current project. Please bring cake and pick me up in an hot-air balloon and take me to Africa to go white-water rafting.

And my page views have gone up a lot. No wonder really, as I have posted more than two posts this month! The thing that puzzles me is that I have barely got any clicks and yet quite a few page views, which means all the visits are intentional by someone typing in the url to my blog. Well, welcome back, you.

Today I learned that I look like a spastic when I am having a good time and talking and being myself. How: I filmed myself through an entire conversation. I look insane. But I’m fine with that. I look very happy too. So I don’t mind. Will put it up on my Tumblr in a couple of days, probably, as primary research for my Articulations project. I also updated my online portfolio, to make me feel as if I was working while not actually doing so. I did work a little though. I will do a lot more tomorrow.

Other things of importance that I did today: yoga and boil eggs. Not at the same time. Not do my laundry. And not spend even a penny. Watch forty minutes of Mary Poppins.

I went to the Necropolis today. It was incredible. I wanted to have a look inside the Cathedral as well, but I never know with places like that. Can one just walk into a cathedral? I didn’t dare. So I looked at tombstones. according to Wikipedia there are more than 3500 monuments there, and more than 50,000 individuals (only appropriate word I could think of…) have been buried there. Yet it didn’t feel even slightly morbid in the evening sun and cherry blossom and perfect grass with spring flowers all around. It’s all set on a hill. And there are paths going up and down, some with fences and railings, some not. At one point, I realised that my vertigo has gotten worse over the years, I was practically clinging to the wall, despite the path being wide enough for three people before a drop dooooooooooooown onto more tombstones and spiky monuments.

I photographed quite a bit, though the light was tricky, either perfect sunlight, which  makes tombstones very flat looking, or against the sun, which means ISO up to extreme and the sky being all washed out.  But RAW is magic. You can get the sky back in. Sometimes, at least. RAW is magic.

I walked around for a good two hours. In the evening sun. There were some other people, but not many. It was wonderfully perfect. I’ve not felt quite so much at peace ever in my life. Never. During those two hours I was not worrying about a single thing.

And then it hit me that I should probably go home,  I’d rather not be in a graveyard, even the most fantastic graveyard such as this, after dark. (Strange phrase, come to think of it. It’s during dark. Not after dark.) Go back home to my room with most of my possessions and no people, (flatmates have all gone home for the Easter weekend. Not that that would make much of a difference.)  and sketchbooks and projects and guitar and uke and books and bed.

And then I had the most fantastic daydream. Fantasy. Whatever you call it. I daydream quite a lot. But not normally as vividly as this. I could practically touch it. It felt as if I’d remembered a different life from what I am living now. An alternative one. I cannot explain it. But it was so real. (It might still happen.)  It made me want to sit down and cry. I didn’t. I walked home. Feeling better than I have in a long time.

Graveyard meditation. I might start doing that actively.

Coming to my senses was like swimming upwards in a deep, cold pond. A dead quiet pond in the middle of a deep dark forest. It’s strange, how I remember it so well, I thought I was dreaming about a couple of people in my class  just before I opened my eyes  (the water still in my eyes and ears and rushing through my hair)  to see those people standing around  looking scared. And I thought “euugh, just a minute longer…” as if I had slept for a decade and now ought to wake up again.

The whole thing was much less humiliating than I would have thought. After I started feeling better people were joking how I ought to do that whenever a class gets boring. A nice little lady-like faint, with a man catching me before I hit the ground. Which is apparently just what happened. I don’t get it, there were people between me and the guy who caught me, yet he got there in time. He was recognised as a proper man and a hero by Andy, our tutor, later that afternoon, and refered to as “He Who Catches Falling Ladies” for the rest of the day. I, however, was poked and prodded repeatedly the entire day to “make sure I was still with them.”

And now, I might move back onto a topic wich was raised very often by myself during my early days of blogging. The Darkroom and Photography department. Because I love it oh so much. So much that any member of staff there seems funnier and nicer and better human beings than most other people in my school. So much that I would gladly spend 8 hour days in school everyday, as I did today, in there, rather than those 4/5 hour days I tend to have in the studio. And, to make it better, there is so much there that I do not have a clue about. I have still to learn to use the studio lighting, and the copy room, (a room which purpose I haven’t the faintest idea, even after having seen two people working in there.) colour processing and developing, not to mention dodging and burning, we ran out of time before he could teach us that.

Hoping I will faint less and work more tomorrow.