About those who actually make movies...

To me good directors are those who can capture the essence, i.e. emotions, lessons (though not a fan of movies that "send" moral lessons) of the story, transform it into pictures through which, deliver the message back. Great directors though, are those who not only can do that, but also have a truly unique vision on how they portrait the story. So that what we got isn't only the story, it's the story seen through their minds eye. There's a lot of movies that left me thinking about the lines, the characters, etc. but only a few left me lost for words, simply because I wouldn't know where to start, the story, the hue, the sound, the light, the cutting, the fade-in and fade-out, the sense of space, etc. Good directors make us feel, great directors overwhelm us.

Dreams

Ah, the first entry here that's actually posted on the day it's written.

It struck me around a week ago (somehow the thought of marking down the exact date just slipped away from my mind, not that it really matters, it'd just make this look more like a diary entry), in the middle of the night, and I figured out what's behind our dreams. Not their meanings though, if that's where you're going. What I mean is, I figured out why dreams are often so absurd. It was the strangest experience trying to think while you're half asleep. Those thoughts, in daylight, would be shut tightly inside my brain as easily as holding rocks with my hand. At night though, it's like trying to keep sand from running through your fingers.

Anyway, here's what I came up with. Each of our thoughts/emotions/events/predictions/fears/etc. is stored in tiny little dices and every face represents a specific detail, like ppl's names or faces. If you're a happy person, you'd have about a thousand dices of joy, about the same amount of hope, and say maybe a handful of sorrow. If you're anything like me, the melancholy's compartment would be the most fertile. So what would happen every night, only the moment you're about to fall asleep, is that someone would pick out a handful of dices from your little head, like how one picks different veggies to make a soup, roll them and there's a dream already cooked up for you. That's my way of explaining why you would see your highschool friends at your elementary school, but the clothes they're wearing is from a Chinese movie.

Heartattack In A Layby

"Elle est incroyablement belle et triste. C'est extrêmement déprimant.[...] Elle est sur In Absentia. Elle parle d'un type qui rentre chez lui en voiture mais qui s'arrête car il sent une douleur dans son torse. Le matin il s'était disputé avec sa femme et il se demande comment il va s'y prendre pour s'excuser. Mais, il ne réalise pas qu'il est en train de mourir d'une crise cardiaque.[...]"

Nuit et brouillard

Well, I don't even know where to start 'cause I'm still trying to catch my breath. If I have to pick one film that awakes all sentiments (probably excluding joy) in me, this would be it. It only lasts 30 minutes, but disgust, horror, sorrow, rage will come back whenever I think of those images. Halfway through the film I found myself wanting to throw up, and the next thing I know my eyes were swelling with tears. By the end here I am staring at the black screen in disbelief. I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think I would ever be able to watch it again.

 "The crematorium is no longer in use. The
 devices of the Nazis are out of date. Nine
 million dead haunt this landscape. Who is
 on the lookout from this strange tower to
 warn us of the coming of new executioners?
 Are their faces really different from our
 own? Somewhere among us, there are lucky
 Kapos, reinstated officers, and unknown
 informers. There are those who refused to
 believe this, or believed it only from
 time to time. And there are those of us
 who sincerely look upon the ruins today,
 as if the old concentration camp monster
 were dead and buried beneath them. Those
 who pretend to take hope again as the
 image fades, as though there were a cure
 for the plague of these camps. Those of
 us who pretend to believe that all this
 happened only once, at a certain time and
 in a certain place, and those who refuse
 to see, who do not hear the cry to the
 end of time."

Untitled

"Sunday, May 27, 2007

Rough times = Productive times Yeah, I'm writing and it's going well. I've always been extra productive when there's a big change in my life. Sure, I write a lot of shit as well, but the way I see it is you gotta wade through some shit to find the pearls. I've deleted a few dozen ideas from my harddrive because they're not on par or better than the best stuff I've got so far. Yet, the perception of what's "shit" as in "bad music" differs radically from person to person. So I guess the worldwide response to the next Opeth record is going to be a "masterpiece that fucking sux".... I'm a musician and I will always be a musician. Opeth has been the vehicle for my musical experiments for a good 17 years. I will forever be attached to that name and I wouldn't have it any other way. Opeth Mark 264758 consists of five guys who all have made up their mind a long time ago. We're musicians, whether it's with Opeth or something else, that fact will always stay the same. It troubles me that out of all our past members, none or not many of them have continued with music as far as I know. I haven't heard from Lopez in a long time, I don't know what he's doing but I hope he's playing. DeFarfalla is a politician, Nordin is an aspiring long distance cyclist, I think David Isberg might have something cooking...don't know excatly what though. Fuck knows what the rest of em are doing but they're not playing as far as I know. It's like their idea of being a musician died when they parted ways with this band. With that said I have no bitterness or resentment towards any of them and I sure as hell wish them the best of luck with whatever they're doing. I'm just slightly surprised, that's all. I hope Peter won't follow that trend.... Yes, speaking about Peter.... I hired him as a bass player for a gig (with Asphyx and Desultory) in 1991. We've been friends since the 80´s and we knew we'd play together eventually. His band at the time were rehearsing next door to us and we're basically a three piece then consisting of myself, David Isberg and Anders Nordin. We got a guy playing guitar for that gig so that's why Peter played bass. He soon switched to guitars. We had the same ones actually, Yamaha's...kinda shit guitars but they looked alright....he had a black one and I had a white one with blood painted on it and a Samael sticker below the bridge. We met up several times a week and just played guitar for hours. Most of the material for the first record was written in my boy room in Hagsatra. Not a day goes by without me thinking about those days. I miss him, what the fuck else can I say? Yet, it's how it is...I'm sure good things will come out of this. The reactions to these news have been mixed but rather calm and "good". I understand the sadness you feel, but it's quite heartwarming to see that most of you are welcoming Fredrik Åkesson into the band. He deserves it! He's a marvellous guitar player, really! Great guy too, we hang out a lot, at least once a week When I'm not hanging out with him, Mendez is... Musically I will just continue to write music as I always have and I hope to have some contributions from the other guys as well. We don't feel like stopping just yet. As long as we feel that we can pull out a few cool tunes I think we'll try and have them recorded and released. I mean, I'm still fucking excited about music, being in this band and all. I still giggle like a fucking kid after I've come up with something that sounds cool. Myself and Jonas Renkse are talking maybe 10 times a day, playing new riffs through the phone. He's writing for a new Bloodbath and a Katatonia record and...yeah, it feels like the old days when we didn't do anything else than write and record stuff. With all the shit that's happened to this band lately I can't help but to feel psyched about the future. And my belief in this band and its music is as strong as ever. As usual my "blog" (Do we have to call them blogs?) is disjointed and might be hard to understand, sorry about that guys. I've been asked by many of you to say something about the whole Peter matter so I just wrote this down. So now you know, kinda, what's cooking in my stupid little head. Thanks for giving a shit about us! Take care Lasse Micke Åkerfeldt" Source: http://blog.myspace.com/mikaelakerfeldt

Been Smoking Too Long...

Sunday February 17, 2008 - 07:50pm (PST)

"Um, good evening...or should I say, good morning. The time is twenty-five to five, and I've been sitting here for some time now, actually...(?) from a party which I quite enjoyed, but you know, it's... One has one's reservations when one has quite enjoyed oneself, but one has to make reservations because, um, the people were particularly interesting. In fact, there wasn't as many people there as I expected there to be, it was, I thought...you know, the Maynard-Mitchells have a big, big 'do', in fact there weren't nearly as many as one might have thought, which was, which was a pity.
In fact, I think I must have drunk a lot, or although it seemed so, at the time I felt myself quite sober, but when I leapt into the car to drive home, after my merry abandon, I found the task extremely difficult. And it was extremely fortunate that, um, there was nothing else on the road because, looking back at it, I seem to remember I had a mental brainstorm, and I didn't realise at the time, and I think I drove the whole way home on the righthand side of the road...which is something, of course, which comes from driving in France too much, which is what I've been doing recently, as you probably know...driving in France, you know. And in moments of stress, such as was this journey home, one forgets so easily, the lies, the truth and the pain...and so I'm wavering from the point...
What I was trying to say...um, when I sat here I had an extremely pleasant time on the piano actually. I was playing the piano and sort of singing, and I rather fear I may have kept people awake upstairs...one hopes not, but it was pleasant, and it's extremely pleasant sitting here now, because I think there is something extraordinarily nice about seeing the dawn up before one goes to bed, because there's something uncanny about it, when it suddenly becomes light, because one connects darkness with going to bed, surely...um, and when one is still up when it becomes light, and it's a new day, and you still haven't gone to bed, to sleep, because the night equals sleep, so easily, and when one is still up when the new day begins, it is something of an (achieved?) experience, I always find.
I can look out of the window now, and that tree over there is green, whereas before one goes to bed, just when one goes to bed, that tree should be black, surely. Everything should be black before one goes to bed, but that is surely the essence of the romantic.
Anyway, I think I'm straying from the point. I shall probably stop now because, um, if I don't I shall start sort of surrealating on life histories and things, which will be frightfully tedious. So it's here that I'll sort of say good night, you know... Good night." - Nick Drake

----------------------------

Something very strange grew in me as I was reading those words. Fragile words.

Ba'o lu.m

Wednesday October 24, 2007 - 08:31pm (PDT)

I was doing laundry, down in the laundry room, of course, when I found a box of magazines that someone threw out. Guess what was in there? Metal Maniacs with Opeth, and Unrestrained with Dark Tranquillity on the covers. Both of them are pretty old, 2005 issues, but who cares, I haven't read them yet. Whoever threw that out, I want to know him/her!

The Metal Maniacs magazine got one of the most hilarious photo of Opeth I've ever seen, besides the "highschool boys" one, of course. Wanna see? Here it is ! It's not so clear, I know, but look at Peter's posture LOL!!!!!!!

Damn I miss Peter!!!

Some other funny Opeth-y shits I found in the mag:

"I didn't think I was into children, but now when I see a kid, I'm all gooey." - Mike A.

Now I see what SW meant when he said Mike didn't know the song titles til the very last minutes before the release, cause apparently, he used to call "The baying of the hounds" as "Uriah Heep", "Beneath the Mire" as "The Russian", and "The Grand Conjuration" as "Evil Frost" LOL

The original pressing of Orchid featured a blue disc print. Peter Lindgren on the mysterious blue disc: "We wanted the orchid on the CD, but the CD plant told Lee Barrett it wouldn't fit, so he had to come up with sth else. So, he chose blue. When we received the CD, we were like, 'it's fucking blue!' " LOL, I actually laughed out loud!