Henrik Carlsson's Blog

All things me.

Lost Art

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I just fell upon a trailer for a documentary on the tv show Lost on YouTube and as I glanced at the comments the black hole opened up. ”Great show, terrible ending.” ”Worst ending of a show ever.” ”The creators should be sent to prison over the ending.” (Yes, that was an actual comment.) And so on, and so forth.

I was really into Lost when it started and I kept watching up until season four, I think, then I stopped and later got back into it via the DVD box sets. A year or two ago I rewatched two or three seasons but it’s been quite some time since I’ve watched the whole thing, so this is not going to be a post about details of Lost. I’m going from memory here so things are inevitably colored by the bit rot the mind. Regardless, in my opinion whatever problem Lost had was not the ending. It dragged in the middle but the very end, in particular the last episode, was great.

But arguing whether the ending was good or not is sort of pointless. What I do want to argue is how much I think we keep missing the point of the art, yes, art, of stories when we keep coming back whether the plot was all tied up, whether there where any ”plot holes” or not, and only judging it by what can be summarized in a wikipedia plot synopsis. If that is all that matters, why even read books? Why watch movies and tv shows? Why not just read the wikipedia page and have time to consume so much more content?

I took special note of a comment from someone who was so mad that the show demanded an ”English major” to understand. Why not just spell it out plainly? At first I wanted to reply to that comment but I quickly realized that that would be pointless, so I started writing this instead.

Maybe I’ve become that artsy fartsy, high brow person that I despised when I was nineteen, but these days I care much more about how a story, regardless of medium, makes me feel and the journey I took with the characters than I do about exact plotting. Because again, if I only care about plot why even spend the time engaging with the story when there are so many great summaries to read online?

Maybe me changing my opinion this way over time is something I should be ashamed of. Maybe I’ve let my past self down. Or maybe it’s a natural part of growing and evolving – after all, nineteen years have passed since I was nineteen – and it’s much worse that so many people seem stuck in their teen mindset. Maybe that mindset and single-mindedness stops stories from being art and instead turns them into more content, more slop for us to consume.

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Achtung Perfection

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In the past I’ve considered myself to be a musician. Even further back in time I considered myself a songwriter. The problem is, even back then, I wrote very, very, few songs and now it’s been a decade since I wrote almost anything. I’ve also completely fallen out of actually playing instruments and my singing voice has deteriorated completely due to it not being used. The only recording and mixing I’ve done in a long time has been as part of various short projects at work. I just seem unable to actually create anything for my own sake, whether just for the pleasure of doing it or for the sense of validation when showing it to other people.

This is something I really want to change. I want to be able to write and record things and to play music. I can come up with multiple reasons why I don’t but in the end most of them are probably excuses and the truth is most likely that my problems boils down to striving for perfection. I want the things I create to be perfect and I know that they won’t be. Hence, I don’t finish things because if I don’t finish it, it can’t be criticized by either myself or somebody else and therefore it cannot be deemed as imperfect.

Again, this needs to change. I need to get out of this mindset and realize, truly internalize, that one finished shitty project is a thousand times better than any amount of works in progress that one day, someday, eventually, maybe will become perfect. I need to push myself into something creative and to decide that it needs to be finished, even if the result is not what I initially wanted it to be. These thoughts have probably been swirling in my mind for a long time but they got much more focused a couple of weeks ago when I watched Yahtzee Croshaw’s Dev Diary on YouTube. In it, and in a lot of his other endeavors, he is very clear about the importance of actually creating and finishing creations if you want to be a creative person. It seems so obvious but hearing him hammer it home and following he’s journey to create twelve video games in twelve months, ultimate quality be damned, lit the spark in me to do something similar.

Now, I’m not going to be developing video games. I’m also not going to try to write 100 songs in 100 days or something similar. What I am going to do is actually embark on a project that I’ve been toying with in my head for way too long. Which brings me to the title of this venture, Achtung Perfection.

Achtung as in U2’s 1991 album ”Achtung Baby”, my absolute favorite U2 album, and one of the greatest rock album ever in my opinion. My project, Achtung Perfection, is me making my own versions of all the songs on ”Achtung Baby”, one song every month. For an album with twelve songs, that means a year long project. Some of those songs will probably have an arrangement and a production similar to the original while some might be quite different. Some will borrow ideas from exiting cover versions.

The idea is not to make a perfect version om ”Achtung Baby”. That is something that I can’t do, simply because a perfect version already exists; the actual album itself. The idea is me being aware of, avoiding, (”achtung” in German means ”attention”, ”watch out”, etc.) attempts at perfectionism. I will make one song each month. Each song doesn’t need to be perfect. Each song doesn’t even need to be good, but each song needs to be finished at the end of each month.

Here’s how it’s going to work

At the end of each month for the next year, at the very latest the last day of each month, I will release a finished recording of a song from Achtung Baby, in the order they appear on the album. I am allowed to think about upcoming songs, but I am not allowed to do any recordings for an upcoming months song before that month starts and the previous months song is finished and published. Now, published can be a relative term and the exact definition here might vary. At the very least, I will put up an mp3 file here on my blog. Hopefully I will manage to get any licensing issues solved (I do have an idea for that) and be able to put them up on YouTube and maybe Spotify or Apple Music or something similar without having them taken down for copyrights violations but that is something that I’ll work on during the project and not worry about now.

Also, at around the half point of each month I will publish a blog post or a YouTube video or something reflecting back on last months song and talking a bit about the current months song, This doesn’t have a set release date but the 15th of each month seems like a good target to aim for.

The first month for the project is August 2024, meaning the project has started and I’ve started recording my version of Zoo Station. When I’m writing these words I don’t yet know for certain if they are going to be published as a piece of text or as narration on a video. If it turns out you are getting these words from a video, you will likely hear some drones in the background that is part of my Zoo Station version. For those of you familiar with Nine Inch Nails version of Zoo Station, this might sound similar to that and that is not an accident. I really like Nine Inch Nails’ take of the song and my idea is to fuse that and the original, flying from one version into the other.

When I started writing this text I had recorded the drones and some guitar and bass. Between the first draft of the text and the publishing of it I’ve also recorded vocals. I’m using a combination of my modular synth and a Korg Volca Modular for the drones. They are not the most spectacular or original drones in the world but I think they will get the job done. The guitars are more or less scratch tracks, but I am well aware that I am halfway through the month now so I need to be prepared to make some tough decisions and keep some things that were meant to be re-recorded so that I actually finish on time.

Will it work? Will it be any good? I don’t know at the moment, but both I and the world (ha) will be able to know on August the 31st at the latest.

I’m looking forward to this project, while also being very nervous . What if all twelve songs turn out to be crap? What if this finally reveals my imposter syndrome to be well founded? Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing!

Or maybe I do. Maybe this will be fun and rewarding. Achtung Perfection

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posted this article on and tagged it with Gear Music

Many years ago now, I set ”The Year of Music” as a Yearly Theme. Though one of the ideas behind a theme is that it shouldn’t really be something that you can fail at I would say that The Year of Music was a huge failure. No new music made, very little music listening. Now, however, the latter part of that is changing.

After many years of indecisiveness I took the plunge and bought into the Sonos ecosystem and I am so glad I did. The idea of being able to fill the house with music, or to have different music playing in different rooms, have been something I’ve wanted for so long. However, even though I’ve considered Sonos – and the Sonos/Ikea products – I’ve always resisted, thinking that there’s got to be a better, less expensive solution that doesn’t lock me into a single company’s line of products. So I’ve kept thinking about it, going more or less deep into various Raspberry Pi-based rabbit holes, never sticking to one idea. In recent years I’ve even considered buying a turntable and getting into vinyl records. I’ve got a MacMini server at home, several speakers – both Bluetooth and wired – and I have some basic programming skills. Surely, I should be able to create the perfect solution. Surely…

Obviously that didn’t happen. Now, in hindsight, I think that is part of why the listening part of Year of Music failed. Friction, even light friction, greatly reduces the chance of something happening. When music listening requires me to connect my phone physically to a speaker, or make an AirPlay connection, and having playback be instantly disrupted whenever a call comes to my phone, making it almost impossible to have a communal experience with my family about selecting the music, and so on, there is great friction making it very unlikely to happen.

So a month or two ago I started seriously looking at Sonos gear. Yes, it cost a lot of money1 but honestly speaking I am in that part of life where I have more money than time so I should at least consider it. Fortunately I spoke to Linn about it. I have a tendency to overthink everything. She is much more spontaneous so she encouraged me to go ahead and buy a speaker or two, or why not even three. Thank you, Linn! :)

Finally, I talked to my old friend Johan who’s been using Sonos for a long time and he’s recommendation was the last push I needed so I bought two (yes, two) Era 100 and one Roam 2. I’m using the Era 100s as a stereo pair in the kitchen/living room and the Roam as a portable speaker, wherever I might need it.

It has worked great, both as an interconnected system with the same music playing in the kitchen as on the backyard patio – or when I’m writing this among the flowers next to the green house of the front side of the house – as well as a system for the kitchen and a separate speaker for separate music somewhere else, for instance when my daughter brings it out to the trampoline in the back garden. The fact that each speaker is ”smart” enough to act as a music player, that no phone or other device is required during playback is such an important feature and makes it miles better then any Bluetooth or AirPlay speaker.

In the end, the friction of listening to music is minimal and the result is that I indeed listen a whole lot more. Sometimes it’s to music that I really like, sometimes to music that someone else in my household really likes, but there is always music in the air.

  1. I try to separate ”expensive” and ”costs a lot of money”. The former is when more money is spent than what is reasonable on something. The latter is for things that have a high price tag but that provides something that lower cost things don’t. ↩
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posted this article on and tagged it with Movies The Shining

🎞 Watched: The Shining (1980)

Two nights ago Linn and I watched The Shining and I’ve recently finished the book. I have mixed feelings about this movie. I’ll get back to this soon, I hope.

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I’m so fed up with content

posted this article on and tagged it with Black Mirror Content Handwritten Subscription services TV shows

Linn and I have started watchning the latest season of Black Mirror. (Season 6, I think.) So far we’ve only seen the episodes ”Joan is Awful” and ”Loch Henry” and I think both were good.

In the past I’ve thought that the problem with ”Black Mirror” is that it’s rarely as clever as it thinks it is.Its good ideas have usually been explored better in earlier works of sci-fi and it has this air of baby’s first dystopia. Two episodes in and I feel that this problem is less present in this season, even though the meta narrative stuff they’re doing at the moment are balancing on the edge of becoming masturbation.

But I’m not here to complain about Black Mirror. I’m here to complain about Netflix.

The problem isn’t the service Netflix, it’s the Netflix apps. They’re just so noisy. When I want to find something to watch I want to browse a list of recommendations, of I’m searching for something specific and want to see the results of a search. Netflix does present a list to browse but doing so is like browsing a minefield. Whenever I stop the cursor for just a second to read something or look at a poster, the thing I’m currently highlighting starts autoplaying.

I’ sure there’s lots of data that suggests that this maximizes the consumers engagement with the content. But I don’t want to consume or engage with content. I want to watch a movie or a tv show. Sometimes to relax and to take my mind off of things and sometimes to challenge myself to new ideas and perspectives!

When I finally find something to watch in this endless sea of content to consume, if that something is a tv show the next annoyance shows up.

”Skip intro”

I HATE the ”skip intro” button. If what I’m watching is something that’s really meant to be watched for its artistic merits, the intro is part of the experience. The director and editor has crafted the pace of the film (or show) with the intro in mind. Is sets the tone, tells part of the story. The ”skip intro” button just tells me that I should rush past this boring thing and get to the content.

And then, after I finished watching an episode of something, enter the stress again. As a movie or an episode ends I like to remain immersed in the world I just visited and think about what I saw while the credits roll. Oh now you don’t, says Netflix and starts pushing the next thing. If I want to stay with the credits I have just a few seconds to find the remote and quickly tell it that yes, I’m actually watching this and I want to continue doing that.

Why, Netflix, are you so afraid of me actually getting a few seconds to think? Are you that worried that I’ll realize that so much of what You present to me are just meaningless, artless content meant to distract my mind and keep me subscribed?

Post scriptum: The rest of the season was good as well.

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Threads

posted this article on and tagged it with Handwritten Social Networks Threads

I wrote this headline in my notebook a few days ago, thinking that I should collect my thought on Threads under it. Up until now the page has remained empty. The thing is, the more I think about Threads the less I care about it.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re on Threads and you are having a great time there then good for you. The same goes for having a good time on Instagram, TikTok or Twitter och Reddit or whatever. People having a good time on (or off) the internet is a good thing. I’m not here to say that Threads is meaningless or uninteresting on an objective level, just that it’s uninteresting to me.

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Seveneves

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I’m currently relistening1 to Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and just like the first time around I really like it. I have been falling behind on books lately but this past weekend I felt like listening to something and I was completely burnt out on podcasts so I decided to go back to this one. It’s so grand in scope and such a thrill-ride and then parts of it is, despite it’s dire subject matter, sort of a cozy book to me. Yes, the situations the characters are in are terrible and they have to make some tough choices but is competent people making the best out of their situation, solving problems as they come up. That is apparently something that really speaks to me.

I started listening on Saturday and today (Wednesday) I finished part two of the book. Oh, speaking of nothing in particular in the book, this post will be full of spoilers for the book. The intended reader is somebody who has read the book, or who doesn’t give a shit about being spoiled. Alright, moving on.

As I was saying, I finished part two of three today and I haven’t started on part three yet, so anything I write about ”5000 years later” will be based on my memory from my first time through the book. That being said, I think the first and the third part are the best ones. The second part drags from time to time.

Part One

The first part is just fantastic. The opening is great. I quoted and raved about the opening sentences on my first listen of it but it’s not just those lines. The first couple of chapters are amazing. It draws me in from the first sentence and then keeps it up, without it feeling ”cheap” like som page-turners can feel. The way the ending of one section can so nicely translate into the beginning of another, even thought the latter one is from the perspective of a different person and/or some time later gives it a really nice flow.

There’s also a clear way that things are heading. Maybe not as clear as a goal but at least I as the reader know that we are moving toward The White Sky and The Hard Rain and that everybody needs to to everything they can before those events.

Part Two

I’ve been thinking a lot about part two during this listen. I don’t really have a problem with long asides about orbital mechanics or other things. On the contrary actually, I love those asides in novels. So that’s not the problem with this part of the book.

Also in my mind, part one goes on up until Dinah telegraphs repeated ”QRT QRT QRT” to he father. To me, that’s where part one ends and part two begins.

I think the problem with part two is two-fold. It doesn’t have as clear of a narrative goal as part one. It feels like there’s a continuous struggle to get somewhere, but where that somewhere is isn’t quite clear. At times that makes it extra tense, which is good, but at other times it feels like it’s not really going anywhere.

The second problem is that it’s in part two that the main characters makes some really stupid decisions, decisions that feels out of character for them. For the first part of the novel people make the best they can out of a terrible situation, and they do it by making rational choices. Sometimes the choices are hard to make, but it’s still rational. In the second part, we have the situation with J B F.

When she shows up at the Cloud Ark, it’s in clear violation of the Crater Lake Accord. The clause about no world-leaders being allowed to be sent up seems like such an important one. Her role wasn’t to escape to orbit. Her role as president was to die with the people. Since she cowardly abandoned that, when she asked permission to come about Ivy should have declined. Yes, that’s grim, but so is nuking people the way J B F did, though given the circumstances, doing that was the right choice.

Failing to decline Julia, once she has been allowed to the Ark, once all hell has broken lose, and once Aïda is calling asking to get back to Endurance, the answer should once again have been no. She and the other’s chose to leave the Ark and to go on their own so F off and good luck.

Obviously I’m writing this with hind-sight but my memory is pretty clear on me feeling this on my first go through the book, when the situations first unfolded, as well.

And again failing that, once there on Cleft holding The Council of the Seven Eves, how, HOW can they allow Aïda and Julia to be part of the future of the human race. I get that killing them, a quarter of the human race at that point, would have been a really hard decision, but one that Tekla was ready to make. But they wouldn’t have had to do that. Let them live, but don’t assist them in having children. Particularly Aïda is so clear with her intentions, letting her build her own clan when the others could have just as easily refused her seems so illogical.

That being said, without these choices there wouldn’t have been a part three. And I love part three. Well, I loved it the first time around. Let’s find out tomorrow if I still do.

  1. I have a really hard time deciding whether I should call it listening or reading, when I’m not the one doing the actual reading of a book. ↩
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posted this article on and tagged it with Drinks and cocktails snapshots

Happy National Martini Day! 🍸

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Coronaförnekare på lista – regionrådet: ”Oj” — FaluKuriren

Dalarnas sjukvårdsparti släpper alltså in personer på sin regionslista utan att ens googla personen för att se vad hen står och argumenterar för. Det är så beklämmande slappt.

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Midnight Swim

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Tonight (midnight between the 31st of July and 1st of August) was the ”Midnight Swim” here in Sundborn, where a bunch of swimmers swim from the damm next to Carl Larsson Gården upstream to the church and then back downstream again. It seems to be an annual thing and I heard about it last year but was too tired to check it out, something I regretted the day after when I saw photos of it and read about it in the paper.

So this year I decided to go regardless of whether I was tired or not and I’m so glad I did. It was really cool to see the lit up buoys (the right word?) that the swimmer dragged with them in the dark, and the speed they managed when they headed back downstream was simply amazing.

Here’s some photos:

The last group of swimmers (the fastest ones) starting their journey.
Resting and gathering the group back together at the church, before turning back downstream.
High speed swimming downstream, closing in on the finish line.
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