Hello all,
Years ago there was a website located at Nordenstam.com
Stina was answering emails of fans and correponded online with her friend Magnus Haglund. Just before the website went offline I decided to save all texts of the Dialogue, as the correspondence was called.
I promised a few years ago to make them available again.
I thought this might be an appropriate time to put the text online. With a new website and a new album in stock, this is something to making the wait a bit shorter.
Please do not respond here. The text can be discussed here. This way the text remains easily accesible for newcomers who want to read this.
The Dialogue (original text)
The Dialogue (original text)
Last edited by paul-pgss on Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Stina, still wondering about the Sadie Plant-quote in the homepagetext.
Mastercopies lose their mastery, and everthing valued for its size and strength finds itself overrrun by microprocessings once supposed to smaal and insignifcant to count - and how it relates to musical matter. Why is insecurty so important to us? And why does it worry us so much when it filters into politics, collective turbulence, mind wars? Could the one be separated from the other?
Best wishes,
Magnus
Mastercopies lose their mastery, and everthing valued for its size and strength finds itself overrrun by microprocessings once supposed to smaal and insignifcant to count - and how it relates to musical matter. Why is insecurty so important to us? And why does it worry us so much when it filters into politics, collective turbulence, mind wars? Could the one be separated from the other?
Best wishes,
Magnus
At 1999-07-16, Stina Nordenstam responded
Dear Magnus, I have been in London for ten days now and I feel homesick. Or, I don't know about home, sick anyway. Bombs going of, in Brixton, I saw it on the news and it was giant nails, a three year old kid got one through his brain. And the meetings I've had... it always start with an hour in a black cab in London traffic - it's like the blindfolding game when they put a blindfold on you and spin you around and around. Again and again you find yourself lost. And then the cab comes to a complete stop and you get out and you walk into the beast's nest and are offered drinks, sparkling or non-sparkling?
For example there was one meeting I had looked forward to with some tension, it was an important meeting. We all get our diet cokes and sit down an he says: I'm a huge fan of yours. I love your two first albums. The third one a bit less... and the fourth ... the fourth was a shock. All those fantastic songs, how on earth could you do a c o v e r s album?
I don't like cities I suppose. I like: fresh air, clear view, efforts waiting to be made. I have no friends here. I don't hang out. I've been very efficient and now I'm off.
Magnus, we need insecurity, like stilts, to stand on. To get a better view, containing all. Remember the word Open in the initial text. It's balancing, in an almost impossible pose. Holding, reaching, trying, in an almost impossible pose.
Best Stina
Dear Magnus, I have been in London for ten days now and I feel homesick. Or, I don't know about home, sick anyway. Bombs going of, in Brixton, I saw it on the news and it was giant nails, a three year old kid got one through his brain. And the meetings I've had... it always start with an hour in a black cab in London traffic - it's like the blindfolding game when they put a blindfold on you and spin you around and around. Again and again you find yourself lost. And then the cab comes to a complete stop and you get out and you walk into the beast's nest and are offered drinks, sparkling or non-sparkling?
For example there was one meeting I had looked forward to with some tension, it was an important meeting. We all get our diet cokes and sit down an he says: I'm a huge fan of yours. I love your two first albums. The third one a bit less... and the fourth ... the fourth was a shock. All those fantastic songs, how on earth could you do a c o v e r s album?
I don't like cities I suppose. I like: fresh air, clear view, efforts waiting to be made. I have no friends here. I don't hang out. I've been very efficient and now I'm off.
Magnus, we need insecurity, like stilts, to stand on. To get a better view, containing all. Remember the word Open in the initial text. It's balancing, in an almost impossible pose. Holding, reaching, trying, in an almost impossible pose.
Best Stina
At 1999-07-16, Magnus Haglund responded
Dear Stina,
Grey weather here, small kids in shiny orange plastic firemen-style jackets playing football outside my window, afeeling of empty vastness, maybe just what you long for, being locked inside that city confusion. To be open in a private way, communicating alongsided other languages lines, not being reachable by standard procedures, by tactics: that's how we enter the future. It seems that the meanings of art are changing now. The word in itself doens't have the same connatations as it had yesterday. Different strategies of opposition seems to be neede, new zones of silences, different forms of non-hierachical thinking, lots of strange experiences. Everyone is a DJ.
And he/she goes by the name of DJ Art aka Passion for complexity.
in sincerity,
Magnus
Dear Stina,
Grey weather here, small kids in shiny orange plastic firemen-style jackets playing football outside my window, afeeling of empty vastness, maybe just what you long for, being locked inside that city confusion. To be open in a private way, communicating alongsided other languages lines, not being reachable by standard procedures, by tactics: that's how we enter the future. It seems that the meanings of art are changing now. The word in itself doens't have the same connatations as it had yesterday. Different strategies of opposition seems to be neede, new zones of silences, different forms of non-hierachical thinking, lots of strange experiences. Everyone is a DJ.
And he/she goes by the name of DJ Art aka Passion for complexity.
in sincerity,
Magnus
At 1999-07-16, Stina Nordenstam responded
Dear Magnus,
The world is most certainly new and keep surprising you by continuing to take new shapes. As an example of this I am now a criminal, have been for a week or so, got busted by the police for doing an overtaking at a pedestrian crossing and they took my drivers license. But of course I can?t stop driving. Driving is so important to me. It?s my way of living. I need to get to places, and away from. Parking the car would considerably affect my sense of freedom, so I choose to become a criminal.
What else is new. Lots of things. I read today in the paper that the journalist Eva X. Moberg had died, not very much older than I am. Though I had no relation to her or her work I became strangely upset. I had to get out of the parked car and throw the paper away in a trash bin. Cancer. I don?t want to die. I hate that I will.
I got lots of scars on my hands. My hands show my age with a striking preciseness. A wound from last nights opening of mail? wounds on both hands from last weeks skiing in Val D?Isere. Scars on fingertips from playing guitar, scars from cooking in Denmark.
Small, slightly brown hands with long ringless fingers. Hands not old but no longer so young. Neglected nails, velvet skin, I love my hands.
What else. The capital is still here. I swim every day. I?m writing songs.
Best Stina
Dear Magnus,
The world is most certainly new and keep surprising you by continuing to take new shapes. As an example of this I am now a criminal, have been for a week or so, got busted by the police for doing an overtaking at a pedestrian crossing and they took my drivers license. But of course I can?t stop driving. Driving is so important to me. It?s my way of living. I need to get to places, and away from. Parking the car would considerably affect my sense of freedom, so I choose to become a criminal.
What else is new. Lots of things. I read today in the paper that the journalist Eva X. Moberg had died, not very much older than I am. Though I had no relation to her or her work I became strangely upset. I had to get out of the parked car and throw the paper away in a trash bin. Cancer. I don?t want to die. I hate that I will.
I got lots of scars on my hands. My hands show my age with a striking preciseness. A wound from last nights opening of mail? wounds on both hands from last weeks skiing in Val D?Isere. Scars on fingertips from playing guitar, scars from cooking in Denmark.
Small, slightly brown hands with long ringless fingers. Hands not old but no longer so young. Neglected nails, velvet skin, I love my hands.
What else. The capital is still here. I swim every day. I?m writing songs.
Best Stina
At 1999-07-16, Magnus Haglund responded
Dear singer-songwriter-photographer-swimmer Stina,
Everyday is certainly not like Sunday, but the sun keeps shining here and has done so for ?bout a week: escapist weather, psychedelic dreaming weather, lights under surfaces, the body sensitive to touch. Yes, hands are interesting. The look of them, the feeling of your own hands, especially in situations of isolation. The word sorrow is, for me, linked to hands. Is it the distance between the hands and the eyes? Or the broken relationship between the body functions and the freewheeling movements of thoughts? The hands are facts, statements not only of ageing, but of memories as well. Are the hands the most poetic part of the body? I remember this strange, strange feeling of waking up in the middle of the night when I was something like eight or nine years old. Everything seemed so distant, so far away. I looked at my hands and they were kilometers away. It made me so sad: the blood pulsating through the body into the hands, the realness of the situation, in fact it was not a dream. A sudden, irrevocable loneliness. I guess there?s a connection to how I perceive the powers of music.
All the best wishes to be found in the world and outside it,
Magnus.
Dear singer-songwriter-photographer-swimmer Stina,
Everyday is certainly not like Sunday, but the sun keeps shining here and has done so for ?bout a week: escapist weather, psychedelic dreaming weather, lights under surfaces, the body sensitive to touch. Yes, hands are interesting. The look of them, the feeling of your own hands, especially in situations of isolation. The word sorrow is, for me, linked to hands. Is it the distance between the hands and the eyes? Or the broken relationship between the body functions and the freewheeling movements of thoughts? The hands are facts, statements not only of ageing, but of memories as well. Are the hands the most poetic part of the body? I remember this strange, strange feeling of waking up in the middle of the night when I was something like eight or nine years old. Everything seemed so distant, so far away. I looked at my hands and they were kilometers away. It made me so sad: the blood pulsating through the body into the hands, the realness of the situation, in fact it was not a dream. A sudden, irrevocable loneliness. I guess there?s a connection to how I perceive the powers of music.
All the best wishes to be found in the world and outside it,
Magnus.
Dear Magnus,
As a child I was very sensitive to weather. Silent winter days with light from a sun that is always low and doesn't warm you. Early summer rain stopping you in whatever you're doing. August evenings, or maybe September, the dry tension, school has started, bicycle wheels in sand, I'm too young and not to young enough to fall asleep just yet.
Funny how we think we invent the world. I could have sworn there was a connection between inner and outer conditions, that the weather was taking place inside of me.
I'm still not sure.
Stina
As a child I was very sensitive to weather. Silent winter days with light from a sun that is always low and doesn't warm you. Early summer rain stopping you in whatever you're doing. August evenings, or maybe September, the dry tension, school has started, bicycle wheels in sand, I'm too young and not to young enough to fall asleep just yet.
Funny how we think we invent the world. I could have sworn there was a connection between inner and outer conditions, that the weather was taking place inside of me.
I'm still not sure.
Stina
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as a discussion should always finish, please find below the rest of the discussion between magnus and stina.
this discussion was called "the first try".
other discussions included:
* the media
* the media, ghosts
* diaries
* writing
* psalms of repentance
* so-so-so-sorrow
but for now they should stay were they are: in the park.
v
this discussion was called "the first try".
other discussions included:
* the media
* the media, ghosts
* diaries
* writing
* psalms of repentance
* so-so-so-sorrow
but for now they should stay were they are: in the park.
v
Last edited by vero on Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Dear Stina, burning sun, glimmering trees, glistening thoughts: the weather works as a memory bank, the child and the grown up change place in these moments of being in-between, waiting for something indefinable to happen, to come through. Like the feeling you write about, riding a bicycle on an asphalt surface with small heaps of sand on an indian summer evening and school to go to the next morning: an obscure loneliness, is someone waiting for me? Am I in touch with the others? City isolation, sensitivity to light while standing there between the suburban tower blocks. I guess this is one of the reasons that your songs connect that strongly to some people in the same time as they express unconnectedness. It?s about physical sensations, the body working as a litmuspaper in situations of risk, uncertainty.
Some weathers never leave you, they continue to shimmer in the body system,
and suddenly while playing the piano, a piece by Schumann or Bach, it all
comes back: the naivety, the yearnings, the poetic openness. It comes with
the hands touching the keyboard.
The very best,
Magnus
-------------------------------------------
Dear Magnus,
I'm going out tonight to see a friend from your neighbourhood, do you know Fredrik Johnsson from the band called Mouth? I'm picking him up in an hour and I keep changing clothes, nothing seems to fit, is it that I haven't spotted the feeling of the moment? First I go more and more well dressed in my choices, then I change track and go back to my favourite cords, then I start all over again. Should we start dress up already for the millenium?
What does the world economy say, about skirt length? Is it spring or perhaps early summer, or still cold in the evenings though the trees are green? And should I go for something new or clothes I know well -
I remember Iris in ""The Blindfold"" by Iris Hustved. She had this thing about colours. One day it was, say green, and then she would dress in green and solely eat green things.
Do you think in the future, we will have less options?
Best Stina
-------------------------------------------
Dear dresser-reader-partygoer Stina, it?s the paradox of our post-modern (or post-post-modern) times, isn?t it: more codes, more complexities, fewer options? So many words, so little to say. Politics turned into flickering, carefully directed television pictures, hordes of Kosovo-Albanians on the run, shell fire over Pristina and Belgrade, government manipulated demonstrations in Beijing, the nationalistic card played out all over: A Don DeLillo-world inside our heads.
Fredrik Johnsson is not a person I know, I have some vague memories of the first Mouth-record, some sort of Sonic Youth-Pixies sound spread over rudimentary bluesstructures, or maybe I?m totally wrong. It?s strange how music comes and goes, how it takes new shapes and suddenly makes learned structures totally out-of-touch with the sound reality. Maybe one shouldn?t bother at all, just continue with ones private interests. But music and art (or should we spell it Music and Art?) has more to do with confusion and non-ordering states of mind, than just doing the expected. Time could be a clue, realisation that my time isn?t your time, that communication is always broken.
The green colour in the Hustvedt-story, it seems to be related to hysteria, a person locked inside her own mindmachine, with no open windows, just mechanical reactions. In other words: just cut out for a career in the media industry.
Just for curiosity: what did you finally decide to put on? What colour? What length? And was it a happy night on the town?
Take care,
Magnus
-------------------------------------------
Dear Magnus
I just had a strange phonecall.
- Is this Stina? It's Michael.
-...Michael?
..Yes, you know, Michael.
-Michael who?
-Bj?rkman.
-I don't think I know anyone with that name -
-Of course you do, from the other day. You said I should call.
-Did I?
-And then you gave me your number.
-I don't think so. There must be some misunderstanding here. What's the
full name of the Stina you're looking for?
-It's..it's...no I don't remember. This is strange. What...what do you do
for a living?
-I'm a singer.
-A singer?
-Yes, what did that other Stina do?
-She was working at a coffee shop.
-Well, I've never worked at a coffee shop.
-Aha. Isn't your number 0708 85 45 33?
-No , it's the wrong number.
-OK, sorry. Strange.
-Yes, good luck.
-Thanks, bye.
I ended up wearing skirt last night, and it was OK. It was neither long nor short. For some reason I felt like a uniformed college girl on the run. I stay inside today to avoid the police.
Best Stina.
-------------------------------------------
Dear Stina,
the coincidences, disruptions and sudden dark waters: it?s fascinating, and quite frustrating, how we immediately read these situations metaphorically, like if Paul Auster was there, making his appearances notable in our daily confused lives. The New York Trilogy had a huge impact on me when I first read it, the books surrounding it, the novel Moon Palace and the autobiographical memory book The Invention of Solitude as well. But then, after a while, something creeped in, a feeling of knowing a bit too much. Like expecting these phone calls to come. Turning chance into a calculated thing. Which it of course can?t be. But fantasising about the other life is an altogether different kind of activity. This other girl, working in a coffee shop, who can it be? Maybe she has one or two of your albums in her own cd collection. Or maybe your songs are being played as background music, while the guests are drinking their caf? lattes and their lime juices? I guess our lives are connected in ways that we can?t control.
The very best,
Magnus
Some weathers never leave you, they continue to shimmer in the body system,
and suddenly while playing the piano, a piece by Schumann or Bach, it all
comes back: the naivety, the yearnings, the poetic openness. It comes with
the hands touching the keyboard.
The very best,
Magnus
-------------------------------------------
Dear Magnus,
I'm going out tonight to see a friend from your neighbourhood, do you know Fredrik Johnsson from the band called Mouth? I'm picking him up in an hour and I keep changing clothes, nothing seems to fit, is it that I haven't spotted the feeling of the moment? First I go more and more well dressed in my choices, then I change track and go back to my favourite cords, then I start all over again. Should we start dress up already for the millenium?
What does the world economy say, about skirt length? Is it spring or perhaps early summer, or still cold in the evenings though the trees are green? And should I go for something new or clothes I know well -
I remember Iris in ""The Blindfold"" by Iris Hustved. She had this thing about colours. One day it was, say green, and then she would dress in green and solely eat green things.
Do you think in the future, we will have less options?
Best Stina
-------------------------------------------
Dear dresser-reader-partygoer Stina, it?s the paradox of our post-modern (or post-post-modern) times, isn?t it: more codes, more complexities, fewer options? So many words, so little to say. Politics turned into flickering, carefully directed television pictures, hordes of Kosovo-Albanians on the run, shell fire over Pristina and Belgrade, government manipulated demonstrations in Beijing, the nationalistic card played out all over: A Don DeLillo-world inside our heads.
Fredrik Johnsson is not a person I know, I have some vague memories of the first Mouth-record, some sort of Sonic Youth-Pixies sound spread over rudimentary bluesstructures, or maybe I?m totally wrong. It?s strange how music comes and goes, how it takes new shapes and suddenly makes learned structures totally out-of-touch with the sound reality. Maybe one shouldn?t bother at all, just continue with ones private interests. But music and art (or should we spell it Music and Art?) has more to do with confusion and non-ordering states of mind, than just doing the expected. Time could be a clue, realisation that my time isn?t your time, that communication is always broken.
The green colour in the Hustvedt-story, it seems to be related to hysteria, a person locked inside her own mindmachine, with no open windows, just mechanical reactions. In other words: just cut out for a career in the media industry.
Just for curiosity: what did you finally decide to put on? What colour? What length? And was it a happy night on the town?
Take care,
Magnus
-------------------------------------------
Dear Magnus
I just had a strange phonecall.
- Is this Stina? It's Michael.
-...Michael?
..Yes, you know, Michael.
-Michael who?
-Bj?rkman.
-I don't think I know anyone with that name -
-Of course you do, from the other day. You said I should call.
-Did I?
-And then you gave me your number.
-I don't think so. There must be some misunderstanding here. What's the
full name of the Stina you're looking for?
-It's..it's...no I don't remember. This is strange. What...what do you do
for a living?
-I'm a singer.
-A singer?
-Yes, what did that other Stina do?
-She was working at a coffee shop.
-Well, I've never worked at a coffee shop.
-Aha. Isn't your number 0708 85 45 33?
-No , it's the wrong number.
-OK, sorry. Strange.
-Yes, good luck.
-Thanks, bye.
I ended up wearing skirt last night, and it was OK. It was neither long nor short. For some reason I felt like a uniformed college girl on the run. I stay inside today to avoid the police.
Best Stina.
-------------------------------------------
Dear Stina,
the coincidences, disruptions and sudden dark waters: it?s fascinating, and quite frustrating, how we immediately read these situations metaphorically, like if Paul Auster was there, making his appearances notable in our daily confused lives. The New York Trilogy had a huge impact on me when I first read it, the books surrounding it, the novel Moon Palace and the autobiographical memory book The Invention of Solitude as well. But then, after a while, something creeped in, a feeling of knowing a bit too much. Like expecting these phone calls to come. Turning chance into a calculated thing. Which it of course can?t be. But fantasising about the other life is an altogether different kind of activity. This other girl, working in a coffee shop, who can it be? Maybe she has one or two of your albums in her own cd collection. Or maybe your songs are being played as background music, while the guests are drinking their caf? lattes and their lime juices? I guess our lives are connected in ways that we can?t control.
The very best,
Magnus