A sky photo of a small part of my hometown: Sigtuna

I got a sudden urge last evening to go out biking. The time was around 19:10 and I knew it would be light outside at least for a couple of more hours. Now, I live in a small town - a really small town. For some of you it would appear a village. It’s called Sigtuna and sometimes it strangles me. It can feel like a compartment, although at the same time giving the comfort and security in being the one and only town I’ve ever lived in for my whole life. Since there’s no use sitting around at home, playing games, blogging, browse music online and in my music library, getting out and walking and biking can be the only way out, so to speak, when all friends are gone and absent for the moment.

It might seem dull. Sigtuna isn’t exactly the town where things usually happen. But tonight I discovered what I on the other hand knew for a long time. Sweden may be dead in the winters - that’s another discussion - but it sure is vibrant with life yet in harmonic peace at the same time. Swedish summers are awesome but nothing beats the spring!

The trees are in full bloom, smells of flowers mix with the distinctive and warming ooze from the barbecues of the evening throughout my ride. The sun comes in from an angle that rarely blinds you and gives mother earth a comfortable light setting. It’s warm but refreshingly windy. If I hadn’t had my ipod plugged into my ears via the Sennheisers, I would’ve heard the birds chirping.

I ride for nearly two and a half hours. And all along I have some of my favourite music playing in the ipod. Being some sort of hipster (I guess) and listening to the music I listen to, gives me the feeling that I alienate myself from the rest of my local community. I feel unique, not lonely, but alone. And riding the bike through a glorious spring landscape, mixed with more urban parts in which new buildings I’ve never seen the completion of have been fully finished, to the sounds of Nordpolen, Jonathan Johansson, The Tough Alliance, Jens Lekman and Familjen, I realize something interesting.

Some of the (mostly the electronical) music I listen to wants me to live in bigger urban areas, it’s just the nature of the music, not the intention of the artists who created it. This is just how it looks in Sweden. “Cool” city people know the “cool” music, the “right” music, the indie/alternative music scene. “No one” else does. Speaking generally I mean. Because then there’s me. I’m just the free-spirited youngster who has dawdled away 17 years in a little hole, one of the finest holes of Sweden considered by many, and I have to agree, but still I get blind in front of my home surroundings sometimes.

A sky photo of fields in the areas surrounding my hometown: Sigtuna

So as I rode their, through pure forest parts, through newly built areas I haven’t seen and to me well known neighbourhoods, through plains and fields that might scare any foreigner to believe that they are lost in the middle of nowhere to the sounds what by some are called “hipster music”. And to me it just feels so right. I love mornings and evenings. Everything just seems a lot calmer and more beautiful - more true. Dashing down a hill like a rollercoaster vehicle, working my way up another followed by exhaustion, the sun is setting and turning the sky a heart-warming orange and pink. The music fit so good together with the picture I saw in front of me, the almost art-y picture I was riding through. And it hits me that everything is totally OK. I forget all troubles and as I look at trees’ silhouettes against the setting sun, I sort of get a perspective of what’s truly important in life. I pass people with hard faces, troubled faces, or just indifferent faces. And I feel like I’m soaring high above them. I don’t feel like that now, I think. I feel fine!

I realize that this is how most of Sweden is. It doesn’t matter how deep in Stockholm or industrial Linköping or inner city Uppsala you live. You always have a close access to a variety of summer fields, lush pine forests and countryside landscapes wherever you turn, it’s just round the corner. You just need to search and you’ll find it very soon. This is unique for Sweden I think, and that’s what tourists and foreigners say about it as well. They are terrified that the taxi driver is kidnapping them to a hideout in the middle of the forest when they’re actually heading to central Stockholm from Arlanda Airport. This is actually a true story!

Anyhow, I suddenly come across the thought that I have all the right in the world to be proud of my country and of where I live. Yes, I live right in the smallest town and yes it is trapped inbetween the lake Mälaren, forests and various fields. And it just happens to be so that I also have access to a more than decent broadband connection and hence also access to the world. God knows I won’t be stuck here forever, I’m a world citizen at heart. But right now I’m a smalltown hipster and what’s important for me right now is to ride my bike among summer fields and through pine forests to the music that I love.

Familjen knows a thing or two about smalltown life - he knows where I come from.

Familjen - Hemmaplan

Jonathan Johansson knows a thing or two about that magical deserted sense of dusk atmosphere - he had the perfect soundtrack to my ride last evening.

Jonathan Johansson - Innan Vi Faller

Nordpolen knows a thing or two about the feeling of teen angst, and the hazards of being a young man trying to stay pure at heart in a town you want to leave - he knows a thing or two about me.

Nordpolen - En Meter Under Marken

The Tough Alliance know a thing or two about that special someone - wether you know who it is or will be or not.

The Tough Alliance - Something Special

Jens Lekman knows a thing or two about the opposite of hallelujah - the feeling that there’s not really anything to be depressed about nor anything to shout hallelujah about and not being able to make people understand that feeling.

Jens Lekman - The Opposite Of Hallelujah