The sublime circle of family communication*

*Interview that never made it to Scandinavian Man (stavning?). Questions by Stefanie Ravelli.

So I've read that the song you are going to perform at Radikal Salong "När min son fick cancer" is originally a note you found at your fathers home. Is the song about you and when you were sick or a song about your dad's feeling about you when you were sick? Why pop song?

Well, it’s about his feelings, and somewhat surreal interactions with other people, at the time when I was ill. It was actually quite heart breaking to read his poem because… I don’t know… he always had such a big but silent heart and I was very selfish when I had cancer. Selfish and ungrateful. Don’t get me wrong, I think I had the right to be like that. When you get cancer, especially in your early teens, I think it’s a basic human right to hate the world and everybody around you. But I often took it out on my father. I was mean. It was so easy for me. Like a grace from God. I could somewhat disappear for two years in bittersweet daydreams of dying, I didn’t have to do anything besides get in the car, lay in different beds, throw up, eyeball hospital clowns… but he and my mother had to be there, live trough everything, and keep working, paying bills and manage other peoples pitiful reactions at the same time… I really admire them in retrospect. I was a spoiled brat in a sense, a spoiled sick martyr brat.

And for the pop-question: I love pop music, and there should be more pop songs about cancer. The only cultural phenomenon Swedish cancer kids have right now that depicts them, that they can mirror themselves in, are a prize gala event for comedians (Barncancergalan – det svenska humorpriset). It's perfectly possible to do charity work without pissing in the cancer kids faces like that.     

You found the note on a piano... is it a coincident that Isak created this piano melody for the song? 

Maybe my father wrote it as a song for piano from the beginning, I haven’t dared to ask him. I’m afraid he’s going to cry if I do. But Isak Sundström is truly one of my favourite living artists, he always has been, since I heard the Skriet song “Fåglarna” for the first time. And he plays the piano. It felt natural and dignified and just right. And my father plays the piano as well. So maybe we can go on tour. I can't request that from Isak. Maybe me and my father could go on a crying tour with just one 10 minute long cancer song. Hooke me up with Luger someone. 

I'm curious about the chat you and Isak had when you discussed Ola Julén.

A lot of top-secret show business related things were discussed. I can’t elaborate on that. But let me say this: I always admired the inherent determination in eating yourself to death.

Why did you stole the note? And what did you father said afterwards? 

I just couldn’t ask. So I stole it and posted some fragments on Twitter. I knew my mother would see that, because she is my most devoted follower. And she would tell my father. And he would be okay with it. I think he is. The sublime circle of family communication. When he heard it on Spotify he called me and said that he was surprised, because he "likes Isak Sundström”. 

Emanuel told me to ask you this, so despite the fact that I'm afraid to ask you this: Would you have come to heaven if you died in cancer? 

That is a lovely question. I think that I would have, yes. I would have been a saint. But now it’s to late. Now we're all going to hell.

Radikal Salong is a salon for contemporary artistic expressions, where people and ideas get a unique opportunity to fusion regardless of genre and generations. How come you joined in? 

I have very little integrity and I’m awfully bad at saying no. But it’s also nice with salons in the city. Cities needs more salons.

The program of Radikal salong is assembled by an art council consisting of, besides yourself, curator Alida Ivanov (Bohm Bohm Room), publisher and Editor Emanuel Holm, in cooperation with Johan Wirfält and Eva Kopito from Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. How do you put the program together? Is this council like the new "cool" Akademin?

I’m not sure if I was supposed to answer this question, but we use the underrated concept famously known as “brainstorming”. I once wrote a poem in which I stated that “everything is allowed in love and war and brainstorming”. That was a bit silly of me, to write that. Svenska Akademien will always be the “cool” ones as long as there’s money, I guess. Maybe there shouldn’t be money? I'm brainstorming right now, fuck. Fuck my life. My performance on Radikal Salong 2.0 will be my farewell, my swan song. After that I’m going to retreat from the council, but I will return as an adorable part of the audience. The tickets are really cheap. I love the audience. Spring is coming.