tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40106184053003700442024-03-14T14:17:56.244+02:00Astrid Swanher musical lifeAstrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-45789023689436716952023-10-23T15:08:00.000+03:002023-10-23T15:08:48.467+03:00New address<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ81nEHxB7mMlKm2Ht92Kc4_MNr6siMM6Y7mDBZOEe5BxvZ6dXhxo1S-s6couH1MEbbSsFifNTy8kuA8yWVdv-nYv0s5kdKNWEwZeHyu3OGiNHJNSG7XpMgx-MXszd_s9OWzeyDcW3CDBBuHGgrBDn18oW22UxQk077votMMCXwLqtPhDAxkq3mJrXvNg/s4032/IMG_7686.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ81nEHxB7mMlKm2Ht92Kc4_MNr6siMM6Y7mDBZOEe5BxvZ6dXhxo1S-s6couH1MEbbSsFifNTy8kuA8yWVdv-nYv0s5kdKNWEwZeHyu3OGiNHJNSG7XpMgx-MXszd_s9OWzeyDcW3CDBBuHGgrBDn18oW22UxQk077votMMCXwLqtPhDAxkq3mJrXvNg/w480-h640/IMG_7686.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><br />I have moved to a new location online. If you want to find me, <a href="http://astridswan.blog" target="_blank">go here</a>. <br /><br />Astrid<p></p>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-91529157403079729302023-05-16T14:39:00.001+03:002023-05-16T14:39:21.593+03:00Angels of Our Digital Heaven<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM1V00rjmbv8VLSg1Lig83U4ewn8ZmrvgkfNZB5ULGNn--8TG_IGk4TeAM0qjAVUQ04kT1KxOfnaKk90o23PaIBZ9C8bpmo1o4Ghg3PMv_7rTgJnOBweqIFh8vkltubajf9zwEghjRY4NtufU3sqM6tRTvdTqV2WpiYmi250qQHKOL7LUdqCUYbkML/s4032/D38DF3BB-B6D9-4E72-BAB7-8EFF166A3A93.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM1V00rjmbv8VLSg1Lig83U4ewn8ZmrvgkfNZB5ULGNn--8TG_IGk4TeAM0qjAVUQ04kT1KxOfnaKk90o23PaIBZ9C8bpmo1o4Ghg3PMv_7rTgJnOBweqIFh8vkltubajf9zwEghjRY4NtufU3sqM6tRTvdTqV2WpiYmi250qQHKOL7LUdqCUYbkML/w480-h640/D38DF3BB-B6D9-4E72-BAB7-8EFF166A3A93.heic" width="480" /></a></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>Shift</b></h3><p></p><p>I don't have a plan for (not) writing on my blog and I don't strategise about publicly addressing this messy thing called life. I undulate between exposure and hiding. These are some facts: blogs died a long time ago, kinda. Now they are an active yet historical node in the digital atmosphere. This online address is a little formless: not just a songwriter blog nor an illness blog and it is definitely not a mommy blog. Still, it is all of these and more. Over time accumulation shapes the archive. In my manner of upkeep, it is not a reflection I like, but a sedimental creation and I am the author. It's out of my control. It's a thing I want to leave and a thing I come back to. I am also a researcher of blogs, digital mothering discourse, and illness narratives. This place is almost most obvious for my existence. Yet, I have never fully committed. My digital participation over all is a little too porous to create the desired sticky effect. </p><p>Last week a watershed moment occurred for marking digital/material time. It is not a platform thing or a code or an app thing. It is a human thing. I am talking about the death of Heather B. Armstrong/Hamilton @dooce on May 9th, 2023. She was in many ways the creator, originator of the online self-narration that we now take for granted. She was the OG "mommy blogger" or just BLOGGER with Dooce. She was also the first "influencer" and while she was popular and successful, she was also much hated online. What ever our feeling about her, Armstrong/Hamilton was one of the very first to blog about her experience of life in the mess of it unfolding; mental illness, alcoholism, postpartum depression, divorce and so on. Specifically, she addressed these issues while discussing mothering as her situated experience. It was infectious writing predicated on self-exposure. A creation of a vulnerable digital self that is entangled with her followers. Reading <i>Dooce</i> often feels like trespassing, like I should be shielding myself from taking in her words, because they leak. </p><p>Whether I enjoyed reading <i><a href="https://dooce.com/" target="_blank">Dooce</a> </i>is beside the point. In digital networked reality, she was one of the people who epitomised a particular variant of gendered online culture. Her death draws attention to the limits of what is achievable via giving every bit online or creating and sustaining oneself via digital means of publishing. Digital life writing or online superstardom do not shield anyone from loneliness. In fact they may compound loneliness as the experience of a sharp split between the embodied and the virtual. In the days following Armstrong/Hamilton's death, online communities have also dedicated time and effort in expressing their hatred for her. This makes me wonder, how much online hatred in all its forms compounds material struggles such as mental health and isolation. Hatred, like love is easy to dish out online, but receiving it is a different kind of experience.</p><p>Vulnerability is a digital asset. We have cultivated the idea that by self-exposure we can avoid or lessen damage to self and others. This tenet has entangled itself to countless social media cultures from wellness to human rights and anti-racism. Its long shadow is the anonymous hatred online. Under the sentence "sharing is caring", we are invited to tweet and story our most shameful and painful moments with a promise of... what? Maybe, we have believed that by posting, following, commenting, reading and discussing we cultivate communities and hold people and culture accountable. Or that at least, our existence is <i>known</i>. We have imagined digital life writing and social media as an affront to suffering alone. Simply put, the logic is: the more likes, the less alone I must be. But accessing digital vulnerability, while it may generate actual money and amplify the theoretical possibility of (dis)connection, doesn't often materialize as hoped. Heather B Armstrong/Hamilton's death is a crack in the faultline. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>Exposure</b></h3><p><i>My ability to publish about personal suffering does not make it go away.<br />My exposure isn't met with just kindness.</i></p><p>The fault is not just in how we perceive the digital, but reaches into all kinds of media and expressions of the self. Vulnerability is a prerequisite in art and to some extend a necessary part of being alive. There is a lot of interest in the therapeutic value of creativity especially when works address adverse experience or trauma. The assumption is that the author is helped/healed/therapised in the process of life writing (see definition of life writing <a href="https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/what-life-writing" target="_blank">here</a>). Simultaneously, critical perspectives view art made about experience in the category of "therapeutic" and therefore less valuable. This is despite the fact that nearly all art in any form throughout history has some personal motivation of experientiality in the background. It is impossible to come to formulate questions and topics without a self as a sieve. While writing a blog as much as a poem can become an essential part of someone's survival in the moment, the creative act is not in itself a way of healing or a port where others wait. Something hungry and perverse awaits in this medicine instead: <i>the audience is there for your demise</i>. <br /><br />Writing social media updates about relapses or books about experimental depression cures, penning songs about the fear of death and performing them to an audience doesn't cure cancer or suicidal ideation, nor does it ease the pain of side-effects or pre-empt the loss of those who remain. In fact, it is just a way of making products out of the experience. Sometimes, it is this fact that the so-called trolls wish to point out. </p><p>Conversely, at other times, the depicted process of writing and publishing does appear to give meaning to hardship. Publishing, visibility and fame are balm to the wounded whose fundamental belief about themselves is <i>nobody loves me</i>. But most people are not influencers. Most people's content is seen by no one because it gets buried by the algorithm. The internet isn't a democracy and it doesn't love you! It wants to mine your data and point out how wrong you are. <br /><br />Years ago for a brief interval there was traffic on this site. People came to read about me scrambling with metastatic cancer. Diagnosis was a moment of shock through which I wanted to write. Writing was a familiar method. Yet, I was torn. Publishing unnerved me. In fact, large amounts of readers made me feel exposed instead of supported. I felt like I owed something to the invisible audience. I owed them access to a story. What's more, yellow papers wrote articles based on my blog posts and published my Instagram pictures without my permission. Headline: tragedy approaching! What was established felt counterintuitive to what I was attempting in the moment. Now, four years after publishing my memoir <i>Viimeinen kirjani: kirjoituksia elämästä</i>, the book has become a strange measuring tool against which to examine my life. often, I feel like I am unfaithful to my own narrative just by being alive. </p><p>In writing this blog and the memoir, I needed to be visible in the hesitation. I yearned to exist despite the grip of the unknown. A sense of marginality mixed with urgency is the basic soup of the feminine trying to leave her mark anywhere. Sometimes I think that we reach for the easiest method available to us and pretend it works. </p><h3>Heart Emoji</h3><p>Reading online comment threads is like deciphering a cacophony of misdirected intimacies and declarations of grand public proportions. I am rarely in the mood. If the online audience is there to wait for the other shoe to drop, are they really <i>there</i> when it does? It seems not. I think that in those moments of life (and the event of death) the digital world splits sharply from material existence. And at some point, when such a real and time-cutting experience as someone's death is made public, the most common response on social media is a red heart emoji. No words, just love from strangers in the form of a heart. What a reduction of complexity. Such an insufficient expression in the face of a mysterious void. The other thing that quickly occurs are arguments within comments: just hours after Armstrong/Hamilton's death announcement on Insta, some people wrote on the comments that she had it coming. Others told those people where to go. Some wished well for the family grieving their loved-one. Others commented on their comments that a woman this ill should never have been allowed to procreate, let alone publish a blog. On it goes as if the commentators are unaware of the public nature of their condolences and criticisms. On it goes, as if other people are merely a fiction in the digital atmosphere. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Death of the Author</h3><p>It's time to admit that digital platforms are ill-equipped to produce human care that leads to easing of suffering and material connection. At least it is an unreliable way of producing any of these. Instead, the digital produces an avalanche of performative care, forms of affectual performance and commercial success/failure. Keeping affects circling is not enough. </p><p>The last post <span style="font-family: inherit;">published on <i>Dooce</i> ends like this:</span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://dooce.com/2023/04/06/youre-the-one-that-i-wanted-to-find/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-size: 13px;"><blockquote><blockquote>Here at 18 months sober, I salute my 18-year-old frog baby, she who taught me how to love.</blockquote></blockquote></span></a></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-size: 13px;"></span></span><p></p><p></p></blockquote><p>It is a love letter to the author's children. It is also a riveting check-up on the challenges of sobriety. Now, it almost reads like a goodbye. </p><p>Death is the ultimate raw-flesh frontier of digital life writing. I don't know what the difference is between reading the blog of someone's clinical depression and suicidal ideation or the posts of someone who knows they will not heal from their terminal cancer. Is it a degree of posturing in relation to the inevitability of death? Should death always be a surprise or never be a surprise? What should be the feeling of those left behind? How should it be expressed? <i>How do we grieve for those we have</i> "<i>followed"</i>? </p><p>Last year's deaths of famous "cancer influencers" Nalie Agustin in Canada and Dame Deborah James in the UK (women who published online regarding their lives with metastatic cancers and gained huge audiences in multiple media) brought me to think about dying and the digital. I will be writing about it in my new research, but want to mention two things here: <br /> a) Not just embodied suffering but death itself is a commodity online. Dying can be tied to products sold for profit as narrative but also as almost anything material: t-shirts, mugs, books, clothes, flowers to name a few things. For example: a woman stuck in her hospital bed in the last months of her life can be sent make-up and clothing by brands that she will then––as a kind thank you––feature in her stories that are watched by millions of people. <i>In the face of helplessness, we like to buy things. </i>And in grieving our own approaching death, we may engage in the activity of buying and selling.<i> </i><br /> b) <i>Grief of the dying</i> is a complex concoction of emotions and cultures. It is packed full of everyday-ness and interruptions, crying fits, desolation, depression, longing and love, whip cream and candy wrapping, dance clips and champagne on empty stomach. What constitutes grief in this? Is it the tears, just the whip cream or the goo they make together? What about the grief of the followers? Is it real, or jut virtual? While "consuming content" online are we accessing grieves of our own?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>Archival Annexation</b></h3><p></p><p>Before I publish and this post becomes another cut in my own time (one I may regret later), I want to think about the archive as a location or a collection that is supposed to contain us and translate our existence. We have all become archivists. Should we continue this way? The digital is imbued with a yearning to become a ghost. One programmed to elongate a self's presence through non-presence. Conjuring up generational bonds, we exclaim on book dedications and blog summits and academic presentations that it's all for the kids. </p><p>But is the exclamation "I am leaving this for my children," actually bullshit? Is it really going to be good for my children that when I die, they can turn to my memoir or my songs, research or diaries? Am I conflating the obvious traces of my published and unpublished efforts with an offering because it justifies my choice to spend life this way? Are we really writing and publishing to get closer to the beasts that share our homes on daily basis and who depend on us for safety and nurture while being intimately familiar with our faults? When exactly is the moment that I want my 20-something child to spend a weekend with my most popular work? When should they uncover my diary from 1995? What should they make of my secrets and spelling mistakes? Should they read the reviews and the nasty comments too? It would take a life-time to weed through the archive. I don't what them to do that.</p><p>For the first time, I have seen that my children's lives are <i>their narratives</i>. Entirely their own. Already happening. Already full. When I catch a glimpse of their lives, as they present them and allow me to see, I cry. </p><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Real AF</h3>I am not calling for the end of anything. I am not predicting doom. I am asking for you to consider that your digital participation is as real as can be. I am asking you to pace your existence online as you do otherwise. <i>I am asking us to be responsible in our (non)participation</i>. <p></p><p><br /></p><p>PS. Olin maaliskuussa vieraana Ylen ohjelmassa Flinkkilä & Kellomäki. Ohjelman voit katsoa <a href="https://areena.yle.fi/1-63695825" target="_blank">täältä</a>. </p>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-72249237540763887962022-07-04T17:21:00.000+03:002022-07-04T17:21:52.722+03:00D/other, live shows & life<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcnO_aI2aH88tXKd4l-50_VXr2g2TYFS4Y_XMbrQJCVPCHP8YomO5pyyuiBooN4asF47yDxn4oKYVi4h5b3hbBE9JMt84MU9gGEnxysBDFNrjyNqj3-mL9ZUDMP0GqKTbOnHq3FjtiZJKONaEYWTCYRjeaPDNlQki9Es06bt-ExUfWf6cM5JbNV5vL/s1800/566EE965-89A9-4FDB-A3A6-2D23C58CEB82.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="1440" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcnO_aI2aH88tXKd4l-50_VXr2g2TYFS4Y_XMbrQJCVPCHP8YomO5pyyuiBooN4asF47yDxn4oKYVi4h5b3hbBE9JMt84MU9gGEnxysBDFNrjyNqj3-mL9ZUDMP0GqKTbOnHq3FjtiZJKONaEYWTCYRjeaPDNlQki9Es06bt-ExUfWf6cM5JbNV5vL/w512-h640/566EE965-89A9-4FDB-A3A6-2D23C58CEB82.jpeg" width="512" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture from Sideways 2022 by Johannes Salomaa.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />It's been almost exactly ten months since <i>D/other</i> came out in October 2021. The time has been layered with lovely concert hall shows, the despair of cancer and its gruelling treatment, disappointments and fear with Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, worsening health and the preparation to die and then, the hopefulness of new medication, better news, rescheduled shows, spring time and summer time with some festival specials. In the richness of life at its best and worst, it has been a struggle to know which story to tell––which ongoing narrative to hold in silence and which to share. So, while I have been writing future works to be published, and while I have performed the <i>D/other</i> songs together with my lovely band, I have shied away from telling my story at present. </p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ph9hVt2iwo70foNYr7AcfVCNCfyZveQNWJ1Puzw78w77rtvXMI4MX2QwShpT-q_ei-zQlKdpQU_MfFlklJPRNxaBGDiF13IBn0nCaF6NUK893NObPJBytW0qG22IzpFUoQ4obBnM6hEimOVxKfyD5Qz5fKr5psvxwn8EZXJgz3Lhfky_9RW1ZHvX/s1024/93D9D4B6-9A52-4809-8DC9-3EE5EF6204F5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ph9hVt2iwo70foNYr7AcfVCNCfyZveQNWJ1Puzw78w77rtvXMI4MX2QwShpT-q_ei-zQlKdpQU_MfFlklJPRNxaBGDiF13IBn0nCaF6NUK893NObPJBytW0qG22IzpFUoQ4obBnM6hEimOVxKfyD5Qz5fKr5psvxwn8EZXJgz3Lhfky_9RW1ZHvX/w640-h480/93D9D4B6-9A52-4809-8DC9-3EE5EF6204F5.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GLiveLab in Tampere, June 11th. (thank you for the photo to the audience member)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Last September I defended my dissertation becoming a Doctor of Philosophy while in October I published <i>D/other,</i> my seventh solo album. In the same month I also began treatment for brain metastasis that continued to grow. The new drug was my last hope. Other available medicine struggled to pass the blood-brain barrier therefore doing nothing to prolong my life. It was a shred really, a long-shot, a wishful medical gesture that held little promise in my situation. I was lucky to receive access to a new medicine that was proposed to revolutionalize breast cancer care for my specific cohort. I thought it best to give it a try so as not to leave any unturned stones, but held little hope for any effect. In the past years, nearly all of my cancer sisters had died and I was preparing to. This meant that my priority was putting my energy into realizing the autumn album release shows in concert halls around Finland. Performing the shows gave me life, its joy, richness and meaning. Still, by early January I felt so ill from the treatment, I almost wished it wasn't working, so I could give it up. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGtGFJhn65wPEBggG78k5zUnpHdxJXR9gIt_WY0SIAqkScQCRhiWZXt-LdoOWjhWQl8xXcEwMInj47nsVpYcb3vqCSgupVCziGqRHi8aca2xNe6_A7jMc_Yq6QFbDlSQxTOES2Z1dQAV-piQimmVwDHC-wSSlfYluOEiQWL4-BSXy-GiOivhOAOO0p/s2048/580BBD7E-06DA-4207-85A3-57541395C6A5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGtGFJhn65wPEBggG78k5zUnpHdxJXR9gIt_WY0SIAqkScQCRhiWZXt-LdoOWjhWQl8xXcEwMInj47nsVpYcb3vqCSgupVCziGqRHi8aca2xNe6_A7jMc_Yq6QFbDlSQxTOES2Z1dQAV-piQimmVwDHC-wSSlfYluOEiQWL4-BSXy-GiOivhOAOO0p/w480-h640/580BBD7E-06DA-4207-85A3-57541395C6A5.jpeg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GLiveLab in Helsinki, March 2022</td></tr></tbody></table><br />It was then, a few weeks before I turned 40, that I got the news that my cancer was stable. I then went on a break from treatment and rediscovered my appetite for food and for life. I celebrated forty and my child celebrated 10 years on this earth together. Slowly, as I healed from side-effects I began to make plans, to dream and to write in my journals, notebooks and various documents on my computer. I proved to myself that I hadn't been depressed, just beaten by the new miracle drug washing through me every three weeks. I didn't give myself much of a horizon then, but I did begin to live in the year thinking of summer, imagining some distance of time where I might still exist. It is a tricky business learning to live with a realistic understanding of the limits of my time here and to make space for the uncertainty that comes with the understanding. The uncertainty means that I might remain longer than expected. But it also means, that I might not. <br /><br />At some incoherent moment in time, I had a sense that my preparation for death was over, yet I just wasn't dying. I no longer felt desperate for support and understanding. I no longer cared to complain about the unavailability of any reliable professional support in my situation. I felt bored by the subject. Just then Covid-19 measures re-closed what had been opened and I recuperated in the heart of winter, waiting it out like a timid sprout under the snow covered ground. It was a long winter with a low hanging gray sky. My emptiness and unsureness was budding into dreams, plans and pages of writing. I was practicing for new shows, and when they got moved up, I played freely around what I had loved a long time ago, connecting with old strands that were there, waiting to connect to me. Being 40 didn't mean what I had imagined it might: the heaviness of the ground, loss and finitude. Instead, I began to play with the idea that 40 might be a beginning. A beginning of what?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOBRUcASySMq3bageD-rdRwwCLnl-UYvdLLzzQIM32pmzP5KpC_O3gSz7__xvknL54CdO_o1diA2_oRRJZbrLKn0tuKlYxoC1pEnXJgCe69S-slJDYjWybvIytPXjyPKPi9IBAXFaXqz3RCKZfTyjXzYigcSor8K5OSOh_uK0DDAEWSks8hmUwZWtG/s8583/ETUKANSI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="8583" data-original-width="8583" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOBRUcASySMq3bageD-rdRwwCLnl-UYvdLLzzQIM32pmzP5KpC_O3gSz7__xvknL54CdO_o1diA2_oRRJZbrLKn0tuKlYxoC1pEnXJgCe69S-slJDYjWybvIytPXjyPKPi9IBAXFaXqz3RCKZfTyjXzYigcSor8K5OSOh_uK0DDAEWSks8hmUwZWtG/w640-h640/ETUKANSI.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div>In April I got the news that the cancer in my brain had begun to shrink. Tumours were visibly smaller than in the winter. The news was not a complete surprise because I was feeling so good. Despite my having suffered through a Covid-19 infection in late March, I felt healthier than I could remember. I sensed that had the medicine not worked, I would have by now fallen under the spell of serious side effects. Or, I would have fallen straight into my death: Last breath, boots still on, unable to call for my own ambulance. But I was here. Even back on the poison that was healing me by poisoning my body, I felt different than in the fall; I had hope. <br /><br />Now the medicine that I had expected to disappoint me was evidently beginning to take effect. This knowledge created a lightness in me. A space inside that was filled with Nothing. A new space, a new possibility. An unexpected turn on a road that had been surrounded by seemingly endless thunder storms. I didn't know just how to exist in that space. I walked around carrying the newfound emptiness, which I wasn't in any hurry to fill with something. Not even meaning.<br /><br />The spring with its good news brought more usual niggles. They were welcome, thought always annoying. Now that I wasn't letting go of this life just yet, I needed to return to vacuuming, cooking, planning, planting, traveling, dreaming and arguing. I needed to at least try to see myself as a member of a family and various communities. I needed to pull my weight. And also, to remember that I am ill and do not possess energy and ability the same as "everyone else". I remembered again, just how difficult living with hope is. Surprisingly, it requires re-continued exercise routines, muscle work and stamina. It demands giving up a diet of cake and candy in service of the possibility of ageing. Hope offers the danger of being disappointed again, of being hurt; falling again. I edge toward my hopeful routines now treading carefully and taking my time. <br /><br />Now, in July <i>D/other</i> continues to feel like a new album for me, one which I love and hope for everyone to listen to. My wish is for it to become a companion to so many lives, so many unexpected turns. <br />Meeting audience members at my shows these past months has been fulfilling. It has been a sustaining gift. These meetings have been special because everyone is now aware of the precarity of connection. Often, I have felt overwhelmed by the words, looks, presents and flowers that I have received. Thank you! <br /><br />In releasing <i>D/other</i> in October 2021 I was certain I was putting out my last album. <br />Now no such certainty prevails. <br />I joke sometimes that this all must have been a really good advertising plan. But then again, if it had been, I should have sold more and had more of those illusive "listens". <br />New show dates and brand new performance plans are being made as I write.<br /><br />Just a few days ago I also received the news from my doctor that my brain tumours continue to shrink. Many have disappeared completely. I have no idea what the future holds, and I am in no hurry to get there. I am happy to exist in this in-between space where nothing is certain, yet much is fun and discoverable. I will gladly keep reporting from here in the many forms that may suit this unexpected narrative. <br /><br />Thank you for reading!<br /><br />XO</div><div>Astrid</div>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-63630928935710976692021-10-01T13:12:00.001+03:002021-10-01T13:12:59.347+03:00Pre-order D/other – One Week Until Release Day!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheD7__VD60JN7OZq1WxLQn_taAwb-fX824Lvr-XeKMztZMbPxnY1NdldSZWY5zJE4NeI4L_sNgS6QzRoDzSdaJkfdAhFxQ6CMkzhPI8tCyRxVlAAF7czdD519fgGVfgvZB9hl0POJIE0/s2048/ETUKANSI.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheD7__VD60JN7OZq1WxLQn_taAwb-fX824Lvr-XeKMztZMbPxnY1NdldSZWY5zJE4NeI4L_sNgS6QzRoDzSdaJkfdAhFxQ6CMkzhPI8tCyRxVlAAF7czdD519fgGVfgvZB9hl0POJIE0/w640-h640/ETUKANSI.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />My seventh album D/other is out in one week! <br />Here's the pre-order links for CD and VINYL: <br /><p></p><h3 style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 200; line-height: 1.09091; margin: 36px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.levykauppax.fi/artist/astrid_swan/d_other/#748383" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #ff7373; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Pre-Order Levykauppa Äx</a></h3><h3 style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 200; line-height: 1.09091; margin: 36px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.8raita.fi/shop/p96213-swan-astrid-d-other-lp-fi.html" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #ff7373; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Pre-Order 8 Raita</a></h3><h3 style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 200; line-height: 1.09091; margin: 36px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.rollingrecords.fi/lp:t/610d04baf158813833fd707c" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #ff7373; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Pre -order Rolling Records</a></h3><h3 style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 200; line-height: 1.09091; margin: 36px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://store.allthatplazz.com/item/astrid-swan---dother-lp-8102021?fbclid=IwAR3evpA5EnhkGI5L8c2or5pdTdeIk61vY8IAQtHKLCg1bTuCKiwfJa5sTGQ" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #ff7373; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Pre-order All That Plazz</a></h3><h3 style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 200; line-height: 1.09091; margin: 36px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bigdipper.no/soliti/soliti093/astrid-swan-d-other-lp" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #ff7373; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Pre-order Big Dipper (Norway)</a></h3><div><br /></div><div>You can also pre-order on streaming services of your choice to make sure you are one of the first to hear the album on October 8th:</div><div><br /></div><iframe width="600" height="300" frameborder="0" src="https://playgroundmusic.ffm.to/y6bdojl/widget?width=600&height=300¬e="></iframe>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-43343168216265623892021-09-15T09:21:00.003+03:002021-09-15T09:21:17.520+03:00Luxuries<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3hcMOp1mbjzLLfu9WQBEbFGUS9Rt-XS82lLPPcqRudpk1t_nelxzryVRLjl2M8zXgAlkQs8HdQCLl7tIkkTJy9NJYqNLFN7yKYHj4-4xwJ5rdDBnOcw-0YeIyX2o2BjNMoUOBMzJOV8/s2048/kansi4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3hcMOp1mbjzLLfu9WQBEbFGUS9Rt-XS82lLPPcqRudpk1t_nelxzryVRLjl2M8zXgAlkQs8HdQCLl7tIkkTJy9NJYqNLFN7yKYHj4-4xwJ5rdDBnOcw-0YeIyX2o2BjNMoUOBMzJOV8/w640-h640/kansi4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Valreza Collective</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>Last Friday I published a third single LUXURIES from my upcoming album D/other. <br />It has received lovely attention from sites and blogs. You can choose to listen to the song from <a href="https://playgroundmusic.ffm.to/3rod3kd" target="_blank">here</a>. </p><p>Luxuries came out with a music video by Valreza Collective. Take a look below:<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="358" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-pHssDLJ45U" width="476" youtube-src-id="-pHssDLJ45U"></iframe></div><br /><p>Here is a list (and links to) of all the nice places that have written about the song:<br /><br /><br /><a href=" https://www.rumba.fi/uutiset/aika-ja-elama-loppuvat-aina-ensimmaisena-ensiesityksessa-astrid-swanin-video/" target="_blank">RUMBA</a></p><p><a href="http://mesta.net/parantumatonta-syopaa-sairastava-astrid-swan-julkaisi-uutta-aika-ja-elama-loppuvat-aina-ensimmaisena-ne-ovat-kaikkein-suurimmat-aarteet/" target="_blank">Mesta</a><br /><br /><a href="https://lefuturewave.com/2021/09/12/introducing-astrid-swan-luxuries/" target="_blank">Le Future Wave</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.beehivecandy.com/2021/09/astrid-swan-amanda-anne-platt.html" target="_blank">Beehive Candy</a><br /><br /><a href="https://higherplainmusic.com/2021/09/12/introducing-astrid-swan/" target="_blank">Higherplane Music</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.onechord.net/2021/09/11/octa-music-weekly-episode-152/" target="_blank">One Chord</a></p><p><a href="https://honkmagazine.com/astrid-swan-luxuries/" target="_blank">Honk Magazine</a></p><p><a href="http://austintownhall.com/2021/09/13/astrid-swan-shares-new-single-luxuries/" target="_blank">Austin Townhall</a></p><p><a href="https://nichemusic.info/astrid-swan-luxuries/" target="_blank">Niche Music</a></p><p><a href="https://paivanbiisit.com/2021/09/14/amyl-and-the-sniffers-low-astrid-swan-big-thief-alicia-keys-radiohead-lyyti-holly-humberstonemetallica-viikon-parhaat-biisit-ja-levyt-ja-paljon-muuta/">Päivän Biisit</a></p><p><a href="http://rosvot.fi/alice-june" target="_blank">Alice ja June</a></p><p><a href="https://whenyoumotoraway.blogspot.com/2021/09/luxuries-by-astrid-swan.html" target="_blank">When You Motor Away</a></p><p>Thank you for all the lovely words and for listening and watching!</p><p><br /><br /></p>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-58035245195138801982021-09-06T11:18:00.003+03:002021-09-06T11:18:18.896+03:00A Little Fire Story<div style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><i>I wrote this story for my keynote/Agora in the wonderful Aboagora event in Turku in mid-August. The evening consisted of a solo concert of mine and a discussion with Hanna Meretoja about our literary writing, life with cancer and the meanings of story telling. You'll be able to watch this online later, if you missed it, but for now, here's a little fire story. </i></div><div style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyekqAl2dSkxRQtd_dIv2jKhaULTkwulGvQb3vO9aguBMPsl2LJSTTuiKAoYLHw3Ljb5NElPymj_P7rqA0B3E2nGvIfRB0jaCCV0ZbIG_68vW7SEoAOmAcBAncf6-ET1FrCZqGB6Wq4pQ/s2048/3163BBF3-30F0-4A47-9015-056D8C6C89F8.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyekqAl2dSkxRQtd_dIv2jKhaULTkwulGvQb3vO9aguBMPsl2LJSTTuiKAoYLHw3Ljb5NElPymj_P7rqA0B3E2nGvIfRB0jaCCV0ZbIG_68vW7SEoAOmAcBAncf6-ET1FrCZqGB6Wq4pQ/w640-h426/3163BBF3-30F0-4A47-9015-056D8C6C89F8.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture by Pekko Vasantola</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think I was seven and I think it was summer because I remember the light. I recall the direction of sun light as I stood outside waiting for my mother to come down. The house was on fire. Really it was only the garbage shed and all the garbage containers in it, but it was adjacent to our building, right below our windows. We lived on the fourth floor in an apartment building for students.<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The smell of smoke drew me to the window. I was in my dad’s room watching TV, lying on my front. He was not home. My mother was in the kitchen. We each had a room of our own united by a corridor that ran past the three rooms leading to a kitchen and a balcony at the end. My two Guinea pigs were next to me in their glass home built by my father. I saw flames and smoke billowing from the shed, licking the blue tin roof below, reaching toward the gray wall. I yelled for my mother and next I was flying down the stairs, rushing from the fourth floor to the ground floor to get out. I made my escape alone. My heart was in my throat, I think I was holding my shoes in my hands. I had to pass the fire because the burning shed was right next to our front door. I was going alone. Saving myself. Getting out. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just get out</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> screamed my body to me. It was a nonverbal command. I don’t remember any words being exchanged between my mother and I, but I remember how my body felt in fear.<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t remember passing the fire. I didn’t look at the flames. I don’t remember feeling their warmth upon opening the door and running past the disaster. I joined other people congregating in front of our yard, just a little further from the building. Children and adults gathered together from the neighboring apartment building and our own. I organized my canvas shoes on the asphalt and slid my feet into them. Summer evening brightness testified of a world that was still intact. I remembered my mother and the Guinea pigs. I felt terrified that they would not make it down. I felt shame for not staying and helping my mother to carry them and I felt nauseous for the thought that she would not be able to bring them down. I felt anger, what could take her so long? What if she didn’t make it, my mother? What if the building would burn with all my books and scribbles? My toys and my clothes. With my mother.</span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-b1a09867-7fff-f141-ae9e-4ea3a3a06137"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The flames grew taller and painted black shadows onto the canvas that was the wall of my home. We heard fire engines approach. They hollered and hooted for us to move out of the way. My mother appeared from the door holding two Guinea pigs in her hands. She didn’t seem worried, she didn’t seem angry either. She was a little unreadable, used to navigating sea changes. She spoke to our neighbors, she made me look rational too and had no words about my selfish dashing out. I think I pressed into her side, hoping she’d stay there. I took the other one of the Guinea pigs and held it a little too tight with my shaking arms against my chest. I knew that it was desired I’d appear nonplussed. Some kids wanted to pet the animals. I don’t remember if the Guinea pigs squalled or if they were quiet. The children were bored with the fire already. They had mostly come to see what was happening. The fire was an interesting occurrence. My vigilance held my gaze on the fire. The police appeared and with them a strange numbness. I guess I felt safe. I believed that the men in blue suits together with men in beige and yellow carrying hoses meant that nothing disastrous would be allowed to happen. My insides turned into brittle lace frozen like ice, my nervous system kept on ringing the alarm bells. Water rushed in gushes against the wall, making the flames disappear. The smell of burning plastic turned into an acrid afterthought. It would linger for weeks and months. It would remind me of this day decades later whenever I encountered a burning rubbish bin or something minor burning at home.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was proud for having saved myself. I was simultaneously embarrassed for having left my mother up there on her own. Standing outside our building for a minute or two, I realized that without her I would be untethered from life. The seconds I waited for her painted an eternity in front of my eyes. It was a void I sensed among the curious children and the worried adults. I understood that her existence as my mother defined my place for me. Because so did the absence of my father. He was not there. To lose my mother in the dumpster fire would make me unknowable. Just a girl smelling of plastic smoke plumes some time in 1989 or 1990. A girl with no one. The fire that licked the concrete walls of our very temporary home, reminded me again just how unsafe I was; how unpredictable the world around me was.
</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The fire had been started by an arsonist. Maybe a child, maybe an adult. More garbage sheds burned in our suburb that summer. The news trickled in through gossip and my friend’s parents who worked in the area. The smell of burning that alarmed me and the flames I witnessed from above signified a hollow place I found in me. A loneliness. A mistrust of others and their intentions. I hated the fire. I hated it. I hated people who purposefully endangered others, who had no regard for their sense of safety, their things and their lives. That summer I hadn’t learned how to strike a matchstick against the side of the match box yet. I hadn’t learned to light a candle, a sauna or a fireplace and because of this fire, I was in no hurry to do so. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When I remember this moment now, I think of the little patch of forest behind my back as I stared at the burning. Usually, I faced the pines and fir trees from my window. They were a calming sight. Now they too watched out for the fire. But what did the trees hide from view? What stood still behind my back? They protected a hospice building in red brick, a place where my friends have gone to die in recent years. A place that I will, one day soon enter and never leave, so close to the sight of the fire.</span></p></span><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></div>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-64637994326347966972021-08-06T10:20:00.001+03:002021-08-10T08:57:35.865+03:00Not Your Mom<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiftcs6F4Ue0-KCaz4_zARY7O5ikJTqJaT7V_WU7kl6JCVK2ba3lNYYLfc6Pv_wedoFADnPGK69CyF06qwUExVpnGDFWE-9zizfOY1egn64UIIjze9F6lUMJFutjOGKCJbYNNNf68KuQg4/s2048/astrid_vers1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2045" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiftcs6F4Ue0-KCaz4_zARY7O5ikJTqJaT7V_WU7kl6JCVK2ba3lNYYLfc6Pv_wedoFADnPGK69CyF06qwUExVpnGDFWE-9zizfOY1egn64UIIjze9F6lUMJFutjOGKCJbYNNNf68KuQg4/w640-h640/astrid_vers1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Today a second single from my upcoming album is out. It is called Not Your Mom. You can take a listen, or ten from the link below. I hope you enjoy this song!</p><div class="gE iv gt" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; cursor: auto; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.875rem; padding: 20px 0px 0px;"><table cellpadding="0" class="cf gJ" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border-collapse: collapse; display: block; font-size: 0.875rem; letter-spacing: 0.2px; margin-top: 0px; width: auto;"><tbody style="display: block;"><tr class="acZ xD" style="display: flex; height: auto;"><td colspan="3" style="margin: 0px;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://playgroundmusic.org/kpvgazv/widget?width=600&height=300&note=" width="600"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>The song was recorded in December 2020 by Mikael Hakkarainen. Alina Toivanen plays drums, Veli Kauppinen bass and Mikael Hakkarainen guitars. I play piano as usual. <br /><br /><h3 style="text-align: center;">Not Your Mom <br />(by Astrid Swan)</h3><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">At night I'm not you mom</div><div style="text-align: center;">cause I sleep</div><div style="text-align: center;">and I can't if I have to </div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">think of you sleeping</div><div style="text-align: center;">or bad dreams...</div><div style="text-align: center;">bad dreams</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />At night I'm not your mom<br />cause I dream<br />and I dance past midnight<br />in my black jeans<br />to dad's old records playing</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />What I keep from you<br />won't hurt you<br />behind the dark side of the moon<br />are all my secrets<br /><br />At night I'm not you mom<br />cause I swim<br />straight into the ocean<br />to retrieve<br />all the fallen stars<br />so you can stick them to your ceiling<br /><br />What I bring to you<br />is everything<br />all my lights and all my blues<br />all my dreams</div><div style="text-align: center;">What I bring to you<br />you can keep<br />how you hold it in your heart<br />that's on you<br /><br />that's what I'll do<br />that's what I'll do<br />I make no promises that I can't keep<br />I make no promises that I can't keep<br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAfsrXHyCOoSE9udWMI5tjVe2LiLN6210eXqVh4KsPw8J51aANNHcXvyo5tgzER_mCeuxanTk3fO7K4pg1Tlo1-TIMTeJORcoWhi-bbleuNvjlTa48YqngaGrq6jPmmpeA0SD0GsQpDGQ/s2048/astrid_01_1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1452" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAfsrXHyCOoSE9udWMI5tjVe2LiLN6210eXqVh4KsPw8J51aANNHcXvyo5tgzER_mCeuxanTk3fO7K4pg1Tlo1-TIMTeJORcoWhi-bbleuNvjlTa48YqngaGrq6jPmmpeA0SD0GsQpDGQ/w454-h640/astrid_01_1.jpg" width="454" /></a></div></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">D/other comes in October 2021</h3><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_d3RdeW2wRsT6scsazOLscdrxwoHM2tJLZDszLYHCfspv_A05YCdzJYBbskLG__zjtsIFxO50a8eSKSCVygYms2ARSK9uG-dEj7rT4WBtI9JKslbsg91R00b8Ots4iKROR3IJdzqWzDA/s2048/ETUKANSI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_d3RdeW2wRsT6scsazOLscdrxwoHM2tJLZDszLYHCfspv_A05YCdzJYBbskLG__zjtsIFxO50a8eSKSCVygYms2ARSK9uG-dEj7rT4WBtI9JKslbsg91R00b8Ots4iKROR3IJdzqWzDA/w640-h640/ETUKANSI.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>In other wonderful news I can tell you that my seventh album <i>D/other</i> is out on October 8th, 2021. <br /><a href="https://www.soundi.fi/uutiset/astrid-swan-not-your-mom/" target="_blank">Soundi</a> published the news today on their site. <br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You can preorder the album already from:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.levykauppax.fi/artist/astrid_swan/d_other/#748383" target="_blank">Levykauppa Äx </a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.8raita.fi/shop/p96213-swan-astrid-d-other-lp-fi.html" target="_blank">Kasiraita</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.rollingrecords.fi/lp:t/610d04baf158813833fd707c" target="_blank">Rolling Records</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://store.allthatplazz.com/item/astrid-swan---dother-lp-8102021?fbclid=IwAR3evpA5EnhkGI5L8c2or5pdTdeIk61vY8IAQtHKLCg1bTuCKiwfJa5sTGQ" target="_blank">All That Plazz</a><br /><br /><br />I'll be updating more live shows soon. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />On August 18th I play a solo show as part of the annual Aboagora event in Turku. You can stream the show from anywhere in the world by registering before August 11th, <a href="https://aboagora.fi/programme/agoras/" target="_blank">here</a>. (Follow the link on the page to free registration and you'll receive a viewing link.)<br /><br /><br />All cover art and pictures of me by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/valrezacollective/" target="_blank">Valreza Collective</a>. <br /></div></div></div>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-14065952727613927672021-07-22T22:38:00.003+03:002021-07-22T22:38:45.613+03:00What Does Paint Have to Do with It?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQca3pCqylh6nzM3kzddf9ZaE_0ZKIzPeYgyqi-wWKXfuVdcCsdgpbbKv-QYoGTZIVw-VcGkyyaegRSh-95UkDM_oe3vDwcRuujaOlfz3CJ_HbxsfrYlcjhyIDkvhooHkth9nidnvwtd0/s2048/FDB5BA5F-7964-4685-B023-F5F771C68666.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1152" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQca3pCqylh6nzM3kzddf9ZaE_0ZKIzPeYgyqi-wWKXfuVdcCsdgpbbKv-QYoGTZIVw-VcGkyyaegRSh-95UkDM_oe3vDwcRuujaOlfz3CJ_HbxsfrYlcjhyIDkvhooHkth9nidnvwtd0/w360-h640/FDB5BA5F-7964-4685-B023-F5F771C68666.jpeg" width="360" /></a></div>This wall paint in light blue with hints of yellow and turquoise has replaced our dark blue chalk paint in the living room. Painting walls is our usual vacation activity after relaxation has truly set in. Last year I wallpapered the bedroom and hallway. This new living room color was really not my choice as it wasn't with the previous shade either. It was a kind of compromise: I wanted a color wall, I painted it and my partner chose the color. This time though, I didn't paint, I didn't pay and my advice was not needed. I could just watch the paint dry. Literally. As well as giving my (un)necessary and (un)helpful remarks. The goal was to cool things down, make space, bring air into the crammed space, refresh... I dubbed the color Scandinavian chic. Everything that we used to be against. Everything that we appear to now desire. <br /><br />In my not participating, I had all the time in the world to imbue the new wall with meaning. I came up with some of the following:<br />1. I am not needed. <br />2. My ideas are not always great.<br />3. My partner's taste is good.<br />4. I am witnessing a switch from the color of sorrow, the oceanic shade that held us in deep deep water. <br />This new shade is celestial.<br />5. Number four let me to the questions: am I supposed to be here? Am I supposed to be alive?<br /><br />The last one is the questions that burns me these days. Have I outstayed my welcome? Am I living like a ghost in my own life? Am I "memorializing" and being "memorialized" instead of LIVING.<br /><p></p><p>Wasn't that the meal I was most hungry for? Life.<br /><br />So now I feel like the living room is not mine, but kind of oozes life after me. I feel like I am in the future. <br />I also feel that the living room is no longer grieving, it is moving on, but I am stuck. <br />I'm still grieving. I'm still sick and I'm still here. <br /><br />And what's more: I still don't know how to grieve. So I just tell myself it's all part of the process. It's a waiting game. <br /><br />The other thing I do in this spare time of mine is keep mentioning our kitchen lamp. It has to go. I am desperate for change. I don't like the one we have. I want to have a vintage glass pendant hanging low above the table. Something really old and pretty and impractical. I have been lazily eying options for a year. I like to think that French vintage online stores are my forte. I like sugary edges and campy pink hues. But most of all, I finally know what I do not like. That much is clear. And that which I do not like is hanging in my kitchen. But now I don't know if I should make this choice or just let it be. Let N or someone after me buy the new kitchen lamp. (See, death again). It'll be giving light to their gatherings after me. Mostly anyway. I'm trying to say this without resentment. Although of course I resent the idea. Maybe I will buy a really ugly Venetian chandelier just out of spite. Let it always remind these people of me and my random taste (?). Let it be an endless conversational piece. Let my presence linger in the light.<br /> Lamps are status symbols. My status is passing or nearly past. My status at most optimistic is ill. What kind of light bulb goes with that?<br /> The only lamp I love in our home is an old oil lamp turned to an electric one. It is currently not working. All the other lamps (and we have way too many) were bought because they were at least 40% off, not because they are what I love. No one wanted them, that's their story. </p><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Hovering in the Info-graphs of Cancer</h3><br />I have grown accustomed to living in the margins of survival graphs and predictions. I used to think that 50/50 odds were bad. Now I reside somewhere around the line that has curved down to indicate death, but I hover above it batting my imagined wings. From my first cancer diagnosis I was given 50/50 or less then 50 % chances of recurrence. I was told my future looked grim. This felt hard to hear but I am also thankful to the young oncologist who decided to be candid instead of hopeful. After being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2017, I found out that only 22% of patients were alive after five years. In 2019 after being diagnosed with brain mets, I checked the median overall survival: it was 18 months. <br />At this point I began to think that maybe numbers and median curvy lines indicating doom had nothing important to tell me. My treatments were no longer based on robust research alone, because very little research is done on my specific cohort: women with metastatic breast cancer in the brain. Instead, my treatments are anything and everything that will keep the cancer kind, slow and preferably invisible. I need to accept that while my life is being prolonged by medicine, it is no longer an exact science measured by the steps of everyone whose been here before. I need to believe I am an individual case. A lucky one. And in thinking like this, I know I am going the route taken by so many women I know ahead of me, now dead. <br />Facing more difficult times, I have begun to feel more warmly toward the people who say: maybe there will be a new treatment (they used to annoy me). I now hold onto the sci-fi hope that the future is littered with bright ideas and I'll be the recipient of their fruits. This is the only kind of optimism I can partake in that involves my remaining alive. <br /><br />In my post-graph phase I wonder am I now a winner, having crossed over to the other side of the median graphs? Or am I levitating over an open grave? Or is this some kind of phoenix bird magic trick? I know it is not. I am just lucky. I don't believe in magic. Yet, every now and then I feel like contacting some masterful psychic who could crack a code or two for me and make me feel special and purposeful in this mess. <br /><br />While others have been decorating and moving on, I have not just been making myself sick with this graph levitation of mine, but I've been reading books by wise women about cancer. My favorite genre.<br /><br /><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">Two Books That Shook My World</h3>Last week I felt lucky to be alive and reading the pages of Anne Boyer's <i>The Undying</i>. I had been dipping into it in the spring, but was finally able to read properly during the oppressive heat of July. My expectations were high (see the cover image below). This would be the kind of writing about cancer I would relate to, the kind I have written and aspire to write more of. The book came out in 2019, like mine. Boyer also received her breast cancer diagnosis the same year as I did. Where we differ is that she has not suffered a relapse. Her book leads to a kind of healing. Though it refuses to tell such a story.<br /> My reading method was fervent. It reminded me of the first times I read Sylvia Plath in my teens. I read with a sense of urgency to be seen and understood and to know what perspective is taken in the next part, the next page, the next sentence. I read with a mad sense of connection. Boyer's style was porous like poetry flowing from page to page but it was also demanding, difficult, and unrelenting. While she wrote about her experience as a cancer patient she carefully argued and agitated against the narratives of cancer that usually get told. Her references were all familiar to me, her depictions of chemo the same. Boyer's writing flowed between the poetry of the intimate and then it built structures about structures tearing them down the next moment. Reading this validated not only the me who is a cancer patient, but also the part of me that was hurt by the criticism my book <i>Viimeinen kirjani</i> received about its complex structure––here is a Pulitzer Prize winning book that breaks the rules of linearity and stumbles into its own meta-narratives about telling the story of being ill. Here is how we demand to be heard.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivluz_FAM_AXWPpgaWtSzyFpm5lg1cG0lBQgLx76W1pUQahbus83hk_k4YfU4VMLkGHKme7Jof3h3XHFa2c8JiVXFupXlK-jxICiA3L1J8pNC53sNwc-E1WQJ0jzAdfBE4wOabgrbyZW4/s2048/06D0A901-082B-40CF-93E9-CF9C49A7F635.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivluz_FAM_AXWPpgaWtSzyFpm5lg1cG0lBQgLx76W1pUQahbus83hk_k4YfU4VMLkGHKme7Jof3h3XHFa2c8JiVXFupXlK-jxICiA3L1J8pNC53sNwc-E1WQJ0jzAdfBE4wOabgrbyZW4/w480-h640/06D0A901-082B-40CF-93E9-CF9C49A7F635.heic" width="480" /></a></div><br /><br />Straight after I finished Boyer's book I dived into Jaoaud's memoir. I was ready to hate Suleika Jaoaud's<i> Between Two Kingdoms</i>. I wanted a fracture to appear that would make her annoying or faulty somehow. Because following her on Instagram and listening to her presents such a lovely, wholesome person that it makes me envious. But there is nothing to hate here. Her book is instantaneous, inviting and well written. She is skilled at expressing the shadow side of cancer, the emotional shit show. The struggle. Jaoaud was only 22 when she was diagnosed with leukemia with a grim prognosis. She is now in her early thirties and in remission, but her book describes the difficulty, emotional and physical pain, the grueling treatments that included chemo for a couple of years as well as a bone marrow transplant, and her prolonged hovering around death at a time when "everyone else" was partying, finding themselves and making their mistakes that become to be known as "life". <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8oU0yuk8hn9TyflK-XZNrFioYkjdZhSEl3anMZxL-r0vyTYLQswGgkrl-XWGrHJJxNt9xaNJ3Tb7B8f01F3kSE1qITkQvnH57d2HxQIQ-F8q4kP-nwUnyIkToQSgts0nzwahf93LSXQ4/s2048/08A71C0E-50E9-47B7-8826-C9FD0532E582.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8oU0yuk8hn9TyflK-XZNrFioYkjdZhSEl3anMZxL-r0vyTYLQswGgkrl-XWGrHJJxNt9xaNJ3Tb7B8f01F3kSE1qITkQvnH57d2HxQIQ-F8q4kP-nwUnyIkToQSgts0nzwahf93LSXQ4/w480-h640/08A71C0E-50E9-47B7-8826-C9FD0532E582.heic" width="480" /></a></div><br />Even though I was ten years older when I was diagnosed at the age of 32, I am glad that books like this one has been written. Being ill while young or young-ish is a very different position to assume than at some other time of life. It has for so long also been considered the wrong time to be ill. We need so much more writing about this. <br />At times Jaouad's style is bordering on <i>Eat, Pray, Love</i> by Elizabeth Gilbert (whose blurb is on the cover), but instead of offering up normative femininity and consumer culture as wisdom of the free woman, this book looks deeper into the pain and suffering that is somewhat randomly and unfairly distributed to us. It is not trying to turn experience into get-well-soon cards. <br /><br />Boyer and Jaouad do not give me answers. I know their references, both literary and embodied, but I need to read the stories over and over again. I'm in there somewhere. And where I am not, I will have to write my own story. Maybe it involves the celestial hue of our living room. Maybe my grief too. <br /><br />The other day I wrote this in my diary: <br /><br /><i>I am frightened, I am dependent on others. I am in complete isolation. My dreams have dried up. </i><br /><br />When I read these women, I think: <br /><br /><i>So is everyone else. </i>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-1171739934668409222021-06-30T15:07:00.001+03:002021-06-30T15:56:31.401+03:00Living Past Help: When a Cancer Patient & co Meet the Scarcity Model of Health Care and Support<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6yFDuh89kwZgiE46c6SE_ac-I65CicwYW1XeebgPhyphenhyphenCOkDiMb-SW8toMYpnCfHsddTEaKwO3d1-xG4vJeY65SgBoVizjF9PBzfKJY6jQUmvASVK4LqU7XW6HKq9WCqdoVKC2Mg-R19Lo/s2048/3C4E6E57-9453-473E-8E0C-999E050D38D9.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1638" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6yFDuh89kwZgiE46c6SE_ac-I65CicwYW1XeebgPhyphenhyphenCOkDiMb-SW8toMYpnCfHsddTEaKwO3d1-xG4vJeY65SgBoVizjF9PBzfKJY6jQUmvASVK4LqU7XW6HKq9WCqdoVKC2Mg-R19Lo/w512-h640/3C4E6E57-9453-473E-8E0C-999E050D38D9.jpeg" width="512" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>In 2018 I asked my hospital for a peer therapy group for women with metastatic breast cancer who had been diagnosed in our 20s and 30s. I knew seven of us who wanted to participate. The hospital organized two experienced therapists to lead the sessions. The therapy was planned for 14 sessions during three months. After the initial group therapy was over, the participants expressed a wish to continue our meetings because the need for support was not going anywhere. We were all ill and dying of cancer. We were struggling more or less all the time. Meeting each other regularly and sharing our difficulties and our joys was a significant measure in survival. Our retired therapists kindly agreed to continue our meetings. Even when it meant saying goodbye to some of us. We continued our meetings once a month until Covid-19 stopped us. By then some of us had died and others died during the last year in isolation. In fall 2020 we met for the last time to end the therapy before death ended it for us all. There were two patients and one therapist present. <br /><br />In the summer of 2017 I contacted the Finnish family support services (perheneuvola) for help. I had been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and had a family facing a grim near-future with my illness, treatment and death. We were feeling sad, angry, frightened and unsure of the future. The services responded quickly and we began to see them regularly as a family. We met our representatives two to four times a year most of the time. In June 2021 our family service workers informed us that the system was gearing toward short term help and targeted interventions and therefore, our regular meetings would have to come to a close when our regular psychologists were no longe available. We have been asked to contact them again IF we need help. My initial response to this had already been that we would like to continue with new people, as I have learned from experience that left to our own devices we allow suffering and difficulty to exist for a long time before asking for help. We were not appointed new representatives. Our current situation is too stable. I am alive and our child is not in acute crisis. I continue to live with breast cancer metastasis in the brain. I have exceeded the average survival months and years for metastatic cancer. No one knows how fast or slow my illness progression will be in the future. In our home everyone lives with sadness, anger, frustration, fear and anxiety. </div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDi5ewzjXKV-MaX0BZH26v8Fo15qdoZro1bFjv8W4V-46jLG9z1nEmPPxaws0qP-MeX5z07J3hFGANyzkyL4NqxNbw0j_h-3dxCi6t-H49yVmBQeCrVhTnekYfvFMAUR7bN63bh6ipkz0/s2048/37A5B39F-86F9-4948-9294-BEDF733C0AE6.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDi5ewzjXKV-MaX0BZH26v8Fo15qdoZro1bFjv8W4V-46jLG9z1nEmPPxaws0qP-MeX5z07J3hFGANyzkyL4NqxNbw0j_h-3dxCi6t-H49yVmBQeCrVhTnekYfvFMAUR7bN63bh6ipkz0/w640-h640/37A5B39F-86F9-4948-9294-BEDF733C0AE6.jpeg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />In the summer of 2019 I and my child participated in a peer camp for families with a mother who has metastatic breast cancer. In 2021 only three out of the nine mothers who participated are alive. I am one of the lucky ones. Yet, for the last year cancer has been steadily growing in my brain. I was recently put on targeted chemo. From here on out it is unlikely that I'll ever live without being on some kind of chemo. The fact that I survived for four years after an MBC diagnosis without chemo is a gift I received. It has to do with the kind of cancer type (HER2 positive) I have and the medicines that came in the early 2000s and changed a hopeless cancer type into a more hopeful one. That gift made me hungry for more.<br />In the summers of 2014, 2015, and 2016 I also participated in peer camps or meetings. They were usually few-day events with talk and activities. They were organized by NGOs. Those days were usually full of laughter and tears. Fast friends were made. Many of the participants have since died. <br /><br />In the fall of 2019 as I was officially diagnosed with brain mets, I also became a patient in the palliative care unit of the cancer hospital. Palliative care means symptom care for patients whose illness cannot be cured. It does not mean end-of-life care, although that is one area of palliative care. I was well-informed of this and wanted to become a palliative patient. My oncologist suggested the same thing before I had time to utter the words. They can be the words that cancer patients fear. The word p a l l i a t i v e has become a synonym for death or giving up. For about a year and a half the palliative doctors and nurses called me every now and then asking how I was doing, renewing prescriptions, discussing possible outcomes and improvements. We even discussed the development of my PhD and I was met not only as a terminal patient but as a developing researcher and a human who is living her life to the fullest with the incurable cancer in the background. Those discussions made me feel safe. Even when I had no illness complaints, I knew I could reach the palliative unit easily and ask my stupid questions. Then some time in 2020 my palliative doctor changed and so did the tone of the calls. My problems could not be solved by them any longer. It sounded like I was either too ill from cancer meds to be treated by them or too well to be worthy of their time. I was bounced back and forth between doctors and nurses unsure which part of my physical experiences of illness should be voiced where. It was exhausting. The idea that I am too much creeped into my head. It was a familiar thought from childhood. I was too needy. Here we go again. Why can't I just be fine? Why can't I just be happy to be alive? Where is my thankfulness? Maybe I had truly exhausted all resources, had my share. Maybe it was time to die. To quiet down once and for all. <br /><br />In effect I felt I had been thrown out of the palliative care services. In the spring of 2021 the brain mets continued their slow growth. My oncologist was scrambling to find a medicine that would address the problem without making me unbearably sick. The promise of a brand new medicine sustained me through the spring, but its arrival to Finland was delayed so in May I started a targeted chemo. <br /><br />In June I sit in the office of the psychologist who works in the socio-psychological unit of the cancer hospital. I have been seeing this person on and off even before my MBC diagnosis, when I was in remission and struggling. During the pandemic we called about every two or three months. Now I am back in the office after a year and a half. My hair reaches my shoulders. I don't look ill. I sit here after so many of my peers and friends are dead from cancer, not from corona. She knows I feel like the palliative unit wanted to get rid of me. We both know it's partly a feeling of mine and not the actual intention. We also agree that I have not been treated very nicely and that there are loopholes in the systems. I have asked for new personnel. Everyone tells me it's my right. That I belong to palliative care. In the same breath the psychologist tells me about some of the restructuring that her socio-psychological unit is going to implement. I understand that they wish to focus their services to targeted periods and avoid extended patienthood like mine. She tells me that they still won't have resources for working with the whole family, i.e. involving children of the patients. I am lucky to have the ongoing relationship with the family help unit, she says. This meeting was before the one where I learned we can no longer count on it. I tell her that I have over-stayed my welcome in the structures of cancer care. That I should just make do now. Get on with life even if it hits me and my loved ones with a stick on regular weekly intervals and gives us no summer breaks and doesn't slow down to accommodate to pandemic scarcity or personal exhaustion. </div><div><br />I guess by now I should have learned the tricks of relaxation, self-soothing, breathing, feeling and thinking in proportionate healthy intervals. But I just keep having the feeling of needing support. I need people who listen and look me in the eye. Who can take the fact that I am both alive and lucky and not at all ok. People who can respond to my feeling of loneliness and isolation, the continued sense of not being safe, not having enough people and strucures available to me and also my continued striving for a liveable every day life where I am the agent despite difficult times. I want someone to listen when I voice my biggest fear: that I am still too much, too much with what I need and what I feel. <br />The psychologist mentions that our hour is up. We reserve our next meeting. I feel good about that day.<br /><br /><b>At this time, four years after receiving a metastatic cancer diagnosis I ask:</b><br />Is there an expiry date for the need for help and support?<br />Can a terminally ill cancer patient and her family fall through the hoops of psycho-social support by having had their share? Or by living too long?<br />Is it enough to offer short-term targeted therapeutic support to families that live with ongoing stressors?<br />In the long run what is more cost-effective: walking with those who need support continually or stepping in once the shit has truly hit the fan? <br />Can anyone anywhere afford to walk with these families and their actual needs if it means that help cannot just be performative (services tailored for set pieces) but may have to be continued for years? <br />What does it tell about our society, a Finnish welfare state to be precise that a family with a mother with metastatic breast cancer can become too well adjusted for support?<br /><br />I guess it's just good luck, horse shoes and strawberry emojis until the dying truly begins. And who, may I ask, will define that for us?</div><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1uzJt9MWupQ00y1YgJVLIEpu0W5RMalwvpjqjBCZbcL0BpZsT1fvo1ckRWAPInM0MEyy9if-Iy6lquCob36J-r5Cx2YcC2AjUs4l3WY1N95CRQt5pDRdJwO3p2xeKDNKCoIuOqYTJTsY/s2048/84B82CC8-7329-4AE9-B66F-5585F9BBC911.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1uzJt9MWupQ00y1YgJVLIEpu0W5RMalwvpjqjBCZbcL0BpZsT1fvo1ckRWAPInM0MEyy9if-Iy6lquCob36J-r5Cx2YcC2AjUs4l3WY1N95CRQt5pDRdJwO3p2xeKDNKCoIuOqYTJTsY/w480-h640/84B82CC8-7329-4AE9-B66F-5585F9BBC911.heic" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Post-script:</b> I am not criticising individual care-givers with this post. I know everyone is doing their best. I feel lucky and cared for for the most part. I wish to point to the structures of care that we currently have. Also, I do not give interviews about this post nor do I give you or anyone in the press permission to make news based on this post. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-60936254146439276482021-06-18T11:06:00.004+03:002021-06-18T11:06:54.383+03:00Silvi's Dream<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtb05MBIK6NnVIR9lvF5_s5RT4IrLmNWKGhBq7VfxQLq0Kw6Ts4B2we3UFibMH4Mm2q11GXAlFjvsH9C0VBGpZJA0yBv_mkQt9rTqSoqBsfZIrLL-JOIJJ6CxClPIE6jv2C4o7iQM1CP0/s2048/blogin+kans.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2047" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtb05MBIK6NnVIR9lvF5_s5RT4IrLmNWKGhBq7VfxQLq0Kw6Ts4B2we3UFibMH4Mm2q11GXAlFjvsH9C0VBGpZJA0yBv_mkQt9rTqSoqBsfZIrLL-JOIJJ6CxClPIE6jv2C4o7iQM1CP0/w640-h640/blogin+kans.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>On May 14th, I released a new single, Silvi's Dream. It is exciting to share some new music after a long while. What do you think of this song? Are you looking forward to hearing more new stuff? <br />Here is the song for you to listen and below it, lyrics if you are interested. I will write more soon, as I think it is finally time to share more here again. <br /><br /></p>
<iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/3rTRXpAkskLhSj4rMOmCQ5" width="100%"></iframe><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-66634475-7fff-3fd9-c427-a455a0e4c993"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 0pt 18pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 0pt 18pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; width: 100px;"></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">SILVI’S DREAM
(By Astrid Swan)</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have watched you</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">on the edge of sleep</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Moving through the body</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">like mist looking for a dream</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">to carry you,</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">carry you…</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have watched you in the light from our stars</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">seen your glowing skin</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and muscles give in to sleep</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh, but I’m here now</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">seeing you</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">when you are both here and away</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While we lie completely still</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m a little anxious for my evening</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m aware of the time</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and its density</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">cause it’s so real</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I could turn it into a rock</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and I will oh, I will</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">cause I must and I must</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and I’ll hand it to you with my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ll</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> hand it to you with my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I can see you my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I can see you my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">my child my love</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Though one day too soon</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">it’ll be my turn to lie still</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">with you next to me</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then you’ll see me through the door</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">against my will</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet, I’ll always remain here</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like a rock, like a rock…</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh, I will yeah, I will,</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">cause I must and I must</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ll hand it to you</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">with my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ll hand it to you with my love</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I can see you my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I can see you my love</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My child my love…</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVO2JYW_Od4IZUrn1Qro8tDupJjOO7UD0XD5KbqR3MaaWCMwiInL0HVf3oONybsYAiM4uNrlRhfXceM8AqV0_DgVOhi5vn1N55r-qkewAEnFky8OYNQJaXErpF8Fmd6D9DhHEFgJfW02c/s2048/DSC_6170+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1416" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVO2JYW_Od4IZUrn1Qro8tDupJjOO7UD0XD5KbqR3MaaWCMwiInL0HVf3oONybsYAiM4uNrlRhfXceM8AqV0_DgVOhi5vn1N55r-qkewAEnFky8OYNQJaXErpF8Fmd6D9DhHEFgJfW02c/w442-h640/DSC_6170+copy.jpg" width="442" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Cover art and imagery by Valreza Collective</span></div></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></div>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-51614644251693510872020-09-15T11:21:00.002+03:002020-09-15T11:29:50.091+03:00Writing Published Between 2018 and 2020<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLKFkfphYpDlpPEcS3uWwlqdhE852trJfkWmR-1B2RcRhTlF9fo89cpMNLsiIf3aopzQkBYF-90jWcza7JbSUpNQJppR_VLQNonD8hwGOkc0Qlsif9aXG0uaJ6Av5YrS-eUd-SvM6_1EQ/s2048/WMjPoSbMQ6%252BRKorxRznzPA.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLKFkfphYpDlpPEcS3uWwlqdhE852trJfkWmR-1B2RcRhTlF9fo89cpMNLsiIf3aopzQkBYF-90jWcza7JbSUpNQJppR_VLQNonD8hwGOkc0Qlsif9aXG0uaJ6Av5YrS-eUd-SvM6_1EQ/w480-h640/WMjPoSbMQ6%252BRKorxRznzPA.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I've been so busy making the most of my time on this planet that I have mostly forgone the opportunity to recount what I've already done. So today I am compiling a list of my published writing of which I have not mentioned anything here before. In the last couple of years I have published two research articles (in <i>A/B Auto/Biograpy Studies</i> and <i>Journal of the Motherhood Initiative</i>), a song lyric of mine has been published in <i>Lyrics As Poetry</i> and a an introductory article about my creative works related to cancer came out this year in <i>Wildfire Magazine</i>. Yet, somehow I forgot to mention any of these happy moments. It took me a while to realize that everything relates. And that by letting you know about my works and these lovely journals and magazines, I'll let you decide how you might want to relate to this stuff. Of course, in 2019 I published my Finnish language memoir <i><a href="https://otava.fi/kirjat/viimeinen-kirjani-2/">Viimeinen kirjani: kirjoituksia elämästä</a></i>. I'll write a separate post about that later. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><p></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><h3 style="text-align: left;">1. "Dreaming is Dangerous" in Lyrics as Poetry</h3><div></div></div><p></p><h3><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCJHpCyXDu97hrXJsHN4NFRaUWk_YhyphenhyphenSIMfRNMH6-1loPVHQaSvlE-A0tjFwcXPFBU_BK-o0LfxL3K_1iopUmLC0ndWwzqVhD9RFvB1lnFKCJpudK-4onhFoHvWzs1zkxA1ai0vAOSyEE/w480-h640/1IR8N07hSSyQrfgZWS6YNw.jpg" title="Lyrics as Poetry vol 2." width="480" /></h3><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It was an honor to be asked to publish this song lyric in the second issue of <i><a href="https://www.lyricsaspoetry.com/" target="_blank">Lyrics as Poetry</a></i> in September 2018. "Dreaming is Dangerous" is a song that was born as a complete lyric before it found its music and its way into the album sessions of what became <a href="https://tidal.com/browse/album/21953280" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Astrid4</a><i style="font-weight: bold;">. </i>It didn't make the cut. Then it was recorded for <i><b><a href="https://tidal.com/browse/album/69752102">From the Bed and Beyond</a> –</b></i> again the song fell out of the album, but was released as a single in 2017. I am forever thankful for the statement that this journal makes: lyrics are poetry. For me, the poems that do not find their match in music, usually are forgotten, sleeping their princess sleep on pages in my journals, notebooks and diaries. Sometimes I feel sad for them. As if the pages have turned into little forgotten graveyards. </div><p></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><h3 style="text-align: left;">2. "Skeleton Woman and Other Stories: How MBC Made Me Break My Own Silence" in Wildifire Magazine<img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia4R6aF089MbTRlI1NJuftkYrhruiaowapPpd1gU2sJUV1GzwyikzxGfwYHQlyprCbWQhBbrxfvURm2LGYrRmCKDu4SrkdOWzUOJ1CdFoD6jLp3uWqg6qtREV5SSTf1LUlbM9SLwgSZD0/w480-h640/rKP7th8ZTOKaTJM7xQ5%252BSQ.jpg" title="Wildfire Magazine" width="480" /></h3></div><p></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">About a year ago I discovered <a href="https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/" target="_blank">Wildfire Magazine</a>. Immediately, I wanted to be a part of this unique magazine that focuses entirely on young women's experiences with breast cancer and metastatic breast cancer (MBC). For their February/March 2020 issue, Changemakers, I wrote a piece about how my songwriting and life writing became the ways in which I made meaning out of illness and approaching death. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></p><h3 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">3. "Cyber Labour: Birth Stories on Mommyblogs as Narrative Gateways into Maternal Thinking" in Journal of Motherhood Initiative</h3><p></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_ODl3HEQ5RKJH2e3wq4ZtjqJ2FVlWbC38hqaLVWbs6BWdDWxmOPGEKf1FjLLRp9xjiTv7jZeHuIhscsmitpe5l7Zfmhg_0nlBp61nmXkXY1GZJ_lEcpfyYGaGBqfYitKl_JTF1yQofY/w480-h640/ZAiTN3iOTRqoiqsoyC3lQw.jpg" title="Journal of the Motherhood Initiative" width="480" /><p></p></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><h3><br /></h3><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I have been writing my PhD dissertation for the last six years (I am going to be graduating in 2021), the same amount of time that I've been a cancer survivor with intermitted bouts of recurrence and treatments. The "Cyber Labour" -article in <a href="https://jarm.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jarm" target="_blank">this journal</a> was my first published research article. At this point, it looks and feels like a beginning, which it was. The article analyses birth stories on mommy blogs and presents mommy blogging as a discursive "tool" for maternal thinking. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><h3 style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />4. "Becoming D/other: Life as a Transmuting Device" in a/b Auto/Biography Studies</h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg79o2Cw3R_-Q6jKzaq7ZBTTySCN-7X4c14ZVzVi-X4g8DLUhWIDrV5WJvNP6PoTxhYmlV-6oLjyKQ8OHVsHdQqVl9hJTGM95Senri36Zy0erQxIuSjKMn_V6WSDENCsj4u_IICU3Lk6o4/s2048/bPFRk1edSEStj0BJ5yqR9g.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg79o2Cw3R_-Q6jKzaq7ZBTTySCN-7X4c14ZVzVi-X4g8DLUhWIDrV5WJvNP6PoTxhYmlV-6oLjyKQ8OHVsHdQqVl9hJTGM95Senri36Zy0erQxIuSjKMn_V6WSDENCsj4u_IICU3Lk6o4/w480-h640/bPFRk1edSEStj0BJ5yqR9g.jpg" title="A/B Auto/Biography Studies" width="480" /></a></div><br />This is my second published research article. I jokingly called it a UFO while writing it – it felt so strange and so right at the same time. I was the author, but the piece felt like it was writing me. I wrote it for this special issue <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/raut20/35/1?nav=tocList" target="_blank">Life Writing in the Anthropocene</a> in mind. it took two and half years until published from when I started to work on it. Academic publishing is slow and many doors may open and close in the process. My article considers death of a mother, the extinction of planetary life forms, and the role of narratives, archives, digital memories and lives as devices that transform existence. Importantly, the article begins the development of a new concept D/other. <p></p>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-52129578715678579812020-09-03T12:37:00.004+03:002020-09-03T12:37:36.201+03:00Toiseuden synty: rodusta, rajoista ja kirjallisuudesta (Toni Morrison)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVMO2Kaz8zUE4wDyNrVKsDkdEDvpRnDvULfJ737Sxows1XgKBvzUOvVMWEEQwF6M2VZGofoFj_yPzXZTtbdEvwZ9As2i3lYszn_Oyfkxdr7_m-2-pKSPfcY4CvLsPWxJr2w6HR8OzuCtY/s2048/9789520426668_frontcover_draft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1311" height="976" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVMO2Kaz8zUE4wDyNrVKsDkdEDvpRnDvULfJ737Sxows1XgKBvzUOvVMWEEQwF6M2VZGofoFj_yPzXZTtbdEvwZ9As2i3lYszn_Oyfkxdr7_m-2-pKSPfcY4CvLsPWxJr2w6HR8OzuCtY/w625-h976/9789520426668_frontcover_draft.jpg" width="625" /></a><br /><br /></div>Ihanaa! Katsokaa mikä kansi. Vietimme Koko Hubara kanssa kauniin kesän kammioissamme ja rannoilla, tiiviisti tietokoneen ruutuihin ja <i>The Origins of Others</i> -kirjaan keskittyen. Ei se mitään. Keskustelimme kinkkisistä lauseista ja niiden merkityksistä niin valuvan sitruunajäätelön kuin valkoviinin ja tomaattileivän kera. Lähettelimme kuumeisesti whatsapp-viestejä keskellä yötä, koska välillä epätoivo iski. Suomeksi ei ole sanastaoa kaikelle. Meille iskettiin maailman upein kirjailija ajatuksineen emmekä halunneet pettää edes Morrisonin muistoa. Mietimme voiko sanoja keksiä, miten kieli muuttuu ja mikä on perusteltua. Tuloksena syntyi suomen kielinen käännös Morrisonin esseekokoelmasta. Sen nimi on <i>Toiseuden synty: rodusta, rajoista ja kirjallisuudesta</i>. Tammi julkaisee kirjan vielä syksyn 2020 aikana. Se on osa perinteikästä käännöskirjallisuussarjaa Keltainen kirjasto.<br /><br />I received the honor of translating Toni Morrison into Finnish with my friend and respected author Koko Hubara. The translation of Morrison's <i>The Origin of Others</i> (<i>Toiseuden synty</i> in Finnish) will be published by Tammi in fall 2020. We are very happy that this book is coming out for the Finnish language audience and a very important discussion can continue in Finland too. <p></p>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-82444035390528507272019-10-21T13:55:00.001+03:002019-10-21T14:17:31.126+03:00Brain Storming : Fragments from the Fall<br />
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";
panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-134238209 -371195905 63 0 4129279 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Bodoni 72 Book";
panose-1:0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@Arial Unicode MS";
panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-134238209 -371195905 63 0 4129279 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Bodoni 72 Book";
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";
mso-font-kerning:1.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-family:"Bodoni 72 Book";
mso-ascii-font-family:"Bodoni 72 Book";
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:"Bodoni 72 Book";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";
mso-font-kerning:1.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}
@page WordSection1
{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;
margin:70.85pt 2.0cm 70.85pt 2.0cm;
mso-header-margin:36.0pt;
mso-footer-margin:36.0pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
</style>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5aIYFvGPvgn0NTLHk_Y68lBB57t8oGtXzZGhDR49Fs91kMZ-WaBf9_QOYSBDRQTJhvPQVGOKveIOEpGAZoYOZK6pQkfPrROU3CONOKtaS4Zwgzn7B_ubhZk0rSXnyNQH3V8d3dfWawCU/s1600/fullsizeoutput_33c5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1191" data-original-width="893" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5aIYFvGPvgn0NTLHk_Y68lBB57t8oGtXzZGhDR49Fs91kMZ-WaBf9_QOYSBDRQTJhvPQVGOKveIOEpGAZoYOZK6pQkfPrROU3CONOKtaS4Zwgzn7B_ubhZk0rSXnyNQH3V8d3dfWawCU/s640/fullsizeoutput_33c5.jpeg" width="478" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Image by Tekla Vály</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Broken Story</b></span></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">This is a broken story. There are so many lines I refuse to write. I both avoid chronicling the passing moments, the news, the small and
large things, the shifts and turns from where there is no returning and I want
to leave traces, details from it all. </span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;">I mourn the days lost. </span><span style="font-size: large;">All the days that were so important, the crumbs that
made the whole, of which there will never be a record. </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "bodoni book";">Instead there is this document, and a parallel story in the paper diary and a</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">ll the notebooks which mix work, ideas, diary and
lyrics into an utter mess. Because for me it all relates...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The disarray and the gaps nag at me. I so wish to organize this life. I want to leave behind a meaningful archive. And yet, I cannot write, or I do write one moment and say nothing the next. </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
This whole life, moment to moment as I live, unrecorded – as any life. And then the awareness of a jumble of artefacts left
behind. Not as a trail to find me, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">but as tokens to collect and assemble a
whole other narrative. Not MY narrative, not an intentional image if one would form, but traces scattered. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">I think writing is my duty, a responsibility.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anticipatory Grief</b></span></span></h3>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Over the past years, I have held on to a dark and heavy slow-motion of letting go of it all. Yet often it has appeared comical because of time's passing. I have turned this letting go into a joke almost, laughing at my own dramatic expressions of living on the cusp. Now again, it appears there is realism in this desperate darkness, the anticipation. It is just so difficult a space to occupy, it makes everyone uncomfortable. It’s like that thing: looking down into a toilet bowl, which as a child we were told would not be a good idea. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Now the dark stone -feeling is right. It blankets us even here, where it was almost a memory until now. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Although life keeps happening as per usual, there is the cinnamon dusting of anticipatory grief. Every beautiful line and thing is noticed for its perfection. Deeper hugs, longer and more of them.</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We linger, we linger in this <i>now</i>.</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "bodoni book";"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Brain Storming</b></span></span></h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "bodoni book";">It takes me a few days to gather myself from a deep pit of bad news; the fact that my brain mets need treatment. By Wednesday, my first appointment with the radiologist, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am accustomed to the idea. I can take the mask making (think a kind of hospital/space version of S&M fun) and the symphony of the MRI as it really is musical this time. I can take the absurdity and the carelessness of new doctors working in the cellar. I feel my agency hung on
things like not needing dexamethasone and not losing my hair in chunks at
least. My best distraction at the hospital is a friend sitting in each room with me. In the mask making space, where I lie for fifteen minutes inside a plastic mask covering my head apart from eyes and nose, she talks to me about a tv program where couples have sex and then end up in the ER. She makes dates on Tinder while I lie still. Her actions make for consoling discussion erasing much of the despair in the room</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Friday afternoon, not expecting a call, I get one and the same strange cellar doctor states matter-of-factly that there is a
snow blizzard in my cerebellum.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I begin calling the metastasis a brainstorm.</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>I am brainstorming. </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The doctor's words linger:</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> <i>if we don’t treat these now, later we could be in a situation where they cannot be treated… </i>One sentence justifies my suffering. I am willing.</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The outlines of a finitude are suddenly just there, visibly painted in front of my mind’s eye. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Just there, is the line from where there is no return. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I can be here now, but a light gust of bad luck can blow me over to the other side. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am a wind seedling. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am tumbling.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "bodoni book";"></span></span></span><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The doctor calls it a situation that needs more treatment.
So now my hair will fall out in large clumps from the back of my head. Now I
will have to eat dexamethasone for two weeks. Now the whole area
of the cerebellum will be radiated on a low dose and the two larger
metastases will be blasted with the planned stereotactic radiation. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
While she holds me on the phone with her monotonic voice replying to my questions, I
feel calm and pretend with her that I believe her statements of business as usual. I write things down so as not to forget. Then, just as suddenly, I am on our new bed alone, with the phone off and my previous work
stuff lying there looking like the most unimportant trash. I cry and type text
messages at the same time. I send the news off to different directions. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Gradually "a spot of cancer" is getting worse. </span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I sink.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<b style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Medical Anxiety</span></b></h3>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I start taking dexamethasone two days before the first radiation treatment. I take the pills three times a day. I have great anxiety about it all weekend, because my experience with this drug is that it makes me very sick. After two days of the pills, I am emotionally unstable, crying at every juncture. Within three days I have lost myself into a fog. I am distant from myself, inside, deep somehow. The outside world is too loud, too active and triggering. It is as if there is a curtain hanging in front of my eyes, clouding my vision. I just want to sleep and exist in silence. But even the silence feels dangerous. My thoughts race at a high speed. I am not connected.I think to myself: <i>now I know why Sylvia put her head in the oven</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>I cannot live like this. I would rather die than to lose myself.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Luckily, it is clear my symptoms are from the cortisone and not from grief. Of course I am sad, but the sadness is not incapacitating me, the drugs are. I have never known such depth of depression. The dose of the cortisone is lowered and instead of ending up in treatment for depression, I manage to walk myself to the radiation five times within the next two weeks. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The treatment itself is like a scene from a science fiction film. I am Hannibal Lecter, ET and Sigourney Weaver all at the same time.</span></span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Friends</span></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">My friends walk me to the machine and wait in a little booth nearby. Then they take me to lunch and walk me through the yellows and oranges of autumn. I am deeply moved by the depth of their care. They are willing to accompany me to the ugly buildings and sit through boring treatments. They take time off from their full lives to sit next to me when I cry. They make me laugh. They tell me about plans, daily life, dreams and we linger on a bunch of ideas on how to change the world for better. In their presence I am comforted because I know they will go on, whatever my situation and because they are there with me. I feel lucky.<br /><br />PS: Thank you for reading and I do hope you respect my wishes to not write news stories or articles based on this post. </span>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-8111755110219369992019-09-17T09:15:00.002+03:002019-09-18T16:05:56.609+03:00Certainty has left the building<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMgnowh187uwTBkNbkRFnt9qUygdZYblUhXz4O0uI59K9eLpQ6CpDludxHxzyJl-IABMRGPfxpgq9dO6Y17ZWZc_M5Igm_Db2lKWd6vUoErUuq4qBWFHXLaUErJ9xjx1tWNaFFRtXmykA/s1600/kansi4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMgnowh187uwTBkNbkRFnt9qUygdZYblUhXz4O0uI59K9eLpQ6CpDludxHxzyJl-IABMRGPfxpgq9dO6Y17ZWZc_M5Igm_Db2lKWd6vUoErUuq4qBWFHXLaUErJ9xjx1tWNaFFRtXmykA/s640/kansi4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Tekla Vály</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Certainty Has Left the Building</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br />
In June my oncologist called me about some tiny spots that had been
detected in my brain. This news came after an MRI scan of my head. It was taken as a precaution, after I mentioned I was eating painkillers for headaches
nearly every day. The spots seemed harmless, like old news to me. I immediately
assumed a deflective stance: this was going to be nothing – at its worse, a minor hick-up in my normal and very enjoyable life. I mentioned the spots only to a handful of people in my immediate family demanding them to remain stoic in
their trust in my perspective. Yet, it seemed difficult for my very
experienced doctor, her most trusted neurosurgeon and many other
oncologist and radiologists to agree on what the small spots were or what should be done. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br />Weeks turned to months. I fell into a summer
of reversals. One week I was to just be monitored every month with an MRI, the
next I was to have one dose of stereotactic radiation. Phone calls kept
coming at funny hours from the hospital, but they were followed by more calls taking back decisions more than
once. In July, I was told again that we were going ahead with radiation. Letters of appointments were mailed to me and I began to adjust myself and the ones in the know to this
new reality. Then my nurse called once more and said that I can
tear all mailed letters of appointments because they were not going to treat me. She framed
it as good news: nothing was going to change. As if the doctor's decision meant I no longer had <i>something</i> in my head.<br />
I tore the letters when they arrived thinking I am a time bomb.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">My first thought upon hearing about the tiny spots in my cerebellum was: <i>now
I know how I will die</i>. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">I exist in a time that has hollowed and frayed. I hide my despair deep
thinking I’ll deal with it when there’s certainty. Knowing certainty
is the one thing absent forever. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Certainty has left the building.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am creating a void; avoiding my own
reactions, feelings and self-knowing. To my partner and mother and child I
have the story of my friends who survived against all statistical odds on the
right side of the Kaplan-Meier curve. Those who are alive as we speak. These
women are like fireworks in the sky above the curve lowered to death below
May grass. I quote my hope-giving doctor to anyone who seems doubtful and I aggressively belittle each expression of despair my loved ones put forward. I tell them things that
make me believe this is just a breeze. I suggest my relationship to oncology is
comparable to dentistry. </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">Am I leading them astray? Am I already cultivating reality in the
amounts that I can take, creating distance between us for my own sake? </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">What about statistics, the ugly words printed near the lowering of the
curve? Should I lie down now?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<br />
<b>What I Can Do</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 72.0pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />In the six years my mother had MDS, she wrote 100 blog posts, two books
and two plays and directed a movie. There was nothing she could do about her
death but to keep going in the face of it. Work was its own kind of medicine,
even if it could not save her when her MDS came roaring back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 72.0pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’m having a little health
crisis.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 72.0pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">That’s how she put it when she
called me shortly before Memorial Day weekend.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 72.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Jacob Bernstein in New York Times “Nora Ephron’s Last Act”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 72.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">That "little health crisis" ended up being the one Ephron did not survive. I understand the necessity of framing her worsening health the way she did. One of the most important healing methods I can think of is to delve
into my work in such a devoted and time-consuming manner that I simply do not
have time to actively process how ill I am. I don’t have time to watch for unusual
headaches or twitches in the eye. This is the secret of why, since my first cancer diagnosis in 2014, I have been
working on a punishing schedule writing and publishing music, literature and
academic research. This must be why Stina Koistinen is in a million different
bands, groups and recording sessions. It is survival through art making. <br /><br />
Yet, in the quiet moments of July evenings I sense a new type of weariness. A disinterest is
brewing in me. I keep asking myself is it depression, because everything these
days needs a diagnosis. Even flighty emotions. I have a vague recollection of having felt this before, I keep quiet. I am tired of being the spectacle of illness for the sake of drama. I am tired
of entertaining others with my destiny. Still, I cannot shake my interest in
staying in the discussion about the insights that illness brings. Because
in my experience, it does work that way. Illness becomes an illumination. I spend my summer reading and writing about illness and narrative. The library of sorrow I am collecting grows exponentially. I underline sentences and circle words here and there with my new rainbow pens. I come upon what </span><span style="font-size: large;">David Rieff
wrote about his mother </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">Susan Sontag's </span><span style="font-size: large;">refusal to go:</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i> My mother
had lived almost her entire seventy-one years believing that she was a person
who would beat the odds, no matter how steep they seemed. In this, as in so much
else in her life, she remained determined, and as consistent on old age as she
had been in childhood. […] What this meant for her, she added, was an “absolute
decision not to be done in.” </i>(Swimming in A Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir by
David Rieff , p.23) <i> </i></span></span><!--EndFragment--><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />Over and over again, I make the decision to believe that I can choose to not be done in. The summer lingers well past its usual spell. Another doctor's appointment looms close.<br /><br />
<b>September Issue<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the first week of September I get my August MRI scan results. I can already tell it’s
not going to be good when my appointment is cancelled an hour before its time, the last
week of August. I get pushed into another month, as if into another department of the year, or a chapter in a story.<br /><br />
I usually never take my partner with me to the hospital. I get irritated by him there.
I cannot handle his emotions or his ways of coping (phone scrolling and incessant
talking about politics). Now I have made a point about him coming along. We sit in the uncomfortable beige chairs of the waiting area. This time we
discuss the British political drama. We speak loudly in disagreement. I do not
accept calling LGBTQ -rights brave. I want to call them the norm. I focus on details, his terminology as per usual. I am oblivious to the old people who may be listening. The hospital makes me sick, because it is moldy and I
have become sensitive to its air.<br /><br />The doctor is nearly an
hour late. When she does appear she creeps up and taps me on my shoulder gently inviting us in. She is hushed and
muted and unlike before. Now there is evidence of growth in the images, she informs us after we are seated. The
radiation treatment will be scheduled immediately. We are talking about brain metastasis.
The uncertainty of “something in the cerebellum” is now called “two dots of metastasis”.
Even the consoling mental image of the growth having been "tiny" is switched to the
reality of something visible to any eye. Measurements are given, but I don't get to look at the scans yet. I am referred to the cellar, where cool-headed physicists and radiologists
reside. My questions are batted off; someone else will know the answers better.
<br /><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">My partner and I</span> separate in front of the hospital.
He goes to work. I cycle to the post office to pick up an order of ethical hosiery
from Sweden. The pleasure of my order has turned to emptiness. I am not sure if
I should cry from anger or from sadness. Crying seems like a duty I have, the appropriate reaction, but I wish to deny the universe this obvious expression. The sea, the trees and the buildings
all appear respectfully proportionate to my state. Do I need tights this fall?
Will I live to see them break in the crotch and develop holes in the toes? I am thinking about dying in a biking accident. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>I am thinking about
dying.</i> </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then I decide to not talk
about this to anyone. I'll just inform the immediate family. I am tired of making my
tragedy a public saga.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I go home and wallow in loneliness
and attempt to collect hopeful information from bits and pieces. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">The cancer community knows that brain mets are easy to treat and the treatment won’t make me very sick. Not like chemo. Piece of cake, they say. </span><span style="font-size: large;">I drown my sorrow in work. Suddenly my academic paper is advancing in leaps.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I tell myself and my loved ones that</span> life isn’t
about to change. I have no problems with my every day health, my blood work is
excellent, I have energy and inspiration. I ask them to push their despair to the edges of time. Still, the next day I cancel all my appointments and work engagements and meetings with
friends. I am incapacitated by fear. I cry for hours. I write a poem about the view outside. I have no idea where to put my
anger. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">There is so much
I don’t want to acknowledge a</span><span style="font-size: large;">nd so much I do want to grapple with, but in good time. For now I just focus on not folding.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Half an hour after I have written my poem and my cheeks are streaked from the paths of tears, I am on the phone with a friend when a rainbow appears in front of my windows. I know it is saying something like </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">remember the beauty of this absurd life </i><span style="font-size: large;">but I think it's too much. It's tacky from the universe to insert a rainbow into my scene of accute suffering. Yet, isn't it just like it too?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Note to media</b>: Please, consider not writing news articles or anything based on this post. Any queries should be directed to <a href="http://solitimusic.com/" target="_blank">Soliti</a> or <a href="https://otava.fi/nemo/" target="_blank">Nemo</a>. Thank you.</span></div>
<br />Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-52322524936127275532019-03-27T09:04:00.001+02:002019-03-27T09:04:11.376+02:00On Becoming a Writer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSfikvLcUWBqhDl1YfOgP-Vx1HSdiKoRSktv4XB6-ShMVLXVGXtWWsQnBd4lhoeNXGXA9U4inZ2wU3QkF2DHleOJ2jeQjPn0Atqj74nidl_nr67ZoN-PkPBCDHnvyODR0gJdI6itdxZs/s1600/viimeinen+kirjani+kansi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1101" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSfikvLcUWBqhDl1YfOgP-Vx1HSdiKoRSktv4XB6-ShMVLXVGXtWWsQnBd4lhoeNXGXA9U4inZ2wU3QkF2DHleOJ2jeQjPn0Atqj74nidl_nr67ZoN-PkPBCDHnvyODR0gJdI6itdxZs/s640/viimeinen+kirjani+kansi.jpg" width="440" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
As I write this I am waiting for my book to arrive to me from the printing press. Some time this week I'll get to hold a copy and leaf through the book. Or so I think, even though the release of the book is still two weeks away. The book is in Finnish. Therefore, I hesitate to write here in English about it, but then I give myself permission as this space has always been in English. I remain torn between the two languages. Still, I am more at ease with these two languages than ever before. They are both mine in a meaningful way. I don't have to prefer one, I don't have to struggle between expressions.<br />
(I just hope you read Finnish)<br />
<br />
This same sense of duality has troubled me for ages regarding being a passionate musician but continuing to love and need writing as well as research too. As if wanting to contribute on all these fronts, through apparently differing media was a infidelity or a contradiction. It has taken me a lifetime to arrive here; to know it's all just one stream. One stream or a reservoir of water from which I pour. In which I swim.<br />
<br />
I am going to give myself permission to write in Finnish here too, from time to time. If it seems to make sense with the book. I am the worst translator I know so it won't be a case of translating. Just hopping to a different part of the brain. Maybe, in time I'll realize that there isn't such a chasm between the modes of expression either.<br />
Now I'm just sharing this cover of the book with my expectant feelings. Butterflies in the belly, spring's harshest dust in the throat, glittering joy of a dream coming true.<br />
<br />I am becoming a writer. One with a book with pages and covers.<br /><a href="http://nemokustannus.fi/kirjat/viimeinen-kirjani-kirjoituksia-elamasta/" target="_blank">Viimeinen kirjani</a> is out April 7th, 2019.<br />Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-25062897719053748632018-12-31T13:37:00.002+02:002018-12-31T13:37:46.502+02:00A Year of Change: 2018<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_wvvWFvGwahhnNN6R6l35Taias-ktiJ4E1JohXEMWdQsI0RI_a4arEu0gg9tMNBUIPkFQSajWwBXMVvdu-WUMNo_qvLtmk4Xb55nV1Vmwo90UdfcwTXMETrKi6JULM1wcU18vxr0kYko/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-12-31+at+12.48.04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="604" height="630" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_wvvWFvGwahhnNN6R6l35Taias-ktiJ4E1JohXEMWdQsI0RI_a4arEu0gg9tMNBUIPkFQSajWwBXMVvdu-WUMNo_qvLtmk4Xb55nV1Vmwo90UdfcwTXMETrKi6JULM1wcU18vxr0kYko/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-12-31+at+12.48.04.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My #2018bestnine on @astridswanland Instagram</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />I am writing this in a state that describes just how seriously I take transitions:<br />I feel sick, have a low grade fever and one of my eyes is weeping from infection.<br />Thank you, I won't be popping the bubbling at midnight, but cheering with a cup of turmeric tea.<br />And that's ok.<br /><br />I am a self-declared change lover, but recently, I have had to admit that the thrill of the new makes me scared, sick to my stomach, truly frightened and nervous. I'm not sure is it ever since I discovered a lump in my breast on January 2nd, 2014 – five years ago – just after the fireworks and promises of a better year. Or is it since I became a mother in 2012, end of the same month and discovered that the world is a danger zone through the eyes of a woman post-partum? I suspect that I have carried this fear with me always, but have allowed it to surface – wash over me completely – now that I truly <i>know</i> how new beginnings are out of my control. They can be the wonderful surprises of new homes, new views and even awards and nominations. They can be about respect and honor but they can just as well be about recurrence of cancer, or something unimaginable. Something... well, new.<br /><br />I dislike people's tendency to psychoanalyse common colds and other somatic illnesses for deeper meanings. Still, I cannot help but notice the funny timing of waking up with flu on New Year's Eve after the year I've had.<br /><br /><i>It's been so good.</i><br />Yes, I have felt lucky.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivTbYocauYR7hG68GLxe0YFaVQJduLmIlrOEo21AIkIM8fliHyZ-cNSyJXZBqwNiZ-OnlKxTb3kUZBbU1nrWmDglLbyjnjW8YKi-obku0Znz0EYsn86r5tu1f1sCMkN_1Dgmnsf1e3U5c/s1600/IMG_6757.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivTbYocauYR7hG68GLxe0YFaVQJduLmIlrOEo21AIkIM8fliHyZ-cNSyJXZBqwNiZ-OnlKxTb3kUZBbU1nrWmDglLbyjnjW8YKi-obku0Znz0EYsn86r5tu1f1sCMkN_1Dgmnsf1e3U5c/s640/IMG_6757.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
A year and four months in a state of NEAD with metastatic breast cancer (Nead= No Evidence of Active Disease). The same amount of time without chemo and with a head of hair. I have lived in near-normal health. Yes, my life is punctuated with hospital visits for three-weekly treatments, several CT-scans a year and doctors visits as well as an uncountable amount of other tests, drawn blood samples and little health scares here and there. But all of that is so easy compared to life with chemo and advancing disease that I have taken to forgetting the nearly weekly hospital visits.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXvijsb-rC7TKcGtG7IL66aQxIDuIAV2lXxpRhlK1WIxweOGsD93Whz2klC1gxRhNkHqPs-MkFoNdavTwdwqVw8Kohc_V3MrYat4yBIGL2IYtswBttNMLlzdRx_uPQfmfjBntB5RMyrZc/s1600/IMG_7914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXvijsb-rC7TKcGtG7IL66aQxIDuIAV2lXxpRhlK1WIxweOGsD93Whz2klC1gxRhNkHqPs-MkFoNdavTwdwqVw8Kohc_V3MrYat4yBIGL2IYtswBttNMLlzdRx_uPQfmfjBntB5RMyrZc/s640/IMG_7914.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
As a creative artist, I could not have imagined to ever live through a time like this. Especially because my latest album <i>From the Bed and Beyond</i> was in early 2018 already a year old. But 2018 became a time when I was institutionally recognized in Finland and in Scandinavia. In December 2017 I was nominated for an Emma Award in the Critic's choice category, then in January 2018 I was nominated for Nordic Music Price (<a href="https://bylarm.no/awards/phonofile-nordic-music-prize/" target="_blank">see the amazing contestant list here</a>) and then came the nomination for Teosto-palkinto. In April, <a href="https://www.teosto.fi/teosto/teosto-palkinto" target="_blank">I became the winner of the Teosto Award sharing the honor with Joona Toivanen trio</a>. Having experienced a deep connection with my audiences at shows and online during the <i>From the Bed and Beyond</i> shows, these nominations and the Teosto Award appeared to constitute a moment in which the connection continued to exist. Thank you! What a supportive, restorative, energising, fragile and precious gift it has been.<br /><br />While I have experienced this sparkling music life in 2018 on the visible part of a wave, there has been lots going on in the undercurrents: For one, I have taken time to see the world with its beauty. I have traveled alone, with friends and with family. I have noticed just how tired and broken I feel and my attempt has been to take a rest. At times I have succeeded, but to be honest, the undercurrent has swept me off my feet a few times, because a huge artistic effort has muffled my insides the whole year: my book. The process of writing has offered a sobering antidote to feeling like I achieved something elsewhere. And because I am writing about my life and the lives of those who came before me and stand next to me, it has been like traveling with a silent thunderstorm where ever I have landed.<br />
<br />So with gratitude and more gratitude, but also with trepidation, I walk into you, time. <i>The New Year</i>.<br />2019. I make no promises, but I keep my standards. Just like you both do and don't.<br /><br />Thank you,<br />AstridAstrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-56714019121444242352018-10-31T11:17:00.001+02:002018-10-31T11:17:13.009+02:00SHOW CANCELLATION & DIGITAL LIFE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcP3aSxYlG9ImP6JFJTHJuHF1Nwy86adw3rPdECYVzH5SoXUb6b0yx6KEpLe6ahqys2DMCpCRAHmmxn3fKUjPskqtI3iEePkLkPCCrUfYL5Zxub8kw06ERT4dH06I63KR-Ro09tSguwEs/s1600/IMG_7761.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcP3aSxYlG9ImP6JFJTHJuHF1Nwy86adw3rPdECYVzH5SoXUb6b0yx6KEpLe6ahqys2DMCpCRAHmmxn3fKUjPskqtI3iEePkLkPCCrUfYL5Zxub8kw06ERT4dH06I63KR-Ro09tSguwEs/s640/IMG_7761.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<h2>
Gig cancellation</h2>
<br />I found myself telling an interviewer some time ago that my blogging is like exercising: always the first thing to go. When life is full, I forget.<br /><br />Right now, I am back from Rome, snuggle at home with a head cold and the grey of the outdoors waiting for November to really deliver its dark magic.<br /><br />I'm really here to inform you that <b>my show at Sofia Future Farm in Helsinki on November 10th has been cancelled</b>. I am needed elsewhere, as my family will be burying a member that day.<br />
If you have a ticket already, You will be able to get your money back.<br />
<br />I will be playing my last show of the year in December. Welcome to <a href="https://holvi.com/shop/kansallisgalleria/product/6609d8747aedf1d47531b5b3fc5f6e41/" target="_blank">Ateneum-klubi,</a> Helsinki on December 19th. Hopefully, see you there.<br /><br />
<h2>
Social media shutdown</h2>
<br />Today is the third day of my social media diet. I think that it may have played a huge role in being less active here... who knows, maybe I'll find myself blogging more and constructing some larger posts now that I don't have to compulsively produce content daily via Insta and FB. I haven't quit using those, but have taken them off my phone. I am noticing some heavy symptoms of addiction, as I am withdrawing. The urge to grab my phone "for a quick check" or a some smart update that suddenly occurred to me, is finding me constantly.<br /><br />I had no idea just how addicted I was. I am already noticing that now I have time to talk to my partner and to listen to my kid, and to read and to write in a journal. Hey, maybe I'll even start to make phone calls... that would be radical.<br /><br />Social media has enriched my life because I have been able to connect with people I would not normally meet or talk to. I have at times felt like there is a community.<br />But then there is the stress that comes with needing to be always present, alert and at work.<br />I am someone who has never been able to read the news daily, because I carry the bad news with me and become incapacitated by my inability to change the conditions of suffering at once. With social media, I have become emotionally involved every day in things, carrying others' lives and turning my experiences into publishable emotional tales. Some of that is fine and enriching, a lot of that has sucked me dry.<br /><br />Now I'm signing out and resuming my duties: a new keyboard, mike and the need to mix Koistinen/Swan EP ASAP.<br /><br />X<br />Astrid<br /><br />Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-11183637199726104482018-06-29T21:37:00.000+03:002018-06-29T21:37:12.216+03:00Over the Rainbow, Under the Sky<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnMD1jzMheebE-EpQEnOMrpnsQt89vfUonsOUffaKHmynPTxr9ez9DS_I02aI7YPuEDf6LTKgfLAMpz4dtf6-FIDckUqJF-H_36O8QA_PM_1qcpfe1Q6oSGdrnfFBgSjWP8aratYNKvLg/s1600/IMG_4870.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnMD1jzMheebE-EpQEnOMrpnsQt89vfUonsOUffaKHmynPTxr9ez9DS_I02aI7YPuEDf6LTKgfLAMpz4dtf6-FIDckUqJF-H_36O8QA_PM_1qcpfe1Q6oSGdrnfFBgSjWP8aratYNKvLg/s640/IMG_4870.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corfu, June 2018, photo by Varpu Eronen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A year after I wrote a blog post imagining what it will be like not being here, leaving my life when my child is still small, I’m still here. I'm here as a parent, a partner, a writer, a musician, a friend, a researcher writing a PhD, a daughter. I'm both active and not very active. I'm alternating between stages and living with imperfections and annoyances on all fronts. And I'm here (among the piles of dust, unpainted walls and yet-to-be-decorated-rooms as well as the fun, the travels, the award ceremonies and so much more glittering fun). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Suddenly, I am aware of just how much preparation I was mentally (and more pragmatically) doing for possibly exiting soon. And how much those around me and much farther from me were involved in their own processes of letting me go. And yet, if I'm honest: how very much it hurt to have even so much as a slight hint of someone working on letting me go. Because I was and continue to be here now.<br /><br />So guess what I think now? That what we all need is no one ever giving up on any of us.<br />I'm not sure, but I have a strong sense that somehow that kind of belief in someone is constitutive. </span><br />
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe-ujIsF6Ljuo93qq32O3RjsXYMysZDR9DuLzmAxvDzH9cnjZtpHvsWBIFWi6trWJ_VlGduxNHfP9K1fyrnaAAftehA5IyBw1aMlSX78PN1uv3HfL640zJx659y5XeIrLN313Jo-Mj-pU/s1600/IMG_4654.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe-ujIsF6Ljuo93qq32O3RjsXYMysZDR9DuLzmAxvDzH9cnjZtpHvsWBIFWi6trWJ_VlGduxNHfP9K1fyrnaAAftehA5IyBw1aMlSX78PN1uv3HfL640zJx659y5XeIrLN313Jo-Mj-pU/s640/IMG_4654.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corfu town, June 2018, photo by Varpu Eronen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is life like now then, in the New Normal in which I once again try to balance between<br />hopefulness, getting on with living and a realistic humbleness towards what lies ahead, so as not to run away from the serious border drawn around by cancer?<br /><br />It is one where I get to talk with my incredible kid every day. It is one where I get to forget I am ill, because right now, I'm really not (thanks to regular intravenous targeted medicine).<br />It is one where other people's large and small complications are once again shared with me and where I'm not always the center of concern or attention. It is one where my hair grows.<br /><br />It is one where I am growing older and making racket as a mother. It is one where I'm failing at things and bumping into corners, where petty grievances have returned and yet, new adventures have begun too – like writing a book that will come out quite soon. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is one where I get to share mundane evenings with my partner. Then I am traveling to amazing conferences abroad, and holidaying in Corfu with a childhood friend and where <a href="https://www.teosto.fi/teosto/teosto-palkinto" target="_blank">I have won a prestigious award for From the Bed and Beyond</a>. And when I come home, I feel loved and safe.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5F0QVpHwhF7ETmNTpzzdO8VOtJbHsp7aQwh7IQTqwZ5m5iyxVG39H7DQ3jXEgjGOaYMP3rFERM2WdNS10V6yCkTWTn8CXO7CuzVn2-kIusiG2dO9tCarbka4BB1f_tNehIUqY1b89sI/s1600/IMG_4579.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5F0QVpHwhF7ETmNTpzzdO8VOtJbHsp7aQwh7IQTqwZ5m5iyxVG39H7DQ3jXEgjGOaYMP3rFERM2WdNS10V6yCkTWTn8CXO7CuzVn2-kIusiG2dO9tCarbka4BB1f_tNehIUqY1b89sI/s640/IMG_4579.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">June 2018, Corfu – photo by Varpu Eronen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">So here I am, currently cancer free metastatic breast cancer thriver, who has gone on living against the odds. Here I am acknowledging that so much else is occupying my life now. Cancer treatments at the hospital bring a three week rhythm to life, and control scans punctuate the year a little too frequently, but believe me, I realize I am one lucky lady. I continue to sustain a cancer free status with precision meds rather than chemo, so the side effects are so small that they have just become part of the new normal.</span></span><br />
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia_MENswQsRaFQ8V5ONLdISG4mJmMxX2tBuRJKJrlbkRaEJBPCu-eFSpeTj4XMSkli4uaROMLA60RkCDLHncbvM-WoW82fUoqFd2f7Tnbj-iRK6jLFtJQxiOvlNb7FVdZhCUhITbjeOtc/s1600/IMG_4624.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia_MENswQsRaFQ8V5ONLdISG4mJmMxX2tBuRJKJrlbkRaEJBPCu-eFSpeTj4XMSkli4uaROMLA60RkCDLHncbvM-WoW82fUoqFd2f7Tnbj-iRK6jLFtJQxiOvlNb7FVdZhCUhITbjeOtc/s640/IMG_4624.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tomorrow I will join thousands of people to march in the Helsinki Pride holding the hand of my six-year-old wearing their very carefully picked outfit. It's an important day to my family.<br /><br />So here's for a summer of caring, loving and learning – in all the colors of the rainbow.<br />And please please please, Finland: <a href="https://www.amnesty.fi/tyomme/teemat/itsemaaraamisoikeus-sukupuoleen/" target="_blank">we need to change the law NOW </a>so that trans people have the same human rights as are provided to others. This is urgent.</span><br />
</div>
Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-54591203840715368592018-03-14T22:09:00.001+02:002018-03-14T22:09:38.880+02:00NED (a portrait of No-Evidence-of-Disease)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKakiQNQ5Lpza9ExPwEw5eHC5qlmh1FxDl8YfV92glS1JzwtAXwCLDiP09lEqBxCVlNM-KTQsedMIjJm4_dxZm1CQsBpLJBhTaK2vmgWtMXB1bbVDDv2b8_Z1NtfiJj0Lw9OGnC3EE_0Q/s1600/IMG_3544.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKakiQNQ5Lpza9ExPwEw5eHC5qlmh1FxDl8YfV92glS1JzwtAXwCLDiP09lEqBxCVlNM-KTQsedMIjJm4_dxZm1CQsBpLJBhTaK2vmgWtMXB1bbVDDv2b8_Z1NtfiJj0Lw9OGnC3EE_0Q/s640/IMG_3544.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
It is kind of my second time around cautiously treading the thin ice of "life after breast cancer treatments". It's only partly true, because of course now I am a stage four girl and so this will always be life WITH breast cancer and treatments. But right now I'm living the best possible life (if quality of life can be deduced from scans and blood tests and the severity of side-effects). Today it was confirmed to me by my doctor that I get to continue my life as a NED stage IV breast cancer patient. NED is short for <i>no evidence of disease</i>.<br />This is a huge privilege and a victory against the odds.<br />This means that in all the places where there was a disastrous dangerous shady mass in May 2017, there's now just scarring and Nothing. the good kind of Nothing. The lovely kind of scarring.<br /><br />For the last three months (time between scans) I have lived in various stages of certainty and despair. I have been devastatingly certain that the cancer is back. I have spent my days studiously running away from my fears while totally unable to run at all. I have lived a kind of theatre performance, where my physical being has performed normalcy while my emotions and ideas have given me a solo show of nerves, ticks and obsessions. Consecutive common colds, side effects of chemo and other treatments, tiredness from overworking, family life and illness extras have all turned in my mind to warning signals: the cancer is back – you are dying.<br /><br />What do I turn to then, when I have been so hilariously wrong?<br />When in fact, I need to address my tiredness and my emotional and physical wellbeing from the point of view of continuing life rather than letting go? When I have to hold on to my messy attachments and my new and old projects and I have to live with a different kind of uncertainty. The kind that holds the uncertainties that accompany terminal illness and the ones that relate to living in general.<br /><br />Like what if tomato sauce in a can was first informed that her expiry date is in six months but then she would be given an infinite future later on and put on a new shelf with a better view all together?<br />How would that tomato sauce feel? Or what would it taste like?<br /><br />I guess I have time to ask myself that question now.<br />(Last time I got to that stage of asking, I began to write songs for From the Bed and Beyond)<br />Maybe, during the last six months I thought I better not go there.<br /><br />So, just to remind myself: I'm not tomato sauce. Not even close. There's still work to be done with definitions. There's writing to be finished and songs to be sung.<br /><br />And because there's no one else here telling me this right now, I have to tell it to myself:<br />It's ok to not be so ok, but in fact to be crumbling. Crumbling is a privilege that I can now afford.<br />Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-34022942581439145322018-01-24T15:06:00.005+02:002018-01-24T15:08:19.492+02:00Creative Mornings and Nordic Music Prize Nomination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidknSnWUdFD7nLLoaF5I_gbS5aE74HirE7tqOnY_qzGR3r1WfQm63TcMRbBhXHrChTddECICAopJnqFt-DY-nlZMCwpXxL0yUwKndj8UQFRmpNrVAeD88l-gGjCnT9YsHh8lvzc0iQhns/s1600/AstridIMG_5119077.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidknSnWUdFD7nLLoaF5I_gbS5aE74HirE7tqOnY_qzGR3r1WfQm63TcMRbBhXHrChTddECICAopJnqFt-DY-nlZMCwpXxL0yUwKndj8UQFRmpNrVAeD88l-gGjCnT9YsHh8lvzc0iQhns/s640/AstridIMG_5119077.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Tomorrow is my birthday<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">. I'll be 36. A very good age to be alive, if you ask me.<br />This here blog has been a little silent in the past months. It's been the silence of recovery, return to an insane (and self-tailored) work schedule and a pause from reflection.<br /><br />Mostly it's been a silence out of the necessity of needing to extract every possible minute of the day elsewhere, in other creative expressive processes. You'll be hearing more on that stuff soon.<br /><br />But this week is so full of wonderful things that I need to stop, write and celebrate. Bring on the champagne and the glass flutes!<br />I was nominated for an <a href="http://www.emmagaala.fi/fi/ehdokaslista/23" target="_blank">Emma Award in the Critic's Choice</a> category!<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-c3__1A_6XeJuykGEz7bg5MhBFkwEkGVAlny_ZxAOLcavit3ePJGp9kk-N4tYqDxccp9VvRhPJxijSuPuWI7Gr4oj5JaSA5zehKM2Xyk4-mQy21FfCqgVMk05glMmujpuw0OTZP99TSc/s1600/NMP_AstridSwan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: Times; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-c3__1A_6XeJuykGEz7bg5MhBFkwEkGVAlny_ZxAOLcavit3ePJGp9kk-N4tYqDxccp9VvRhPJxijSuPuWI7Gr4oj5JaSA5zehKM2Xyk4-mQy21FfCqgVMk05glMmujpuw0OTZP99TSc/s640/NMP_AstridSwan.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today the nominees for the <a href="https://bylarm.no/awards/phonofile-nordic-music-prize/" target="_blank">Nordic Music Prize </a>were announced. My album From the Bed and Beyond is nominated. You'll need to check out the other nominees (from the link above). They are insanely talented, brilliant and amazing – and famous. I am proud and surprised and happy and humbled to be in this company.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: start;">
<span style="font-family: times, times new roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Up until this point, I have never ever been nominated for any award, so I'm going through the motions. It's weird. I suddenly realize that there is a difference in being an Oscar Gala fan (as annual TV entertainment) and to be a nominee for something and to entertain the idea of actually having to go to a gala. Or getting to go...<br /><br />I'm also realizing that while I have always thought that I'm doing worthy and great things artistically, there's a kind of difference when others think so too 😂...<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQd6Oug3A5hGT7ljZLNXqGPDmf7oduITkLjpRNgJ6vzzqtzC_Lp6HgCHxJQsGakIAwPNv9tNJ8Q0nutRXKt_Q5sChsCMJQB9sRIgnReEtfj5Sj31kNZxCYxAWI2JQQStH3UowxE0MDjB0/s1600/small_Anxiety_Illustration_Layout_creativemornings.com_slider.png" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: Times; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="1437" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQd6Oug3A5hGT7ljZLNXqGPDmf7oduITkLjpRNgJ6vzzqtzC_Lp6HgCHxJQsGakIAwPNv9tNJ8Q0nutRXKt_Q5sChsCMJQB9sRIgnReEtfj5Sj31kNZxCYxAWI2JQQStH3UowxE0MDjB0/s640/small_Anxiety_Illustration_Layout_creativemornings.com_slider.png" width="640" /></a><br /><br />The other lovely thing that I am happy about (and scared of in pretty equal measure) is that I am giving a talk this week. On Friday the 26th of January, I will be talking at <a href="https://creativemornings.com/cities/hel" target="_blank">Creative Mornings Helsinki.</a> The venue is Design Museo in Helsinki, the time is morning (breakfast starts at 8:30Am)! The language is English. The event is free, but you have to book your tickets through the website in advance. This month's theme is anxiety and my talk is titled "Confessions of an Anxious Memoirist".<br /><br />All in all, today's January blizzard doesn't signify traffic jams, loneliness or distant coldness to me, but crystallisation, inspiration and hope. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hope your 2018 has started with a positive feeling.<br />Here's me ending this post with a humble wish that you are doing ok!<br /><br />Astrid</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-33713942045283980812017-11-09T10:47:00.003+02:002017-11-09T11:22:41.763+02:00Breasts and Other Silences<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhypQxd3ozM3CBByl-HtfRX9IcW1LIGp4xcN7AymJwLII38s50aHaqYXms2STv2hQ0TumEtOVb3hwr4aubGpeZjoxynV4WNfqbJ95cNBXRkBkLXPtFH4BA9a0qh0nG127cwNBiN4sU78/s1600/AstridIMG_5069054.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhypQxd3ozM3CBByl-HtfRX9IcW1LIGp4xcN7AymJwLII38s50aHaqYXms2STv2hQ0TumEtOVb3hwr4aubGpeZjoxynV4WNfqbJ95cNBXRkBkLXPtFH4BA9a0qh0nG127cwNBiN4sU78/s640/AstridIMG_5069054.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the Bed and Beyond performance at WHS Teatteri. Photo by Juulia Niiniranta</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<h3>
Silences</h3>
<br />
I have allowed myself to go silent for some time.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
It's the silence of breathing in... exhaling and pausing.<br />
Looking at my head in the mirror and watching light gray feather turn to dark stubble. Stubble turn to very short, but undeniable hair. It's the silence of looking at this image and not recognising it while also going: phew... that was a close call, my lady.<br />
Also, it's what happens when I am immersed in every day life. Writing, working, cooking, caring, sitting on the sofa, reading, thinking, tending to kittens and children. <br />
Silence is my friend.<br />
<br />
I cannot deny the impact of being exposed in the media. I cannot diminish the meaning of 'aftermath'. Because really, doesn't the nearness of death just make us fragile? Do you really think that it is news? <br />
I don't. I think it's a question of degree. How much are you in denial today?<br />
The events of my personal life (and some of their public interpretations) have created an unwillingness to share (and unwillingness to follow my own rules or the expectations of others). The same events have also shown me how important using my voice is. And so I have been sharing, in different spaces. For example <a href="https://roosanauha.syopasaatio.fi/blogit/prologi/" target="_blank">these three blog posts</a> for the Finnish Breast Cancer Awareness campaign last month.<br />
<br />
While I find it important that everyone is informed about breast cancer and metastatic breast cancer, I found it especially hard in October to exist when all this light was sort of being aimed at the illness I have. Yet, so much of the exposure didn't feel right or even necessary. I'm still not finding information on metastatic breast cancer readily available. Nuanced public discussions about living with illness and the nearness of death are scarce in the Finnish media (and cancer sites and campaigns too).<br />
Pink washing just doesn't seem to scare the ghost. Mostly, it makes for unentertaining entertainment. Yes, we need research funding so that one day, metastatic breast cancer will be like polio – a nightmare from the past. But I still have to live through this and die because of it. And I have to go out and live and meet the confusion and fears of those around me. This I face up to every day with varying degrees of willingness.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFJFx1Gfk4J0jFVrfXbFasuKrGZb2JtiXfcXER2zBLYfZr1kbVIwc-5-CFnvUZfRZzpQCoSu-u3GHG_caDD-xAyv-m5l4PjLJriH-NK_Ram-wOyJ-GnExEx13o1dfUjnZKBvJuw5fETV8/s1600/Glive-38.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFJFx1Gfk4J0jFVrfXbFasuKrGZb2JtiXfcXER2zBLYfZr1kbVIwc-5-CFnvUZfRZzpQCoSu-u3GHG_caDD-xAyv-m5l4PjLJriH-NK_Ram-wOyJ-GnExEx13o1dfUjnZKBvJuw5fETV8/s640/Glive-38.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Performance at G Live Lab, October 2017 Photo by J. Niiniranta</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
On Breasts</h3>
<br />
<br />
Today marks a year since my last reconstructive surgery. I wrote this on my Facebook profile just minutes after meeting with my surgeon:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.12px;">"Remember my upbeat posts about breast reconstruction and moving on with life in 2016? Well, here I am November 2017 after a meeting with my surgeon. I must admit defeat and say that I am disappointed. My good intentions and wishful optimism did not solve it all...</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.12px;">After two reconstructive operations in 2016 and treatments for metastatic breast cancer between May and September 2017 I am now a woman with an aching smaller breast and too small (and deformed) silicone blob on the mastectomy side. I am not at all the breezy haired two-breasted woman I hoped to be at this stage. Instead, I am a fragile skeleton lady rebooting my life philosophies and shopping for bouts of happiness. Tomorrow I'll at least have a proper silicone prosthesis to make up for the size difference. Nothing much to celebrate. EXCEPT: </span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.12px;">I'M ALIVE!"</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">Isn't it wrong that after these operations I am not whole and better, but get diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer? Isn't it more than annoying that now I am not eligible for further reconstructions (at least for now) because of my illness and its treatments (which will never end)?</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">My augmented smaller breasts were supposed to help me move forward, into living without fear. I was frightened by the operations, but I chose to have them because of my yearning to move on. I wanted to embrace the possibility of survival and happiness, living without plastic fake boobs and the daily material reminders of my fear of cancer returning.</span></span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">It's all so angering and unfair that I am overwhelmed (while I know that things could be a lot worse). </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">Here I am, facing up to the task of continuing life as a </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">chronically</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;"> ill person. Living on. This is as good news as I can get. I am a person with so much privilege, so much joy, so many opportunities for expression and space for listening. How can I make space for the grief, disappointment and loss I carry along? How can I let myself take some moments to be sad?</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">Because really, isn't it just a little bit wrong to go through two reconstructions and come out as a woman who still needs a prosthetic breast? Isn't it wrong that no one tells me that I am eligible and that there is a partial prosthesis too? So for a year I wear just some fluff inserted into a bra... </span></span></span><br />
Mixed with my disappointment about how my life is turning out, there's a genuine sense of surprise. What am I supposed to do with these consecutive disasters? Make more art while I wait to die? Is my life really now a waiting room for leaving? How can I convince you and myself that in that case we are all forever locked in those waiting rooms? <br />
<br />
Once again, I'm thinking about David Bowie making his last album and his choice of not talking about his illness publicly –– yet, configuring dying into his work. Dealing with illness and death, making it into art, as some people have chosen to interpret Bowie's style of living and leaving. I'm thinking about Frida Kahlo and the value of her life's work. I'm breathing with Aurora Levins Morales and crying with Audre Lorde. And still, I always carry with me Sylvia Plath and her artistic legacy. I'm building a Library of Sorrow in my home. I'm hoping that no one will judge the value of my life for the amount of years it will span. I'm hoping to outlive you all.Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-76559557623823050432017-09-15T15:07:00.000+03:002017-09-15T15:16:18.946+03:00At 35 – A portrait<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisTDCTBd1kh4OL_1AwTlsbGSPfBuZKMPvMhwlRkymJbY2t0pJH911SW_UcvBVftiLW2Z-yqk6qE7F9eI6VoE3KQ-fZh2z7QdWQ3mWyTKIAJtSBmZWoHZacxKati5RXPXQ7FuqrZaUqZ6U/s1600/IMG_0630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="270" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisTDCTBd1kh4OL_1AwTlsbGSPfBuZKMPvMhwlRkymJbY2t0pJH911SW_UcvBVftiLW2Z-yqk6qE7F9eI6VoE3KQ-fZh2z7QdWQ3mWyTKIAJtSBmZWoHZacxKati5RXPXQ7FuqrZaUqZ6U/s640/IMG_0630.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Self-portrait in 2011: pregnant and in red</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
Then and Now</h3>
<br />
These images bring me back to another time. I was 29-years-old. Early pregnancy, not yet a mother, but beginning to construct an identity in transformation. Turning into something that nothing in my previous life had really prepared me for. Imagining, making space, fearing the loss of the possibility inside me, agonizing over the questions: who will I become? What am I now? Will I lose something?<br />
Can my body really create a baby?<br />
<br />
I was blissfully unaware of what was to come when I tiptoed into motherhood while writing advice books for children about farm animals, mini pigs and frogs (unglamorous, but I had to survive somehow). Yes, it is possible to remain unaware whilst overly preparing intellectually. Still, saying yes to this twist and change is the best thing I have done. How could I have known that becoming a mother would edge me closer to other events that were entirely out of my control? Other seismic life changes would follow. How was I to understand, that control was an illusion? That this illusion was offered to me through education and the ethos that hard work, social posturing, right eating, moving and thinking can keep me on some known track.<br />
<br />
I had no idea. I was privileged, loss was strange to me, despite the fact that life had not been very easy until then either. I imagined all kinds of scenarios. I was empathic and fought for the right of being different, appreciated and free. But let me tell you, that beautiful young woman and this woman I am today – we are the same person, but each cell of this body has died and new ones have replaced them. Wrong cells have grown and taken over too. Things have gone horribly wrong and amazingly well almost simultaneously. So now I'm same but entirely different.<br />
<br />
<h3>
My 20s: pretty and lost</h3>
<br />
From here (in my bed with chemo side effects beginning to hit me) I think about my 20s with empathy, mixed with pity and acute jealousy: <i>You dumb dumb woman, why did you waste all that time with insecurity? You had two breasts, a waist, two feet, two equally proportionate arms and a pretty head with a set of nice brains inside. You fitted into flea market vintage finds, spent large parts of your student loan on shoes and fast-track unethical clothing (as well as gasoline for a car you didn't need). You were smart, learning to articulate your ideas, you were creative and followed through. You ate carelessly, exercised marginally, enjoyed sex, had lovely friends, studied to become a Master's Degree holder at the age of 27, wrote and recorded three albums and made one cover album, toured around the world. You amassed experience and knowledge. You enjoyed privileges that a poor teenager from the suburbs of Helsinki and somewhat unstable home life could not have imagined. Meanwhile, you carried a heavy load. In addition to insecurity you had packed along sadness, anger, feelings of loss and denial. You had no language for your agony and no outlet most of the time (except for music). You struggled to get help and struggled to form strong enough symptoms.</i><br />
<br />
Most of the time in my 20s I was high-functioning and appeared super prolific and successful holding down a musical career while being a diligent university student (and a long-term partner for my now husband and a part-time parent to his daughter). Being a young woman also submitted me to harassment, the sexual and verbal kind. I had no idea how to protect myself. I studied the history of feminism in the university, but in real life I was afraid to say when something or someone was hurting me. Often, I didn't know that it was. The daring to change things around and begin to listen to myself and my feelings came through a full stop: depression and its successful treatment in therapy.<br />
<br />
My 20s was a careless wasteland and a soil for growth. Both a burial site and a tarmac for new flight. If the human teenage years are often looked down upon as the site of formation (and not fruition), I would add the 20s into that packet. I would also like to be kinder to my young-woman-self, – I would remind her to have more fun, own the fun she's having, enjoy it more and spend even less time with concerns.<br />
<br />
<h3>
In my 30s I was supposed to be happy</h3>
<br />
My 30s was supposed to be the happiest time of my life. This was an expectation I developed as a young girl after a good friend of mine introduced me to the idea. We imagined our futures through literature and the 1990s Hollywood movies, old musicals as well as some opera and some ballet. It was both a wish and an intuition.Who knows, maybe my friend forgot the dream of "our good 30s", but I carried it around like a promise.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUKqk_FF1XIlXfLXNk1HB191K9AS5nvggEYs38PGK1aAVifhY4qS2Lgdhzo8_XmD9ShyphenhyphenPxVKlknWk_K3QN0iiKoN_MJe-FD-oWIAZpM6RZ0-X94vE4oMlabPLFhMEQTquMT_JIKaatd4E/s1600/IMG_1118.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUKqk_FF1XIlXfLXNk1HB191K9AS5nvggEYs38PGK1aAVifhY4qS2Lgdhzo8_XmD9ShyphenhyphenPxVKlknWk_K3QN0iiKoN_MJe-FD-oWIAZpM6RZ0-X94vE4oMlabPLFhMEQTquMT_JIKaatd4E/s640/IMG_1118.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Self-portrait: resting chemo week 5/6</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In my 30s I was going to have arrived at a place where I would have what I need. I would be an adult. I would be doing professionally what I want, sexually what I want, I would define my relationships with others. I would own beautiful things. I would enjoy what brings me pleasure and I would know what I need in my life and what I don't. I would express myself without fear. I would own my dream wardrobe, expensive shoes and soft silks with funny detailed jackets. I'd look good and confident and I'd feel it too. In that dream state I'd look at my struggles during previous decades from some distance, having learned and moved on. I'd be communicating, yet protective in equal measure. I would be a parent too. I guess in my mind's eye I saw a black and white photo of myself in Vogue: a fag dangling from my lips, collarbones piercing through skin, wearing a half unbuttoned blouse, a disheveled bob of hair, effortless denim, wine glasses, a bunch of seasonal flowers on the table, a city home and a summer house near the sea. That's some supermodel obviously.<br />
<br />
Now, in the middle of my year as a 35-year-old, I think of this young woman's dream of happiness located in this age and I see both dreams that came true and the underlining meanings and events that I had no way of predicting. The reality of my life now would have scared the little woman to her<br />
bones. Still, she wasn't all wrong about this decade in life.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlZwG34rwVAXIVZUDPclYMQD-7tX1to0ShNu1CUb2w9dvkvjMOFC-lfsKOZ8T8S2O5xt9HME2xu9oQHi2tThdkKGSIQAWYEpe0uDswNoPwZHMcDO02d1rm9CA5OZUgGFKIu8z2GCfA7B0/s1600/IMG_1149.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlZwG34rwVAXIVZUDPclYMQD-7tX1to0ShNu1CUb2w9dvkvjMOFC-lfsKOZ8T8S2O5xt9HME2xu9oQHi2tThdkKGSIQAWYEpe0uDswNoPwZHMcDO02d1rm9CA5OZUgGFKIu8z2GCfA7B0/s640/IMG_1149.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Self-portrait with a chemo scarf I made while suffering the side-effects of treatment in summer 2017</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
35: Where am I right now</h3>
Four days after my 30th birthday I released a human child from between my legs. I struggled through the first years making cocktails of blissful baby love, the loss of my previous self-image and sleep deprivation. I married my long-term partner (in a secret ceremony) after he proposed to me in the hospital where I lay feverish after an 18-hour delivery. I alternated between happiness and discontent. I also became a hell of a lot more confident and went for my needs and wants. My breasts could make milk and sustain a hungry child. My songs could pierce through to their meaning. My wardrobe became bold and luxurious. I committed to my life, dreamed of returning to the university to become a researcher while songs kept appearing through the ceiling and the floorboards. In 2014 these dreams were manifesting fast.<br />
<br />
Then at 32, very close to my birthday, I became a breast cancer patient. I entered into a tunnel of extreme treatments and hospital life. By 33 I was a survivor learning to live without any normal hormone cycle of women my age. I was exhausted, living with symptoms that would have been normal for women 20 years older than me. I was going through acute and sudden menopause caused by hormone blocking medication that was supposedly keeping me alive. The doctors told me it was my way for more time on this planet. My body that I had just become familiar with as a source of pleasure and pride after childbirth, was now sad – like a complete stranger attached to me somehow. Everything reeked of death, hospitals and uncertainty. I didn't want to get to know this new me. I imagined that the old me would return if only I waited patiently.<br />
<br />
So I got busy with life: realizing dreams, professional and otherwise. I traveled with my family, wrote songs allowing myself to focus fully and with complete intention. I applied for grants and got them for art, while not getting them for research. Letter by letter, note by note I gathered a belief in my self, in my truths and experiences, in my right to exist and express myself. From the edges of death I returned full of force and fragility. I was sailing full-tilt with black sales and glamorous shoes. I knew in my body that there are no promises of tomorrow. So I held onto the moments, the people and the places where I resided. I began to feel comfortable and curious at the same time.<br />
<br />
By the time I turned 35 I was sick. My 36th year began with intense struggling towards the realization of my dream shows for my new album and the struggle to stay afloat while strange symptoms were gnawing on me each day a little more forcefully. I have remained in between a state of professional bliss and physical agony. At 35 and a half I am a chronic cancer patient with stage IV breast cancer. <br />
<br />
Instead of a summer of cooling in the breeze with my long hair blowing and my spaghetti-shoulder dresses flowing, I have been a bold woman struggling with chemo side-effects and the mental adjustments that one makes with this re-diagnosis. <br />
Yet, against my own expectations, I'm enjoying my life right now. Most of the time I am happy about where I am (I know, it doesn't make much sense). I don't feel like I've been dealt a raw deal and an unfair amount. I feel privileged and look forward to so much.<br />
<br />
Oh, and I've began to plan my 40th birthday! <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-34136494008021503952017-08-23T10:27:00.001+03:002017-08-23T10:28:26.222+03:002052 <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KC49RxdOjrx89RlRGQ1WMzjGCWJ231QN6KyY89ak3fQrnlsVsVIuAStpu8Jl43qQE-d-6qYN-MRcI3yhEdSuVu1La5LLzDVxfrziGR3FykbTAcWOqYA5zRHu6oP9_sROH0j1UirHXbY/s1600/fullsizeoutput_10f.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="601" height="636" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KC49RxdOjrx89RlRGQ1WMzjGCWJ231QN6KyY89ak3fQrnlsVsVIuAStpu8Jl43qQE-d-6qYN-MRcI3yhEdSuVu1La5LLzDVxfrziGR3FykbTAcWOqYA5zRHu6oP9_sROH0j1UirHXbY/s640/fullsizeoutput_10f.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcSQlujNPoivzb10cVnLWQIDefY_Mh_2XyJAHaZSkI5X99dq2kayoF0JC2dxzw3sgT3dbh_TIE79q-9xnHVSG0lgEQ-HUIIPJv-MpeNG5rk5gHNY8qC3r1g5JQCw-V4E7tti-2a991P0/s1600/fullsizeoutput_110.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcSQlujNPoivzb10cVnLWQIDefY_Mh_2XyJAHaZSkI5X99dq2kayoF0JC2dxzw3sgT3dbh_TIE79q-9xnHVSG0lgEQ-HUIIPJv-MpeNG5rk5gHNY8qC3r1g5JQCw-V4E7tti-2a991P0/s640/fullsizeoutput_110.jpeg" width="636" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV5JFEUlCDyFmTVbeOH7FAz4Uq65LIM1d4RhNFTHXIFya3h_SHlrzncn0NZyRHCBDtISd3nEkursHPSr5PFmzfAOGUwJLiJYcDG7TJzJku5ZzZD16VQy0dkrdiAlAS27GmQzKeX5y7Do/s1600/fullsizeoutput_111.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="487" height="574" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV5JFEUlCDyFmTVbeOH7FAz4Uq65LIM1d4RhNFTHXIFya3h_SHlrzncn0NZyRHCBDtISd3nEkursHPSr5PFmzfAOGUwJLiJYcDG7TJzJku5ZzZD16VQy0dkrdiAlAS27GmQzKeX5y7Do/s640/fullsizeoutput_111.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<h3>
2052</h3>
In 2052 I will be 70-years-old<br />
I will be ready to die<br />
<br />
And if I am already dead, I'll finally let go<br />
Because until then I'll hold on, just a little<br />
I'll remain in orbit nearby,<br />
checking in on loved ones<br />
stroking cheeks with feathers and cloud dust<br />
<br />
I'll be nearby and in the dusk<br />
In shadows and in the rain pouring down<br />
<br />
Although maybe, I'll be flesh and blood,<br />
alive and complaining<br />
moving with anger at what is failing<br />
alive and refusing to let go even still<br />
<br />
In 2052<br />
My youngest will be the same age I am now<br />
He will be fine<br />
He'll be living his adult life taking care of his family<br />
what ever that means then<br />
children, cats, cyborgs, sister, partners and visitors<br />
dear strangers passing<br />
his kin<br />
his work down here<br />
<br />
I'm hoping this planet will be more focused around peaceful solutions,<br />
caring and seeing eachother<br />
I'm hoping there'll not only be tolerance<br />
but love<br />
I'm hoping vulnerability will be a token of strength<br />
no longer overpowered by the pretence of control<br />
no more puffy sleeves with known goals<br />
<br />
By then I'll have driven my grandkids to all kinds of adventures<br />
in my beat-up car that still glides on the old-fashioned paved roads touching the earth<br />
where hardly anyone wants to drive anymore<br />
I won't be afraid<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
My children will have taken me to fly in their brand new flying vehicles<br />
we fasten our seat belts<br />
but the computer does the driving<br />
while we watch a movie<br />
or eat cake<br />
<br />
Riding bikes, wearing helmets<br />
driving cars with humans in the driver's seats<br />
these old narratives <br />
will look irresponsible by then<br />
my stories will show me up like an old hippy parent<br />
who didn't know the first thing about safety<br />
<br />
Talking about emotions will be as common as not knowing <br />
how to talk about them was in the early 2000s<br />
or during the 20th Century<br />
at the time I was born,<br />
which now is a distant extraction<br />
a memory turned gray<br />
<br />
The world will be beautiful in 2052<br />
not because it's perfect and all suffering has ended<br />
but because I'll see what's flowing forward,<br />
the short moments where fragility and<br />
the passing of time look like art once did<br />
<br />
where nature and AI begin to resemble each other<br />
where we know that everything is natural<br />
and unnatural<br />
where duality breaks<br />
<br />
Then I'll let go<br />
finally<br />
content and ready to leave this planet<br />
where I hovered possibly as a dead soul, passed too soon<br />
too sad with so many unfinished cycles around the sun<br />
cracked hope, loss and ungained insight<br />
where I remained out of love<br />
<br />
or maybe I'll let go<br />
as an agony ant<br />
with aching bones and a memory that escapes me<br />
never content<br />
hungry for more time<br />
<br />
clutching at roses, pink crystal and amethyst<br />
unfinished<br />
alive, until my last breath<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD2zIYPbVAt87yQkGWweA7-5bd-mTKwuFdj5_LDhsZng7IudKzNjJzuuOg3MC7OPlbh6uN9JtD3bJ9En9mCgoCJYb5Kvu1tSzmU4MYF5J6pWXEcuko4OM5_5-6fFPHLQEvIonm-e2v__0/s1600/fullsizeoutput_10e.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="601" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD2zIYPbVAt87yQkGWweA7-5bd-mTKwuFdj5_LDhsZng7IudKzNjJzuuOg3MC7OPlbh6uN9JtD3bJ9En9mCgoCJYb5Kvu1tSzmU4MYF5J6pWXEcuko4OM5_5-6fFPHLQEvIonm-e2v__0/s640/fullsizeoutput_10e.jpeg" width="636" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaI4gO7JhB9ML7L0FhFAvRHsubs0lqlsu6XBRkXql1hv8WKJphExpSdhLpOIoLW6VuzdZiW2dfvq2izqIPt-2G7TeCjzL1HQq8Ruo6eHh6kU8rKjci9fZ4qsBP1aVfBGeeZcLk-rJPlYc/s1600/fullsizeoutput_112.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaI4gO7JhB9ML7L0FhFAvRHsubs0lqlsu6XBRkXql1hv8WKJphExpSdhLpOIoLW6VuzdZiW2dfvq2izqIPt-2G7TeCjzL1HQq8Ruo6eHh6kU8rKjci9fZ4qsBP1aVfBGeeZcLk-rJPlYc/s640/fullsizeoutput_112.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
<h3>
All images from Instagram by various and wonderful people who came to see me at Flow, Sunday 13th of August 2017. Thank you!</h3>
Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-28362062955885672782017-08-04T09:48:00.000+03:002017-08-04T10:41:42.471+03:00I'm still here & Why my cancer is not a tragic news story<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg228usmY5wEmr5KXQhSpKpZYxksqg0dImakM1WCepTivKcF8QZFUdlRqW79pn5uQinEE0E07lE24X8_Z3b4ALWhNPOLCPLq9KcSx_EgNKwfmo-miDZgB3E51hbu6QXSl1Aq3yjqfCTZYM/s1600/kansi6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg228usmY5wEmr5KXQhSpKpZYxksqg0dImakM1WCepTivKcF8QZFUdlRqW79pn5uQinEE0E07lE24X8_Z3b4ALWhNPOLCPLq9KcSx_EgNKwfmo-miDZgB3E51hbu6QXSl1Aq3yjqfCTZYM/s640/kansi6.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Tekla Vály </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
So <a href="http://astridswan.blogspot.fi/2017/07/the-secret-to-living-as-chronically-ill.html" target="_blank">my last blog post</a> was amazingly well read after the Finnish media wrote sensationalist news stories based on what I wrote. An avalanche of concerned people contacted me thereafter wishing me well and suggesting what ever help they thought I might need. Cannabis oil, purifying of the soul, Jesus, diets and special healing energies... you name it, I have been told it cures cancer.<br />
While some of these approaches felt supportive and helpful, mostly they were intrusive and unnecessary. The media told 'my story' emphasising tragedy; they presented metastatic breast cancer as a heart-wrenching news story. Journalists had to work rather hard to turn my blog pontification on life and death into sellable headlines and pathetic sounding last goodbyes... even my Instagram photos became companion pieces to online news feeds. And people came flooding to read this blog.<br />
<br />
Because of the unexpected reaction of the media and the responses of readers I have had to take a few steps back. I needed to consider what I am doing here and what I want to say. What I know is that I don't want to be silenced. I don't want to shut my mouth even though not sharing would be a simple way of avoiding misunderstanding, misrepresentation or the burden of unwanted attention.<br />
My writing is intended for you and me. For us – the people who are going through each day with struggles and still waking up to see something beautiful in life.<br />
<br />
I don't blog so that media reps can write fast tragic reference pieces without asking me and with no intention to interview me. I'll give you an interview if you ask kindly and with intelligence! Together we can have a magical conversation. Still, my feelings are hurt when my blog posts become the fuel of headlines, or when I have to spend my time deleting messages from concerned citizens who are mistakenly thinking that I am not being helped by medicine and hospitals.<br />
<br />
Writing this blog helps me with my thoughts and feelings. It is helpful to share glimpses of my life in their imperfect fleeting state – because I don't have time to wait for some perfect amalgamation before I say something. Through writing I feel less lonely. I also realize that a stranger may stumble on this page one day and find something she needs. That's enough for me. By writing my blog I hold on to the idea that something meaningful may come from this difficult passage of time. So I will continue.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Why my cancer is not a news story</h3>
So I'm still here, even though it hurt me to be so exposed. I'm here and I am not looking to become a news story. I am not looking for an alternative cure either. I am not desperate or hopeless.<br />
<br />
I am in good care, hopeful and supported.<br />
With a lot of luck, I'll be around for years to come. No one knows.<br />
But right now I am doing what I love: music, writing, researching, performing, eating, walking, talking and sharing. I feel lucky to be me.<br />
<br />
I have energy and time to get annoyed by how little people know about <a href="https://www.youngsurvival.org/learn/about-breast-cancer/metastatic-breast-cancer-" target="_blank">metastatic breast cancer</a>.<br />
I have good reason to want to change this, to make people aware and to demand more research funding, more support and more awareness. It is time that the pink washing of breast cancer ends and we acknowledge that <a href="https://www.youngsurvival.org/learn/about-breast-cancer/breast-cancer-101" target="_blank">BC is a big killer of women </a>– especially its young victims.<br />
<br />
Living with cancer does not make me special, news-worthy or sensational. It's unfortunate to be ill, but there are many of us. And I am special, but not because of my illness. There are increasing numbers of young people living with cancer. Every third person in Finland will have cancer at one point in their lives (go to <a href="http://www.cancer.fi/syoparekisteri/" target="_blank">Syöpärekisteri </a>for research and statistics in Finnish). There are many families losing a member each week. Yet, when cancer hits at a younger age, it appears tragic and uncommon. But is it really?<br />
<br />
Living with cancer is tedious, boring, repetitive, like a dance on a tight rope but also like a stay in a windowless room. Living with cancer is just that; living. It is the weight of very bad days, pain and suffering. It is moments of joy – long stretches of happiness. Living with cancer is making the abnormal into routine and going with it. Forgetting that I am ill, then remembering again. It is learning to ask for help and expressing my boundaries, and accepting that all of this changes anyway.<br />
<br />
It does sound dramatic when I tell you that I am living with chronic illness for which there is no cure. But this does not meant that there is no treatment. There are all kinds of targeted medicines, chemo, radiation, hormone therapy and so on, it's just that they aim to slow down the disease, but cannot cure it. Still, many patients with MBC are exceeding their prognosis by years. So there is hope that something comes along in a few years and changes the life expectancy for me and my sisters. Yes, there is hope.<br />
<br />
I am getting ready for <a href="https://www.flowfestival.com/en/artists/astrid-swan/" target="_blank">Flow Festival</a> in a week's time. It's going to be special. I hope to see you there.<br />
A week ago I had the honour of doing a show at <a href="http://www.ourfestival.fi/tapahtuma/5592/" target="_blank">Meidän Festivaali</a> with <a href="http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000002855196.html" target="_blank">Stina Koistinen</a> and cancer researcher <a href="http://www.ourfestival.fi/esiintyja/suvi-savola/" target="_blank">Suvi Savola</a>. We had a wonderful time! Thank you!<br />
You'll be able to hear the new composition I did with Stina for the Meidän festivaali show at some point this coming fall. These are just some examples of the amazing and lovely things I get to do and the people I get to work with because of cancer... Life is bittersweet.<br />
<br />
Oh, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34-oBTJTpQ" target="_blank">here's a video of what not to say to someone with cancer</a>!<br />
And here's an article on the same subject by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/well/live/what-not-to-say-to-a-cancer-patient.html" target="_blank">The New York Times.</a><br />
<br />Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4010618405300370044.post-50499089769001360522017-07-21T21:12:00.000+03:002017-07-21T21:12:48.742+03:00The secret to living as a chronically ill mother<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj319UXW-KwEePrnAVGxCTFPxUdZxAV0QTIFPqn11SllKLMVr_xMWcPz2kA9_v4tA6upjHbOBGcU-KuQENEfX0-u1jYPRQ7fR4j2NQ_2tO9n4CTGO6AWyzOTlq8RxH_JaskdNdt29a9ya4/s1600/astrid+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="1424" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj319UXW-KwEePrnAVGxCTFPxUdZxAV0QTIFPqn11SllKLMVr_xMWcPz2kA9_v4tA6upjHbOBGcU-KuQENEfX0-u1jYPRQ7fR4j2NQ_2tO9n4CTGO6AWyzOTlq8RxH_JaskdNdt29a9ya4/s640/astrid+3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Tekla Vály</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
What is the worst thing about being a mother with metastatic breast cancer?</h3>
<br />
<br />
For me it is knowing that I will leave my child behind when he/she still needs me. Too early. At some unknown point in the near future rather than much later, when it might feel natural. <br /><br />
I live with the relative nearness of my own death as a reality and as a futurity that remains unreal.<br />
I live with the fear of this permanent separation and try to prepare us somehow. It is a driving force for action and a black hole of sad emptiness.<br /><br />
Yet, even this apprehended separation (which feels like a failing on my part, even though rationally I know it's not) turns into a practical matter. It is a thing I want to prepare us for, while we live our lives together as normally as possible and hope for more time.<br /><br />
Mothers dying and leaving their children behind used to be a thing I did not wish to think about. It was the big fear, best kept outside, without language, without a name. Loss happened in books, movies and it happened in other families – first in families I didn't now and then in families I had gotten to know. Now it is us – this family and me. As silly as it sounds, being a chronically ill mother isn't something I aimed for or ever prepared for. How could I have? Even as a "cancer survivor" I mostly just pushed this possibility out of my thoughts. Still, here we are living out days with no promise that I'll see my child next summer, that I'll walk him to school on his first day, or that I'll be there at any big milestones, let alone the small important days when something particular happens and he might need my support, baking skills or my watchful eyes.<br />
<br />I tell myself: remember, everyday mothers lose their children and children lose their mothers somewhere near and far. It is a fact of life. It is not the unnatural and distant event we wish to conjure it to appear.<br /><br />
Just this week near me, an adult son lost his loving mother to cancer.<br />
And a young mother left this earth after a huge fight with a version of the big C, leaving behind her beautiful daughter. I have been sad because of these deaths and angry; I've felt compassion for the ones left behind, the ones alive and in mourning.<br /><br />On Monday morning I was taken by an ambulance to the ER. I knew that this wasn't my time to die, but felt too weak and ill not to worry about that possibility. Never returning home. The hospital as a space station. A lost and found. On the short ride to the hospital I lay thinking about the mothers who passed – I thought about timing, the conditions and how death manifests itself through sterile hospital equipment, small windowless rooms, silences and how it becomes familiar and inevitable too.<br />
It becomes so everyday and remains completely mysterious all at once.<br /><br />My hospital visit this week was not in vain: I had an infection and needed antibiotic infusions to stop the infection rates from skyrocketing. Luckily, I didn't have to stay at the ER long, because there is a home hospital service in Helsinki, for which I qualified. A nurse was sent every day to administer my antibiotic and check up on me at home.<br /><br />I returned back to my familiar. Back to the middle of the mundane and the brilliant precious moments that occur each day.<br /><br />There I remembered: People survive losses. They continue to live, even after a mother dies. Or a child. How well they fare depends on personal resources and on support structures, the ones left and the new ones that are found.<br /><br />
<h3>
<b>Letting Go</b></h3>
<br />In the past months (since my metastatic BC diagnosis) I have prepared and planned for the time when I am no longer here. Recently, I have started to change from wanting control to letting go. <br />I have chosen to let go of some preparing that I initially thought I'd like to do. Now I think that when I'm not here, I won't be. That's simple. So there is no point in trying to make all life decisions concerning my child's future now, pre-buy presents, write letters for the next two decades of birthdays and other possible milestones or otherwise attempt to create a future presence for me (in my absence). <br /><br />The reality is that when I won't be here, I'll miss everything. Slowly my loved ones will not mind that as much as they will in the beginning. I have heard that the sorrow over losing someone you love changes little by little from a gripping pain to an ache and then it turns into a faint sensation (of what?). <br />My loved ones will remember me through memories and pictures and my writing and songs. They'll remember me through furniture, and smells and clothing and places. One fragment at a time, life will bring new experiences, new material things, new phases and ways of being. New people will come, so will new emotions, new obstacles and new happinesses. It will be ok. It will be fine that I don't lurk in the corners in the form of agreements, letters and unopened surprises from someone long gone. <br /><br />What I've come to think is this: It will not be my job to define my presence after I am gone, it'll be the choice of the people living then.<br /><br />This realization frees me to concentrate on life in this moment. It frees me from trying to conjure up futures that I cannot predict.<br />I can just live here with these people this weekend. I am free to be a faulty, sometimes nice, sometimes irritated and irritating mother (and partner). I won't be defined by my illness or burdened by the need to fill the gaps in other people's futures. I won't have it all figured out, I won't have the experiences of a 90-year-old when I die or the perspective of a 60-year-old. And what I will not have lived, I will not know. That's fine.<br /><br />So here's what I think:<br />The secret to living as a chronically (and at some point terminally) ill mother, is just to live like any other mother would.<br />
<br />What a relief.Astrid Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510973550582565612noreply@blogger.com