Had a friend over last night and we somehow got on the subject relationships. She had a lot on her mind that she needed to vent and I listened, I understand a lot of her frustration. But as for me… I have to say that I’m happily married and in love – with MUSIC.

At this point, I hope I don’t fall in love with anyone because all it does is slow me down in what I want to do in life. It sucks out all your energy and keeps you focused on all the wrong things.

It’s not even something that I’m trying to convince myself of, it’s really the way it is. My greatest love and lifelong passion in life, is music. It’s the only thing that I haven’t grown tired of. Everything else comes and goes. Even people come and go. But music, and how it makes me feel, always remains solid.

And I’m sometimes wondering if we are born with that. My parents told me that I was trying to sing to songs I heard them play at home, before I could even talk.

I would try to mimic the sounds. When they had friends over visiting, when I was about 4 or 5, I would entertain them with my singing – used a jump-rope as a microphone and imagined I was on a big stage.

[3 or 4 years old. Forgot everything when I got this red, plastic Strat for Christmas…]

EVERYTHING was ALWAYS about music. I was a geek in school and I guess I wasn’t really that interested in hanging with the “cool” people. I spent all day in my room listening to records.

My mom had this portable grammophone from the 50’s that I had in my room, and my grandfather used to work in a jukebox-factory. So when the songs in the jukeboxes weren’t popular anymore, they were just thrown away and replaced with the latest hits. So I had all those really cool, colored vinyl singles in red, green, yellow, with Connie Francis and Brenda Lee for instance that I loved listening to.

There was always somebody that gave me records. My parents friends that didn’t want whatever LP they had lying around, like Ike & Tina Turner or an Australian band whose album I used to love, called Walrus.

It was like I would disappear into another world. I have no idea how many hours I would spend in my room just listening to music, singing to it, pretending I was a star.

Or I wrote stories. Lots and lots of stories. I actually found some of them a few months ago when I was cleaning out the closet. So the writing started way back.

But it continued throughout my whole life. All I really cared about was music. I studied music science at the University in Lund, I sang with my band Spirit, I went to keyboard-classes which bored me to death, then I got drum-lessons by a friend and I loved playing drums. But I loved singing even more and I couldn’t do both (I’m not Phil Collins…!).

Basically…. When I think about it now, it doesn’t matter what happens in life, as long as I have music in it. I can’t be with a guy who doesn’t understand that passion and that love, and unfortunately that narrows it down quite a bit.

I thought that my ex from way back was into music as much as I was, but he would shake his head when I screamed out in pure excitement over a great gig or a fantastic CD. He would mumble something like “It’s not THAT good….”. And now recently he was putting me down in his blogs for not realizing what is REALLY important in life. And “music isn’t important, that’s just entertainment”. Dude – we live on two different planets. If there was no music I wouldn’t be alive.

I was madly in love with a touring musician and it fit me and my lifestyle perfectly. We shared the love for music and we could sit there and talk about music for hours. Or share Youtube-tips and clips or play some obscure old 80’s band to eachother like two kids “heeey you gotta hear this!!”. So far, I think he was the only guy who ever GOT me and understood what I was all about.

But shit happens and I’m not even getting into why we lost contact but it also made me realize that music is really all I need. It was like that when I was a kid, it still is and it always will be.

Nothing touches my heart the was music does. When I saw Halford at Madison Square Garden back in December, people around me were screaming, headbanging, raising their fists up in the air – but I stood there bawling my eyes out like a crazy person, because the music has always been so powerful and it has touched me to the point where I don’t know what to do with myself. If music was a person, I would marry it!

Halford’s voice, combined with those heavy guitars and the thunder that the rythm-section created, was overwhelming. I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.

This whole summer I will be travelling everywhere across Europe checking out various festivals and shows, and it makes me smile only thinking about it. :)))

A colleague at work said: “But… why would you want to see the same group more than once? Aren’t they playing the same songs??”

Oh boy. How do you explain the power, the energy that goes between the crowd and the people on stage – that magical feeling that just makes you feel high?? You can’t explain that in words. It needs to be experienced.

And if you don’t get it, you never will. I sure as hell can’t explain it to anyone who doesn’t want to know, or wasn’t born to love music and everything that has to do with it.

So, I’m single and happy with it. It keeps me focused on what I want to do with my life, and I know that the only thing that makes me happy in the long run is music.

Should I ever happen to find another music-nerd that gets it, then fine. But right now I think that life is perfect exactly as it is. :)