Maja’s Diary

Stockholm, Thursday 11 February, 2021

I feel devastated. Absolutely horrible. Life isn’t easy right now. My chest is tight and it burns. I feel cornered with nowhere to go. I want to concentrate on something fun, like playing bass. Preparing for an audition maybe, but my brain simply will not let me focus. 

Last Friday I made a couple of phone calls to friends to look for a place to stay in case my home situation became unbearable. Well, here we are. I have one possibility. My dear friend Alexander. Me and Alexander go deep, and have been hanging out regularly since we were about fifteen. So when I called him and told him about the situation last week he said he was going to check with his flatmate/landlord who I quite like. I wouldn’t mind staying with them for a while. They have an extra little sleeping alcove which I could make a bit of a refuge home out of. But a couple of days later Alexander got back to me to say they’d turned the little alcove into a home office for the landlord. However, he said I could stay in his room, probably making a space for myself in a corner, but added I would be able to do that for a maximum of two weeks. My heart dropped hearing this. He is the only one of my friends living independently enough to be able to casually have someone stay over. No matter who else I asked, I would only be a huge burden. And since I don’t really feel comfortable telling my parents of my situation yet, I can’t really stay there. Even if everything got worse and I told them what’s been happening, staying there for too long isn’t something I’d like to do if I can avoid it. Instinctively I know I’m welcome there if I need to, but it’s really not an option I’d prefer right now.

I’ve also been looking around for rentals just for myself but that’s almost impossible; Stockholm has a queuing system for apartments which you can pay to be on which you can enter when you turn 18. I’ve been on it for close to 10 years now. Even if I tried to take advantage of that, it would take months from now for anything to actually happen. There’s always the second hand market, but that’s dodgy and uncertain. And it’d probably be a no pets policy. I wouldn’t want to get involved in that right now.

So, what are my options? Well, I could stay where I am and endure the terms that have been newly imposed upon me. I could decide to not put up with it anymore and take Alexander up on his offer. But for just two weeks? And after that move where? To nowhere? A hotel? The street? With a puppy? It simply isn’t happening. No way I am able to pull that off. Not this suddenly, by myself.

I haven’t been able to eat properly for two weeks. The immense stress has made it impossible for me to eat any kind of proper meal. I’ve been trying to eat protein bars but have barely been able to stomach 500 calories a day. For reference, the recommended average is 2000 calories. The stress all this has caused has also made me sleep even worse than usual. Last night I managed to sleep a couple of hours, dropping off somewhere after 5 am, and then forcing myself up at 10. And that’s pretty decent by any recent standards. The insomnia combined with the relationship based stress combined with the inability to eat is starting to show its effects. I’ve been able to hide it from anyone I know so far, but with what happened yesterday I am now itching to talk about it with someone. 

I try to forget about it and do what I have to do next, as one of the demands I have upon me. I have to train. I don’t want to, I want to sleep. I feel absolutely drained, lethargic. But I change into my training clothes and get started. Today I feel too tired to do anything too strenuous, so I am going for yoga. I bring out my book and mat and try to focus on the exercises. They’re physically challenging, and it also takes quite a lot of a mental effort for me to both stay focused on it and on myself. I manage to get a little calmer, but I am seriously bothered. 

My freedom has been taken away from me. Completely. 

I hate it.

I. Absolutely. Loathe. It. 

Even something as relatively simple as being in a band is an unattainable dream right now.

At least I still have my phone on me. But I don’t feel like I can really just call any of my friends and tell them about what’s been happening to me. It’s just too much to explain. How do you tell them that something is even wrong to begin with? No-one even really knows that I am feeling unhappy. Except one person. Mark. And he is not connected to any of my other friends, so word will not get around.

So I message him. I am not sure of how to approach it. He was busy yesterday, so he doesn’t know that anything bad has happened yet. The text-chat starts normal. Fun even, and goes into the night. It’s a relief just to talk about normal things, even if I know it is all coming to an end. But I really want to tell someone what has happened to me. It is eating me up inside. So I start slowly with telling him about the situation I am in. I am startled when I see what comes back from him. 

‘Call me in two minutes.’

Mark’s Diary

London, Thursday February 11, 2021

Just another day helping Maja with her set, although we nudge things in a much more professional direction when we hit on the concepts of articulation and consistency which she thinks will take her playing to the next level. I really think it will, especially when it comes to the job of holding down the solid end in a professional cover band. That and repertoire of course, which we’re covering as quickly as possible.

We chat about a few other things, including her getting more into yoga which I’m delighted to hear. This is really cool and another thing I’m sure I can help with, a tip or two here and there.

We carry on for a while talking about fun stuff and I think we’re getting ready to wind up and maybe I’ll look at another song or two before going to bed. I’m really enjoying getting into this with her. It’s giving me so much great stuff to practice in terms of so many basics and repertoire, as I’m learning the songs at the same time as well. But then Maja drops a message on me, saying that her husband has threatened to end their relationship again. But she also says that she’s getting jaded with this now and that no matter what she does, she feels it isn’t good enough.

She tells me now that this happened yesterday but she didn’t feel ready to tell me until now. All of a sudden, those nice little thoughts I had a little while ago about jolly yoga chats are gone. There would have been nothing jolly about those chats. Nothing at all.

We get serious in text now as she also says she feels controlled from all angles and trapped. I say this sounds like she’s looking for an exit. Yes, yes she is. So what’s stopping her? ‘Not having the slightest idea how to do that. Simply put, I’m afraid.’

My reply is instant. ‘Call me in two minutes.’ She does. With that I step outside into the cold to go for a walk and take a phone call. It will be the most significant call I’ve ever had and it will change entire lives, including mine.

Mark’s Introduction

It’s just past 4am on Saturday June 5, 2021. We’re in Stockholm, where we’ve been since late Sunday night, so just short of a week. As has happened every night since the day we arrived, I’m already up and wide awake. I might go back to sleep later, I might not. At the time of writing I have no idea. Also at the time of writing, we are around three and a half months behind, by far the furthest I’ve ever been behind in Diaryworld. We? Yes, we’re an item. In every way. Emotionally, musically, professionally, aspirationally. Might as well get that out there. It’s kinda implied in the title, so it’s hardly spoiler. As for this early, middle of the night bout of writing, you can thank the summer Stockholm sun for that. Right now it never really gets fully dark, and by around 3:30am the sun is shining bright. So yeah, almost a week in and I’m still rising with it. Sometimes I go back to sleep, sometimes I don’t.

A little background incase you’re coming to this cold. I started my writings back in July 2014 when I took off from Madrid to the Costa Blanca in Spain to see if I could make a living playing bass for the summer.

Around six years to the day later, Maja began her own Diary, choosing her starting date as the day she picked up the bass and started learning from scratch. So her Diary really does start on day zero. If you want more context for what’s in here as you go forwards, going back and reading hers from day one would be a pretty good place to start because it contains the story of how we met through the SBL forum and innocently began working on bass related projects together, just like so many people have in there. At the same time, we were also working on website bits and pieces. That story begins somewhere December 2020 when she first got in touch, having read the entirety of my Diary in a matter of two or three months. She just wanted to say hi through the thread, but also had an idea of how she might be able to use her professional internet experience to help out. Make a website for me maybe. In return, I’d become her bass mentor, maybe. Yes, both of those things happened.

If you want the full on experience, my own piece encompasses five actual Diaries, almost 2000 pages and covers around six and a half years, which you’ll already know if you’ve sufficiently done the maths. I always had a feeling that, as big as my thing was getting, it was really just prologue. And so it’s proved to be. The real story starts now.

There are a few reasons we’re so far behind in starting to really tell it, and also why hardly anything has appeared for so long in either of our individual Diaries. The first is that a lot of what you’re about to read simply couldn’t be made public before now for reasons which we hope will become clear.

Another reason is that when we first started really communicating in a serious way beyond music, it all just seemed way too private to go in anyone’s diary, and none of it seemed relevant to the kinds of diaries we were both writing at the time. As a result, no notes were made and there were no attempts to mark or try to remember anything. Ditto for the early days after we first actually met. But then thoughts turned to music we could make together and we realised the Diaries were starting up all over again, but as a joint project this time. Cue frantic retroactive note making. What follows is the story of our music, and the story of our music will be the story of us.

Stockholm, Saturday June 5, 2021.

Maja’s introduction

I never imagined that my story would get told. At least not like this. And I certainly didn’t imagine that my story would be a story of music. But the story needs to get told. As I’ve been living it, there have been things that are too important to be left forgotten in time. These stories have a life of their own, and I feel obliged to tell them. To let them breathe, to share them and let them live through you as well.

I never had taken any platform to express my stories, but now, carefully writing my diaries, and my music, I finally have a way to express myself. The means of expressing myself like this is new to me, but even when I stumble, weighted by inexperience, I want to tell my stories.

If the story is alive enough, it will find its way to you. It will suck you in and make you feel. It will be alive through you.

And that is what I want to give you, while sharing my life, my dreams and my stories with you.

I hope you want to follow me along. Through the ups and downs, standing in the rain by the highway in the dark, or just to a nice sunny Saturday afternoon rehearsal. My dear friend and companion. 

Maja, Stockholm, Saturday June 5, 2021.