Candlelight conversation

Tonight I'm having a quiet night to myself. Gabriel is off for a sleepover at a friends house, and candles are lit in my living room. On the TV, a documentary about serial killers just started, so I'm switching over to a more positively vibed channel... It suits me better.

Quite frankly, I'm still smiling from the Dreamcatcher gig on Tuesday! We had four lovely artists playing, and two storeys full of supporting audience. I love the Dreamcatcher nights. They fill me with such warmth and energy, and I feed on that rush of enthusiasm for days! It's hard to explain exactly how that works, but something inside me just tells me that "this is the way you're supposed to live your life" when I see the artists enjoying themselves on stage and tell me that they loved playing our night. Making dreams come true - whether they are my own or others, seems like a good way to live. I'm happy I found this out about myself at such a young age - so that I can live the dream instead of constantly searching for it.

For those of you who are not thoroughly acquainted with Dreamcatcher, let me tell you a bit about it. But first, I'm just going to refill my glass of wine...

Done ;)

Dreamcatcher is all about promoting great up and coming music through a variety of concerts, showcases, tours, workshops etc... Me and my sister Therese are heading the "operation" (find her bilingual blog here: resnhansen.blogspot.com) and together with a bunch of great people we work to make magical events happen. Our "catchphrase" is 'Live And Intimate', and we span the kind of genres we mostly love to listen to ourselves - singer songwriter, folk, pop, soft rock, blues, funk and soul. It's become my life lately, and we've got some amazing stuff planned for the future that unfortunately I can't tell you about yet, as it's all secret!! :D

To get a jist of the Dreamcatcher-spirit, I'd like to share with you a few pictures taken at some of our events. All pictures are by our fabulous house photographer Siri Andersen <3

The official Murphy's Day!

Today has been a much lazier Sunday than I had planned. What I was supposed to do was to pick up my friends Vin, Adam and Mark at the airport at 13.30 and spend the day showing them around Tromsø. Vin and Adam are going to play at Dreamcatcher on Tuesday, so that's why I'm fortunate enough to have them come visit :) Hmmm... Haven't I told you all about Dreamcatcher? Oh Dear!! I will soon, I promise - but in the meantime, you can visit the website www.dreamcatchermusic.com and get an idea of what it is about. 

Then - Murphy's Law struck BIG TIME! At Heathrow - terminal 3, the guys were informed that the pilot was sick, and that they had to fly in another pilot to take his place. Now I don't know where he was flown in from, but it took foreeeeever, and when he finally got there, they had to start readying the plane for departure. Then, the tow truck got stuck to the plane... Long, tragic story short - the plane that was supposed to land in Oslo at 10:25, touched down at 17:08!!!! 

Now, Murphy being Murphy wouldn't let it end with that... Of course all the flights from Oslo to Tromsø were fully booked for the rest of the day, so they got rebooked to a flight leaving at 08:00 tomorrow morning! :'( Naturally, I was on the phone to the airline for god knows how long today trying to see if there were any available seats on flights to neighboring cities, but all flights to Tromsø, Bardufoss, Harstad/Narvik, Bodø, Storslett and Alta were fully booked. (Since when is Northern Norway so immensely popular on a Sunday night?)

That means that the guys are stuck in Oslo for the night, but I recon that with wine, comfy beds and each other as company they'll have a fab night!

I look forward to picking them up at Tromsø Airport tomorrow morning - 21 hours after they were supposed to arrive.

Can anyone spell "official complaint and refund claim"? ;)

xxx

Two B's and two T's

One of the great passions of my life is music. Ever since I was a baby it's been something that has caused me great joy! Apparently when I was only a few months old playing music was the only way to get me to relax and fall asleep, and whenever the power was out, my grandpa would play the accordion by my crib until I was happily asleep. Bless him <3

As a music promoter, I'm fortunate enough to get to discover a lot of amazing music - often long before they find their way to the radio stations and fortuned fame. One artist I've had the pleasure of following for a few years is London artist Jamie Abbott. With a John Mayerish sensuality to his gravelly voice and honest, conversational lyrics he's an artist to be reckoned with, and during his two mini tours of Northern Norway the past couple of years, he's charmed audiences with his star quality, gaining fans wherever he gigs.

Promopic. Copyright: Jamie Abbott  

I'd thought I'd mention him in todays blog, as he's playing a gig at the fabulous venue The Regal Room tonight - and the gig is WEBCAST!! That means that if you're in the mood for discovering great new music, you can do it from your own comfy sofa tonight. The webcast is at www.justin.tv/theregalroom and starts at 9pm(ish) norwegian time. I'll be watching for sure :)

On another note: We realized today that we've obviously made a mistake.. Our cat Yoda is neither green, chubby or limping....! Who would have known!!? So clearly he doesn't suit his name!!! How could we not notice that, you ask? Well, sometimes things pass us by... Apparently... So the search was on for a new name. Anakin turned evil in his teens and surely we don't wanna risk that with this kitty, so that's not a good name! Jar Jar was too clumsy a creature to suit our agile, clever family-member, and Padme was a girl... In the end we decided that the good nature of Obi Wan Kenobi echoed the temper of the little kitten, so he's been renamed. The kitty previously known as Yoda now goes by the name of Obi Wan :)

No rest for the wicked

Today brought with it a monumental surprise... We got ourselves a kitty!! And yes, it was a surprise because we only decided on it today...! Yeah I know - a bit impulsive - but I'm like that sometimes.. (ok, a lot of the time), and I'm convinced it was a great decition. I love the little guy to bits already! His name is Yoda, and when we went to visit him for the first time (earlier today) we warmed up to each other instantly, and he and Gabriel were best friends within 5 minutes. Here's him saying hello:

His favorite toy so far is a long stick with feathers attached to the end of it. It's amazing to see him and Gabriel play with it. Yoda is super alert and his reflexes are like a... well, a cat. And Gabriel chuckles and almost squeals in the excitement of having such a cool playmate! It warms my heart :)

Here's Yoda hunting for feathers (which, btw are strewn all over the apartment now!):

Now he's flat out asleep on the sofa of course ;) The phrase "No rest for the wicked" has just been disproved. xxx

Introduction to me

I feel like a "first ever blog" should be about something really important, provocative and generally mind blowing. I can assure you this one probably won't be...

It's been hinted at me quite a few times that I should start blogging, but for various reasons I've felt that the time hasn't been right until now. Also, I should warn you that I'm not at all sure what the etiquette is for what to share and not share in a blog-entry. That's one of the reasons why I decided to call my blog "Honestly". Then at least if I over-share by accident, I'll just refer to the blog-title and claim it was on purpose... Clever, or what? hehe.

For those of you who haven't been in my life much for the past couple of years, allow me to introduce myself: I'm Liselotte. Often called Lise or Liz for simplicity's sake. I'm a Dreamcatcher girl in Arctic Norway. I used to save the world. I don't anymore... Now I just make it a better place to live in :) I used to be a lot of things that I'm not anymore, come to think of it. And all in all I think I'm a better me now. A crazier, cheekier and happier me at least. In this blog I'm sure you'll read a lot about music, weird stuff that goes on in my head, my rock'n roll life (haha) and people who touch my life in one way or another. Speaking of... Here's a little pic of some of the most important people in my pack:

I'll leave you with that for now, and hope you'll enjoy reading about my life as much as I enjoy living it!

x x x