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“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

Carl Jung

This is really fun to do.? Click on the pics on the right, and you’ll learn things about me you probably did not know.? Click on “Read my visual DNA”, and you’ll know it all.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

“Bring literature to life” – that was a Worth 1000 challenge a while ago.

? I decided to create a scene from Tad William’s amazing series “Otherland”, a scene from the prologue that was deeply intriguing to me.

Here it is:

? From Tad Williams, The Otherworld Series, Vol 1, City Of Golden Shadow.

This is a part of the prologue, where Paul Jonas, the protagonist, enters a castle high above the clouds:

“… so he stepped through.
And found himself in a jungle. But it was not quite that, he realized a moment later. Vegetation grew thickly everywhere, but he could see shadow walls through the looping vines and long leaves, arched windows set hight on those walls looked out on a sky busy with dark storm clouds – quite a different sky than the shield of pure blue he had left beyond the front gate. The jungle was everywhere, but he was still inside, even though the outside was not his own.
[…]
In the silence, a low sound drifted to him.
Someone was weeping.He reached up with his hands and spread the leaves as though they were curtains. Framed in the twining vegetation hung a great bellshaped cage, its slender golden bars so thickly wound with flowering vines it was hard to see what it contained. He moved closer, and something inside the cage moved. Paul stopped short. It was a woman. It was a bird.

It was a woman.

She turned, her wide black eyes wet. A great cloud of dark hair framed her long face and spilled down her back to merge with the purple and iridescent green of her strange costume. But it was no costume. She was clothed in feathers, beneath her long arms pinions lay folded like a paper fan. Wings.”

This is what I envisioned (click the thumb):

I put this picture together from a bunch of sources. If you’re interested, have a look here:

Just decided I’ll post more pictures. You guys out there prefer looking at pics, dontcha?

This is Castle Olbrueck in Germany. Shot this on a late afternoon. The light was gorgeous.

It has surely happened? to you before: You listen to a song on the radio, and you’re hooked. The song has seeped through your bones and taken hold of you. You need to hear it again, you need to have it. And NOW.

It happens to me, too. But there’s a strange thing: Whenever it happens, there is a, let’s say, 80% chance that the song is from a Scandinavian singer or band.

What is it with these frickin’ Scandinavians? Why do they just make better music than the rest of the world?

In the 70ies, they gave us Abba, one of the most successful bands of all times.? You need not like them, but you cannot argue they were worth their money.

In the 80ies, there was A-Ha. And Björk. And many more.

And nowadays? Nighwish. HIM. The Hives. Kent.? The Ark. Madrugada. The list can be continued for hours, my newest additions being Lovex and ? Sunrise Avenue.

Those last two were a funny find. I was listening to a radio station and heard that song, “Guardian Angel“, and I thought “Wow, cool song, gotta check out the band. Googled them and voilá – they’re from Finland. While I was doing so, I listened to the radio again, and there was this other song, “Fairytale Gone Bad“. Very moody, intense song, great voice. Good, while I’m at it, I can check that out, too. Found the band: Sunrise Avenue. And guess what: Yep, right: Finland. What IS it with these frickin’ Scandinavians?

Needless to say that Scandinavia has an extraordinary amount of metal music, especially black metal, and many dark and gothic bands besides. But be it pop, rock, metal or goth? – it always seems to me those bands and singers have something in common. Some secret only those born under a northern sun know. A shared mood, some inner tune their heart murmurs when the sun goes down for months at a time? I don’t know. I just know they can enchant me with their music like no one else can.

AND they got the Roskilde Festival. Some things just aren’t fair.