The quest for our first original song continues…

When we ended our previous post we all boarded the time machine, heading for Kaunas, Lithuania 2019.

We step out of the machine, a little dissoriented from our travel, but hey, that’s what time travel does to you.

Kaunas Airport, Lithuania, 2019

Kathrine and Håkon finds themselves on a local bus heading for Kaunas city. The purpose of the trip is to visit Håkon’s daughter who at the time was studying at the university of Kaunas. On the way in, one of the things they discuss are how they can get their hands on a guitar so they can work on the “Tokyo” song while they’re visiting. After all, never leave home without it, a guitar that is, no matter what a certain credit card company might tell you.

Crammed in at the back of the bus, Kathrine, the ever outgoing person, turns to the passenger next to her and simply asks, “how can we find a second hand guitar?” (to be fair, she did actually ask first if the person spoke english, we’re not animals)

The very friendly passenger shows us the local “ebay” or Gumtree if you like, or simply “Finn” in norwegian. And voila! Lots of available guitars pops up on her phone. Not only does several other passengers get involved, all eager to help us out, but the first guy actually offers to go and pick it up for us!

We should here mention that he was on his way home after having worked abroad for a few weeks, and that his wife turned out to be not so happy about his commitment to some perfect strangers (yes, Deep Purple referral).

“hello love, really happy to see you after all this time, but i’m off to buy a guitar for some people I met on the bus. I’ll be home after midnight”

This is were the flowers comes in.

A few hours later..

The stranger true to his words, brought us the guitar while we were eating at a restaurant, so naturally the next thing to do was to immediately check the guitar, change strings, tune it etc..

What?

Have you never seen anyone tune and set up a guitar while eating at a restaurant? You need to get out more…

Anyway, since one of us is female and understands the inner workings of the brain we had bought flowers for the wife of our friendly helper. Because, and this might come as a shock for some, Kathrine managed to foresee that his wife would not be to happy about this and would need some bribing.

We on the other hand couldn’t be happier, we now had a guitar, a crappy, badly set up and horribly sounding, hard to play one, but a guitar none the less. Our quest for finalizing “Tokyo” were closer than ever.

That sunday feelin’

..Sunday were upon us, and we were not having it. After a hard days night, Håkon’s daughter had shown us all the best bars etc, time had come for a full day of “loking”(no, it’s not really a word, not one you will find in any dictionary anyway. Weirdly enough it’s one of NEGATIVIUM’s most favourite and used words..) which basically means to simply exist and do nothing.(basically being awake and in a coma at the same time..yes, we know, that’s quite difficult..but still..)

Or almost nothing

The three of us were sitting in Kathrine’s hotel room, since her room had the best view.

We had the guitar, and “Tokyo” was still nowhere near finished.

The guitar passes between us, the chord sequence being played over and over, Em-G-Am-D..

Håkon sits in a corner sipping wine. His daughter doing hand stands on the bed, Kathrine staring out into nothing..

And then..

Eureka! Finally we manage to cross the bridge…or simply figure out the bridge /ending. At this point in time none of us can remember who it was that cracked it. Of course it was a joint effort, but which one of us that pulled us out of the rut…only the universe knows. The way we see it, the universe wanted us to keep moving forward.

But we were ecstatic! Us playing live in Japan was all of a sudden coming closer..one song at the time.

The bus-guitar had fulfilled its purpose, 50 euros well spent!

That feeling of finally making the song complete..

Full of enthusiasm we now started to look forward to the next step, going back to Norway and record our first original song.

There’s nothing like it, to create something of your own, something that didn’t exist before you with the help of your imagination put it together, and voila again, something completely new has been brought into this world. Probably every artist feel this way, as if the art one creates becomes ones baby..and releasing in into the world is both a scary and thrilling experience.

We had come a long way, and the reality of releasing our first song was closer than ever. Next now was figuring out a bassline and to find a drummer.

But before any of that, there were more instruments to buy.

As always when you visit a new place, you search for the local music store.

In the eternal pursuit of finding new sounds Kathrine laid her eyes on a Kalimba, or is it Malimba? No one knows and we(Håkon)always get it wrong anyways.(scholars maintain that the name was lost hundreds of years ago, until it was renamed by the Germans in 1904)

Kalimba / Malimba in hand, and with a promise of filling NEGATIVIUM’s soundscape with ambient sounds from the ka-malimba. The future looked bright. This tiny instrument would propel us into the stars.

We have to this day yet to use the ka-malimba even once in our songs.

But one day, we will..

Our trip to Lithuania had proven to be a productive and inspiring one, but the real star of the trip, the one that helped us achieve our goal in the first place is the friendly stranger on the bus that put aside his own(and wife’s)wellbeing to help two idiots from Norway in their quest to get their hands on a guitar. We are forever grateful!

The bus-guitar stayed with Håkon’s daughter for the remainder of her time in Lithuania, and was eventually handed over to one of her fellow students. Apparently she was superhappy with her new guitar, and maybe, who knows, it will inspire her to create her own songs one day.

On an ending note, if you ever find yourself in Kaunas, go inside the cathedral at the beginning / end of the high street, sit down, close your eyes, and enjoy the most amazing reverb ever.

Our quest for finalizing “Tokyo” will come to a conclusion in our next post, until then..

Rock on!

To be continued…