Annie got Wood

This makes me the biggest hypocrite in the world and I will never say never again. I did not just quote Justin bieber and I will stop talking now. I got wood. It's pretty cool. You should try it, it's better than swag.

[anniegotwood]

After 15 years in showbiz, I am quitting the entertainment business.... so that I can create again.

I think some people want to be artists, others have to be. I was always the latter, which is why I think the entertainment industry has destroyed me time and time again. 

I am done. I’m not done with music. I am not done with theatre. I am not done with film. I am not done with photography. I am not done with poetry. I am not done with fiction. I am not done with art. 

I am however done with the industry.

I was 4 when I started dancing. I was 8 when I first auditioned for television. I was 11 when I competed in my first singing competition. I was 16 when I first auditioned for casting directors in Hollywood. 

I grew up with showbiz. 

Growing up with showbiz is fun, exhilirating, exciting, but also at times very lonely. Your mind is in a different place, entirely than kids/teenagers your age. They talk boyfriends and you think casting calls, future and present. In your mind is the constant question “Is this my break?”, “Will I ever make it?”. You find yourself reaching some kind of midlife crisis at 17 before any of your peers have even a slightest idea of a career choice. 

I remember getting braces at 15 and losing many parts because of it. You loose your shit like a god damned 30 something looking for a new job and you are still a kid... but you’re not.

When you were having sleepovers I was emailing agents and casting directors. When you were  vacationing  in Spain I spent my savings taking acting classes in England. When my classmates celebrated graduation I was busy producing a show.

I don’t regret any of this. I am happy that I grew up with showbiz. 

I am 23 years old and I already know the downfall of showbiz which makes it easy to now take a step back. 

I love to create. I love to sing. I love to act. I love to write. I love to paint.

Somehow, pursuing it makes me love it a lot less. When art becomes more about being good and making money the passion for it dissapears, at least for me.

I stopped acting when I was 19. I went to drama school where I faced some troubles with my teacher who were trying to mold me into the actor they wanted me to be. I finally gave in and they said “You’ve grown so much here Annie” in which I had performed and felt NOTHING for the first time in my life. 

I dropped out and put my focus into finishing my book.

I finished my book and submitted for dozens of agencies. An agency in Los Angeles liked my manucript, but wanted some changes and left me with notes and a new draft to write. It seemed like work again. It wasn’t perfect... It was never.... perfect.

In the time of writing this hypothetical perfect book I started singing because once again I wanted to be creative. 

It lasted.... until now. Actually not even now... I’ve been tired for a while. I am tired of promoting shows. I am tired of spending money on promotion. I am tired of industry. I am tired of talking about image. I am tired of consulting with people regarding my creativity. I am tired of trying to get somewhere. 

So, I have decided to quit the entertainment industry. 

No, I will not quit singing. I will never quit singing. I will make albums that maybe 10 people will hear and I will play shows for whoever’s there. I will move far away to study photography because I want to learn (not because I want to make it) and I will play my guitar the way I did almost 3 years ago. 

My creativity is the love of my life and I will protect it with every fucking pathetic muscle in my body. 

Art isn’t dead. 

I look forward to recording albums, writing books, directing films and taking photos. I look forward to this new era of being free. 

Working in entertainment isn’t all that cracked up as it seems, but creating something with passion, joy and honesty is the most beautiful thing in the world. 

[anniegotwood]

Dear world. I am so sorry for what I became. I cared more about gaining facebook likes than writing music about something important.

About one month ago I hit the wall. I was ill, physically, emotionally and spiritually. At first I thought it was stress and depression, but I quickly realized that the wall was much taller than that. To me art used to mean something. To me art was politics, justice and solidarity. I lost touch with that. I cared more about gaining facebook likes on my artist page than I did about being an activist in my music.

In music we learn that you need to want much. You should dream about playing sold out stadiums for screaming fans. You should be known. You should have tshirts with your name on it. You should write something catchy. You want to be an icon.

When I first started playing music I didn’t care about any of this. I didn’t have any goals. I didn’t care about chasing some talked-about-slot at Roskilde or getting reviewed by some major publication. I wrote music because I had strong opinions about the world that I live in and music comes naturally to me. 

The first song I ever wrote was called “Are We Sleeping?”

With lines like:

“You lost yourself alongs the way, yeah you ran too fast when you ran away”

and

“You met someone across the road. He said just take one and you took both”

I had opinions about the materialism in our society and how we are so consumed that we don’t even listen.

At this time I was very involved as a volunteer and activist for Greenpeace. I knew where I stood politically. I felt as if I was moving in another speed than most people my age. I couldn’t just ignore the issues around me. My mother always said that this was my gift and my curse: I cared too much.

2 years later I found myself hitting the wall. Music was more about branding, promotion and fitting into an industry than what it was about writing something meaningful. Everyone seemed to have opinions about how I promote myself and how I speak in social media, but no one said anything about the substance of my music.

Only once was it ever a subject. I was living in Los Angeles and working on some songs for television licensing. I was quite upset at the time, attending riots pro-Palestine and being called an antisemitist for it. The producer (a well respected producer in Hollywood) said that I couldn’t write about this. He said “People don’t want to hear about this Annie” I should have told him off. 

I didn’t. I spent the next week trying to write that stupid song but I was completely uninspired and I blamed music for it. I fell into depression and left L.A. 

This has happened a couple of times. Even some of my closest friends have accused me of sabotaging my own career. 

I’m not sabotaging my career because there is none to destroy. I am not here to entertain you. Art should mean something and there is so much that we need to talk about. There are so many of us who long for a change of heart. We need to talk about this. 

I am truly sorry because I didn’t. 

After reevaluating everything that I do I decided that a trip to Berlin with one of my best friends would be nice. After all I never took a break.

On the evening of Friday the 13th I arrived in Berlin. My good friend, half french and living in Paris left her home that morning and met me at the hostel.

We were on our way out to a concert when she suddenly stopped talking.

“oh my god” she said. “There have been new shootings in Paris”

Then there was silence. No more we thought. No more. Paris already changed after the shootings earlier in the year. We had already changed after the shootings in Oslo. I had seen someone get shot and killed on the streets of Tacoma one year earlier and I couldn’t bare anymore. 

We decided that we had to leave the hostel and walked toward the U-ban station. We discussed leaving everything in the western world and moving out into the forest somewhere. We had no more faith in humanity. We wanted no part of it. Shallow... yes. But this was our initial reaction. Too much blood was spilled every day. We were... tired. 

At the U-ban station, staring at the train we decided that there was no way that we could enjoy music right now while our friends were caught in Paris. 

We returned to the hostel. Marlene read the French news. I read the Norwegian. The updates came quicker in french media and she transated it all for me. 

Suddenly there were 6 shootings. Then 7. The seventh shooting was close to Marlene’s apartment. “I am so glad you are not in Paris”. Marlene claimed herself safe and yes, lucky she wasn’t in Paris but what about the people who were? We couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Marlene’s family called. They were all in shock. We waited as more of our friends were claimed safe. All of mine where at 1 am. Marlene still had friends unaccounted for. At 3 am we could finally sleep. None of us had friends in the massacre, but Marlene had a friends who lost people. There was so much pain. We slept bad this night.

On Saturday we had planned to make photos about the materialistic western world standards. We decided we would still take these photos, but make them about grief and hope. We took photos outside the french embassy. Reporters, photographers, regular people. Pain and shock. our bodies were still numb.

We found a park where we took portraits. I told Marlene to scream. She couldn’t. She wasn’t angry. There was just confusion and a hollow emptiness. She cried in the photos. I cried. 

In the afternoon we went to east side gallery. We found wifi, obsessed with reading any updates on Paris all day. 

“Oh my god” Marlene said. “There was an attack in Lebanon prior to the one in Paris”

Again, came shock, then guilt and anger. 

We had lost our minds over Paris and not once did we think about the victims in Beirut. The western media is doing a fine job at promoting the idea that we only care about our white people. Why are you creating a further divide between us? Why don’t you tell us the truth? 

The rest of the day we read about Beirut, Baghdad, Japan and every other bit of information we could get our hands on. 

Today was better, but we spent the afternoon in the anarchist library Tempest reading about the corroption of agriculture in Indonesia and Mapoche in Chile. 

When we left the library we see police cars,a dozen of them. Once again people of Palestine are marching for justice. Speaking of Palestine. Why don’t we pray for Palestine? Why don’t we pray for Syria? Why don’t we change our profile pictures and have minutes of silence for them?

We are in a critical time ahead. We are the lost generation because our world is so fucked that we don’t even know where to start so we do nothing. Music and film is created to distract you, entertain you and take you on a journey away from reality. Wake up kids, this is our reality. We stand before war in every way, war between religions, countries and even our own people. War in politics, left and right. War in our homes, schools and concert halls. Wake up kids, this is our reality and we have a responsibility.

I have a responsibility.

You have a responsibility.

When media fails to cover the truth YOU have to BE the truth. After learning about Beirut I turned to facebook to show my concern. I know that this post was shared over 30 times and again shared by their friends. Someone told me, I told you and you will tell someone else. We are in this together. We are the future.

When our goverment fails to make decisions, we have to make those calls. When information is hidden from us we must find it ourselves.

When in the aftermath of Paris we see hate blossom and conservatives grow we must protect our people. Our people don’t have a color, religion or language. Our people are our people, whether they live in Beirut or Paris. We must protect them from rasicm. We must stand together against the hate. We must be the change.

So I am sorry for where I have been. I will do better. I vow to use my voice in my music to be a voice for our people and our future. I vow to find information from alternate sources and share it with you. I vow to take a stand in this crisis. I stand with you. We stand together.

Critical times are upon us. We have to talk about it. There is power in social media. There is power in a single voice, There is power in you and in me.

Be the change.

�`��`�6{�

[anniegotwood]

It's like you're trying to get to heaven in a hurry

I remember why I started writing. I remember why and I remember how. My friend Robin died from leukemia when I was 8 or 9 and there were always many things that I was never able to understand as a child, but I understood that Robin wouldn't come back. 

Since then writing has become my drug of choice whether it being lyrical or magical realism. There are fucked up stories from any person's life and those stories are better written. At least I always thought so.

I remain in favor of the idea that it is impossible to truly know another person. I think that the book can be opened, but you will never understand why the author expressed that certain word, why that particular adverb.

Because I was there. 

And that's why I have to sing my own music.

I once gave some lyrics to a band I knew because I didn't think at the time that I would perform. When I heard their take on it it became clear to me that I had to.

Because I am not a creative person. I am a twisted neurotic overly-sensitive overly-analytic and deeply damaged human being (which is probably what every sleep-deprived fucking artist writes in their auto-biography.) If I write there is a damn good reason why I wrote. Maybe I wanted to kill a goat or something, I don't know what the fuck goes on in my head (for the record I've never killed a goat or a cow or a person or a penguin. I would never kill a penguin).

Point is. That song. That particular song. I wrote that song in Turkey and I remember why. It was a very bad time of my life. I was 17 and everyone hates being 17. I was struggling with an eating disorder, depression, family drama and the kids my age were just mean. I say kids because we were and I still am a know-nothing sleep-deprived child. I was in Turkey with my history class and I remember sitting on the bus as some kind of demon in my head said this is your last day on this earth. I knew I wouldn't make it to the market with my class. All those.. people. No chance. So I told my teacher that I felt ill and I slipped back into our hotel. My room was on the fourth floor. The ceiling was quite tall. The fall would.. kill me. I smoked one, then two then three. I smoked a pack of cigarettes. That fucking demon kept harassing me. I stood in the window smoking what I thought would be my last cigarette. I tossed it to the ground, the ground I imagined my heart to stop pounding against. 

Then, I jumped into the safety of the floor, shut the window and locked myself inside the bathroom with a pen and a notebook. It suddenly hit me that I had to write because I would not die on this day. 

This is why I wrote that song.

Sometimes when I play shows for people who don't know my music they say it's "intense" and i think for some people it's too intense. Music is not something I do, it's something I am. It can't keep me sane, but it keeps me from complete insanity,

Today was another one of those days. I will always have those days just like Monday will always come after Sunday no matter how much we wish for this day to vanish. 

Sometimes I have friends or family ask me why I don't take medication for what I am.. for what I am. What I am is outspoken, overly-sensitive and overly-analytic but also overly-creative and overly-optimistic for when "people like me" decide to use it instead of throwing it away we write something or paint something or say something that you have no clue of how we came up with.

The stakes are much higher when you're bipolar. Love is more turbulent. Happiness more crazy. Depression deeper. 

I take the bus for twenty minutes every day. Some times during these twenty minutes my heart starts racing and I forget where I am going, I mean not literary but mentally speaking. I forget that I have an album coming out. I forget that things are looking quite good right now. I forget and the only thing I can hear is that demon saying this is your last day on earth. 

Ten minutes later. It's over. I go to work. But every day the mood changes drastically like this sometimes twenty times a day. 

I hate being bipolar

I love being bipolar

Every fucking crazy idea I have had, every song, every chance I've taken, every place I've traveled to, shows I have argued to get, opportunities I miraculously won, people I have met, networks I have built and adventures that I have spontaneously taken which has led to more jobs in music and art.

I wouldn't have had them if I wasn't crazy. 

and for the record. writing this made this day a whole lot better

[anniegotwood]

13 februar spiller jeg på maksitaksi som en del av feber i februar for å styrke kvinner i musikkbransjen. #livemusic #femmebrutal #maksitaksi #chickswithpicks #Oslo #folk #punk #rock

[anniegotwood]

The beauty and the beast of having an ambivalent mind

Not too long ago, but long ago for it not to be recent a stranger thought that it was his privilege to scatter my brains and decide for its direction. I didn't realize that my mind was like open book and he said that I was selfish by choosing to harvest my mind in my own way being that unpredictable  bastard that we with ambivalent minds tend to be.

I beg to differ. Why are we socially recommended to change our state of minds in order to "function" on this psychedelic trip ride called life? Look, life is on roller skates, bipolar or not and it is the wheels that keep it being so god damned interesting. 

Sometimes I do wonder how life would be if I wasn't in such, what do you call it, man who enjoys to make assumptions and divide into boxes; yes instability. Sometimes I wonder if my life would be better or easier especially when the mania crashes but I decided very early to devote my life to art and I decided very early that I needed that beauty of sacrifice in order to be ultimately and utterly fearless. 

When I was a kid I'd be like other kids my age, indecisive and curious, but to certain extremes. I had periods when I was a social butterfly borderline that thing that you call kids who talk and spin around too much and then suddenly I would retreat to a notebook or music or another space where I could be isolated in my mind and the other kids would seem completely uninteresting. It would bounce back and forth like this and sometimes there was a certain balance, but I enjoyed those extreme poles very much. I would go on sprees which ultimately stirred me towards art because none of my family members dressed in creativity. My mind would raise into a dreamer's territory. I would spontaneously start writing books or begin projects and invest weeks with it not being very interested in being a kid and then out of the blue I was a social bird again constantly craving to be around people. 

It is these sprees that paved the way for my creation and I have learned to let these episodes color the path for when I will crash because when I do there is no energy, no reason and no life. As time passes and you realize that it will always come to that moment just like that moment will once again pass you rely on your creativity and your passion because without that ambivalence within you you would not be the artist that you have found such strength in becoming.  

I have learned to make the most of mania. Plan as many shows, create as many opportunities you can and paint with passion because when the life disappears and there is no reason you still have shit to do and no matter what you do you love to perform, it's the only thing you always love doing no matter the state of mind and those moments will break you out of the darkness just a little sooner. 

These are the things that we learn. And sure, sometimes I wonder how life would be if it wouldn't rapidly change the way that it does. My parents would say that I was unpredictable, like a ticking bomb always awaiting explosion. Close friends of mine call it different personalities and someone I used to care about deeply who experienced the darkest of my darkest and let himself be violated by it said that he didn't care because that part of me wasn't me. 

Well, then I guess it wasn't me who ran away spontaneously across the globe several times to find answers, ultimately shaping my artistic career each time. It wasn't me who poured everything I had into music because I had nothing to lose at the time. It certainly isn't me who is completely devoted to change because my darkness is merely an incident and it does not come from me. 

The beauty and the beast of having an ambivalent mind. Yes, there are times when I wonder if I would like it if I were more predictable. Some times I'll decide to go some place in a maniac state of mind and immediately decide to disappear from society once I get there. I used to ask, now I just go because explaining is such a difficult task. It happens once in a while that I unintentionally shut down. Then someone will ask if something happened and I will say no because nothing did , it just happens. Relationships are probably the worst because In one mind there's affection and a functional relation and in an other there's nothing and he will always think that he did something wrong and it will change once again just like it would crash and he will never accept that it's something that he can't fix just like I don't want it to be something that needs repair because I've written some great songs down there.

I do, love both my minds as extreme as they tend to be sometimes. When I was a kid I wrote in a letter to myself "Firstly an artist, secondly a person". A decade later I stand by this statement because no matter the day or the mindset or the time of the year art is the one relationship that will never ask me to take medication because art gets it and it loves me no matter what and it would never ask me to create differently than the exact way that I am creating in that very moment.

To me, that's love.

[anniegotwood]

I woke up with this distinctive feeling to write

Flashback- March 8th 2014. I promised myself and my dear ones that I would write here ever so often, but reality has proven my time to be captivated by life itself.

I do write, ever so often in a memoir slash fiction novel of my travels in which no one is granted to read until I'm ready to piss a few of you off. Perhaps I am writing for my own purpose only, but then again, since I was old enough to claim words nothing truly was for my own purpose only.

March 8th 2014. It's crazy to think of the fact that it's been almost three months of travelling. I think I have found the recipe of inspiration, pure inspiration not pure happiness but pure inspiration which to me is the closest thing to happiness that I will ever find. The answer is travel.

I remember the fall of 2013 when I moved into an apartment in Oslo and my friend Julie who I mention by name because she was and is a huge influence of the way I now live my life kept trying to inspire me to live my life differently. At the time I was constant in my way of thinking, being quite so nihilistic and having a very steady vision of how to be.

Travelling was not in my mindset and god Julie how you sometimes pissed me off in the beginning of our friendship by being so god damned positive and obsessed with auras. I truly wanted to kill something. A few years back I was as dark (or thought I was) as it gets and I was fucking proud of it. 

I was truly enslaved by the perception of who I thought I had to be to be great. Only, my obsessive ideal of burning and vanishing was the one thing that kept my passions from exceeding my own constant mind.

If there's one thing that I have learned it is that a firm plan for your artistry will only prevent you from creating the art that you were meant to create. I used to have this vision in my mind of where I had to be to achieve this greatness and heck, nowadays I don't even know where I'll be next month and I promise you that I have never been more free. 

Travelling, in my mind and cross cities and countries was the discovery that needed to be made in order of getting out of that narrow mindset that used to be my goal.

I want the same things now, but I want it differently. It used to be about the destination in which I was obsessed to get to. Nowadays I have none of my eyes on a certain place. Each day brings something different and I celebrate those little things like playing at a small but captivating gallery in Boston with just a few poets and musicians who understand my words or playing with travelling buskers in Nashville who've lived of street money for nearly a decade to a very inspiring encounter with a young man who left his hometown for the first time and for good and all of the drugs that destroyed his upbringing for a new life in the country side overly confident of his goal to be the first of his family to get out.

These are the memories that I cherish. These are the moments that Inspire me. These are the years that I will look back on in the future and feel so very grateful to have experienced. For the first time in my life I can truly say with both hands on my heart that there is no other place and no other path that I'd rather be following.

If I could go back in time (which I wouldn't because I learned what I learned for a reason) I'd say to myself "Darling, get out of your mind, get out in to the world, because you truly don't know anything yet".

My philosophy teacher in high school (who sadly passed away last year) told me just that. He saw the rawness beneath us, the person behind the student and he cherished our individual storied and encouraged us to read between the lines of life. 

He said we were to young to debate the question of to be or not to be and at this age I know that he was right but at the time everything anyone said about the way I should feel was rubbish.

We've all been there. 

In my life right now I might have this larger than life attitude towards everything that happens and every day blows my mind but you have no idea, every day truly does. 

For several years when I was younger I used to wake up with an arrow through my heart and I remember thinking that being so god damned sad made me more special than my classmates and more special than other people which is why i thought I had to die. Well that arrow isn't there anymore and I've had several years beyond my toughest teen years. 

My teens were eaten by an illness in which your body image defines the perception of your being which is bullshit because the world is so much greater. 

It has a name, bulimia. To me, this "illness" call it whatever you want was the toughest thing to admit about myself because I wasn't one of those people, you know the way society views these people as tiny and obviously insane or even obsessed and conceited with the way they appear in front of a mirror.

I was neither of those things and neither are most of the girls/guys who you will discover have this illness. 

The roots run way deeper, but one fact is true, it does enslave you.

I can today say that I am very much following a different path, but the recovery did not come from treatment or  years or counselling or loosing weight. These things did nothing for me. 

Do you know what did it for me? Travelling.

One day a year or so ago I found myself at a crossroad and I thought "Damn, there are so many causes that I am ready to fight for, there are so many people that i need to inspire, there are so many lives that I need to better and I cannot let my own inner battle against my body-image clog that time"

To me, it truly was that simple, so was the battle against depression and the battle against myself.

I look back and I find that during that time I truly was self-absorbed but at times you truly have to be and if you are in such a dark place, don't feel bad that you cannot involve yourself in a universal battle, you need to save yourself first.

I have scars from that time, letters from those thoughts and memories from my years in the dark.

I am as grateful if not more for those year which is why every day now is so magical. 

Every show that I play, every person I encounter and every meal that i eat and laughter that I share with the wonderful people that I come across are all such magical experiences that I never thought that I would have. 

So no, it's not about a record deal, or a show, or a producer or a prime-career or a steady income or a moment of fame. 

As far as I'm concerned I have already made it.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

"You can take what's given to you as an excuse to fuck up or an excuse to succeed"

[anniegotwood]

Leaving town alive on a highway of letting go

Copenhagen.

I wish I could say that I've by now learned better, but old habits die hard and once again everything up until the point of arrival is a blur. It's the art of being a penguin, we always leave.. in chaos. 

By now I've realized that keeping this and the tale of the penguin apart is inevitable. I am the penguin. .

To be honest, I'm never truly ready to leave until I burn all bridges and have to go in order to stay sane. So I burn all bridges and run from insanity.  I am biologically constructed to break before I become steady.

So, this where I stop painting with metaphors and write about my final week in Norway. It was my first week without a normal job, first week of paranoia, first week of realizing that whatever safety net I think that I used to have; well it's gone. This was my first week of music, for real this time.

I wake up at noon. I wake up for interviews. I wake up to play. I wake up knowing I don't have to think about anything other than art this day. I don't know if I like it yet, well I mean of course I like it, but it's just that this life, well this life doesn't last.

I was foolish enough as a child to swear to only make the art I WANT to make with PASSION. This is the only real promise that I have ever made and I shall take it to my grave. I'll be back watching your kids or cleaning your house soon. I don't mind. To me this is reality. It pushes me to create.

I think I grew up this week in some way but by all means not in all ways. I last saw my father when I was 19. It's a long story, one we will both tell differently. I thought it would be at least a couple of more years until I would let him see my face but then came a train to the town that he lives in and a concert I would play in his reach. Sometimes you have to quit being so fucking stubborn, just for a moment, for peace, for people. It wasn't much, no coffee or anything. The scars run too deep for any coffee to discuss, but he never saw me play music before. I think we both needed that confirmation.

I had lunch with my little brother who has always been the most reflected boy I've ever known. He will never make the same mistakes that I did, for that I am sure. My brother speaks of freedom. He will find it in a far less complicated way than I did. With my brother I feel like a person. To me, people are replaceable, so are thoughts, but I would move a mountain for my brother. He is and will forever be my only sweetheart.

Yesterday I played at the 25th year anniversary of Greenpeace. This organization and the people I've come to know through it have opened my eyes. I was never sleeping, but I was in coma before I came to realization of the action speaks louder than words formula.

It was a good night, at least it was until it wasn't. Here's what I know about endings; I don't.

I was, I am, I shall forever be a PENGUIN. 

This way, I can pick up my guitar and my belongings and fly across the globe for an indefinite time and when I find myself in a life where it's steady I will do it all again just like I've done it before.

Am I scared?

Absolutely.

Which is precisely why I must do it.

I am alive.  

[anniegotwood]

The news of today were the news we tried so hard to hide from at the market.

Good evening Europe. Good morning NYC. I sit here mourning over the tasks that I have yet to complete because as 3 hours of sleep, theater, music and work finally took it's tows on me and I got... fucking sick. Yet, spending 8 hours in the recording studio barely holding my cough, when you hear this version of my new tune "Blue Bird" I might sound overly fragile, in reality I was bit by the flu. 

So I decided to write again. Scratch that. I've been writing since January, casually putting science fiction aside a little bit to write about my journeys as a penguin. This time around I write only when I have to put my words into motion and not to complete the next word count. I will be back for more tedious fantasy drama, but right now my heart is in music. 

Speaking of music. Music is the reason I decided to write again, not about the penguin (which I will grant no one to read until finished) but about my travels. 

I started writing here when I was 18 and left "permanently" for the first time. Life is on roller skates. I never thought I would be back so sudden, but as Christmas break came I was broke and had no place to be. A visit to mommy and daddy lasted until Christmas day when I once again pulled my suitcase out of the house and screamed FUCK OFF until my voice came down. I was 19 by then and I swore this would be the last time.

That Christmas we spent more time drinking than focusing on the art of acting that had brought me to NYC. We foolishly rented an apartment in outer Williamsburg sleeping in until 5 and hitting a new bar each evening. My savings were suddenly gone. So were some of the funds I was supposed to pay for college with.

Back at school out on Long Island i never slipped into any pattern. Truth is I never went to college to study, even though I was an acting major. I went to get as far away as possible from where I came from and I got a scholarship so there I was. It took me almost until the end of the semester to pay tuition both terms because I sat there with all that fucking money that did not belong to me ready to pay for an institution I did not belong in and all I could think about was how at ease I would feel to get on a plane and invest in my career elsewhere. Elsewhere at the time, being Los Angeles.

I was fond of Los Angeles as a child, having spent time there since the age of 16. I was always eager for more than what my home-streets could give me. I wasn't the most talented actor at age 14, but I wanted it more than I then honed my craft. When I was once again rejected from a local musical theater group in my small town (the BEST as we were told) I enrolled in acting classes in the capital of Oslo and got my first "real" job apart from babysitting and delivering newspapers at 15. I saved up enough money to spend a month in LA learning about Film & TV and the business, that is Hollywood.

Regardless this isn't what I want anymore, but my first travels to LA in 2009 was for me a game changer. I might have spent the summer memorizing sitcom bits and dressing up for headshots, but when I returned for school in the fall I never looked back. From this moment I knew that I HAD to be an artist.

When I was a teenager I might have been at fault for some reckless behavior and a whole lot of not giving a fuck, but when it came to my art I was more committed to it than to any friendship and to any cause. I gathered my savings the next year and went to study physical theater at the Cambridge school of visual and performance art in England. This summer was much tougher than last. We had class everyday from 9 to 5. There was no excuse, ever. We were just 6-8 students and it was hard. I had never studied physical theater before and for a girl who was "trained" in Hollywood Cambridge shook me up and down and taught me not only life lessons but it changed my entire perception of being an artist. I was going beyond my limitations (a sentence I heard one too many times in Suzuki class in college) and it was about you as a creative persona and not the results you were trying to achieve.

I returned in the fall with a new motive " I would make REAL art". And that is how we founded Playroom, a theater company then made up of three 17-year old girls who wanted to make their creativity matter. The next year we presented our first piece DEFEKT, a story at first loosely based on Girl, interrupted, but turned into something entirely different. In these moments on stage I honored what my 14-year old self initially wanted to feel; passion. After this performance, the actor in me would slowly suffer from a virus; one that tried to teach me how to be.

I don't regret going to school (unless I take a look at the loans I will never be able to pay back) but some times I wonder what had happened if I hadn't been so eager to leave and had taken a baby-step out of my prison. I instantly had troubles with my professors. Like I said earlier, I wasn't there to learn and coming from method, from writing, directing and freelancing cutting back to basics made me more angry than respectful. I ended up walking out of class at one point after a performance piece that I truly felt but my teacher felt was staged. It wasn't first time for me to storm out of class, but to them at this little theater department I quickly became the talk of how not to respond. I should have taken my money at this point, but I tried until the end of first year.

In April I had settled down a bit. I tried to listen, not because I truly meant it but because I had no where to go. I had fucked up too hard for any other school to take me. I had no home to go back to. By April my professors applauded my change. For the first time in my life I presented art by the book and for the first time in my life I wanted every show to be over. I didn't realize what price I had paid until the following August when I decided to drop out.

Once again i was stranded at a cross-street, 19, broke and reckless. I spent some of the tuition money on bullshit, escaping to the city every weekend to go to shows and to get drunk with kids who did not wear the college logo.

Once again I had to beg my parents to take me in, give me shelter, lend me money. When I was 18 I thought life would be simple. I didn't think about those 4 months when school is over, where would I go?

I was back at my parents house swearing to sobriety on probation until i was out of debt with them. Turns out 5 and often 6 day work-weeks was exactly what I needed at the time. When August rolled into motion I realized that by going back to school I would make it. I know how to work hard and I would be their actor. But.. I would be the artist i had sworn so long not to become; the one without grit and the one who lost the passion for gold.

I don't say that school cannot nurture joy, passion. But for some who have always sought training outside of he institution the institution can break you because for you art and school are two entirely different things. For me school was where I HAD to be but hated to go to and art was my escape from just this. 

In an insane world you must keep dear to you what matters and even if you have to pay for your passion your passion will always save you.

Of course I couldn't stay with my parents having dropped out of college. This is how and when I moved to Oslo. I was on summer vacation and i never returned in the way I had intended. That life, that year, just like the rest of the yeasr I've left behind weren't lost but remembered. 

I'm the kind of person that always leaves.

I was never fully able to recreate the love I had for acting which is why I put all of my creativity into poetry and fantasy. I went to Paris several times to write. This was a whole new era for me. When I picked up the guitar after my last visit in Paris it was as if it was meant to happen in the way it did. 

That summer i returned to NYC and to LA mostly for acting, but it ended up being for music. Los Angeles was no longer my childhood dream as the perception of myself had faded and i was reconstructing a path of being conscious. 

Twenty years I had been living by the book of how life was supposed to be. "I will not know you too well because I have to leave". "I cannot travel because i have to be in the city, for auditions, I have to do it now" "I don't have time"

Time is exactly what i have. Through music I somehow managed to stay true to the path of being an artist without diminishing  the path called life.

If there's one thing that I have learned is that you can be both, a person and an artist. No don't question me, I swear for me at 16 there wasn't. The girls and boys my age were doing normal stuff, like I don't know, stuff and I was manically searching for roles, submitting and planning. 

It took two bare-feet weeks in Estonia last August to fully taste the passion of art again. In Estonia I came to make theater. I spent most of my time busking, playing on the beach, in the park. I was playing for hours and hours each day. There were no contracts, no emails, no deadlines. I took my bare feet dancing. I didn't need any drugs this summer. I was high on passion. 

If reading this you have by now realized that I am a very extreme person in every way. I don't get mad, I get furious. I love momentary and it passes like the wind. I live out of a suitcase and I can belong in every place that I visit.

This time i have the luxury of the one way ticket and this time there's no college awaiting my money. I don't know how long I'll be staying. For the first time I have the feeling that I'm not running away from a place which is why I might not come back. I don't know, I never do. Life is on roller skates.

What I do know is that I am more passionate than ever. Music to me is the child in me laughing for the first time and seeing none other troubles than learning to tie her shoes. It's great, isn't it? I think it is. 

What is even greater is the love that grows out of this distance. My mother finally came around and realized that her daughter will be an artist and despite the war between my father and I she is able to reach out and support me. 

"There's an ocean between me and my parents and they will never understand who I am or what I'm doing"- passing strange.

The thing is, you have to value the effort. The fact that my mother supports my decision to quit my day-job and my apartment and jet off on tour with the little I have saved up in hopes of some recognition some time some day. 

To me, this is love; to attempt to understand what you cannot possibly understand and agree without judgement. 

To my dearest mother. Thank you. I will be okay and I will not get into anymore troubles. As of the songs of hatred. They're dismissed. 

From now on I will only write songs of the future.

Talk soon.

[anniegotwood]

Art saved my life and I now I owe the world my creativity, to create will potentially save others

You know when you're young and about to explode and you feel like the entire world is against you? I'm here to tell you that it isn't true. 

For me the seed was planted sometime before I was ten. I think I remember how it happened, but I'm an actor and we have a tendency of twisting things around. It doesn't matter now. I remember what I remember. 

It blossomed in my mid-teens. This is the part I don't remember. Suddenly it was there and the world I once found beautiful as a child wasn't anymore. Now this is what I know: Father was right. Nothing terribly difficult ever happened to me. Nobody died. Nobody left. Nobody used me. Nobody bruised me. Now this is what I've realized: none of that mattered.

Sometimes what we feel can't be traced back to a definite root. It is when it can't be traced to a definite root that we become constant in our emotions. It is then we start to pity ourselves and spin further and further away from our own potential. 

You weren't put on this earth to be angry. You weren't put here to hate. You certainly weren't put here to be unhappy, yet you are. "I can't help it" you say. I'm here to tell you that you can.

I saw two different people during my time in the dark. I saw enough of them to know they couldn't help me. Now I know why. I'll tell you later.

I fell hopelessly in love as a teenager. No, not like that, not in a person. It wasn't like that. I fell in love with my depression.  It became me or I became it. Whichever way I was gone. Those where my years of being Jane Doe.

With new skin growing I had to make new marks. My monster was clever in that sense. It knew how to control me. As damaged goods there was no way I could be a part of the constructed world around me. For the longest time I didn't want to be.

This is the part where I tell you how I woke up. 

I left home believing it would change things. New town, same mind. Sometimes you need to get away from a place to be all that you can be, but everything you can be is in every place you visit because you are there.

It was in this new place where I met the second person I saw. She took me seriously, too seriously. She didn't know why I came. Neither did I until she told me what I thought I wanted to hear. I wasn't sick, I was lazy and the thought of being sick and unable to take responsibility appealed to me more than the thought of being the one in control.

I was, the one in control. I was there, far away from where I came from. The people who I decided held me under control couldn't possibly create what I felt. Yet I held an imaginative black hole in my heart. It was easier that way.

This is the part where I tell you what ultimately helped me. 

Not god

I'm not religious

Not my therapist

Whe create the patient they decide to help

Not medecine

That shit is bullshit

My mind

I swear

Why? Because I have two hands, two feet, a functioning heart and a somewhat enlightened brain. Nothing anyone ever said or did or didn't say or do will change the fact that I'm here with my physical health and with my potential.

We decide every day who we want to be. You want to die? Fine. You won't prove a point by doing so. All you do is taking the short-cut. Saving yourself takes a little more effort than taking a leap off some platform. You want to hate the world? Fine. It won't hate you back, but you will think it does because that's how you've defined your universe. You want to be miserable? Fine, but it won't make you a better artist and it certainly won't make your life any better. 

You can take what's given to you as an excuse to fuck up or an excuse to succeed.

The people who hurt you are irrelevant because you decide if they will be a part of your future. If they can't change, leave. If you can't leave, don't hate them when they hurt you. You gave them the oppertunity to do so.

You wake up in the morning. You leave your house. It's 7 AM and you're barely awake. It doesn't take you a couple of hours to feel worthy anymore, you decide you're worthy as soon as you open your eyes. They sky is gray, but it doesn't mean you have to be. You miss your tram. You will be late. It doesn't matter. You look at the people. People. The people don't bother you. You're here together. You don't know where you'll be next year. You don't know if you'll ever have stability. You don't know anything other than it's passed 7 AM, you're late and it's okay because you're already late and nothing you can do will make you arrive any sooner. It's raining. You enjoy it. Rain is water. Water is life. Your hair is wet. Your clothes are soaked. You laugh because everything is funny.

That's when you know that you've made it. 

[hitrecord]

“Her Polite Madness”  

Photo by xobreexo23

[anniegotwood]

Vision of division

Wallowing in inspiration. Use it. Stay amused by it. Allow yourself to be steady. Allow yourself to be happy. Allow yourself to accept yourself. With accept comes progress. Some people spend one year, two years, four years, most years or all of their years trying to find solutions to something that cannot be solved. You cannot change the way some people perceive their lives and perceive you. You try and find no solution. You try again and you only achieve frustration. People are what they become and they become a version of what they believe is correct. So who do you blame, the person or their master? Blame no one. Shed no anger. Shed accept and carry on. Let it inspire you, though never define you. Don't ever become a product of the people who broke you. Become a product of your mind, let your passion control you. You don't have to forgive, and you must never forget, but you need to understand that it is what it is. You cannot change somebody's perception of right and wrong. You cannot let your own ideals decide who you love. Save yourself, don't rely on somebody else to do it for you. People are people. Don't overestimate them. Don't underestimate them. You decide how other people perceive you, not the other way around. You have a little bit of poison and a lot of potential. If you want something, go and get it. In the end, if you don't have it then I guess you didn't want it enough. Excuses are nothing but avoiding hard work. Don't avoid yourself. Speak to yourself. Read to yourself. Understand yourself. There are 7 billion people in the world. Friends come and go. Family can deceit you. Plans change and sometimes people change. You will have one companion and one companion for the rest of your life. Gaze into your own reflection. Take it in. Ask yourself the question; are you happy? If the answer is yes you are well on your way. If your lips speak no you're on the verge of on your way. Gaze into your own reflection, see the potential. Forget the people, the traffic and the horror. You're staring at your own savior. The tools are hidden behind that thick scull of yours. Stop searching. Say hello. 

[anniegotwood]

Life of a writer is public knowledge

 was 5 I l

When I was 5 I loved. Who doesn't love ? Everyone loves when they're five. I wanted to be a performer. I always wanted to be a performer.

When I was 11 I bullied someone. Maybe I ruined her life. Maybe she killed herself. Who knows? I moved away and since then I haven't seen her.

When I was 12 I hid during free period at school. I had no friends.  I was miserable. I was miserable, but I figured I deserved it. After all I did bully someone.

When i was 13 I believed in karma. I made good grades. I would become a lawyer. I did sports. I also did theater, but at the time I didn't think of art as a career.

When i was 15 I liked blood. I don't know why it happened , it just happened. You know when you're younger and you read about people who hurt themselves and you think that they're either crazy or stupid? I was maybe crazy, but never stupid. You know how it is. Shit happens. I was sad and the blade was just there. 

When I was 16 i drank too much. I drank until I was 19. I said I wanted to kill myself, but I didn't really. If I wanted to i could have. It's a simple task, to kill yourself. I lived close to the tracks. I wouldn't really, I just wanted somebody to save me from a hypothetical situation. You know teens, they're attention whores. 

When I was 20 I was alive. i wrote this, because when I write, I write because it's over. i waited around for happiness and it took me to New York and back to realize I was the one who had to find it. 

When I was younger I used to think that i was special because I was sad.

It doesn't make you special, just sad.

When I was 20 I still used razorblades and knives. Love knives.  You dip them in red, paint, not blood. Then you pierce through material that is not skin. 

When I was 20 I finished my novel. I could have created a lot of scars with that rage. In stead i completed a novel. Old scars and novels are both evidence of how far you've come. Personally I rather have something i can sell.

I'm human.

I like money.

I have a feeling i will either have nothing or a shitload of it when I'm older. I will be great. Maybe 2 people believe me. The rest think I should go back to school. I hate school. Fuck school. I know that I will be great. 

Gone are the days when you're blue.

Here are the days when you're blue, red, purple, white, green, yellow, brown, turquoise, pink, violet and orange. 

[anniegotwood]

I was shamelessly disguised

The day when you said fuck it, slipped back into your old ways and tried less. It's not going to kill me and even if it does I remain indifferent.

Firstly an artist. Secondly a person. 

One day I'll make the exhibition. 

[aladyloves]

Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936)

[chaplinfortheages]

Nice close up Charlie.

[designersof]

[cassiesteele]

holllllaaaa!

SUPPORT GAY RIGHTS!

[unicornsnatch-blog]

You don’t know ANYTHING about a person until you’ve seen their blog.

[anniegotwood]

I missed the last bus, I'll take the next train.

We are cursed to live.

I think there’s something particularly beautiful about staring out the window and wondering. Was yesterday real? Is now real? Am I real?

I have different personalities; one for myself, one for the public, one for strangers and one for friends. Every time you encounter someone new you make a choice; who am I today?

The question reads differently every time. I don’t think it’s possible to really know somebody. I’m not talking coffee buddies or facebook friends but to really know a person. I believe words are adjusted. As we grow up we make choices. Who will I be? We are doctors, writers, lawyers, bank robbers or nothing. Some people choose to be nothing. We are cursed to live. You can either take it as an opportunity or leave. Everybody makes choices, every day of every life.

Now, I like to think that I’m different because I do what I do. I’m not. Everybody makes choices, every day of every life. You write a book. You write prescriptions. You write nothing. You can choose to write nothing. There’s one thing, one thing that we all want.

I like to think that I’m different because I do what I do. What I do is an attempt to stay here with what’s been given to me. What I do is to use it as an excuse to succeed and not an excuse to fuck up. What I do is what everybody else does, every day of every life.

Strip down to the core, the pure animalistic core. The curse is not the life itself, but the mind, the choices. The choices are the demons. Who am I today? Our minds are beautiful, yet poisonous.

There’s one thing that I want, that you want, that everybody wants. I want recognition. I want fire. I want life. I want to feel it. There’s one thing that I want, that you want, that everybody wants.

I like to think that I’m different because I do what I do.

I’m not,

I’m like you,

I’m like them,

I’m cursed to live,

You’re cursed to live,

We're all cursed to live,

What I want,

What you want,

What everybody wants,

Is to be understood.