Published today 8:07
Life is so much more than chasing after new music can be found. The artist Louise Hoffsten has broken with his label – but the music never leaves her.
Louise Hoffsten have stopped being angry with his illness, MS. Now she wants to show others that it is possible to live with it. “It may sound pretentious, but I want to spread hope,” she says.
Louise Hoffsten have stopped being angry with his illness, MS. Now she wants to show others that it is possible to live with it. “It may sound pretentious, but I want to spread hope,” she says.
The man she married was unfaithful, her father disappeared into oblivion world long before he died, and self she suffered a life-long neurological disease was young.
But she met a new man, had a son and noticed that she can continue to behave – and have a rich life.
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– Life is never perfect but always a mixture of light and dark. Occasionally thrown a handful of gravel into existence. All we get our fair share of this – more or less. As for me. My illness has consequences for how I live, but does not prevent me alive. It exists and it may be, says singer and songwriter Louise Hoffsten.
She is up to date with a new book about his life. It has been given the title “A handful of gravel” and is written with journalist and author Lena Katarina Swanberg. They sat together and reflected, laughed and sometimes shed a few tears.
In the book, for example, we know why Louise chose to stand in the Eurovision Song Contest last year and read about the meeting with the gardener who shall ensure that the become better control of the family’s plants and crops. We also get to go on concerts in Sweden and the USA, take note of some risqué drinking songs and read about financier Jan Stenbeck’s love for the blues. Fun memories and episodes interspersed with seriously.
In the autumn fills Louise Hoffsten fifty years. At that age usually some suffer from a more or less serious existential crisis. Some test jumping “bungee jumping” or buy a motorcycle, others start exercising like mad and eat extremely healthy. Louise has also changed his life. It took many years for her to come to the realization that the frustration and despair she was carrying was directly harmful to her physical and mental health. But it was not until the work of the current book before she came to a real life decisions.
– I decided to take a large step aside. I had come to the conclusion that my family is the most important of all, realized that the care of my husband and my son does so much more than sometimes superficial successes. Therefore, I broke the contract with my label, and intend to take a vacation from the industry’s increasingly rapid search of finds. Though the music is still important to me and I continue to sing and write songs.
We meet Louise a day when the snow clad trees and bushes in the family’s garden in white. She says that she is no longer angry with his illness. Sometimes it causes the “hell on earth” for her, but she has learned to live even in those moments.
– I think that we humans always have to try to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in. And it is whether we are sick, unemployed, betrayed … life goes up and down, although it was so desperately hard for me to realize it. I’m thinking now that my “life-contract” includes taking responsibility for my actions and how I behave towards yourself and others.
– Although it is not my fault that I got sick, I can the sake do not blame something or someone else. I have noticed that it is very easy to go into a victim role, as the betrayed wife or the person so unfair became ill. When I finally realized this, I also became a happier person who can enjoy what I actually have, not mourn it, I do not have or can get.
Louise Hoff Stens first book, entitled “Blues”, came out in 1998. She wrote in anger and rage. The man she was then married to – who she thought everything good in the world – had been unfaithful and left her for another woman. And she had been told that she suffered from multiple sclerosis, MS. She had life and a long music career ahead of him had a serious neurological disorder that might end up in a wheelchair.
– Many asked about a continuation of the “Blues” and wanted to know what my life looks today. I hesitated for a long time, but when I got the opportunity to work with Lena Katarina it felt right. Twenty years ago I thought everything was running. But that did not happen. Now I want to demonstrate that you can live with a serious illness. Maybe it sounds a bit pretentious but I want to spread light and hope to other people.
In the fall synthesis her name and face in Neuroscience Association’s campaign to show that those who have, for example, MS not alone. The campaign continues now with the goal to collect more money for research on various neurological diseases.
– To lend his name to a disease is not easy. The risk is that I become associated with the disease for a long time and that I meet do not see the person Louise. Still, I wanted to be the campaign. I’m not alone in having a neurological disease and more research is needed in this area.
Several times Louise told in interviews that she, after then-husband’s betrayal considered to become a nun in Jerusalem, today she says that it was more about an aimless escape from pain and sorrow. In several places in “A handful of gravel ‘residing She, however, the existence spiritual side. So here she writes, among other things:
“I easily spirituality – but are terrified of being labeled as religious. I am baptized in the Swedish church, but I is not been confirmed. The reason is that I despised them as confirmed solely for gift squadron. That was not me. And those that were so, them I did not want to be with. Those of my age went and read had long lists of everything that they expected that confirmation gifts, money is not the least. I wanted my spirituality would be for real, not a way to get nice package. “
Louise has a belief, even if it has no connection to a particular religion. If she lived in Iran, she had probably become Muslim, now she grew up in Sweden with a Christian tradition and a grandfather who was a pastor.
– I see rites and rituals as an idiom for keeping us together people .
So says Louise that her grandmother hated all forms of fanaticism. She said that without laughter is people’s faith fanatic, and that religious fanaticism is the worst kind of all.
– Grandma had so right. I think when a man is sentenced to hundreds of lashes in Saudi Arabia according to Islamic laws, when people are killed by fundamentalist Islamists or when Christian fanatics destroy abortion clinics in the United States.
Louise Hoffsten born and raised in Linköping. The father Gunnar was bandleader and played trumpet and piano. He was long an important interlocutor and musical playmate. Even as a child he taught all their favorite songs, and they were a lot of different kinds.
– The music is a language with many nuances and dad were not high or low. He differed only between good and bad music – and it was he himself who decided what was good. Or bad.
When dad Gunnar again and again repeated the same question even though he heard the answer two minutes earlier, understood surroundings that something was wrong. In the end it was clear that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The reason for all the confusion and forgetfulness existed in changes in the brain – and there was no help available.
– Dad lived last days in a nursing home and I visited him frequently. It felt awful to stand there at his side without being able to do something. I remember how he once said he had been through so much fun in their lives. So he continued that “the problem is that I do not remember what.”
Louise have thought a lot about death by father Gunnar’s death. The grief, longing and loss weigh down still. His body is gone, but his legacy she tries to manage. She often talks to her father, thinking of what he would have done or said today. What advice would he give daughter? What would he suggest that she will do the rest of his life?
– I do know that I have an important task. My husband Dan and my son Adrian is the largest sources of joy in my life. Them I will cherish. I learn so much by Adrian every day, he has such a positive and joyful approach to life. I wish all parents could get it that way.
– And later this year I’ll be on some concerts with Meja, an artist I admire. We call ourselves “Meja and Louise,” as a travesty of Thelma and Louise from the film. Although we do not intend to take our lives as they did … life is just too good for that.
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