INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

A NEW START

Anna started school in Kirkenes, as her new house was now in Jakobsnes. And at the beginning of October, Alexandria was met with a new start, concerning the topic and the themes of the songs. In October 2022, I took Anna with me and we spent a weekend in Yorkshire, where the other members of the band were too. When they saw Anna, suddenly their mood became happier, as the youngster's presence would always cheer us up. We were in Yorkshire due to band business. And this business concerned the audition and, ultimately, hiring of this girl, who would be playing Irish pipes in the band. She was a girl, two years older than me, her name was Nancy and she had long dark hair. Our style and appearance were very common, though she had a more gothic appearance (even though she didn't look like a metalhead at all, nor had she anything to do with those people), while I had a more vintage style, of a Victorian era, mainly due to the acts I was playing on the theatre.

Nancy and I instantly hit it off. And that's a real paradox because we had completely opposite characters. I was a very reserved person and not that sociable, whereas Nancy was constantly joking around, she was trying to have small talk with everybody and in general everybody wanted to be her best friend. I can't say I was an easy-to-talk-to person at all, exactly because the older I was getting, the less typical affairs did I like to have with people around me. Either there's an honest friendship between us or we're no friends at all. And this is the second paradox as far as my friendship with Nancy is concerned. It took me ages to finally trust someone and be friends with them, especially during later years after the lawsuit. If we did in the end, I would keep people at a great distance, in the sense that I would put a limit concerning the time I would spend with them, what I would offer to them as a part of myself etc. I'm aware of the fact that this was rather selfish on my part and I don't feel proud at all about it. It's only that I've been a lone wolf and I can achieve being mentally healthy, only if I don't have any neighbours if I live in the middle of nowhere with my family and my animals if I spend as much time as I need with myself and the most important if I don't have to let anyone know about what I'm doing. Anyway, things weren't like that with Nancy. I could spend an eternity with her, fooling around, as if we were some eighteen-year-old teenagers and we could be spending time together, seeing each other's face for a whole week and it didn't matter at all. Of course, I have to say that I have always had a preference for people who come from Northern England, Scotland and Ireland, because of their humour. Furthermore, after my two past shitty years, my heart was longing for some laughter and light.

Nancy joined the band, playing the pipes, flutes, tin & low whistle. Furthermore, she accepted to bring in some additional keys. I explained to her that I had had an operation on my wrist, due to a thumb fracture, and that I couldn't play our old songs with those fast keyboard riffs that easily anymore. She replied to me in a completely normal tone: "No problem, dear". Thus, with me on lead female vocals and Bryan on lead male vocals, we got into work, in order to compose our eighth studio album. I have already mentioned above that, after the incidents of the years 2021-2022, the band changed completely, concerning the topic of the songs. After Black Notebook, I promised myself that I would never be in such a terrible mental state. Yes, all these depressing songs and books I was writing would very often help me get over my pain because I would let all this get out, at least in a paper. However, when you produce an Art, especially when you write a psychobiography, your aim is that your audience will become touched, when reading your work, so you make it as emotional as you can, often exaggerating a little bit about your feelings. I had realised that this kind of exaggeration was what would kill me. For example, in my Art, I would represent the fact that I had bad self-esteem in such a harsh way, that I would literally throw myself in the rubbish. Even in my latest book, I was a heroine who ended up killing herself. And of course, every time I would write a dramatic scene in a book, I was feeling so bad about myself, that I would break into tears. Well, I didn't want to be like that anymore. I wanted to write someone else's story and not mine. I was completely bored to keep on writing my diary, something I had been doing since Kansi was released. After all, it's completely selfish to write only about yourself, because in the end your audience will get too bored and will not be able to relate to your work at all.