THE HAUNTED Frontman: What Happened To The Snow?

THE HAUNTED frontman Peter Dolving has posted the following message on his MySpace page:

"So we haven't seen any snow yet this winter. At ALL. Global warming, someone? Nah... It's just, um... a warm year?

"I am so tired of that lame excuse for the ridiculously over-consumption of the average Urban Joe Schmo, working class with delusions of upper middle class brass balls, bought and paid with the new credit card and an optimist/moron hat on — thinking, 'Oh I'll just spend the weekend in New York, Hawaii or London or mutherfucking Uzbekistan — Hey, I'll take one of those completely idiotic weekend trips on a low-budget airline that struggles beyond their real financial life span and dumps millions of gallons of white spirit airplane fuel into the air before landing about ten thousand gazillion times per day. And yeah I need another couple pointless drives to the convenience store just because I happen to live in the city that ain't even a city and it's only a couple of miles and by the way I reeaaaaally need that plasma TV and one thousand other extra applications put together by some 11-year-old kids in Malaysia, China and the Philippines because it somehow hightens the illusion that I have a life!' Vacation in the sun, anyone?

"Entertaining, somehow, the notion that consuming the death of something else somehow makes us a more powerful being. One step closer to utter omnipotence and eternal life. Yes! I consume and therefore I am a GOD! Well, OK, not a god, but I'm fatter and better and obviously more worth than those dudes planting rice in the hills of the Cambodian jungle, becasue I can afford AN IPOD! I AM A FREE MAAAAAAN. Screaming an imaginary scream of defiance to the ever greyer heavens in a slo motion 'Braveheart'-meets-'Rocky' mutation...

"Oh, and there are the people like myself, 30-something jackasses with a bubbling social concience, a lingering political ideal and painfully slowly coming to terms with the notion that MLK's 'I have a dream...' was a loooong time ago, feeling trapped in a compulsive need for selfexpression, cogs in the global wheel of capitalism, and some bizarre mixture of experienced necessity and desire — 'But but I have to travel to make a living...' Yes, I am part of the problem. We all are. We know there are solutions. But like everyone else I walk around hoping someone else will take those first steps towards userfriendly sustainable options.

"OK, I'm not gonna completely rag on myself, though the self depicration is seductive. Hell, I drive a very small unleaded fuel saver, I ride the bus to town and they're on bio-gas these days and I try not consuming more than I feel is an absolute must. Still, everytime I get on an airplane to the U.S. or anywhere else I feel this sickening paradoxal internal conflict of: A. How much damage my ugly face is responsible for every minute I contribute to the end of the species by touring and B. How much I fucking wish I could afford a business class or 1st class ticket...

"If there is a god out there — have mercy on us, give us not signs — we've seeing those for a long time now... How about a hint of how to make the necessary transitions to a better world as painless as possible. I mean really, if god exists, would it not be a cool thing to send down one those old-school bad-ass angels, like Michael or Gabriel, upon, say, 500 major execs in the energy, transportation and car industry and curse them all with the beatific glory and that fanatic burn you see in the eyes of southern evangelists dancing with snakes hanging out of their pockets, to wake up one morning thinking, 'Hey I got an idea! Let's make the most daring and creative investment of all time! Let's invest in an entirely new way of looking at the world! Let's put money into making sure there is still a market to invest in 500 years from now! Let's go deep here, let's scrap all the old models and go all natural, all eco, all super clean! Let's slow it all down a little so we can have grandkids who can have grandkids who can have grandkids!'

"It's my little prayer, so if there by any chance is some deity out there listening or at least a half god... Please do it. Please let the people on Forbes 500 list wake up with a deep acceptance of their own mortality and a willingness to do what they can to make a change for the better happen. Please?

"OK, so no snow it is.

"I know — most people never even know what that stuff feels like. I mean, sure — we've all seen it in the KoKa Kola commercials around Christmas, but no — most people never have the curse/blessing of snow in their lives. Me? I'm a Swedish farmboy with the dubious urban childhood experience of the first three years of my life in Gothenburg, a pretty overrated port city about the size of Portland, OR. On the southwest coast of a country that is the home of IKEA, fermented herring and a dyslecsic monarch whose chin proves beyond all doubt that inbreeding was never a good idea to begin with — two weeks of four inches of wet icky Slush-puppy greyish goo spread over the city like a cold embrace of painful teaser. Snow that ain't snow is to children what smoking bleach is to a crackhead. Daily drizzle and temperature shifts turning what likeness to snow it may have had to begin with swiftly turns into this gruesome mix of mud and icy puddles of water. Now of course when it 'snows' in Gothenburg authorities panic, schools close, people stay home from work, traffic accidents accelerate by a thousand percent and the city sends out an army of bright yellow trucks covering every surface except sidewalks with a layer of sand and salt to make sure the mud factor is further elevated and that when as is all melts two days later the streets are covered in this greyish potentially toxic goo that endlessly splashes up to cover the sidewalks as cars pass by... etc.

"Anyway, after year three of my life as my mom and dad were mostly finished beating each other up I moved up north to my grandad's farm. Now, up where he lived there was four feet of crisp fluffy white stuff coming down every week four to six months every winter until I moved to live with my disfunctional mom once again as I hit my teens. Snow is essential in my mental creation. It encases the world and slows everything down. The sounds become muffled. The nights become a magic transluscent mix of pitch black and wonderous blueish silouettes as the snow reflects the moon and the starlight. Any kid outside playing in that snow at four in the semi arctic dark afternoon will forever after have their senses hightened, elevetated and awakened. Snow helps a person accept things like infinity, the expanding universe, humans descending from the apes and the concept of groove as a most natural way of getting closer the source of all things cosmic and life being generally real fucking cool in itself — in a zen redneck kind of way. Watching the Aurora Borealis on a night like that makes the Christian notion of god seem kinda oh I don't know, like Gothenburg winters or English cooking. (No, Jamie Oliver does NOT represent English cooking...) No matter what influence we are under the fact remains that so far, and this is January 2007 we ain't been whooping down a hill yet and we ain't gone skiing, and that sucks.

"This year I spent the days before Christmas on trains across the country to do some spoken-word/lecture things about rock and this life thing we're all in. It is truly sweet talking to people about this love of mine. Sharing my thoughts and experiences over the years teaches me one thing — people are NOT all morons. Sure there's always going to be some of them here and there, and NO we can't possibly get it all at once, but I'm sure hoping we all move on with our lives and that people grow sick of their BRITNEY SPEARS and JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE records and find the limitations of listening ONLY to CANNIBAL CORPSE or THE GAME or whatever the hell it is people dig. Everywhere I go there always some 18-year-old kid who sits quiet, just kinda taking it all in, trying to get a feel of what the hell I am talking about, waiting for the right moment to like REALLY test my shit. And then he'll shoot some brilliant question or statement designed to make me cringe and prove I'm a phoney. It's beautiful. Suddenly there's discussion and the other people at these lectures open their mouths and a discussion about life, love, fear and dreams slowly expands making my world a little kinder for an hour or so.

"I am looking forward to 2007. I think it's one of those years..."