Recently, as I was packing up my things, I was distracted by finding some old journals. As it turns out, I had written a rather extensive journal entry about my audition. Admittedly, most of it was pure cringe when read over a decade later. Despite this, I pieced it together into something that would tell my side of the encounter. At the same time, I spare myself the embarrassment of releasing the meandering dear-diary drivel that the neurotic and self-deprecating fan-boy I once was wrote in the spring of 2010. Thankfully, I’ve done a considerable amount of growing up since then.
Probably nobody cares, and if that’s you, you’re welcome to stop reading here. That is, after all, why I hide my side of the story in the comments of my code. I don’t mind being invisible; I have never been one to long for the limelight.
The reason I want to share this is that, honestly, I don’t have the same view of Micke at that audition as Axel. Yes, I thought they were laughing at me, and yes, it did little to ease my anxiety. While that was a bit rude, they were otherwise very kind to me.
Outside the S:t Eriksplan station exit I stood, struggling to get my bearings, and clutching the handle on my guitar bag so tightly I feared my fingers might fall off. Already I’d lost all feeling in them. In my imagination they’d gone white and numb, devoid of blood flow, fast becoming useless jiggly rubber-digits. What a nightmare that would be, to arrive at my audition with wiggling maggot-nubs! The ease with which I could envision that probably calls my sanity into question. However, considering the circumstances, for once, my rampant anxiety made some degree of sense.
I swung the bag multiple times, attempting to force the blood flow. It was so bulky and I was so scrawny back then that it nearly swung me. As I started toward the rehearsal studio, I glanced at my phone and realised I was far too early. Which was good because my mind was spinning so maniacally that I felt faint. Every single solitary cell in my body was vibrating in sync, creating friction and threatening to kick off a chain reaction; fission maybe? Finally, I located a nearby bench and forced myself to sit.
‘Get a grip, Kåre,’ I told myself. ‘You came all the way from Malmö for this moment; you’ve waited most of your life for this. Just remember to breathe, for Christ’s sake, breathe, but not so much that you hyperventilate, and everything will be fine.’
My sister had dared me to send in an audition video and when a dare didn’t work, she bribed me to do so by offering to buy me the Rickenbacker bass guitar I wanted in the event I was called in to a physical audition. I followed through, if for no other reason than to appease her, with zero expectations for it to go anywhere. It was a long shot; I assumed I had nothing to offer them. I’d only ever been in one other band, after all, a terrible emo band that thankfully left no lingering traces on the internet. And as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t even an interesting person yet.
While it’s news to me that Micke called me ‘the kid’, I still thought of myself as a kid in many ways. ‘What the hell would Axel Lundén and Micke Berg want with a kid?’ I wondered. He probably had every big-shot session guy in town auditioning. And me. The only twenty-one-year-old with the audacity to show up. At least I was a good bassist. At that point, I had already been playing for eleven years. I reckoned that was a good deal longer than most others my age.
Axel… I had actually met him once previously, at a Nauru record signing. My father escorted me in 2004, the last year he was alive. I was so nervous when it was my turn in line that I froze.
“What’s your name?” he asked me as he uncapped his sharpie and held it poised over the surface of my CD-sleeve. I hesitated. He blinked at me, laughed and asked me again, “You do have a name, don’t you?”
I had glanced over my shoulder and met the eyes of my father, who nodded encouragingly. Softly, I said, “It’s Kåre.”
“Are you sure of that?” Axel chuckled as he signed. “You don’t sound very sure.”
I nodded and stood there grinning as he signed my record; I grinned like I’d never grinned in my entire life, I grinned and my face hurt for hours afterward. He handed me back my CD. “Thank you,” I managed to spit out. “Thank you so much.”
Looking back on it now, I find it hilarious; endearing even.
But on audition day, a part of me hoped Axel wouldn’t remember that version of me, broken as I was. And of course, he didn’t remember. I was one mortified fan among many.