NEW YORK - MIXED BLOOD VIDEO-SHOOT
061207 - 061210

On thursday the 7:th of december I went to NY to meet up with Stefan Lundaahl, a.k.a. Omnimotion, to shoot videos for both "Mixed Blood" from my own album, and "Wide Awake" from his album.


My flight left from Arlanda 9 a.m. Though the trip took nearly nine hours, I was to arrive in NY at noon the same day.


Clear day. Sunny. Not at all as cold as the following days...
Our dear Myspace-Friend Terri picked me up at the airport and drove me to Manhattan.


I checked in at Hotel Pennsylvania, a few minutes walk from Times Square and Empire State Building. Later Omni arrived from his trip to California, where he had shot some good footage for his video.




As soon as it was dark we went out. NY by night was busy and glistering.


We visited old friends of mine, brush artist Hawk Alfredsson and his beautiful spouse Mia Hanson. They live in a room at the Chelsea Hotel where Hawks art fill the walls and corridors. We watched his latest paintings and got to see Mia's photographs for the first time. An enchanted evening.


This was my second time in NY. My first time was in my teenage as a graffiti-writer. I came here to touch upon the tags of my heroes and behold the burners of gigants up close.


It became a journey back in time. A slide down memory lane through faint, dreamlike memories of walls, lines, bent angles and living color.




At night we hit the streets, rigged a camera and started filming shots of me delivering Mixed Blood in the middle of Times Square. Cars went by, people crossed the streets and stopped and watched the spectacle. By-passers cheered and wistled, but kept at a respectful distance as we filmed our scenes.

It was freezing cold and and we were tired and hungry but we pursued anyway.
But back at the hotel we noticed that there was something digitally wrong with the shots, and so had to go back to Times Square to redo it all again.
This time I was so tired and angry that I just clenched my teeth and did a couple of unhesitant one-takes, delivering the track without pauses into the camera.
Allready on location we noticed that these shots had a much better, direct feel and determined energy to them, and ironically made us lucky that the first ones were broken and we'd been forced to go back...

Mixed Blood - video uploaded on Youtube.com
and Myspace.com/kristerlinder soon...