Alan: Hello, Pontus.

Pontus: Hello, Alan. You scared me there.

Alan: Sorry, I shouldn’t say hello? Is that too frightening for you?

Pontus: Well, it was, all of a sudden you were popping up likewhat’d you call him?

Alan: A Jack in the box, yeah.

Pontus: Jack in the box? Yeah, that’s right.

Alan: Now, I wasn’t popping up like a Jack in the box, I was popping up like a podcaster.

Pontus: Okay, that’s what they do? Okay.

Alan: Yeah. ‘Hello, Pontus’. That’s what a podcaster does.

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Alan: I was very struck and I was very moved about a video that I saw from Angelina Jordan. It was one minute and 10 seconds long, and she was in the hospital in California with her grandmother. Within five seconds, I started to cry because it was so poignant and so moving. The song that accompanied it I’d never heard before. The match between that music and that video. I can’t ever remember having heard a more perfect match between, some music and actual visual experience. Because it was a situation in the hospital where Angelina’s grandmother was either just about to have an operation, or she had just had the operation.
And it was a very, very personal, very heartfelt moment. I am so full of admiration to Angelina Jordan and her family for broadcasting that video. And to me it so fits in to who she is and how she is, because she is saying, ‘My heart is open. These are my feelings. They are strong and they are clear and I am not afraid of my feelings and I’m not embarrassed by my feelings. And even though this is a very private moment, this is who I am, and this is how I am’.
And I thought it was a tremendous, tremendous, thing to do. I cannot think of anyone else who would do something like that.

Pontus: Hmm. Yeah I agree. Yeah, it was a very moving from me to. I have seen it once and I don’t think I will see it again because it’s so heartbreaking to see actually. And I think it’s like a testament how she is like a person, as you say, the thing that she does, I think is she’s portraying or she’s projecting something that is so human. I mean, we all go through this with our loved ones, with our next of kin that gets older. And the moment when you realize, ‘Okay my grandmother or grandfather, or even my parents, they won’t live forever’. And it’s such a great thing to share because, we will all meet that sort of fate sometimes. And yes I think it’s like a sign of being just another human being, so to speak.

Alan: Yeah. And also for those of us who’ve followed Angela Jordan for many, many years. And some people have expressed, um, ‘Oh dear, she is not a child anymore’. In a moment like that, she reacts both as an adult and as a child. And she lives in two worlds and we could admire her being both an adult and a child at the same time. And it was just tremendous and we always are talking about and focusing about how she is able to capture these emotions in her singing and how she’s able to develop these emotions in us. And we can see how emotionally clear she is. And the emotional clarity that she has into her singing is something which is really, really so exceptional for her.

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Pontus: I was thinking about what music does to you, really? Because I was, going my usual, six o’clock in the morning walk. I don’t know if you heard that I have that routine nowadays. I go up really early and go out for a walk down to the beach. And I was listening to some music and I got this feeling inside me that sort of corresponded to the mood of the music, of course. And then I got to think that music is one of the things that can bring us to quite a different mood than any other thing in our ordinary life. Because it’s like a daily routines all the time., you’re so busy, you don’t have time to reflect upon the larger things in life, the philosophical side of being alive. But as soon as you hear music that is sort of in that realm of emotion, then you’re instantly transported into that sort of mood. I don’t know if this makes any sense? But it’s like, I got almost like an epiphany that this is so unusual for me to be in this kind of state in this kind of mind. And it’s all due to the music and the impact that has on me.

Alan: I understand that very well, because it reminds me of what Egil said when Egil simply said, ‘Oh, that’s the magic of music’. And the way I understand what you just said is that music bypasses the rational. You do not have to understand the music. You can turn off your rational thinking analytical mind and just experience the music.
And there’s a much more direct link between the music and your emotions. And you don’t need any filter between them. And if you want to construct a filter, it’s difficult to construct a filter. And so that is really one of the main factors for the magic of music, the fact that it can bypass your thinking brain.
And it can just go to your emotional world. And that’s why every culture has music. And that’s why music, affects people the way it does.

Pontus: I got this a comment from one of my subscribers that saw a couple of my reaction videos to Angelina and he said like, ‘It’s almost like you’re showing a sense of pride. Like you’re watching your daughter doing something great’. And I think he really hit the nail on the head on that one, because I think that’s part of the feelings that well up inside of me when I watch Angelina and I think that’s also why it’s so, so heart wrenching when I saw that clip from the hospital there. Because that is something that instantly sort of… Well, in the back of my mind I’m like dreading that moment for my girls when they need to experience that with their grandmother and grandfather. You know, they’re in their eighties and every day is ticking, the clock is ticking closer to that moment when… I mean, they’re very healthy now, but someday they will be in hospital and we will go through all of those emotions and…

Alan: I know, but you know, this is the paradox of life. I mean should every parents hold their child when the child is five minutes old and apologize to the baby that they’re born into a world where they are mortal? I mean, you know, life has an asterisk next to it, which says, ‘This is finite by the way’.

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Alan: you know, with Angelina. It’s not just you and I, but then she does have many older listeners and there are many reasons for that. First of all, if she’s doing a lot of forties and fifties music, then of course, that brings us back to an era that we remember when we were young, but also there’s something which I think I have to call the Grandchild Syndrome. We look at her and say, ‘Ah, she could be our grandchild’. And so that triggers a certain type of pride and protectiveness in her direction as well.
But I think there’s, something else going on and that is, you know, people of our generation, we look around and we think, ‘Oh dear, the world is turning into a huge mess on many levels. I see no hope for the future’. And then someone like Angelina Jordan comes along and we think, ‘Ah, there are little, little pockets of hope for the future of how future beings can be and how they can develop’. And, it gives us hope that not everyone, in the future will go down the drain.
But that there are people who are gifted and who are upstanding and who in their own way can act, in a certain way almost like a leader, so that other young people can be guided by the example that they set.

Pontus: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just a shame that our leaders are not influenced by those kind of young people. There’s not much action going on to make this world a better place when it comes to leadership, I think. Right now, anyway.

Alan: Yeah, I know. But if a politician were very benevolent and kindhearted, it would not gain a lot of publicity and politicians need to have a hard edge to them in order to be elected. And that is the paradox of the life around us.
You and I, and many others, we can listen to Angelina Jordan and we can admire her and we can be moved and we could be made a better person. But I don’t know how the same impact can be had for billions and billions of people. You know, if someone is hungry, and if someone is in a country with a dictator, you know, they don’t have access to the same emotional openness that we do.

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Alan: I never expected last year, before I heard of Angelina Jordan, to have this type of reaction and this type of experience. It’s not just to a young person, but it’s almost like a change of career. it almost brought me in a different direction. The original idea of our podcasts was to show how it has changed us.
And you know, it’s sort of like, if you get to be 65 years old, you don’t start thinking about starting up a new business. If you get to be 65 years old, you don’t think about, ‘How can my emotional world shift? How can I grow in a different direction’? This is not really part of one’s vocabulary when we reach a certain age, you know, this is just beyond what we can imagine happening to us. And yet this is the type of influence that Angelina Jordan has had.
And, you know, we have something called an inkblot test in psychology. Where someone looks at a little ink blot, which has no specific meaning, but everyone projects what meaning they can see onto that, which is a projection of things which are going on inside. And in a way Angelina Jordan is like that, because everyone will have a different reaction to her, according to where they are at the moment. You know, some people will become more kind and other people will give more to charity and some people will cry more and some people will even embrace spiders.

Pontus: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. We also have like a form on our websites to encourage people sending in their stories about how Angelina has affected them. And there’s one story that is really, really great with, a fellow who, attributes his first hole in one in golf to Angelina, because he said he was listening to Angelina a lot on the car over to the golf course. And he has never had that in his life before. So that’s pretty awesome.

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Pontus: One thing that is quite, like a coincidence or fate or what you choose to call it, is the timing of her performance on AGT, just before the pandemic really struck us all. Because so many people have suffered pretty badly like, psychological during the pandemic and have found sort of a, almost like, a medicine in listening to Angelina every single day – myself included. In that sense, the timing of her sort of breaking through a little bit to the masses, at least in the US could not be better, I think.

Alan: Yeah. What she does works on so many levels, because it’s not just the calmness that the listener has. It also has something to do with her creativity and how original her creativity is. And, why are not more artists consistently able to have the type of reaction that Angelina does? What is it that is so unique about her, that her angels had this reaction over and over again? You know, this is sort of like a mystery. This is a major mystery.

Pontus: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that is that part of it that’s sort of like a driving force, at least for me to keep listening and keep doing videos and everything is the mystery part, ‘How can one human being be like her, in so many aspects?’ Like the quality of the voice, the musicality, the genius of the musicality in her and of course, her overall persona like this, giving gentle and a combination of being humble and confident at the same time. I mean, it’s so many levels of this that is, driving, at least me to stay on this journey.
I had a lot of time on my hands during the pandemic and every day I could see new, reactions to Angelina’s songs. And of course her catalog is quite extensive with, I think it’s now up to over 150 songs that she’s covered. It’s like opening a candy box every day. Something new every single day. And that has sort of got me through this time, really.

Alan: I mean, there are songs she covers that I don’t like the original song, but then I hear her version and then, I suddenly like the song, it’s her interpretation.
You know, it’s funny because, most people like to travel. They like to go to another country. They like to experience a different culture and maybe they will see how people have different type of fashion or they will see how people heat their house in a different way, or they will see, how people cook potatoes in an original way. Every culture will have a different imprint and a different tradition, which is hard to imagine if you are not familiar with it beforehand.
And if we look at someone like Angelina Jordan, we also have to redefine what we have been used to before. In other words, I have a certain emotional repertoire, certain emotional reaction, and I have a certain understanding of my emotions. But when I look at someone like Angelina Jordan, the emotional intensity that she has and the emotional clarity. It’s not to say that she does or does not have a filter, but the way she is able to capture that emotion and communicate that, to me really almost like redefines how I experience the emotion in me. If another human being can feel that intensity and that clarity and communicate that, then maybe I should try and do the same.