Fall asleep with Henrik

First day back after the summer. I sit down and I start with gravel.
Not the interesting kind. There isn't an interesting kind. But where I grew up almost nothing was paved, and when you came off a bike on that surface it took a wide decorative area out of you and filled it with small stones. And those stones lived in your knee until September.
So this one is mostly that. Two memories from a very small village in the middle of Sweden. My little brother and a friend stuck in a ditch full of clay, and one single boot left lying on the road. And a boy called Pontus who did a skid that tied a knot in itself.
There are old people in it too. Real ones. Born so long ago they had probably seen the nineteenth century. One of them stood on his steps and offered us sweets and then wanted to hear about our lives.
Then I talk about my summer. Copenhagen with my daughter, who navigates vintage shops she found on TikTok while I stand there holding the bags. Being told, gently, that my life is unfair. Driving alone to places nobody else wants to go to, and slowly noticing that the pleasure in it is running out.
And whether or not I have been swimming this summer. You can decide that one for yourself.
No script. No plan. One hour, and then a timer goes off.
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It is summer, with all that comes with it, so this is a rerun. A fallback to a more innocent time, when I was still quite new at this whole speaking-English-into-a-microphone thing.

This is me letting my mind wander. No script, no soothing affirmations, just my imperfect English and whatever thoughts show up. That was sort of the point then, and it still is.

I talk about the spaceship I invented as a kid, the Adventure Wolf. About my drinking, back when that was a thing, and how I found my way back to my childhood imagination. I get into national identity and why I would rather belong to the whole world than to one flag. Somewhere along the way there are schoolyard bullies, old Swedish poetry that romanticizes war, and some thoughts on sleep and the lack of it.
You do not need to follow any of this. Just let my voice be there in the room while you drift off. It is completely fine to fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. That is what it is for.

From the archive, first heard in May 2024.
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Hi, Sleepy.

Tonight I try to stand on the floor of not knowing. Not as a clever sentence, not as a podcast slogan, but as an actual place to put your feet in the morning. From uncertain times and foggy future towns to acting, meditation, smartphones, forecasts, sobriety, fathers, daughters, white beards I cannot grow, and the strange certainty that if you are hearing this, I somehow made it all the way to the end.

This is an episode about uncertainty, but in the sleepy way. No alarms. No instructions. Just a Swedish boy-man in Stockholm talking himself through the fog while you drift in and out beside him. Maybe falling asleep. Maybe just resting inside the fact that none of us really know what comes next.

It is what it is. What happens, happens. And right now, there’s nothing we can do about it.

Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi Sleepy.

Tonight the talking puts on its shoes and wanders off again. A cold Stockholm morning becomes bluish mountains in Dalarna, which becomes old theater rooms, old fear, old drunk directors, and then somehow a warm little container called Adventure Wolf, where no one has to prove anything to anyone.

I talk about getting older and still not becoming a wise, stable mountain person. About fame, and how something that once looked like freedom can start to feel like a coat made of wet carpet. About loneliness as space, as habit, as prison, as a room where you sometimes find yourself and sometimes just your phone charger.

You don’t have to follow all of this, Sleepy. You can let it blur. Let my voice walk somewhere in the next room while you drift off to sleep, through memory, bitterness, gratitude, and the strange peace of small places.

It is what it is. What happens, happens. And right now, there’s nothing we can do about it.

Cause of summer leave, this episode is a rerun from one of the older favourite episodes. Brand new episode coming next week.

Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, Sleepy.

Tonight we walk back to the old hiding place. The imaginary cabin in the deep Scandinavian forest, where the asphalt gives up, the gravel road gives up, and eventually even the noisy little generator of being a person seems to give up too.

There is moss, an old stone that should probably be touched, a deer path, a cabin with silver-grey wood, smoke from a chimney that nobody has lit, a chair that knows me, a kettle, books, Handel singing to a tree, and the strange relief of entering a place that doesn’t need to explain itself.

This is an episode about shelter. About thresholds. About being between the forest and the fire, between the outside and the inside, between awake and asleep. And perhaps, Sleepy, about finding a room somewhere in yourself where you can just sit for a while with coffee, old wood, and no particular assignment.

At the end, we go down to the black forest tarn.

And maybe we swim.

Sleep Tight!

More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.