Poliphilos

“Morning” originally started as a promise to myself after a major, life-altering experience I had in the summer of 1993.

After spending the whole summer on a course by a famous Finnish primal therapist doing group exercises and sessions that combined dance, movement and primal therapy to increase our knowledge about ourselves, something inside me exploded open.

It was a moment of self-awareness I’d never known before, but that I had been unconsciously chasing for years — the realization that it is I who has all the power in my life.

Morning became the anthem to that awakening, a declaration that the day – and my life, for that matter – could now begin, no matter what had come before.

From Africa to Sweden

Getting “Morning” on “Eternal Echoes” wasn’t straightforward, though.

I’d originally planned a completely different track called “Give It Forth” — an African acappella piece built around collaboration with my producer Juho. The split was clean: he’d write the melody, I’d write the lyrics. Together we’d put it together.

At least that was the plan, because I soon realised how very opposite approaches us two have to writing music. I write intuitively, smash ideas together and want to hear a full length demo as quickly as I can because the demo always tells me what the song needs next. Juho, true to his profession, works like an engineer seeking the “absolute truth” of the creative idea and the purpose of the song. Neither is wrong or right, and while we explored the different routes to the song in several lengthy sessions trying to fit my words into his melodies all the while trying to make the song in African acappella style, time just ran out.

“Give It Forth” absolutely had potential, but as the European Son release date was approaching, the high season at my family’s hotel starting, and no more weekend trips to the Helsinki studio were possible for me, I made the decision to pull Morning from my archives instead.

With my thirty years of subconscious sediment suddenly ready to surface and Juho hitting the ground running by taking on a no-fuss new direction – a sign of a true professional – we completed Morning in record time.

For reference, I played him Duran Duran’s Rio, wanting that frantic urgency from Nick Rhodes’s arpeggiator. However, the arpeggiator in Morning actually came from another unpublished song of mine called “Heroes,” which Juho saw as useful here. We added church bells to mark a place and to create a sense of folklore. Juho’s fantastic ’80s drum kit and snappy hi-hats also drive the song forward.

Finally, I knew there was another opportunity for my vocal coach Emmi to do backing vocals and what strange, funny, Kate-Bushy things she came up with! The song was perfect already before them, but Emmi’s la-la-la:s sprang the song to a new level of magical realism that is important for me under the Poliphilos brand.

In fact, as I performed it live recently, I imagined what kind of a rural community it could be and mimed me and a community chanting together, women giving birth and their newborn babies taking flight into the sky lifted up by the soaring Morning melody — because elsewhere that’s absurd, but in Poliphilos’s world it’s called Tuesday.

Morning is my counterfactual story

On the album, Morning plays a specific role.

Eternal Echoes follows the classical Hero’s Journey, and this is the homecoming track.

The protagonist returns after years away, expecting to find the community of his youth intact. He finds instead a town that has changed beyond recognition: there’s a mandatory daily assembly, a new religious movement, a chant that uses his abandoned melody as liturgy.

At first, he does participate. He accepts the crown. But then he leaves, because staying would require him to cease being himself.

That story is actually my counterfactual.

In reality, I did return to my hometown in 2018 — after having left in 1990, meeting my own mentor in the primal therapist, waking up, navigating romances and breakups, wandering around the world.

Then, returning to that Nordic wooden town, full of 200-300-year-old houses and historical elegance, was one of the best decisions of my life, which I even stated on the town’s marketing video!

But really, the quality of life here is outstanding. I’ve never participated so much in events or felt such deep roots. There was even recent news that this area of Finland is on track to become the country’s first official blue zone — provided more people reach 100 years old. The sense of community, belonging, the things evolutionary psychology says we need for survival — they’re not just theoretical here. They’re daily practice and NOW after all that I have been through, I can provide to the community myself.

And yet I remain an outlier

I knew this as a child.

While other boys in the 80s listened to heavy metal and wore jeans and t-shirts, I showed up in a suit and tie and listened to Duran Duran.

There was tremendous pressure to conform — mental abuse, humiliation, name-calling, slurs. And I could have been crushed.

But instead, strangely, I found it empowering.

I kept telling myself: “Hit me harder, because I know I am right.” So the insults didn’t break me; they clarified the boundary: I was never issued a tribal tax. I’ve never felt real belonging anywhere, but I can make my home anywhere. The world really is my oyster.

Poliphilos in the “Journey to Morning” walked out of the town wearing a crown of hawthorn and oak. I walked into mine wearing the same suit I always wore. Different choices, same equation.

Survival demands membership. Sometimes the price is worth it. Sometimes it isn’t.

This song is about learning the exchange rate.

You know what is yours.