Music has been my passion for as long as I can remember, and as a toddler I pounded my Gran’s pots and bowls to pieces. I was in a special music stream at primary and lower-secondary school. At upper-secondary school in the Helsinki suburb of Laajasalo, I drummed in the school choir and boogied in women’s clothes on stage at the school’s spring concert. I quit classical piano at some stage, when the usual story of beer, hanging out in town and the opposite sex started to interest me as a teenager. I played the drums in punk bands, hanged around with a group of graffiti artists and listened to rap. At the beginning of the 1990s, I got the bug for collecting vinyl records, which deepened my hobby and broadened my range, and in 1993 the Roskilde rock festival blew my mind – there was no turning back.

I had nevertheless decided that I wanted to be a journalist or do some ‘real work’ connected with writing – music felt more like a beloved hobby. University was always on my mind: sociology, history, journalism and other things that provide a well-rounded education. After national service, I had an honest year of partying-/resetting the clock, after which I began to consider which direction I would take.

At some stage music nevertheless became my job, and I didn’t get round to finishing my Master’s thesis. But I’ll definitely still get it done and when I do I’ll offer university lecturer Juhani Sipila a coffee.

At a meeting for unemployed young people, my gaze happened to fall on an announcement on the wall for a place called Mediakylpylä (‘Media spa’), where you could study the media industry under the guidance of expert teachers. Unfortunately, the officer at the meeting informed me that the course had already been running for a couple of months and was full. I was condemned to drawing chalk lines on Kontula’s football pitch. As I was leaving the office, the officer called down the stairs for me to come back – someone had just dropped out of the course, and there was a free place in the ‘press group,’ where you could learn about newspaper journalism and editorial work.

I went for an interview and got a place. Perfect. We practised writing articles under the guidance of good teachers, and when the year was over the feedback I received was the following: “your articles have a strong feel of literary fiction; you should apply to university to study Finnish literature, for example.” I had never thought of that. I got the books for the entrance exam and started investigating the thing, and became inspired. At the same time I went for a long interview for a job at the magazine Hussler, which had just appeared in Finland. When the results of the entrance exam came and I had been accepted, the game was up; the intellect had won and my long path to becoming a humanities scholar had begun.

At some stage music nevertheless became my job, and I didn’t get round to finishing my Master’s thesis. But I’ll definitely still get it done and when I do I’ll offer university lecturer Juhani Sipila a coffee.