To realise that you do not love yourself is truly heartbreaking…but utterly necessary. Only then can you begin the journey back to yourself. And to make this trip easier you can get help from self-help. But is self-help something that actually helps? Does it work the same way for everybody?

Maybe it is not about loving oneself completely and always in every situation. 

Perhaps it is about walking the line between pathological narcissism and feelings of inadequacy or insecurity and a syndrome of throwing oneself under the bus.

Maybe self-hate with a fist-full of salt and a big bowl of sarcasm is not something negative.

Just make sure you’re not doing that thing where you neglect your own needs. You can’t get what you want unless you know what to ask for.

“HYMN TO (SELF) LOVE” is a piece for those who live alone, as well as for those who live with extreme existential anxiety. This piece is the first part in a series called “Thoughts on love” where Samuel reflects on and tries to navigate the different aspects of the subject.

Samuel Haglund works with his own experiences and lines of thinking in his artistry and his works. Through movement, scenes, and text he stages his existential life questions, big and small. Wanting to understand his place in a peculiar world, he finds comfort in the everyday realism.

He wants to produce movement material that speaks, characters that can narrate his mind, and use pop cultural references and music/sound that amplifies his themes. At the same time he is searching to stage honesty and “the authentic”, whatever this means.

Samuel wants to stage a dynamic show with ever changing pictures and intensities. Throughout his pieces and his artistry he is working the idea of “comedic finesse”, which is not about actively searching for laughs or putting something that can obviously be perceived as “funny” on stage. But in this case it could be about putting something commercial in the conceptual room in a non-conventional way.