I sit on my couch, with my sad tail between my legs.
I should be in Montreux Switzerland right now, enjoying one of the most prestigious music festivals in the world, on what would be the day after playing one of my most anticipated shows of 2010. when the invitation came up a few months back to play the Montreux Jazz Festival w/ Roxy Music, i was honored and thrilled. “YES” i said right away. from my family’s swiss roots, to french being my second language, to a feeling of being acknowledged as an established artist in my own right by an important music festival
Due to an Emergency Door Light malfunction, my Air Canada flight from Montreal to Geneva, was delayed hours, then when it was too late to find an alternative route, CANCELLED. heartbroken, i stayed up all night, waiting for morning to come to see if the festival promoters could find another stage or bill to fill the next day… they tried, but as they are such an organized festival with months of preparation, they could not find a way……
DEVASTATED….. in the last 24 hours, i have gone from numb to tears and back again.
my emotion fueled imagination brain kept orbiting around these three major LIFE issues:
DYSFUNCTIONAL COPORATIONS
ENERGY CRISIS
MOTHER NATURE
i know it’s just a missed show, but the emotional side of me sends me reeling into the big picture symbolic stuff when these disappointments occur…. first of all, last time i was in europe, just a couple of months ago all was stopped due to VIKING VOLCANO. in my 15 years plus of touring around the world, i’ve never missed a show. never run into a volcano or had a flight cancelled. for both things to happen in such a short period of time, is shocking to me. so being held back from playing my swiss show, i got instant flashbacks of watching my oslo and london show pass me by…. that time was due to act of god AKA MOTHER NATURE, IN FORM OF ICELANDIC VOCANO.
so naturally it was again, that feeling of things being out of my hands… but this time was because of a DYSFUNCTIONAL CORPORATION: the failing airline industry that do not have back up planes, parts OR pilots. while my artistic fate sat in a holding pattern in an airport for 6 hours, i learned that there is a PILOT shortage and crisis, with airline pilots making as low as $19,000 a year. the unions in that industry have been destroyed, so there is little protection for pilots. this then leads the mind back to 9/11, when the industry took a huge hit (not to mention the other devastations), then a few years later, the price of fuel went soaring up: ENERGY CRISIS, we find ourselves in a non sustainable way of life, that is not only polluting our planet, but is in dire need for alternative energies systems. scientists have beein warning about both sides of the issue for decades, but corporate greed was only thinking about TODAY> well TODAY, we have a leaking oil rig environmental disaster looming over us. so the least of our worries, but no surprise, is that the airline industry has been tanking …. so flights are overbooked, no back up plans in place etc… that brings up the issue of FAILING CORPORATIONS of the world. not only did these beasts take the power away from individuals and independent companies, but now their greed has caught up with them and has shot them in the foot.. limping along, screwing the people who work for them and the people who depend on them for their work… this is a basic corporate frustration rant…. BUT the volcano flashbacks also lead me to….
THE MOTHER NATURE. when a volcano tells you what to do, you have no choice but to be humble and listen. she does have the final say, and our jet setting modern day ways are weak and ridiculous in the wake of her. which brings us back to the unsustainable way of life that’s been created around us, and the slaves to corporations and the economy we’ve become. then we think there’s no time to think of such small things, but all these issues do bring on a lot of pain to the hearts of ART- not that the ART suffers, because that energy is eternal no matter what the external reality is, but the act of SHARING THE ART INSIDE, with the outside real world, is affected by the rise and fall of technology and the economy.
we may have forgotten by this point of my long rant, but i began talking about my cancelled show at the montreux jazz festival and how an emergency door light on a plane broke my heart. 2010 saw the release of my first independent music and art undertaking. i’ve never worked so hard, and i’ve embraced all the changes and challenges in the landscape, from dying record companies, to volcanos, but truth is, it’s tough out there. most nations and people are struggling in their own ways. however, i do believe the struggle inspires harder work and opportunity for the heart to take over (why must i find that falling down, brings my hopes so high?) – this is when the intangible CREATIVE SURVIVALISM kicks in… the golden web of love, imagination and hope begins to spread. wrapping every struggle and cancelled flight into a poetic song of life. luckily, that source of magic is endless, and in all of us. even still, on my way home from having done all i could to get my self to switzerland, i cried in defeat. it wasn’t a beautiful volcano that stopped me from sharing my heart, it was an emergency light in an aircraft, then a long delay while the humans tried to fix it, then by the time it was fixed, it was too late for the scheduled pilots to fly, and they did not have any pilots on hand to FLY MY HEART TO MONTREUX. my heart aches because of it, and my little brain tries to make sense of it…………………… my brain relies on the magic stuff from the heart to get by. if i did not have that golden web to spin, i guess i’d be depressed and would probably not write songs… or long winded blog entries.
SENDING LOVE AND ENDLESS SOURCE OF GOLDEN WEBS YOUR WAY,
to get you through your day and your disappointments.
HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON (in particular, the people of french switzerland, i owe you x)
have a great weekend, wherever you are sweet person x
xMAdMx
