2015/09/02

FUTURE MOUNTAINS

It’s a case of back to the future now that I am back in Berlin. There are multiple fronts calling for attention, and I feel really glad now to bring my focus properly back to the Journeys project. I’ve mentioned I’ve been very focused on the commercial side of my film work during the summer, to raise the funds for the next steps.

One of the videos I recently completed, was the video for my great friend Jaimi Faulkner which was just released the other day:

I do have other projects for September, but my main focus, to the exclusion of the video side returns to Journeys. After Africa, as it does, life took over, and it has taken longer than I might have anticipated to get to the next steps. But that is one of the beautiful realities of being an independent artist nowadays – that you have to tend to life – rather than getting lost in the musical world to the exclusion of all other modes of life.

I can at least notice a transformation of my spirit which has come since losing the EMI deal – and that is that I have been released from the need of a conventional notion of “success”. I feel in a paradoxical state somehow – because I feel more ambitious than I ever have been – but on an artistic side – rather than commercial. Do not get me wrong – I want my songs to be heard. But I am joyously free from the slavery of the normal musicians path. Or at least of the need to be seen as successful.

It’s not to say I don’t have fire, its just a different type of fire. I am reminded of Patti Smith’s advise to young musicians, namely “don’t give up the day job, and go to the dentist”

My journey has been towards a more progressive balance – while simultaneously the Journeys project itself, always brings me back to a state of spontaneity, a need to be open, and, dare I say it, to that old chaos – which used to follow me.

But liberation has many faces, and balance in no way means boredom. I seek a state of being able to renew my relationship to the chaos – to feed from it, to use it, without it overcoming everything I build, and threatening to destroy the aspects of my life which slowly form a deeper grounding.

Anyway for now – there are so many fronts open, and rather than feeling over whelmed – as I did before my week in the mountains – I feel ready again, renewed and and ready for the challenge of this project.

There are several focus’s at the moment:

- Journeys EP #2 release in October + touring in Italy, Austria and Germany
- finishing the documentary for Journeys #2 in Africa
- Preparing for setting off for Journeys #3 in Russia this November
- Completing the Journeys #3 EP now that Chris is back from South Africa (who is producing)

The key word of the day is simply “face the challenge”

I know that I am up against it regarding the music industry, regarding the normal paths. I am burnt fucking goods brother, the EMI fiasco saw to that.

But the question is how you chose to rise in this life. I believe in the every day. I don’t believe in the defeats that other people put up on you. I don’t believe in the illusions of success, just as I don’t believe in the illusion of failure. There is just life, and how you chose to live it today.

Anyway, with that in mind, I been picking up my electric guitar again for the first time since Journeys began. It is something to do with being reinvigorated. It is something about facing the challenge. It is something about reclaiming my rock n roll and seeing that the fire is still in there, and that more than that is burning burning burning….and I intend to feed from it, embrace it, re-become it, follow it….and bring it to the far off corners of the world, if life will allow me…..