THANK YOU FOR MAKING 2015 ONE OF THE BEST YEARS EVER.
Where has this year gone?!
This has to be the fastest year ever. Time seems to be running ahead, dangling a carrot we cannot reach no matter how much effort we put into racing to catch it.
BUT what a great year.
So much ground covered, great shows, fabulous film work, this undoubtedly goes up alongside 1983, 1993, 2003 as a perfect year and it doesn’t even have a “3” in it!
One of the many things that put a smile on my face is to have seen so many KING CRIMSON fans in my audience. Surely “never the twain shall meet”, but this year they have and spectacularly so. KING CRIMSON (my husbands band) are notoriously complex, thus so are their audience in many ways, they expect complexity and to be challenged as an audience…..me, I am instinctive, my shows are the complete reverse, but still take experience and craftsman ship to execute. Don’t get me wrong because I like to think my unique art is openness with no veneer, the depth coming from vocal story telling as well as a hot band, a different kind of showmanship, perhaps more personally engaging than the notoriously reclusive Mr.Fripp and undoubtedly musically many miles and decades apart.
To see people in my audience who seriously like us both has been fabulous and reassuring. We are doing something right.
I will remember 2015 for a record-breaking amount of shows, for me, AND a record amount of SOLD OUT shows, with the acoustic show going from strength to strength. Currently I am re-writing and adding content for 2016’s run of acoustic shows. We are adding new songs, new stories, new behind the scenes footage and for the first time I am including stories about me and Fripp……I always keep to the funny stuff and with Fripp and I there is plenty of that….after all we are the ODD COUPLE of rock……..for example…our wedding day will be going in….the bad dress….the press showing up……Fripp running away from the church so as not to be photographed, so I didn’t see him again until the reception!
2016 is shaping up brilliantly, the music bookings are ahead on the previous year, (2016 looks busier) and this week the festivals are coming in thick and fast.
December/ January are down time for me, by that I mean no distractions, this is a contradiction because I am still in the office handling booking after booking but I have a cut off point and I allow myself to study and top up on my reading, some thing I miss greatly when I am travelling hundreds of miles a day. I am giving myself the time to reshape shows, write, study and plan creatively, after all THE HUMANS write in MARCH and Darlow and I need to finish the follow up to CRIMSON QUEEN.
In a way 2 months isn’t enough!
Shows start again in February and the feature films start in March……oh I can feel time dangling that carrot already.
Frippy lands in the UK on the 22nd December….in time for a fabulous Christmas week of socialising. This year and probably every year for the rest of our lives now, we are having a “sugar free” Christmas. For Frippy and myself that is like a fish saying it is planning a “swimming free” Christmas. Sugar is my drug and it has to go……and that means Christmas too.
We don’t have a tree this year because Robert isn’t here to see it but all my mothers decorations are out…hanging off door knobs, light shades, mirrors so I have a sense of family.
Christmas is so powerful at turning up the volume on missing those who have passed. I am missing my mother dreadfully this year. When I was younger I though it would be the loss of my father that I would never get over but in fact I miss my mother more strongly and I cannot fathom why this should be. I put it down to the spiritual connection of my mother physically bringing me into the world.
Here at home the blossom is on the trees. Leaves are trying to burst out. Mushrooms are sprouting up all over the lawn, the roses are in flower as are the clematis and the daffs are already visible…..how strange is this winter? There seems to be four seasons in one.
It makes me thing of the chorus of THE PACKT. Nature is a powerful law unto itself….I see it as vengeful rather than the victim of out actions…..respect to planet Earth.
I cannot go with out mentioning the happenings in Paris last month. Everyone I know within the music world has been badly affected by the event. We all knew people who were there, who were wounded or killed, or who miraculously escaped.
To go on stage all over the UK in the following month was impossible without thinking of the safety of all within the auditorium. I cannot image the fear, confusion, the thoughts, the sights , the smell, the incredibility of it all.
By nature I am an angry person, who keeps a firm control of my ability to react, especially when I was brought up to be defensive. So in the last month I have needed to button my mouth and think…..think ……think and try to understand how this brilliant world, with billions of potentially amazing human beings, who all have the need to nurture and love….. HOW it could all come to this.
How do 7 billion people repair the damage and stop the rot? Unity. We must find and hold firm to our unity.
There is 1% out there who hold the planets wealth (really how much money do you need to feel safe and powerful?) But there are also 7 billion of us who the 1% rely on to maintain their power. Through unity we will be even more powerful than that 1% possibly even break free from their manipulations.
We need to find that unity and not feed the beast through fear.
This week I listened to Bjork’s UNRAVEL, where lyrically she tells the story of heart break making the devil manifest for all eternity, without being able to reverse the process.
See the video, it is exceptionally executed.
It there is fear and loathing in the world then there can also be love and healing in equal measure, even in greater measure.
Let’s not give the devil reason to exist….we are too cleaver, too brilliant and too deserving.
Thank you everyone for a brilliant year. Thank you to my wonderful band, to my agents, Craig Astley and above all THANK YOU………TO YOU.
