Blog: Natural habitats
Fernando’s blog post:
When I go down the stairs of Rock Café Club in central Prague, to reach the backstage area, a familiar feeling invades me. My face is unwashed but I still got to manage a little tourbus hygiene and brush my teeth. Many of my favorite books are about the art of adapting and I am always fascinated about the success stories of people or beasts descending into hell, finding their way there, starting a life, sometimes, worth living for. By no means I wish to compare the First world trenches or any truer captivity to this life of touring. We have a table full of food, coofee, nice couches, technology. It is just that first feeling when you get into a place, you have never been, and start nesting for the day. It is like all materializes on tour, putting away some of the anxiety that always mounts before we set foot on the tranquillity of a bus or the welcoming looking sandwiches wrapped for us backstage. That is why that the week that preceeds the tour is always the weirdest one. There is a time where everything seems to fall apart and another time when things come together. What gets you a bit crazy and anxy, is that the chaos and harmony are only separated by a few days or even hours. Worst case scenario: minutes.
This sensation might describe perfectly a life lived between domestic parenthood and the orderly reckless travels and shows of the rock’n’roll circus, big or small, does not matter, you still have to play the show at night, sandwiches or not. The person one becomes can tie with both universes but as the universe itself not all is harmony and, sometimes, convulsions on a microcosmos confined to four walls and common space, might be violent for you. To deal with that speedy adaptation is everything you must concentrate on. Basic rules and moods set in quite easily, quite familiarly.
If you like to ruminate as much as I do and put your faculties at service of speculation, you will be left with a good deal to think about. Is it ok and even appropriate to fit in both quotas (the family, the road) and does one have to feel guilty of prefering one over the other, as the days pass by and miles click in, are questions I try to answer without great success. The smile of a fan in the crowd or the joy of your son flying in your arms, what does stand more valuable? Blood can be louder than everything. The beauty of it is that it is not an option as one can be easily mislead to. What is nice, though, is that familiar feeling of both, proving only that our natural habitats are much more where our heart is, regardless of the detail of physical presence.
Simple: before you put your helmet on, call home. If everything is peaceful there, then let the battle here begin.
