11 Mar, 2012 Staring Out Of Windows
What is to be done when after weeks and weeks of rehearsing and playing live, it all comes to an expected but nevertheless abrupt halt, just as it did for SM last weekend in Dublin?
In fact everyone who tours professionally, as far as I know, deals with the culmination and the aftermath differently. Some unsurprisingly get down through suddenly finding they are missing the strange adrenalin that they have grown accustomed to a nightly basis. Note that I am not talking about the performers only here, crew and management can also feel rather flat with the realization that months of hyper activity are about to crash to a halt as the last show hurtles towards a finale. Some equally even find a loss of core purpose in their apparent newly freed-up lives, as they struggle to fit back into their “other existence”.
There are others of course who cannot wait to get home, or to to their homes and families, even if only to instantly embrace the kind of normal activities what some might call the simpler things. Painting the kitchen, doing the school run, watching Hereford United FC avoid further humiliation, and taking the cat to the vet even, are just a few things I recall various colleagues telling me that they were looking forward to most as touring was due to end. I kid you not, but I had to check whether they were actually kidding me!
And what about me, don’t I miss family and friends when I am on tour? I do and therefore I try to whenever possible bring them out on the road to visit. And how about those little daily activities that one might never consider could ever be worth missing while on tour. Uh, not that much, to be really honest, I do miss some days not being able to do what I want, to be free of any firmed up schedule. But, we all have days like that I am sure. Can’t really describe why out of the blue I just feel like I want to be off trekking or hillwalking in the drizzly landscapes of the Scottish Highlands, but I do and it happens more frequent than you might imagine.
Roving all over the planet is what I wanted to do with my life however, and this I knew from the earliest days of Simple Minds. Nothing so far nothing has made me change my mind regarding that, likewise nothing has happened wherein I have lost the passion or the sense of good fortune in realizing that my life to date has mostly panned out in the ways that I had innocently dreamed about, but never quite dared to assume would materialise.
Travelling, and family apart, what I like mostly is writing and recording songs. And with that, as soon as touring has ended and a couple of lazy days have passed – days where ritually I seem to do nothing but sleep, or for some unknown reason stare for hours blankly out the window. (Some impressive full moon views this last week!) I then find myself jumping out of bed usually around the third day, and ritually beginning a new creative cycle all over again. With the recent tour(s) sufficiently in the past, I find that my mind is clear again and energized enough to push on with whatever might be next. All of which happened once again during this last week.
Jim Kerr