The Journey Itself Is Home

It has been said that a harpsichord sounds like a couple of skeletons making love on a tin roof.

I’m sure the harpsichord I played on in our last concert in Spain, this time in a huge bull ring in Madrid, sounded just like that.

Björk told me two hours before the show that she wanted a real harpsichord, not the fake harpsichord sound from the Yamaha CP200. So she decided to rent one, just for the concert. It was brought on the stage after we had had our sound check. And then it was tuned.

I don’t know who tuned it, but he didn’t do a very good job. When I started playing Pagan Poetry I immediately heard something was horribly wrong. But since the sound level of the harpsichord in my ear monitors was too low, I couldn’t figure out exactly how far away the instrument was from the correct pitch. So I was unable to do anything about it.

The result was terrible.

Pagan Poetry was the fourth song on our set list and after this dreadful experience I was in a rotten mood right until we performed Mother Heroic. I think that was pretty good. Björk was amazing, it was definitely our best performance of it so far.

There was another surprise in store for me later during the show. Sometimes when Björk sings Earth Intruders, she wears an exotic headdress, which she then throws away after she has finished with the song. Well, when we were performing Declare Your Independence last night, Damian suddenly took up the headdress and put it on my head! He told me later: “I saw you and I saw a headdress… and I saw a connection!”

What could I do but dance with Björk’s headdress like an idiot?

After the concert we went back to the bus and had a great party. Mark Bell was the DJ. This time we created a slogan: “It is impossible to dance on a bus. But Mark Bell makes you do it!” And then we sang: “Ring Mark Beeeeeeeeeeeell, ring Mark Bell!”

After a long drive tonight, we have now arrived in Marseille. It has been a pleasurable day. My daughter (who loved sleeping on the bus) went with Björk, Matthew and Isadora to the beach, while I did some shopping. And tonight we continue our journey, this time to Italy.