The Journey Itself Is Home

We had a fine concert yesterday.

Granted, the venue was too big and the acoustics were a bit too much.

During sound check earlier in the day I went into the auditorium to listen to Declare Your Independence. It was Armageddon!

Like a Wagner opera that had been compressed into a musical black hole, devouring everything!

Nonetheless, I had a GREAT time and so did the rest of us. Beautiful!

The very first thing I saw when we landed in Athens was… IKEA! One of the first things Björk saw in the airport was a picture of Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland, on a poster depicting the world. Ha!

The trip to the hotel lasted some forty minutes and we passed the time playing Who Is It. Not Björk’s song by that name, but the game in which somebody chooses a person and the others try to discover who it is.

Who is it that was a Russian gay composer in the 19th century? Tcaikovsky! Who is it that was an English writer in the first half of the last century and who wrote plays, poetry and novels but became famous for something entirely different? Aleister Crowley! These were my choices.

Björk chose Anais Nin and Maria Callas. The others chose persons such as Harry Potter and Barack Obama.

I could go on:

Who is it in Athens that sometimes lets you down? Taxi drivers! Two of them turned off the meter and just doubled the price. One of them must have been stoned - he acted so weird.

However, who, or rather what is it in Athens that never lets you down?

I visited Acropolis yesterday and it was stunning. I had seen pictures of it, but nothing prepares you for the real thing. The atmosphere there must be sacred. In a way it is comparable to Stonehenge, at least in my experience.

What a cultural heritage the Greeks have!

Mosquitos are the proof that the Devil exists.

I was bitten by Beelzebub’s servant yesterday. The itch is maddening. I hate that shit.

We had a show in Verona tonight. It was in a Roman amphitheatre famous for opera performances. Right now they are showing Aida and they moved the set out so Björk could have her concert.

It was, ahem, interesting. Because of the orchestra pit the audience was so far away! I didn’t like it. I want the audience to be as close as possible. But I think the show was OK nonetheless.

Tomorrow we leave for Greece. I have never been there. I really look forward to it. At the same time I miss my daughter terribly much. The worst thing about touring is the separation from your loved ones.

However, the Volta tour is almost over. The final show, the VERY FINAL SHOW is on August the 15th. That sure feels strange.

The concert in Rome was good! The venue is fairly small and the audience was unusually close. Unfortunately I forgot my camera – the photos would have been brilliant.

When we were driving back to the hotel, Allan Pollard from the crew remarked: “We are driving so fast that we are travelling into the future.”

I found that hilarious. It is true, Roman drivers really like to speed.

After the gig some of us went to a party. It was in a small area in a night club, the name of which I don’t know. There were no toilets in our spot, so people had to pee in flower pots in dark corners!

We have just arrived in Verona. Looks like a lovely town!

We arrived in Rome last Monday. I took a shower in the evening and used the shampoo that I found in the bathroom. Some of it got into my right eye and it became red!

Vile stuff…

My eye has been quite sore and so I haven’t done as much here in Rome as I had planned. But I’m recovering.

The trouble has also been the heat. There is no point in going out until in the late afternoon. By then, some things, such as the Colosseum, are closed. The Colosseum closes at six, which is way too early.

But Rome is an amazing city! Ruins of temples etc. all around.

I was less impressed by the Vatican. The whole of the Catholic Church just irritates me. However the Vatican may be beautiful, I dislike what it stands for. Rome is forever trying to dominate the world. First by force, then by religion.

In a sense, we still have an emperor here. His name is Benedict XVI.

As Philip K. Dick would have it: The Empire never ended. It merely changed its face.

(Dick’s theory was actually that an enormous false memory had been inserted into mankind. He maintained that we have been brainwashed by the Roman Empire to live in a false world. What we perceive as reality is not real - neither the present, nor the last 2000 years. See Dick’s VALIS).

The band Battles, which appeared on the Melt Festival, is one of my favorite. Here is a little video. I met one of them, Tyondai Braxton, after our own show. It was a real honour!

It seems that my entry about Bubbi Morthens has created a storm of protest in Iceland…

For those of you who speak Icelandic, see here.

It appears that what got under people’s skin was the quip about Bubbi’s finances and that Björk should have dedicated the Náttúra concert to him and his bank balance.

I didn’t think I had to state the obvious. That it was a joke.

What wasn’t a joke though was the fact that Bubbi really SHOULD give a concert in Iceland to do something about helping the poor.

In 2004, Björk was so moved by the devastation of the tsunami in Sumatra that she felt obliged to support the emergency response. To that end she released an album of remixes of her song ‘Army of Me’ and donated all the album proceeds to UNICEF’s global emergency work.

Bubbi should do something similar.

A tiny video…

I took this moments ago. Hot Chip is playing on the Melt Festival. We will be on stage in half an hour!

In a newspaper interview today Bubbi Morthens, a popular troubador in Iceland, criticises Björk and Sigur Rós for not having dedicated the Náttúra concert to battling poverty in Iceland.

In the same interview Bubbi says that he has lost a lot of money on the stock market.

Perhaps Björk should have dedicated the concert to Bubbi.

Seriously, rather than criticising Björk for fighting for the wrong cause, maybe Bubbi should do something about this himself!