Life and Soul

Ecuador -Part14

Have you noticed how people when earning considerably more than they once had, soon forget their past along with their friends. As your earnings grow you start to move with different people (usually with more money than your previous crowd of friends) you need to buy better belongings; cloths, shoes, cars & houses all change. People move house into different areas & mix with more wealthy people; views, opinions & attitudes slowly change, the past gets forgotten as you are born into your new life.

The Jones or indeed the Carlos’s are richer in this district, so do try and keep up, “look at there new car, oh look what their children wear, wonder what he does for a living, how much do you think he’s on?”
It’s not long before you are considering buying outside your price range because of this friendly neighbourly pier pressure. I find this now a bizarre way of living; your own wants & needs pushed aside and compromised just to please the wants of others? It shows the great weakness of character that people posses today; we don’t understand ourselves & so don’t have, cant find the character to be strong in our beliefs, most hold no beliefs anymore.

A little story which has always amused me & encouraged me look deeper into my character occurred when I was working as Tour Manager on a tour of Italy with a female artist.

Now I have always tried not to deliberately harm life in any way, setting spiders & insects free that have got trapped or wandered into the house, they live to fight another day. Some poor mosquitoes have met unfortunate totally accidental ends.

So we were in Italy on a 10 day tour. We had 7 gigs over the 10 days. The weather was wonderful and hot 35-40 degrees C, the tour bus was thankfully air-conditioned, our little sanctuary away from the relentless heat of the day.

The band before, our first band of “God squad gangsters” had been sacked and replaced by a totally different set of people. The MD was a 40 year old black American living in London, also the drummer; he ran a tight ship, with a lovely family vibe, full of respect.

The scene took place on the tour bus involving me & Angelo; he was one of the backing singers, a sorta camp and full of life chap who is always the one to pull you back into the joys of being alive & working.

We were playing some crazy word game, there were two or three flies buzzing around the bus; now if I do have a weakness, it’s for swatting flies or mosquito’s, they piss me off & deserved nothing less that retribution.
I was a little pre-occupied wandering round the bus trying to swat the flies, after a little time Angelo became aware of my intentions & asked me to stop trying to kill the flies.

I brushed him off sorta joking saying they deserve to die, Angelo’s voice took a more serious tone as he explained;

“Even the fly is a part of all life on this planet, part of a chain, a process & that this process deserved our respect, a respect that was due to all life. We should not judge, but learn to appreciate all aspects of life for the role they play in the whole.”

We entered into a marvellous discussion that must have lasted for over an hour, I enjoy these talks because you tend to learn if you are open to listening to your opponent.

I had to agree with what he was trying to get me to see. All life deserved to have the chance to live; any creature, including us, can kill for food (natural law of existence) but to kill for pleasure or out of annoyance or just because you can; these are all against the natural laws of life.

It was very entertaining watching Angelo chase the flies around the bus with a paper cup & piece of paper trying to catch them to set them free out the window. It’s good when you learn to view a subject more wisely with greater understanding; your own character grows & moves on a little.