We have been driving all together around 20000km.
Through snowy mountains , green-valleys, redwood forest and desserts.
Redwood forest were breathtaking, we had to stop and explore like kids.
Driving from Phoenix to SanDiego was one of the most amazing drives and the view changed within just a few hours. On our way to Phoenix we drove by the Mexican border while staying over night in El Paso, the city lights from Juárez where overwhelming and endless. In the morning there where big snowy mountains and it was freezing but clear.
The scenery gradually changed to big rocks and then desserts looking like a cliché from a cartoon with big cactuses and bushes. Quite exotic nature for us Swedes. After a few hours came the sandy dessert which was one of the most beautiful views Ive ever seen, then there were these big stoney mountains.
Our drive would be in length almost around half of the earth width.
In the past I have gotten the question -Do you feel changed from seeing so much of the world. I often answer that unfortunately I end up seeing a venue a hotel and If Im lucky some of the city.
But the earth seems more fragile to me after seeing these landscapes and cities so close back to back.
So...lack of natural resources, poverty, climate change, economic crises restoring wildlife feels like alot to worry my mind about when all I want to do is make music that takes you to another place.
After this tour which surely is one of the toughest yet most inspiring Ive done I do feel concerned in another way. Not just from my gut feeling which obviously isnt much to brag about when you have expert scientists all around the world telling us how we need to be concerned. But seeing these different landscapes does make questions pop up like.....how much water is used to keep feeding all this crop in a dessert, why do Californians drive big cars by themselves, Out of curiosity how much would it cost to build better public transport in the US... , how long would it take for it to pay of... and what can we do to preserve our nature and still feed our growing population of people.
World population has grown 3 times as much within the last 50 years thats what I read in national geographic, limited Edition State of Earth 2010!
Great mag!
I think alot of people like myself are dealing with ways to try to change there habits. Trying to recycle more. Stay informed.
As I get on the plane home and start reading the biggest swedish daily paper the first pages are about a demonstration in Denmark with thousands pressuring the government to act on climate change, on how to celebrate a climate friendly christmas by not buying frost for the trees glass balls instead of plastic, recommending folks to feast it vegetarian to recycle more etc. next pages are about research in bio diesel.
As a small country I feel Sweden does take responsibility in trying to inform its citizens about all that going on outside in the big world around it. I wouldn't say Swedish media is flawless but it strives to give a neutral informative perspective.
well enough said for today ...
finally home for a couple days....check out my pics
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Next time you tour the states, you should put up your photos on Flickr or something. You can upload them via telephone or wifi spots along the way. They wouldn't even need descriptions. The photos in the collage look great...
ReplyDeleteI understand what you mean about flying into a city to perform and not even know what the city looks like after you left. I asked Erik about this before the show in San Diego and you could tell that this wasn't the case on this tour.
I'm happy that you and the guys are finally home. Living in Seattle (I imagine Gothenburg is similar), I always look forward to coming home when I am on the road.
Great pics! Will there be a 2010 US tour? Coachella?
ReplyDeleteClimate change is very peculiar monster.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid my dad took me everywhere walking, he`d wake me up erly on a Saturday to by fresh fruit from the local market, get it back to the house, make a `batida`, which is a shake, drank it and off we went, out for an adventure. The adventure did mostly consisted in gowing to an `agencia` de caballos (horse agency) to bet on the races that were to happen that day on hippodrome. After that, we would eat something like a `mondongo` which is sort of stew, all while watching the races.
One day, one strange and unusual day, my dad won some money with a bet I made for him (sometimes he would do that, let me choose the horses to bet on) and so, all frisky with joy, he told me we were going to have fun. He took me to this bar... where he asked for a beer, a malt-looking kind of beer, told me to ask for anything I wanted and I asked for the same. The bartender looked at my dad, and my dad looked at me, it was around 2 o`clock in the afternoon, so he thought it might not do me much harm, and the bartender insisted on not giving me any alcohol, my dad concured but regardless asked for another bottle, and a plastic cup. Drank his first bottle, grabbed the other one and went outside, I followed.
We were strolling on the expensive part of town `Condado`, which is close to the shore. People walking in bikinis, man showing up buffed torsos, and me and my dad walking along the beachy atmosphere without much care. We finally settled for a spot out-looking the ocean, me dad and I sat on top of some rocks, at due time my dad took out the plastic cup from the paper bag where the beer bottle was stuffed in. He then opens the bottle, serves some black liquid inside the cup, and hands me the cup. ``Here son, to our day, your first taste of beer, and not any kind of beer, but real lager``.
My first impression of the taste was ok, not as the looks had me expecting it, malty, but it was ok. My dad suck on the bottle while looking at the sea and told me, ``You see boy, when I was your age the sand was way ahead of us, like over there``, he pinpointed an area in the water, ``Now a days the ocean is entering the shore, at an alarming paste. Your teachers won`t tell you this because people are afraid, too much so, and they don`t want to even formulate the possibility, but if you ask me,`` takes another suck at the bottle, ``we are fated to swim with the fishes.``
The reamrk left me stupid, I couldn`t decipher any of it, not at my age. I choose to disregarded as some drunken slur, for I myself was kind of tipsy by then, but, after decades of that comment, the sands are receding and the water is getting closer and closer to the shore.
My country is an island in the Carribean, a beautiful place filled with bio-diversity and ecosystems pretty susceptible to any abrupt change in balance. Now a day, people are still ignoring the fact, all in the name of `progress`. The government is making some strides in the conservative direction but they all seem way too poitical and not serious enough. The things are changing fast, and as you said, we ought to keep us informed to know and adapt as quickly as possible to the thread so as to keep it in check.
My take on the problem can be described by that Greek tale that speaks of a father and son that, whilst trying to escape some island prison, develop some man made wings to fly off the island, and the son, not paying attention to his father`s advice, fly`s way high, to the point where the wax that kept the wings together melted by the Sun`s heat, thus collpasing to see... never to be seen again. Icarus and Daedalus... those were the names of the protagonist in this tale if I`m not mistaking... what horrble fate was that of Icarus -I believe that`s gonna be the fate of my generation, delirium to progress has made us fly way too high for our own good.