On Tour For DUMMIES

A Fans Guide To Being On Tour

 

EPILOGUE

 

What have we learnt? If we have learnt anything at all. Also, please note the word we. I guess we can say that we have learnt two things, two things that personally I learnt many years ago.

Firstly, chase your dreams and secondly, live and let live.

Sounds simple right? Then I’d like to ask you two questions. Have you given up on your dreams and do you really live and let live?

If your dreams really are your dreams, then are you still chasing them? If not, then why not? They are your dreams right? If you don’t chase your dreams then someone else will, and ultimately, they will end up living your dream, well if it’s your dream why should someone else live that dream. No, really, why should someone else end up living your dream? And if you did stop chasing your dream? Were they really your dreams in the first place?

But if you’re still chasing your dreams, then may you soon be holding them like a new born infant.

Learn to look around you, once you have mastered the art of looking, then learn to see and not just look. Anyone can look while very few people see. See the difference in other people lives, in their passions, in their dreams.

Everything about the next person you look at is telling you something intimate about themselves if only you take the time to see. Witness their footwear, their clothes, their hair, the way they stand or walk or sit. Take time to properly look. To see.

Those people are just like me or you, they too are chasing a dream, they too are desperately holding on to something that is fading in front of them, that is always somehow, someway, always just out of reach. Or maybe they are about to give up the chase and let the flame die in the breeze. 

So next time you see someone wearing a tour T Shirt or even better an event T Shirt, try to understand that that T Shirt is being worn with as much pride and honour as a veteran wearing medal ribbons on a proud chest. I understand that might sound disrespectful to veterans but it really isn’t all.

In exactly the same way that if I was to visit you at home, after you have returned from your holiday to that far flung place, I might find, “little bits of glassware, ashtrays with inscriptions, plastic things on pencils, bits of mass production, postcards, pretty pictures, little bits of plastic, covering up the bedroom…”  to show me you been there. *

Which is just a complicated way of saying what is good for you isn’t necessarily good for me, or to put it another way, live and let live.

 

* Soft Cell, “Memorabilia” from the album “Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret” (1981) 

 

Noggin xx