A Stranger In Moscow
Tour diary: On Narcissism, Cultural Homogenisation, Robin Williams, Marianne Faithfull and more…
Having just very much enjoyed the new Planet of the Apes film (seriously!) aboard this nice and quiet plane, I’m once again on my merry way to Moscow with Sophie Ellis Bextor and the band and crew. An amazing bunch of people too, we work and play hard in equal measure and I’m going to miss them all very much when it’s over.
It’s been an incredible year for me to be honest; working with Burberry in Shanghai, Time Of Dust, the Sophie record, the Marianne record and now I’m FINALLY gearing up with Flood for my next album which we’ve been talking about making for well over 3 YEARS. I have 11 songs in the pipeline and that’s all I can tell you really. I know I sometimes allude to it being darker or full of despair but I think it’s actually quite hopeful in places.
When one reads the front page every day and is inundated with the horror that occurs everyday I guess it seeps into the backwaters of your mind. Becoming a dad in the last few years has also filled me with a very protective outlook, I worry about the future for my kids and others but it’s also amazing to see so many people out there in the streets of cities round the world are fighting for their beliefs, questioning the injustices of their governments and standing up to the tycoons and controlling corporations. Social media can be put to good use but I think its also fairly obvious to most that we are becoming more and more detached from reality, actual human contact and communication, lost in a tiny, luminescent screen, checking for our ‘likes’ , feeling accepted and feeding off compliments or insults of others, some anonymous, some familiar; it says a lot about human nature that we’ve become this narcissistic. Perhaps it’s this age of narcissism that’s the slow, silent killer, the breeding ground for our eventual and inevitable extinction. I don’t think you could be the leader of a country without being narcissistic, it must be the distant cousin of power. Men especially. Men across the globe are puffing their chests out and preening with anabolic steroids pumping through their veins, metro-sexual peacocks with fuck all to say. That the word ‘selfie’ has made the dictionary is bizarre. Yet I indulge in it too. Just writing the word right now is pissing me off. Been trying to ween myself off this cyber mother-lode and read more books again. Although I am writing this ‘blog’. SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO?????!! Does this blog seem ADHD to you?
While I’m on a mild ranting tangent, one other barb to yank out of my chest: the slow, gradual decline of our cultural identity; when on tour in the UK recently, I noticed that a lot of towns have the same shopping malls with the same chains, Chiquitos, Bella Italia, TGI Fridays, Hollywood bowling etc etc. All false approximations of the real McCoy. The I hadn’t noticed it as much until now but it seems to be a ‘thing’ I can’t avoid anymore. There doesn’t seem to be a way to stop these corporate chains from popping up over our beautiful countryside and I guess once they’re there you can’t do anything about it, unless you demolish a MacDonalds, with your tractor like the French farmer Jose Bove did! That’s capitalism baby. “Oh but Ed people need more jobs and it’s good for the economy, don’t be so idealistic” ; in the short term perhaps but in the long term we’ll look back at what’s happened to our country and emit a universal groan and all do a collective face palm. Or maybe we’ll just be too comfortable and apathetic to even care. I know there are some unspoilt parts of the UK, but how long until planning developers get their dirty little mitts in the soil?
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I’m now sitting in the airport in St Petersburg waiting for our flight back to Moscow for the last show of the year with Sophie and the band. It’s been quite a colourful experience the last few days, not sure if I should divulge but there was a bit of a drama in Moscow, involving late lobby call on my part, leaving my card in the hotel and nearly missing our flight. Ahem. I’m not very good with lobby calls but I’m trying. It’s about 9.30am and every Russian man seems to be drinking beer apart from me which is very unusual. There’s a serious fog rolling onto the landing strips and some bad smooth R&B softly bubbling out of the tannoy system but it’s not unpleasant. I’m annoyed I didn’t get a chance to walk around St Petersburg as from the taxi I could see it’s a truly majestic place, some breathtaking architecture; there’s a very dramatic statue of Lenin on the way to the airport that I tried to get a picture of but it came out looking like a chewed up dog toy.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Robin Williams for some reason. The biggest smiles hide the saddest souls. I wish he was still with us. Moments like this make me think of my family, who I miss terribly when I’m away.
So tomorrow I get back to my beloved family for a couple of days and then I get the train to Paris to start the Marianne Faithfull tour; I know it may seem odd to some of you that I’m a gun for hire at the moment, but they’re projects that I’ve been heavily involved with and to be honest it’s always refreshing to do something different and have a break from your own music. However next year will solely be dedicated to ME. ME ME ME. Narcissistic blog boy. There’s the film score that I wrote for Like Sunday Like Rain, written & directed by Frank Whaley, it’s been getting rave reviews after it’s premiere at the Raindance festival in London; it’s a very gentle and understated piece of work, beautifully shot and very well acted. It remains with you for a long time after you see it. Also I’ve been writing a lot with Ren Harvieu, I think she’s well on her way to making a future classic that’ll make you swoon and sway.
Right that’s about it for now, I’m gonna get on this plane and sleep.
Nanoo nanoo. X
Ed Harcourt is a musician from London, England. He can be found twittering @EdHarcourt, on Facebook here, and Instagramming himself with Susan Boyle and Kool & The Gang, here.
