One Journey Down, Two to Go

In my end-of-2023 post, I made the following observation: “Getting married seems to have triggered emotions contrary to what one would normally expect—instead of looking forward to settling down, we want to shake things up.”

I don’t know if this is grammatically correct, but during our world tour, boy, oh, boy, did we shake things the fuck up!

Our trip was full of twists, turns, enduring imagery, learning experiences, lots of laughs, many wonderful people (and the occasional asshole). We discovered that we felt very comfortable with the nomadic lifestyle—a development that will serve us well in the immediate future, as it looks like we’re going to be vagabonds for a little while longer.

I’ll spare you a lengthy travelogue and summarize the highlights in a few bullet points:

• Our play-it-by-ear approach turned out to be a stroke of genius, as several of our intended destinations were wiped out by dengue fever outbreaks, natural and human-caused disasters and social unrest. Halfway through the trip we had to 86 our goal of traveling only to countries we had never visited because we ran out of possibilities that were safe and desirable. In the end, our journey took us to new places (Japan, China, the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, India, South Africa, Cape Verde, Türkiye) and further exploration of familiar locations (the U.K., Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland).
• During the New Zealand-Australia-India-South Africa phase, I became a rabid fan of T-20 cricket!
• Though the trip was an exceedingly enjoyable experience in many ways, it was impossible to ignore varying degrees of anxiety in the populace of the countries we visited. The sour vibes were most obvious in the countries holding parliamentary elections during our stays (India, South Africa, and the U.K.) but unease related to culture wars, the state of the economy and the possibility of armed conflict colored the mood just about everywhere.
• We were in Capetown when French anxieties triggered a sharp right turn towards hatred and intolerance by empowering the Rassemblement national (RN) in the EU elections. While The RN’s primary scapegoats are immigrants (particularly Muslim immigrants), shortly after the results came in, there were reports of attacks and threats directed at LGBTQ+ citizens as well. The xenophobic-homophobic wave intensified during the snap election campaign period and the RN seemed to be positioned to take power after a strong performance in the first round. While the French put an end to that nightmare in Round Two, we were sickened that Nice and most of the Alpes-Maritimes embraced the RN and RN-LV coalition. The next day I contacted our real estate agent and told him to put our house on the market. We were getting tired of Nice anyway due to the unbearable summers, so the decision wasn’t much of a heartbreaker. We interrupted our journey to prep the house for showing, move our furniture into storage and then resumed our travels, eventually winding up in Cork County to stay with my parents while we figured out next steps.
• One of my goals was to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and lo and behold, serendipity came to the rescue. If you’ve read my bio, you know I have degrees in International Relations and International Business. During the trip, I happened to connect with two professionals in the field who, after learning about my background and language proficiencies, encouraged me to consider applying for positions in their organizations and offered to guide me through the hiring process. The first was a director in one of the many arms of the European Union; the second was a UN official we met in Johannesburg. Given our perception of worldwide angst, I decided that if there was ever a time to make some kind of contribution to improving international relations and securing human rights, that time is now.
• Though I’m not particularly thrilled about the possibility of working for a massive bureaucracy, a position in either organization would give me valuable insight into how the system works (or doesn’t). The EU and UN offer consulting gigs ranging from three to twelve months, and I’ve applied for five that sparked the most interest, all in the field of human rights. Part of the reason we traveled to Austria and Switzerland was to get a sense of what it might be like to live in Vienna or Geneva, where some of the openings exist. My long-term goal is to find work in (0r create) an apolitical organization devoted to securing human rights everywhere on the planet through effective advocacy, without pandering to the right, left or center. Us-against-them partisan politics isn’t getting us anywhere.

The good news is that the hiring process for both organizations is positively glacial and it may be months before I find out whether or not I made the grade. Why is that good news? It means I will have time to write some new reviews and fill some holes in my exploration of popular music history! I can’t tell you what’s in store because I’m pretty sure that the reason for my temporary case of writer’s block had to do with planning ahead. I’m just going to write what I want to write when I fucking feel like it! Hooray for me!

I will close with two big thank yous. First, I want to thank my mother for figuring out how to turn a post into a page so that the reviews of Françoise Hardy, John Mayall and Toumani Diabaté appeared on my home page in response to their passing. We should always take a moment to celebrate the legacies of musicians who made significant contributions to the art.

I also want to thank my readers for supporting the site while I was flitting around the planet. I don’t know if I should feel honored or superfluous, but during my absence, the number of visitors and hits remained constant and I gained new subscribers every week! Since I turned off the comment feature, I don’t know if the newbies showed up to bury or praise me, so I guess I’ll have to live with that Caesarean dilemma for a while. I was also delighted to learn that when I googled “music critic” I found myself in twenty-first place in the results! It might not be enough to grab the attention of the Pulitzer Prize committee, but I’ll take it—and I want to thank all my readers for that small but meaningful victory.

Cheers!