March 27th at 9:30, with a glass of bubbly in hand to celebrate the opening of Heathrow/British Airways Terminal 5, I loaded my 2 very large bags into the British Airways system - from Munich - on a wing and a prayer I would ever see them again.
Before shows, I have weird things I like to do. Like play with my harmonica holder a certain way while pacing in circles.
I don't like to talk to anyone about 10 minutes before and I drink my slippery elm throat coat tea like it's going out of style. Sometimes I go to the bathroom nearly 4 times in those 10 minutes and on the not so rare occasion find myself running for the stage as my name is being called.
So when I put luggage on a flight, it's no different in the routine department.
While checking in, I have this little goodbye parting with my bag, asking it nicely to please make sure it pushes and pounds its way to the other end, where I promise to lovingly be there waiting to take care of it.
I secure everything so it has a chance of getting less banged up. I proudly set it down knowing it's one tough cookie and think how lucky I am it's my travel companion and carrying so many important things.
Today is April 2 and finally, after much stressing and compulsive online checking and phone calling with my lost luggage reference number, I read that it has been found!
Out of from I hear now is 28,000 bags in a pile in London with a mere 450 volunteers doing it all by hand, I am totally and completely amazed.
And what has made this worse than say, if I were on a holiday is everything I have needed (except for my guitar thank goodness) is in my 2 very large suitcases. One of which Eagle Creek calls the trunk if that tells you how big I am talking here!
So to say I have been stressing out since being put on a new flight - the day after boarding in Munich - out of London after my original connecting was canceled and being told both bags may be in bag land for weeks to come, is putting it very, very mildly.
I was supposed to start driving by Thursday actually and with the bag situation being dire for me, I scrapped that and decided flying into Austin would buy me an extra few days to wait for them to come.
And that it did. *whew*
During the past 7 days, I have literally lay awake thinking of every last thing I put in those bags, making a mental list of what I had lost. Irreplaceable things and all the files and documents for my graphics. The now I see stupidly placed 50 autographed Little Lighthouse CD's for my main distributor who has been out forever, presents for family.
What was I thinking?
It seems I wasn't.
As ridiculous as it may seem when we have much bigger things going on in this crazy world, to me, this was a big big bleep that in the end would cost me and my husband thousands upon thousands of Euros and already, from the stress I had developed a cold.
A cold to a singer is like the plague and with recording commencing in less than a week, I was preparing myself for no voice. Which equals no recording. Which of course means no new CD... canceled tours, career caput.
And after coming out of over a year of burnout and the past eight months in and out of hospitals, I was not going down without a fight. Not this time.
I am a pro-active kind of girl. Anyone who knows me or has read my journals over the years knows, that although I seem to have some kind of terrible traveling luck (being put smack dab into whatever is going on) I always fight my way through smiling and hoping and being pretty darn positive.
So in the larger scheme of things this really is nothing.
But in my world, it was 5 years of waiting and loans that would be just be gone.
The hope hanging on this by my family, my friends, fans and readers. By my agent and my husband, myself. Was well, huge.
People sometimes hang their hopes on your coat rack and I say this not complaining by any means ... but after having let down everyone and in the process considering hanging up my own dreams last year, I started to wonder what the heck was going on. 2008 has been really amazing thus far and trust me, it was not easy to get to a good year.
So when I posted on a news site my opinion and soon thereafter received hate mail, I was beside myself.
Not angry or sad or any of those things. Just completely surprised that because I was affected by what I and many others consider to be British Airways trying to save money on training their employees (as this is the start of the entire luggage system breakdown) I am deemed by this obviously bored person an 'ugly American.'
Has she not read anything about me or my life, my past...present?
And although I am over it now - both her and the bags - I still can't help but wonder what the heck she was thinking.
It's crazy to think.
The whole carrying a guitar on a plane thing.
People somehow think we are getting away with something.
Like we are having too much "fun" and should not be allowed to carry them on.
You get glares when you do.
And really, have you ever looked at how much space a guitar takes up compared to a business traveler carrying it all? You can't even compare.
And would an airline ask a business man to leave his tool - his large laptop bag, carry on with sometimes his suit wrapped around it behind?
Are you kidding?
We are not getting away with anything. This is our job.
And although we love it and it can be fun sometimes, like everyone, this is a job. A job we must get on a bazillion flights and trains, boats and into cars for. A job where we give literally every single last ounce of energy in the hopes something we sing or say will inspire and help someone. Inspire us to keep going and watching life and listening and writing and singing.
A job that most times, especially in the world of folk music - most presenters, radio DJ's, bookers and so on, volunteer.
They volunteer because they love it.
They volunteer because they believe in the powerful healing of non-commercial, society-fed music.
And we try our hardest to write good songs and sing them with emotion and soul. We try really hard to make sure we keep writing more and finding money somehow to make more CD's. CD's that cost no less than 10,000 each time and in the end, usually double and triple that amount.
And we don't do it because our record label tells us we have to be a money making machine. We don't have one.
And we're not all young and beautiful and trying to get played on top radio or write a hit country song.
A folk singers prime is usually past 40. If we're lucky.
Most of us are doing it for some inexplainable reason.
Some drive that takes hold at whatever point in our lives and does not, despite the sometimes clawing to get away, go away.
It puts us on the roads with little in our pockets, hopefully watching the faces of our audiences and crossing every finger and toe they like us. That they really like us.
We don't need to be rich and good thing because we never will be.
We just want to pay our bills like everyone else.
We want to try and be happy doing what we are doing and on days when we would rather stay in bed, we try our hardest like we all do, to get up and go to work. Give it our best shot.
We don't want to stay out too long because we want to have lives outside of our jobs. We want to see our families and friends and do things like paint or take long walks, pick strawberries and bake pies with them.
And I say all this not for any other reason than this person.
This anonymous person who I will probably never in my life meet.
I say to her - to you - please, before you jump the gun and judge someone, please step back and take a look at why you do what you do.
You want to be happy like every one of us I suspect.
And if any of us are lucky - even remotely - we somewhere, somehow in whatever line of work, inspire someone to be happy, be themselves, not be afraid to love or be loved, stay alive or start living.
This post is dedicated to you stranger.
We are all lost in some way or form.
We all need a safe place to go.
Me included.
I know the internet is not one of them.
I can and have accepted that.
But music for me is mine.
Next to my family of course.
And although we don't know each other and you and I have no stakes in one another's happiness, I hope you too have a hope, a dream, a safe place to go.
I hope you never feel like something as silly as delayed bags and a cold will kill them. It's pretty ridiculous yes ... but real.
At least for me.
I will gladly share my safe place with you any day and I do hope we meet out there. I will sing a song just for you to celebrate.
love, Chris
