Friday 20 January
The soundtrack for today is:

Bon Jovi
24 July 1993
Tinley Park, Illinois
🏟️ Keep the Faith/ Sleep When I’m Dead/ I Believe Tour

Brand new upload on YouTube’s hAnD90 channel.

And a concert recording described by hAnD90 as:
“It’s not solely bad, but you need to be ready to adjust to ever-changing sounds [ .. ] If you manage that, you’re in for one hell of a ride! 

Adjust to the ever-changing, and you’re in for one hell of a ride?
No way my writing is going to top that life advice.
And because there are no photos of this show, not even a proper photo of the tour schedule or concert ticket, and because the show itself is 2 hours and 20 minutes of absolute Bon Jovi GOLD!
– I chose to let myself be inspired by a coincidental aspect of this show;
It’s the very first <1997 concert upload, that took place on my birthday.

And for this post I looked back on the 6 months that have passed since.

If you want to read about the Tinley Park concert itself, you can check this page on this legendary concert:
https://bjtours.jimdofree.com/the-tours/1993-keep-the-faith-i-ll-sleep-when-i-m-dead-i-believe/100-1993-07-24-world-music-theatre-tinley-park-illinois-usa/
BJ Tours website is a collaboration with hAnD90,  and the page is already updated with this stunning concert.

 

Give it all for your giant squid

👩🏼‍💻 the story 20 january

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To say the first 6 months of this year of my life, needed “adjusting to ever-changing” would be an understatement.
Except I acknowledge that the most important factor in the ever changing bit were not external factors but something else:
Me.

After basically (you can cover your eyes at this point) throwing away everything from March 2020 and up;
Perhaps summer 2018 and up;
Possibly even late 20th century and up;
I was absolutely, thoroughly, and may I say violently, done with what my life had become, and more importantly, who I had become.

A combination of circumstances explains why I’ve hardly written since late October, made no videos for either one of my channels, and even my Soundtrack of the day series with Bon Jovi concerts and the photo collages I make- both series that are daily-ish- have been very inconsistent.
I can cover for the past 2.5 month of barely being visible, and in my opinion those are not the biggest problem.

But the reason I lost all those years, perhaps dating back to late 20th century, was because I “just start”-ed and “just do it”-ed my ass off after graduation, without understanding how horribly off-path I was.
And that even if I had succeeded, it would only  have accelerated my demise.

I was like how Elizabeth Gilbert described in her book Eat Pray Love, when she thought she wanted to start a family, while every time she got her period she said:
“Thank you God for letting me live another month.”

That’s how clear my signs were I was living the wrong life.
But only clear in retrospect, because just like Gilbert, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was on the right path, because just like her attempt to start a family, my path too was normal, and desired by so many people.
And I took it without any difficulty really.
I had jobs, careers, and had a wonderful partner with whom I had such a good life and could have started a family if I had wanted to;
It all looked really good on the outside.

But ultimately the things that all came crashing down 2018 and up, and that are taking me the last 2.5 months to unpack – where at times I am almost frozen in my anxiety to choose right this time – all gave off red flags decades ago.
Their own versions of letting me live another month, prayers.
I didn’t want the future I was supposedly building anymore than Gilbert wanted a family.

And although I changed aspects of it, for sure- important aspects too, in particular my love life  – I did not change other aspects.
There, I still showed up as Elizabeth wanting a family, yet secretly praying it wouldn’t happen.

And that is what these past 2.5 months have been about. Because I’m figuring out what it is I need to change, which aspects are still me pretending.
And they’re often very, very subtle.
For instance, last Wednesday after seeing the Leonard Cohen documentary,  I wrote a piece about that I don’t want to be a yoga teacher, but if I am a storyteller and part of the story is told on the yoga mat?
Great!
So that’s what my YouTube channels in 2023 will be rebooted like.

For my English YouTube this means I will make a video, Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs, which is my existing series.
For example: “Wanted Dead or Alive”
And then another video “Wanted Dead or Alive, part 2. Bring your mat.”
The word yoga is entirely taken out of it!

And after years and years of struggling with this yoga teacher thing, that felt so constricting I have ended my yoga career countless times-
I now can’t wait to get this started!
I’m a storyteller and part of the story is on the mat. 
Riddle solved.

I think that was the biggie really, the thing I have wrestled with the most, these last few years in particular.
If you want to know the entire journey that lead to this epiphany, you can read it in last Wednesday’s post, on my Rock Star Writer blog:
A revelation, unprepared and overthrown. The birth of a storyteller. | Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen documentary

Do you know the first moment realized Elizabeth she was onto something?
The first moment she understood something was off here?
When she encountered a friend who had been trying to get pregnant for years, and she was now pregnant and glowing with happiness.
Elizabeth listened to the stories she told, about wanting a baby for so long, and how happy she was, and she couldn’t stop staring at the radiating glow on her friends face.
She knew she had looked like that too, just recently, and searched her memory, frantically, trying to remember when it had been that she had looked this happy.
And then she remembered!

The editor in chief from GQ magazine had called her and asked if she wanted to go on an expedition on a boat, on the pacific ocean, that was looking for the mythical giant squid. A creature ultimately caught on camera in 2006, so it can very well be linked to the offer Elizabeth received.

Receiving that phone call, was when Elizabeth had looked this radiantly happy.
What was a pregnancy and the promise of starting a family for her friend, was looking for an undiscovered giant squid to her.

At the concert in Tinley Park, on the 24th of July 1993, the band kept playing encore after encore. Jon was clearly thankful for the enthusiasm of the crowd, but he must have also remembered their other Illinois concert earlier that year.
Rosemont, 5 March 1993.

A concert in their messiest months, haunted by a poorly organized first leg of their tour and disappointing ticket sales, when it was supposed to have been a comeback tour for their Keep the Faith album.
The first album of the band in four years.

That first 1993 Illinois concert had been a tough time, when the renewed bond between the bandmembers was tested, and the name of their tour and album, Keep the Faith, became a life imitating art conundrum.

The aforementioned BJ Tours website says of this first Illinois concert in Rosemont:
“The show Jon later on referred to as “THE TURNING POINT OF THE TOUR!”
Apparently, someone had said to him backstage that this would be the last time he’d be able to play such a venue because of Keep The Faith not having been the big success after its release.
The band [ .. ] went on to play as if it was the last time they’d ever be able to take a stage.”

They say Jon had to be carried of stage, that’s how close he came to exhaustion. He literally gave all he had, and the rest is history.

Four months later, they were back in Illinois and it all seemed to be so easy now.
But they remembered they had to fight for this.
They had to push through, when nothing worked, and the show could have been their last.

Bon Jovi had recognized the seriousness, of getting one last chance.
Just like I do now.

Therefor their victory concert, 4,5 months later

24 July1993, Tinley Park, Illinois 🇺🇸
Bon Jovi | Stunning Concert at World Music Theatre | Tinley Park 1993
is the soundtrack for today

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The show has been added in to the first playlist 
“Part I: Bon Jovi concerts on this day 10 June – 5 Dec (before 1997)”
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06ScAo9UN4GyhtQWYfl3d6jMT
on July 24.

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 ~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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