moments of happiness – Manchester to Mexico

 

Ecstatic moments can make a life. It can make a life feel like it’s worth living, with desires worth pursuing, goals worth longing for. It can give us a belief in the profound, in a oneness or in the glory of hedonistic pursuit.

It can be induced by a sunset over a Hawaiian island, a close up moment with of a humpback whale, an on going romance, a hire car trip to the mountains, a brief and unexpected sexual encounter fuelled by chemical lust.

Personally I once liked to talk about that 2 pint euphoria – any less and you had no hit of mid afternoon sunshine bliss, any more and there was a slippery slope to travel down. Like a game of snakes and ladders on a wrong throw of the dice – 2 pints forward, 5 pints backwards into maudling.

It’s the kind of ideal that makes going on a cruise such a popular consumer experience. Let’s get one thing straight though – I worked as a musician on a cruise for over 3 months for the first time this year. Working or “playing music” on a cruise is not the same thing as going on holiday. Even if  a jealous “friend” or a defensive colleague tells you that it is.

the happiness boost of a holiday -daily mail

Going on holiday, as people or the authority of a google search will ratify, is something we live for. It is said to reduce our heart rate, lower our blood pressure, sometimes provide the focus of our idea of happiness for a whole year of work.

Working on a cruise, on the other hand, can involve sleeping in a small cabin in a bunk bed with a tense former marine above you, with anal managers on the prowl 24 hours a day outside your room. Official announcements hiss from a speaker inside your cabin, in-house entertainment channels infest your TV screen  – like something straight out of the pages of George Orwell’s 1984 – for real.

It can be fraught and claustrophobic stuck on a ship. Like a prison with golden bars, I was told. No honest person could deny it – it’s not for everyone.

happy holidays? The New York Times

I liked the physical challenge of a moving ship packed with 3000 people from all over the world. I liked the monthly pay cheque. Most of all I liked the best cure for anxiety, depression and self doubt that I’ve ever experienced – playng music and singing. Night after night after nght – when you didn’t want to, it worked. When you didn’t want to smile you had to smile. But it wasn’t like going on holiday. You don’t feel free.

Like many of us, I was looking forward to an actual holiday when I finished my contract and like all of us COVID-19 came and cancelled all our holidays abroad, all our cruises and all our travel anywhere. Even to our mates house for a brew.

I was going to do a gig in Copenhangen – cancelled – and spend 10 days in Portugal, partly sightseeing in Lisbon and partly on a beach – cancelled. I was looking forward to it. My weeks and months spent backpacking and working outdoors in the likes of Denmark, Catalonia, New Zealand, the Himalayas, the Greek Islands, wherever, I forget – feel like some of the most profound and fantatastic experiences of my existence so far. These periods of joy made me feel as if my life had not been wasted. I had not been a fool. I had tried to make my physical temporal journey one which celebrated being alive and learning and seeing. I was travelling.

In some ways, many important ways, so did being a musican on a cruise ship. Be it once. Be it my first contract which may see the end of the industry as a whole, we’ll see. The unique madness of sharing a version of luxury, cultural hell in a plastic consumer bubble with some lovable people, feels like a turning point for me. You can no longer run away from the truth about yourself, your limits, self deception, downfalls, at a certain point if you’re lucky enough to suffer more truth about yourself. It’s all down to you – your life – no matter what buckets of shit you tread in. It’s yours to live or lose.  No excuses.

Now we all have to knuckle down to the acceptance of no travel, no journey, no flights, no boats, no trains, hovercraft, long car journeys, no pints in the pub for at least a year if not more. It’s not a good thought to dwell on. It’s where we are – in a lockdown.

Best to think about Mexico – the burning blue skies, the dust and dirt of crumbling streets, the angry heat and aggressive touting. That tension on the border of lifestyles and economic indicators. You were there on the beach, in a bar. That was you.

Then there’s true happiness – a pint of Guinness in a true Irish bar in San Francisco, the profound statements in the PopArt on display at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art buzzing round your head, one night alone in a hotel room in Belfast having secured a work permit and knowing that finally someone will pay you as a musician, to fly to the USA. A reward for years of practice. You feel it, be it briefly.

Best of all Manchester. Flying in to land at Manchester Airport and hanging over the city like a giant bird of a night time, lights of green, red, white-yellow snaking around the cool buildings. Somehow feeling momentarily overwhelmed by a love of your own city. Your own happy hunting ground. Like a best, close friend. The familiarity.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/trips-and-breaks/holidays-friends-key-happiness

You love your own gothic city and for a moment you are one with it all. It looks like beauty and hope. For a moment – everything makes sense. You believe.

Back to lockdown.

Mike

I keep writing songs. I put up a new one on YouTube today. seagull by mike kneafsey video/live song

I thought I’d share a new song that I’ve been working on in the lockdown. It’s called “Seagull” . I wrote the words while I was living in the town of Padiham near Burnley doing long hours of irregular work. The dream of flying down the River Ribble estuary and out to sea like a seagull makes sense.

I also have a website https://mikekneafseyguitar.com/