Italy

Blog entry 22nd of July

On my way to Rome

In the air…
My seat is 5D. It is a quite comfortable seat for someone like me, since I am quite short and small. To be honest, everything is quite short and small on this flight. That was the first thought that entered my mind when I came in to the plane: small. Very small indeed.

My pianist, Steffen, is sleeping next to me, looking unnaturally big in the small seat. Luckily I am seated near the aisle, so the claustrophobic feeling doesn’t completely take the hold of me. Flying is, if you think about it, quite crazy. We’re sitting here, around 150 people, thousands of meters up in the air, over the clouds. Sleeping, eating, talking, laughing, reading - acting as if this is the most natural thing in the world. We fly higher than the birds. What if we fall down? Lately, my old fright of flying has been slowly creeping back in to my head, and believe me when I say that this is not good when you are, and have been, on the road around 200 days this year! That is a lot of flying… Lately I have noticed that each time I get a new offer for a concert somewhere, I always think about how long the flight will be… That is scaring me a little…

Today, the captain promised us nice weather and good flying conditions. Unfortunately his words were not exactly true for the first hour. It was actually quite a lot of turbulence, but since the flight crew is so nice and informing, I never got scared. I even started to think that there is no chance of this plane falling down, it is actually totally impossible. The flight attendant spoke on behalf of the captain, telling us that we unfortunately had to fasten our seatbelts because of some turbulence. The captain was very sorry for this and had already asked the once who sit on the ground and conducts all the planes (totally forgot what they are called in English…), to give us another, less bumpy route to Rome. This simple little message from the captain assured me of our safety in a way that I have never experienced before on a plane (not like on my way home from Vietnam, 12 hours on the plane, the captain never said one word, three hours of heavy turbulence in the middle…). This simple message had me thinking that unless the motors falls of or we break a wing or something, there really is zero percent chance of us falling down, these guys actually had everything under control (probably they would have known a safe way to get us down even though the motors fell down or we broke a wing…). I hope that this nice discovery can make this little green monster of afraidness go away as quickly as it came. As long as we don’t fly over huge seas that is…(I can’t help thinking about the air France accident). But hopefully this will also disappear before I go to Washington in December.

Steffen is awake, reading a newspaper. We are on our way to Rome. It takes about three hours by plane from Oslo; I look at my watch and see that we have an hour left. Then it will be 4-5 hours left of our trip before we reach our final destination: Ravello. We are playing a concert there tomorrow at a festival. I’ve heard that this is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on earth; you will get an update on that later! You’ll definitely hear my perfect description of me sitting in the sun with my fresh orange juice and enjoying the amazing view, as you can see my expectations are high…

I don’t have my computer with me, I write this in my little travelling book, and when I come back home I will write it in to my computer and update my blog.

I don’t know if I have told you how great it feels to be able to write a little bit on the road, and know that at least a couple of people will read it. I feel so extremely lucky that I can travel around and play, and when I can share some of my thoughts, experiences and scrabbling with you, it feels better in a strange way. My life is quite special. By special I don’t mean that it is more important or exciting than others, it is just that I am my job. Always. I never have a real vacation (even if I try), because the music is inside of me all the time. Sometimes I wish I could press the pause button, just for a little while, but at the same time I am so grateful for my music, and wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. I call it my music, no matter what I play. Because I have to fell like I own it (together with the composer of course…), if I am to tell you the story and sound sincere. Every single piece is like a story or picture, poem or sentence, shape or colour or feeling that I am describing to you when I play it. At the exact moment that I play it to you it is still mine, but then it becomes yours to keep (if you want it…)

Wow, the thoughts wonders in some very deep directions up here in the clouds… Especially when you just find out that turbulence is actually not dangerous at all.
Take care, and watch out for my description of Ravello in my next entry, be sure to have high expectations.

Until next time,
Tine ☺