I just stumbled upon Fannys diaries again, they make interesting reading now in the light of a new period in Michaels life etc. Home News About Gallery Video Discography Links Store Sign up 11 Mar 20 Feb-09 Mar 2010: Light + Shade Light + Shade Light 20th February 2010 – St Thomas Angelique Rainy days are made for the have to do list! Printing all our pictures and getting started on the first module of my biology course were on my list. Digital cameras are just wonderful, but the pictures always kind of live within the computer and never find their way into an album. There is nothing like flipping through an album to show the children when they were little babies and get back to some great memories. It took all morning but I got half of it done before I ran out of ink. Ah well, I will just have to wait for another rainy day. Luckily, the first module of my biology course is all about chemistry! It is incredible how the simple molecule of water, that we might take for granted, is so important to life. Angelique took me back to my arena in England. I spent hours working with my horse to do a dressage reprise using this track, but I never managed to get the same rhythm out of my horse and dance beautifully to this track. Dressage to music is a real art and it is one of my goals when riding, to be one with the horse and perform just like the way dancers move and express themselves along with the sounds. Ah, I miss riding… 21st February 2010 – St Thomas Blackbird There is a fact in life that Michael reminded me of many times and I always acknowledge it but without truly believing in it… What is it that when you are happy, positive and light things that you wish for come to you as if by miracle? And if you are down or making life around you unhappy, things just dont come easily and sometimes they just dont come at all! For example: I spent few hours in the morning walking around a muddy pond where I usually see many birds and especially a beautiful Great Egret, but today none of them were there! I waited and waited until I came back to the boat defeated. So I decided to download the Music VR game Tres Lunas to have a fly around to cheer me up. As soon as Jake saw what I was doing, like a magnet, he took over my computer. What a wonderful sight for me and Michael, to see our boys playing the game. We all had a good laugh dancing with the bats on their way to the cave, the boys were flapping their arms while mummy and daddy were giggling away. Playing with Tres Lunas brought back the little child in me, on our way back from lunch I played hide and seek with the boys and it was real fun. I havent done that for a long time, playing with my boys… As a mum, I kind of turned into a lieutenant in command of an army. I always make sure that my troop is well and in order, somehow it got into a habit and I forgot to just have fun with my kids. All happy and positive, just by miracle, a beautiful pelican was waiting as we came to our dock. Just like that! The picture came to me without any effort or any work. Is it because I was happy and made my family happy that I was rewarded? Luck? Or something else? Blackbird was the name of one of Michaels motorbikes… What a beautiful tune! It is so sensitive and almost fragile, like a small leaf flying around with the wind. 22nd February 2010 – St Thomas The Gate The pelican came back to the dock today, I must have been good :-) It is difficult to always make the right choices, take the right decisions… But what is the most difficult of all is to make them without any influences from one of your folders! What Michael and I call folders are connections or associations with a past memory that influence your judgment and your life. For example, one of my many folders is about horses, in it there are lots of positive files but some of them are real bad. Because of my childhood, I associated horses with being unhappy at home. As a child, horses were a sanctuary where I could escape - very much like music was for Michael. But now, when I have a horse this folder gets triggered and I unconsciously, or more precisely the little child in me, creates stress that will consequently make my family life unhappy. It is like a vicious circle unless you learn to be aware of it and break the pattern. Today, I am very proud because I was able to see that folder and finally took charge of it. I didnt let it control my decision. And the result is great! I feel like a big weight has been taken off my shoulders… The Gate is puzzling, I cant make up my mind if I like it or not. Jake loved it. Maybe you need to be a free spirit to appreciate its beauty. This evening, as Michael arrived in the parking lot on his motorbike, the boys ran to him and in less than a minute the three of them were sitting on it. Eugene sitting so proudly on the front, Michael a very happy daddy with a smile on his face, Jake holding on to his father with his little arms, and mommy looking at them wishing she had her camera. What a picture! My men, these three are my life, and they were looking so nice on this motorbike. 23rd February 2010 – St Thomas The Gate Calling any company like American Airlines is always going to be stressful. First, you need to select which option you want from a menu, then if the line doesnt cut off you finally get rewarded with speaking to a real person who sounds just like theyre on the other side of the world. This morning, I really had it with this lady about our return tickets to Nassau. After spelling our name about five times, I ended up explaining to her that it was old the opposite of new and field where you grow things. She still didnt understand how to write our name, so the new strategy was to go letter by letter. O for octopus, L for lion, Jake screaming behind me D for daddy , F for France and so on…Yes she got it! After this long telephone call, that cost nearly all my credits on my mobile, Michael had the idea that I ought to learn to spell our name using the radio operator phonic alphabet instead of my O for Octopus. We had a good laugh while he taught me this new way of spelling our name and it is true O for Oscar, L for Lima, D for Delta, F for Foxtrot, I for India, E for Echo, L for Lima, and D for Delta sounds better. Then, I exclaimed Thank God, my name is not Vandekerckhove anymore! and Michael did all the radio operator phonic on it. I must say that I was impressed. During lunch, I told Michael how disturbing it was that I could not understand the track that I listened to yesterday. Why was it that I could not appreciate it? He reminded me of our visit to see the WWI memorial gate in Ypres. Then, like in flash, I was there again and remembered how emotional it was for Michael. He explained about the coldness, the glory, the sound carried by the wind and traveling over the hills, and how different his music is. I just finished listening to the track again and I dont really know how to put it. I am so moved by it, it is just incredible. As the music was playing, I could see all the names engraved on the gate again. Michael paid these men and his grandfather a real tribute! I should have done this a very long time ago, listening to my husbands music… It might sound silly, but I only now realize who he is. Not just my husband, my friend, the father of my children but someone else that is so sensitive that I cannot find any words for it. How can he make a track like that? How can he capture a moment, a feeling and translate it in such a pristine way? Wow! 24th February 2010 – St Thomas First Steps Last night, the peaceful marina where we are staying descended into real chaos. As the wind picked up and the sea got more and more agitated, the boats were rocking in all directions. It is one thing to see a boat moving about as the ropes tighten and slacken, holding it from crashing into the docks wall, but our boat Sea Dragon is very much like our home and it was very stressful to see her getting a real beating. But when the bow of the catamaran next to us suddenly turned toward Sea Dragon, it really got our hearts pumping as we realized that one of its ropes had just snapped and it would not be not long before it would crash into us. With only one spare rope left, as all the others were being used to hold our big girl in place, we managed to tie the catamaran back to the dock until someone could come and secure it for the night. I dont how we did it but somehow we all managed to get some sleep. As I needed some cheering up from last night, this morning was as good a day as any to do some shopping before going back to Nassau. I always love going shopping with Jake, he is like my personal stylist. He has very good taste and how can a mother resist buying a dress when her boy says things like this dress is so soft, Ill be giving you so many cuddles or daddy is going to say that you look beautiful with that dress? First Steps took me right back to playing Tres Lunas and Eugene enjoyed the track a lot as he keep saying daddy music, daddy music… Tonight the sea is smooth and there is no wind, I am glad that we are not going to be sleeping to Rock a bye baby… 25th February 2010 – St Thomas Closer This afternoon I installed Newlook and Modelworks, the software that we used to create Music VR, on Jakes laptop. He is so keen to play with Tres Lunas that we thought he might be ready to understand how we built the game. He is very excited about the project and has decided that he wants to design a fishing game, no surprise there. So, we downloaded a free 3D model of a shark and a terrain to start our underwater world…cool! I hope that I am not going to get hooked by working on a Music VR project again, it is so addictive but I still need to finish my biology course. And Eugene wants to share the experience of listening to todays track… I found him sitting on the floor with my headphones on his head, puzzled because there was no sound coming out of them. As soon as he saw me, he asked in his baby language where music, where daddy music… And so we listened to our daily track together…We had a really good time. 26th February 2010 – St Thomas Our Father This morning, I finally received my new lens…I love it! Michaels comment on it was Wow, it looks really professional! The pelicans will be impressed. But I wasnt allowed to do anything before spending some time with Jake working on his fishing game or a mutiny would have arisen on the boat. Together, we created the basic underwater world and added our shark to the scene. He was really proud that he had worked out how to place a zone around the shark and go to study mode. Little one, he will only be 6 years old in few weeks, I am very proud of him. We found out that there are, just like in the old times, some problems with the Newlook software. We could not change the colors of the sky or the fog and it needs to be fixed. I sent an email to the programmer, and I hope he will fix it soon as Jake is already impatient to carry on building his little world. In the meantime, Ill keep him busy looking for some 3D models and textures. Our Father is a beautiful track, very simple and elegant. It reminded me of our visit to Renoirs house in South of France, the simplicity of his studio and the beauty of his work were really inspiring. Todays visitor to our dock, a Royal Tern… (taken with my new lens). 27th February 2010 – St Thomas Rocky This track is so soothing! I really needed it after working nearly all day on biology and organic chemistry. This evening, the boys and I got lost in Maestro… It has been such a long time since I last played the game that I have forgotten all hints and tricks. 28th February 2010 – St Thomas Sunset Another day working on my biology course and I really love it. It is so interesting to discover what we are all made of… We are just some kind of very complicated machine made of electrons, protons, neutrons, lots of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and so on… When I look at the sea, I now picture it formed by balls and ticks of H2O with vertices like in a 3D model. I wonder if there are any links or relationships between the Lewis octet rule and the fact that there are eight musical notes in an octave. Could each organic element represent a note? Oxygen has 6 valence electrons so it would be the note la, and Carbon has 4 valence electrons so it would be related to the musical note fa. Sunset is a track with a wonderful energy, I kept listening to it over and over. It is really motivating! Shade 1st March 2010 – St Thomas Quicksilver Quicksilver must be a really popular track in clubs… I could not imagine going to a place like that anymore, I am light-years away from that kind of life and I have no wish to turn back the clock. Having a family dinner at home or going out to a nice romantic restaurant with my beautiful husband is what I call having a good time! Today, Eugene said, I love you mommy for the first time and it just filled me with happiness. Well it was kind of a first time because like Michael said, I have been training him :-) It is the first time that he said it without me asking him to repeat after me. So this time, today, we didnt cheat :-) My little baby, he is just so beautiful! I wish I could give him a magic potion so he never grows up. Picture: this afternoon, Michael watching the sunset… 2nd March 2010 – St Thomas Resolution It is a first… In the harbor, there are four big cruise ships. Three of them at dock and one in the bay, we have never had so many of them in one day. It is lovely to see them arriving at dawn. The island relies on the tourist industry - I believe today the island will be doing very well! All day, my head just felt like Resolution… Heavy. I just cannot stop thinking. The hard electric guitar and this voice nearly screaming its head off is me! I really have to listen to Michaels advice and start making some time for meditation. I have tried many times but I always end up thinking of my shopping list, things I have to learn or millions of questions about life! We took the boys to the beach today, and it was wonderful to look at Eugene playing with the sand. For more than two hours he filled up his bucket, put a little sand here and there, made a big muddy puddle and was so content. I honestly believe that no thoughts came to his mind; he was secure knowing I was watching him and just got on with his thing. He was so peaceful to watch, no worries, no pretending, just him being there on the beach with his bucket. I really wish that I could regain this priceless serenity that all babies have and that we lose with time. Tonight, Jake surprised us with some of his creative skills. While we were out for dinner, he found my sticky tape and decided to redecorate the boat :-) 3rd March 2010 – St Thomas Slipstream This morning, when the security man approached me at the parking lot of the marina like always to tell me off that our dog didnt have her leash on, he knew better and decided to just let me go. Covered in mud, I growled at him to not even start giving me a lecture and that I do not have her leash anyway. Somehow he got the message and said Its ok…dont worry… Nobody should mess with a woman who just fell in a pond while taking a picture of a bird :-) The good news is the picture was totally worth it! With a bad start, today turned out to be a full of surprises and a great productive day. We went out to a Mexican restaurant for lunch and by miracle a rare black heron calls this place its home. It is a magnificent bird with red eyes that reach into your soul, I felt scared at times by the way it looked at me but it is so elegant and beautiful. Then Jake found a Hermit crab on the beach that he named snappy and it became our pet for the day. It is an amazing little creature that looks like a little alien coming from another world :-) I have listened to Slipstream a few times and it is nice but it is very different. Very much like the heron: vibrant, fast but there is something about it that I cant pinpoint - something different about it. 4th March 2010 – St Thomas Surfing This track is for people like me - internet addicts! The guitar is so expressive and wonderful…it also has a futuristic feel about it, I really love it. That is one thing that Michael and I share, our love for technology and I hope that, one day, our world will be like in Star Trek. How wonderful would it be if there were real transporters? We could energize and voila I would be in France with my family without having to spend 20hrs on a plane. However, technology is only great when it works! Tonight, Jake and I received the new version of Newlook for his little game and it doesnt work… Well just have to be patient. 5th March 2010 – St Thomas Tears Of An Angel Tears of an Angel is a very creative track, and I personally think that it is perfect. I just love everything about it and especially the sound of the guitar, really beautiful. I tried to meditate this morning…I found myself a nice spot on the beach, but all I could think about was how much I was missing Michael. He was meeting us for lunch but I kept looking at my watch like a young girl in love that has her first date :-) I dont know if it is this track that inspired me, like a seed planted in me, but I felt so creative today. I made a new series of pictures that I called Pelican Abstract, it is very different but I think it is special. Michael really liked them and found the title for this photograph The Punchline The banana boat is already on its way to Nassau and Sea Dragon will be leaving on Thursday (weather permitting). We are both looking forward to going back home. 6th March 2010 – St Thomas Romance For this diary to have real meaning, it needs to be true! When I first listened to this track my first thought was yes it is nice but too fast for my taste. However, one point needs to be made about this thought: It is too easy to criticize the work of others. For a long time, my reactions when I saw the work of Picasso was I dont like it… Its not beautiful… Why was he so successful? and it really used to annoy Michael. Luckily since then I have matured, I still dont get Picasso but I have learned that it is just me that cannot see its beauty. It really hurts when people just put down your creation without any consideration of the amount of energy and hard work that it has been put in. Who am I, who are we, to say this is good or bad? So at first, this track didnt appeal to me and then I thought about the two hummingbirds that I observed yesterday. This track is for them! I dont know what they were doing, whether they were courting, playing or just chatting, but they were doing it real fast (Romance in a flash :-)) It is all about perspective… Now this track has a meaning to me and I like it. 7th March 2010 – St Thomas Ringscape It has been raining all day. The power at the marina is off; the boat is running off the generator and there is no internet! But we all had a nice day, cozy on the boat. Michael was busy working with his new mixer and playing guitar. Eugene played with Thomas and all his friends from the island of Sodor. Jake and I spent a good part of the day watching my favorite DVD Peuple Migrateur (Winged Migration), with its incredible movie and documentary by Jacques Perrin. It was the first time Jake watched it and he really had a good time, for me it was even more beautiful seeing it with a new perspective since I started photography. Ringscape is, for me, linked to Music VR. I remember going to the pub with Michael and having these crazy conversations that only made any sense to us. If anybody had listened to us, they probably would have thought that we were crazy, talking about the dinosaurs eyes, Gravitars, flying angels, vertices, 3D particles, textures… We had some good times working on that project! 8th March 2010 – St Thomas Nightshade Our last week in St Thomas… Still no power in the marina but my clever husband found a way to get the internet, yeah! Fluffy and I went for a lovely well-deserved long walk. We went to buy Jakes birthday present, a Mahi Mahi (dolphin-fish) pendant that he had his eyes on a month ago. I hope he will like it :-) Nightshade is another track that puzzled me. First, I asked Michael what the word nightshade means. Once I knew that it was the name of deadly plant, he explained that he didnt made a track with this title as a message but thought that the word just sounded nice. It is so strange that I need every track to have a meaning. I want a definition. But what about Mike making a track just because it sounds nice, because he just liked it… Without any big meaning or definition. If I was a journalist, I bet that I would be one of these terrible ones asking him the worst questions of all like Why did you write a track about Nightshade? or Why did you write Tubular Bells? and he would be growling at me I just felt like it! A baby like Eugene doesnt do things to be cute or cool. He is just right here in the present, just living in the moment without asking himself Why should I do this or For whom should I do that. I believe that this track is just the same and it will always remind me of this side of me that I need to get back: to just be. 9th March 2010 – St Thomas Thats it, the suitcases are done and we have moved into our small hotel room by the beach. Our time in St Thomas has nearly reached its end… But we had a great time. I have really enjoyed Light and Shade and have learned a lot in the process of making this diary. Thank you to everybody for your nice comments and messages about the photos and the Music of the Spheres diary. I hope you will all enjoy reading this one too… Copyright © Fanny Oldfield 2010 back Mike Oldfield promotion Mike Oldfield promotion Click here for the Two Sides Bonus Area Launch audio player Copyright © 2010. All Right Reserved. Website Terms Of Use Safe Surf Guide Privacy Policy Cookie Info facebook/MikeOldfieldOfficial tubularbells2009/
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 13:21:22 +0000
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