7 and 7 is

Continued from blog 15 - One of Us is in the Wrong Place...

...There was always the number 7 story. One of those stories that you don't want to cling to, half of you not wanting to sound like a superstitious fool and half of you in fear of a disappointment so what you do is you entirely believe in it! Isn't that always the case? Tell me what you have to lose? If you end up with nothing you will be no worse than what you had to start with, it's the Dr. Pepper principle of blind faith, what's the worst that could happen? Although if you do ask that question you will find that there's always a "worse" so you better be grateful for what you have now.

In my native Brazil you don't need to go to a seance or consult a fortune-teller to know about your future, your own friends, anybody, will volunteer information you haven't even asked. The Spiritualist faith or philosophy is the second faith in the country after Christianism and it takes all forms from Kardecism, the ones who simply study and follow the studies of Allan Kardec, a French philosopher who communicated with spirits, the many forms of African religions, brought to Brazil by African slaves in the 19th Century, such as Candomble and Umbanda and even the Shamanism of Brazilian Indians. One could say Brazilians are very superstitious, but in my opinion Brazilians just have a lot of faith, which I think comes from that feeling of what the heck, what have I got to lose? Poverty has this freedom, when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose so you might as well believe in the impossible.

I have had many things said about my future. I don't happen to believe in a set future, I think you make your own future, there's free will, but I think there's a plan. We mere mortals have a plan for everything, for building a house, my to do list for today, now if I am going to do everything in that list, that's another question, that's when my free will comes in, but there's a list. So I believe in a list for our lives and that some people have the power to hack into that list and reveal some items of it for you. Everything that was volunteered about my future came true, although it is always volunteered in a riddle form so you only come to think of it when it actually happens. One of the most remarkable predictions was about my husband. I used to date a Welsh man when I first lived in England, we split up, or in his words, we had never actually dated as such, (men!) just before I returned to Brazil in 1992. While I was still here I was told this message "Don't cry, go back home because your English man is going to knock on your door". Although my ex-never-been-boyfriend was Welsh, I thought well, spirits can't be that specific geographically so I thought they were talking about him. He did go and visit me in Brazil in January 1994 but it was a total disaster, but in August that same year my English Husband did knock on my door, I met him inside my house, amazing. Another incredible prediction was that I was told I would have a son that spoke in a very distinctive incomprehensible way, which I thought referred to the fact that my son would be foreign, English, but in fact my son is 8 years old and he can't speak yet for he is severely autistic. What he says is in fact distinctive and incomprehensible, not only to Brazilians, but to anyone. I won't list every prediction that went right in my life but the one that has never come true, the number 7 story. I was told that we would be successful in our music venture after the number 7. Now what does that mean? 7 years? When we have 7 members? 7 records? After 7 World Wars? Whatever it was it seemed we were in it for the long haul!

When I was debating the name Zen Arcade this story came to my mind and I thought, ok we have been waiting for a long time anyway so why not give destiny a hand and name our band something with the number 7? We had also received a really sympathetic answer back from an independent label who seemed to have enjoyed our work, but couldn't afford hiring anyone at that moment. Among many compliments they did suggest that having your band named after someone Else's record or song is quite misleading. I thought that was my cue to intensify my demands to change our name and since naming after another band's song or album was not in I suggested 7 Miles High, after the Byrds' song 8 Miles High, which also sort of fit with our record of being an "almost" band, always "almost" there but not quite.

The name was catchy and people seemed to like it, but guess what, there was another, perhaps the reason behind calling themselves 7 Miles High wasn't as Paranormal as ours, but still there they were, but this time we just ignored them!

After our disappointing deal with Flat Records in 1997 we decided we should really try to be together as although technology was evolving and we were more and more able to make tracks nobody believed were home made or that we were in different places, at times it started to really feel as if our band didn't exist. I started to influence my English boyfriend, who I lived with in Holland, to move to Britain where Paulo was. Even though Tayo was in Sweden, if at least we were together we could do a bit more. Tayo was always proficient with computers but Paulo and I always struggled and we thought we could do more live. I got married in 1998 but still had to wait until 1999 to get my visa and move back to London where I live until today.

During this period when Paulo and I lived less than a mile from each other we rediscovered the joy of playing together and I discovered the joy of making music, as so far I would only sing what I was told to do as Paulo would write the music and voice melody to Tayo's lyrics, but this time I took the challenge of fitting Tayo's lyrics into Paulo's songs and I really enjoyed doing so.

We've written many beautiful songs at this time following a funny method, I would think of song titles, send them to Tayo then he would write lyrics for those titles. Sometimes what I would have thought a title meant was completely different from what he came up with. We have recently as a challenge done just the other way round when I got to write my first set of lyrics to titles he volunteered to me for his solo work Xingu.

It was also at this time that a revolution took hold of the world and we were one of the first bands to jump on it, The World Wide Web...

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Soter França, 2 and 3 - Paulo Nunes