Questions for Alex - I Need Your Help!
Jan 07, 2025
Hey,
I hope you’re doing well! Such a huge delight for me to be back in front of my Club Missive Google Drive on this Monday, January 6th, after two long weeks of break! I’m of course listening to Alex’s My Favorites of 2024 playlist to get our 2025 Tuesday connections started!!!
I’m feeling so hopeful and on fire with a huge will and desire to face and embrace what this new year has in mind for us, even if this crazy world we live in is going sideways on way too many levels. But to simply be here this morning, writing those words down, reminds me of how meaningful and important what we’re sharing and building really is!
It’s been raining nonstop since last evening here in Tangier, which is quite unusual. I think it’s only the second or third time it has rained since we got here in mid-November! It also was pretty cool for us to celebrate Christmas and to welcome the New Year in this amazing North African city! Even if they don’t celebrate either of those days here, the city was still full of lights and Christmas trees all over, making it truly welcoming for our friends, who nicely came to visit us during the holidays! We truly had a great time going around every corner of the city with its palm trees, Mediterranean Sea, vibe, and, of course, its more than welcoming people! Hope it’s been the same on your end!
Tangier is the city that welcomed the Beat Generation in the 50s, and William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg communicated a lot through letters during that period, which gave birth to Burroughs’ famous book Naked Lunch. I thought it could be cool to interview Alex on the rooftop of the hotel where Ginsberg visited Burroughs for some time and for us both to have an open conversation around the project! But this time, I’d like to know if you have some questions for Alex before we both sit down and navigate those beautiful, dark, fragile, and powerful waters together!
Alex and I want us to be more connected in some ways over 2025 with you all, and I want to welcome you way more into our humanity and art-driven universe!
Here are the questions I would like to ask Alex. Let me know what you think, and please, send me yours! We’re planning to have this conversation next weekend!
QUESTIONS FOR ALEX
That release came as a surprise for so many! Where did the idea to release multiple versions of the song Shadows of our Evening Tides emerge from?Why these specific versions?
If you had the choice and no limitations whatsoever, how many versions would you have preferred to include?
Why is Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem part of the song?
When you wrote this song, did you choose the poem or the poet in the first place?
What are the highlights of this song since we first released it in Canada in 2018, according to you?
- Performing it at the Montreal Jazz Festival for the first time
- So many different versions that are all meaningful to you
- Going into the crowd at the end of the song to hug people out
Does this mark a new chapter in your life?
- In what ways (personal vs. artistic)?
- Does it signify the end of the Windows in the Sky cycle?
Also, as I wrote a little earlier, I’m looking to improve our weekly communications. So, please, if you have any recommendations or ideas, send those over as I’d be delighted to read you and to improve! I’ll explore this topic a little deeper with you all in the upcoming weeks!
In the meantime, I also want to leave you with something thoughtful from now on! Here’s something I shared with the band prior to coming to Tangier:
The need for intimacy in a human life and in a human social life is as foundational as our daily hunger and our never-ending thirst, and needs to be met in just the same practical way, every day, just as necessarily and just as frequently: in touch, in conversation, in listening and in seeing, in the back and forth of ideas, intimate exchanges that say I am here and you are here…
Your Host and Friend,
Jeff
