A walk in the woods
So, this week I’ve been mostly trying to get us to Ecuador. The plan, the dream, the vision, etc is to take our splendid, young and totally-up-for-it sound & film crew from Bournemouth University deep, deep, deep into the forests and then leave them there to be consumed by bugs and creatures and mulch. Hmm… that’s not right, although there’s probably a movie idea in there somewhere, with a series of ever-more-preposterous sequels no doubt. But ack-chew-leigh, we want to record the sounds of the forests for possible, indeed probable, inclusion on the album and the sights for our promotional film, which is certainly taking shape in terms of interviews with our contributing musicians. Now, here’s the even more interesting bit than the last interesting bit; we want to take Vivienne Westwood with us! Yes indeedy. Dom and I saw Vivienne talk at a discussion on Arts & Ecology at the RSA a few months back and were both totally blown away by VW’s passion for the rainforests; imagine the awareness we could raise with her support. We might even get to meet Ecuador’s president. So we’ve asked, and we wait. And then we thought it would be great if Virgin Atlantic could help get us there; Sir Richard Branson has committed $3bn over the next 10 years to fight global warming and we’ve heard a little rumour that he’s a bit interested in music (he had a shop or something), so the perfect choice, non? And then right, get this, I’m chatting with my friend Mandy over Skype (we both wore masks, but don’t ask) and she mentioned that at Virgin Atlantic’s 25th birthday celebrations, who should be on the guestlist but none other than Vivienne Westwood! I allowed myself a small squeal of delight. Are the planets aligning on this? Fingers, toes and everything-else-crossable crossed. I’ve also sent a proposal to Radio4 this week as I reckon our journey would make for marvellous, arresting and inspiring radio, And finally, could I just give a grateful shout out to Anna Francis at Mango PR who has offered to help us out with getting ground support from tour companies in Latin America. I’m constantly heartened by the level of generosity shown to us at Ginkgo Music; humans are alright.