Leaving a Light On…

Time is funny.  I have been back home since Sunday and haven’t really blogged since then.  I have been watching, reading and reacting to Rhonda’s posts.  In many ways, my feelings since I returned from the UK haven’t changed and, in other ways, they have changed.  During the course of this week, nothing much has changed with the band.  Yes, they postponed the rest of the UK tour but I knew that was coming.  They are still scheduled to play in Berlin next Wednesday.  I’m sure I am not the only one anxiously awaiting that day.  Obviously, I hope that Simon is able to sing and that the show will go on as planned.  Yet, I live in fear that it won’t.  I’m probably not the only one feeling that, either.

Over the course of the 9 days in the UK, Rhonda and I had many conversations about many topics.  One of those discussions came at the end of the trip, after we knew that the show in London had been postponed.  In that discussion, we acknowledged Duran’s role in our lives.  In fact, we couldn’t think of anything we had loved as long in our lives beyond our immediate family and that which might be connected to it.  Duran was the first thing we loved independently of our family and it is a love that has lasted for decades for us, personally.  The truth is that we are all scared.  We are all scared to death that Simon won’t improve and that Duran won’t be able to continue, at least not in the way we have come to expect.  I hate even typing those words but that is our fear.  Interestingly enough, after we admitted to each other and to ourselves that we have loved for Duran for that long, we also acknowledged that we wouldn’t know what to do if there was no more Duran.  Would Rhonda and I still talk?  Would we still get together?  Would we still travel together?  The answer to all of those questions is yes.  Easy.  Yet, we both could acknowledge that something would be missing from our lives.  Something huge.  Something monumental.  Something essential. 

Like most fans out there, Rhonda and I have full lives.  We are both extremely busy people.  We could definitely survive without Duran but…we wouldn’t be happy.  Duran is an escape of sorts.  The band pushes us out of our normal everyday existence.  Would we be able to do our daily tasks as well without that escape?  I actually doubt it.  I am about to end another school year, which always causes my emotions to run high.  Yet, I know, deep in my heart, that I have been able to teach for as long as I have due in part to them.  They have provided me with something intangible but real that allows me to get up every morning and do what must be done.  Who knows what I would be like every morning, every day without that.  Then, Duran has pushed me out of my shell in many ways.  The most obvious example here is that I did not travel much before going on “tour”.  Now, I have been to many, many cities and some of them more than once because of Duran.  I’m forever grateful for that.  Of course, I have met many people because of them as well.  Some of those people, like Rhonda, have become lifelong friends.  Again, I’m forever grateful.

Obviously, I’m still hoping that everything is okay, that Simon will be able to sing next week and that the rest of the tour goes on as planned.  This, then, would just be a blip on the radar of Duran’s history–a little something but nothing super significant.  I’m also trying to prepare myself that this might take longer than that.  It did in 1993.  Will it take longer than the four months it did then?  Maybe.  Here is what I do know.  I’ll still be here in a week or in a few months or in a few years.  I’m always going to leave a light on for Duran.  They mean too much to me to just let them go that easily. 

-A