It has been quite a week in Duranland, hasn’t it? I cannot remember a week like this in such a long time. First, there was a tweet announcing there would be an announcement. Then, the announcement itself was posted. Finally, another tweet appeared on Friday prompting more wonder and speculation. Since then, the Duran parts of my social media profiles have been a flurry of activity with many people sharing many of those posts as well as others created by fans in excitement over the forthcoming single and, hopefully soon, album. I have remained relatively quiet about it all on social media as it has been an extremely busy week for me. Since I have access to this little blog here and more time to ponder it all, I thought I might share my thoughts and opinions about it all.
The first big tweet, post, etc. that DDHQ posted was on Tuesday, May 11th.
As you can see, it was a simple message but it certainly got the Duran fan community chatting. Some people just expressed excitement but many others began to speculate. What could it be? The most obvious answer was that it had something to the new single, especially as images were shared online from a supposed video shoot. Of course, Rhonda and I texted each other as we do when there is an “Official Duranie Alert.” We also speculated and shot down various ideas. Both of us worried that we would be too busy to really respond when the official announcement would be made. I have to laugh in thinking about our texts. We have been through this sort of this so many times that we instantly fell back into the same pattern. One of us would share a guess about the news while the other agreed. Then, there would be a comment about what other fans were saying and we would either share our agreement with that speculation or shoot it down. Anyone else experience something like this or are we weird? Never mind. Don’t answer. We obviously like to question everything then question it again. We left our discussion without much of a theory beyond something about the new single. It seemed like the safest, most logical bet.
Wednesday arrived with an early morning announcement about Duran Duran performing at the Billboard Music Awards on May 23rd.
In this case, I saw it first and texted to Rhonda. At first, we didn’t realize that the band would be performing the new single that night, which left us wondering if there was something more to the story. Don’t get me wrong. Of course, we love to hear that there is a performance in the works but we weren’t sure it rose to the level of the “big announcement tweet”. Then, later, we saw that it wasn’t going to be just a random performance of Hungry Like the Wolf or some other hit that they have played literally millions of time but something new. That is something certainly way more exciting! I love having something to look forward to, especially on a Sunday night. I don’t know about the rest of you but Sunday nights are not my favorite as I usually have a long week of work ahead of me. In recent years, I have tried to do something fun or at least relaxing on Sunday nights to have something to look forward to, something so that I don’t dread the end of my weekend. This kind of thing is perfect! That being said, I have to admit that I wasn’t as excited as I thought I would be, which makes zero sense. As I thought about it more, it hit me. There is a part of me that doesn’t believe it. There will really be a new Duran song? There will really be a new performance? It won’t be something in the past but something present, something happening now. I think I almost forgot what it was like to look forward to something like this!
Then, yesterday, the band tweets out a rather cryptic tweet:
Rhonda texted me about it as I was picking up groceries so I couldn’t really look right away but I checked it out as soon as I could. The whole dang thing got me thinking. What do the words mean: “Quiet one is a life without a voice.” The single is going to be called Invisible, right? Those words don’t have to do with visuals but sound. Then again, someone could feel invisible if they are silenced. Then, there is the visual, which is a 15 second gif of an unclear image within a sea of green. Is that a person who is invisible? Does that person blend into the background? If all that was not enough, a twitter handle is included that leads to an account that joined twitter in June 2018 and whose tweets are protected. This account follows no one but has some unknown followers. All of this has got me thinking. What does it mean? What is this tweet trying to tell us? Rhonda and I love this kind of thing. I’m not even going to lie here. A tweet like this almost gets me more excited than finding out about the upcoming performance, mostly because I get to focus on figuring something out, on providing an interpretation. It reminds me that Duran is still that art school band that they were when they first formed over 40 years ago. My Duranie heart loves that.
I don’t know about the rest of you but things are definitely feeling more exciting, more hopeful, more normal than they have for a long time. I have a feeling that the restarted excitement that I have been feeling this week will only increase from here. I cannot wait to see what comes next! How about the rest of you? How are you feeling about it all?
-A
