Eventually, I acclimatized fairly well to life in Reykjavik. The perpetual daylight of high summer was psychologically harder to take than December darkness. I’m not sure how to explain it - the locals certainly did not agree with me. But while there are at least a few hours of low light in the winter, there is NO darkness in the summer at all. Plays havoc with your circadian rhythm.
I put together a very successful band and a decent career as an English teacher. I learned Icelandic (a devilishly difficult language) well enough to understand simple conversations and 90% of what I read in the papers. Carrying on a conversation above 4th grade level eluded me, as did deeper integration into the insular Icelandic society, and I made the decision to return to Canada. Divorce #1 had been in the works for a long time anyway; the need to return to N America and live in an environment in which I could fully function linguistically was just the catalyst. My daughters were 13 and 10 when boarded my flight to Kennedy Airport. They would stay with mom for the next 10 years but I always remained close with them, flying to Reykjavik annually and having them stay with me in Toronto over the summer months.
I was in my mid-40’s, and had not yet settled into the career that would eventually become my bread and butter until - and beyond - my retirement. Once back in Toronto, I looked for English teaching gigs but my heart wasn’t in it. I realized it was time to finally do music full-time. The first few years brutal, the following two and a half decades merely tough. Deciding on a musical career - especially in one’s mid-40’s - is like taking a vow of poverty. Even my very best year in music never yielded more than about 35K. A more typical year for a musician is closer to 20 - 25K annually. I saw the meteoric careers of my peers who were doctors and engineers. They were buying summer cottages and sports cars, and living la viva loca, ncluding cruises and exotic vacations. I only ever bought a brand new car once in my whole life - and that was after my dad’s passing, from his life insurance money. On the plus side - a HUGE plus side - I have always been the master of my time. I hustled like nobody’s business to get better and better gigs and to eventually make it into the insular jazz clique of Toronto. I played the Toronto jazz festival a few times, as well as many prestigious venues - in addition to every sketchy dive and tavern that booked jazz in order to elevate their cache.
On one of my trips to Reykjavik, I met my Icelandic wife #2. She was beautiful and smart with a degree in clinical psychology. She was also 14 years my junior which was wonderful at first but eventually proved a bridge too difficult to cross. We stayed together for 15 years, and, once again, towards the end of that long run, I caved to her demand that almost brought on yet another nervous breakdown. We lived in a great two bedroom condo in mid-town Toronto that I became truly attached to. It was convenient to shopping, restaurants, great cafes, my favorite bagel joint and it was right on a subway line, 20 minutes to downtown. My wife, however, insisted on being a house owner and tirelessly whittled my will down over a number of years until I gave in, naturally against my better judgement. Like in my first marriage, the handwriting had already been on the wall, but the move away from my beloved condo to a house in the northern suburbs, with a nice back yard and deck but far from any amenities I consider important (like a decent coffee shop) was the breaking point.
I was now in my late 50’s and absolutely determined to finally move to where *I* wanted to live: not a quiet suburban house and most certainly the northern-most capital in the world. It was time to fulfill my life-long dream of moving to the United States of America. It took well over a year and about 6 thousand dollars in lawyer fees but I managed to get a 3 year visa in the O-1 category (awarded to “aliens of extraordinary merit”) I may have doubted my extraordinary merit when I looked at my tax returns, but the Department of Homeland Security of the United States of America thought I deserved the designation - and who am I to argue with DHS bureaucrats? And so I made my 6th international move (have you been counting with me?) and relocated to Orlando, FL in December 2011.
I loved EVERYTHING about living in Florida. No more Canadian winters. No more Toronto champagne socialism. No more compromises. This was MY move. I was lucky to have an agent lined up and was able to start working almost immediately. I worked as a studio musician at Full Sail University, did a couple of years at Disney, played some amazing venues in Orlando with truly some of the best musicians in the world - even befriending one of the seminal jazz guitarists of the 20th century, the late, great Larry Coryell. Best of all, through a chain of crazy circumstances (a topic for another Substack), I met Diane, wife #3, born the same year as me which means we share the same musical memories, TV memories and, most importantly, love the same kind of humor: we laugh together all the time.
But there was nothing in my previous 67 years, not the Soviet invasion of 1968, not the Yom Kippur War of 1973, not my unsettled, itinerant lifestyle that could have prepared me for March 2020. What the world governments wrought, in tandem, in response to a respiratory virus, is a million times worse than anything I had experienced before. 1968 was the collapse of an experiment in “liberal socialism”. 1973 was a personal tragedy for me, as well as a national tragedy in Israel. My unsettled life, often brought about through other people’s decisions, left me with psychological scars. But March 2020 was a world-wide cataclysm from which it will take a century to recover - even if millions have not yet understood it. Everything we are experiencing today - a hobbled economy, inflation, mental and physical diseases of unprecedented proportions, the first European war since 1999 and the first major conflict in Europe since 1945, the lost freedom, the masking and vaccination hysteria, the mandates, the looming fascism almost everywhere - all of it is the result of March 2020. Note the wording: NOT the result of the “pandemic” (such as it was) It’s the direct result of what governments have done to we, the people.
That’s it. That’s the kvetch. I certainly never thought as my parents and I were crossing the Austrian border in September of 1968, that I would be sitting in Central Florida in October 2022, fearing for the future of freedom in America. What a reversal of fortunes! Among all the world leaders, it’s now Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin, the ex-KGB agent, the guy who’s been known to dispatch a personal enemy or three, who alone sounds like an adult. I don’t think the children in the White House or 10 Downing Street have any idea what’s going on. Rome is definitely burning but Biden can barely put two sentences together, let alone play the fiddle
The paragraph that starts “but there was nothing...” made tears jump to my eyes, you’re so right and it makes me so sad.
Thanks again George. We were in Florida in Feb 2020 and knew right off that the narrative was a lie. While we tried to ignore every dictate from the gov. we all suffered from the psychological abuse from our supposed democratic leaders. Up here in MB we were told to rat out our friends and neighbors. And many did. I still can't quite understand how tonprocess it all. Our family has had personal tragedy, but the last 3 years have been harder somehow.