the year of travel and adventure®...

ladies and gentleladies, meshell ndegeocello and the spirit music jamia present...

the lisa/deshi european tour!!!!

ok, so maybe not.

but close!

some of you already know from lisa's earlier posting that she and i are embarking on a two-country european tour to catch our hands-down-favorite-artist meshell ndegeocello in concert with her new project, the spirit music jamia.

i've been hesitant to blog about this because i didn't have all the necessary visas in hand to be absolutely fucking sure that i was indeed going. and i'm superstitious like that. but i just picked up my passport, freshly stamped with british and dutch visas, and am so ready to go!

basically it all started after i came back from bangladesh in january, feeling sad and blue that my vacation was over. so my way of getting past the sad and blue was to make a determination to myself that 2005 would be the year of travel and adventure!®. in light of that proclamation, i began listing out countries i wanted to visit, and one of the top five was the netherlands (or, specifically, the city of amsterdam). well, wouldntcha know as i was browsing through the freemyheart website, i came across meshell/smj's european tour dates and almost instantly formulated a plan in my head. i mean, i was already getting impatient with the fact that meshell hadn't been in chicago for over two years, not to mention i was dying to see smj live. by the way if you haven't heard their recently released cd dance of the infidels, you are sooooo missing out!!! so i figured, fuck it. cuz you know, sometimes you just gotta say fuck it. if she won't come to me, i'll just have to take my ass to europe. and since amsterdam was already on my list, i figured i'd just use the smj concert as my official excuse to spend money i don't need to be spending on a trip to amsterdam! meshell ndegeocello always makes for great excuses in my life. word up (shout out to summer!).

well, the next problem was deciding if i should go it alone, or if i should drag a friend with me. i scanned through the list of friends in my head, (which took me like four hours... haha just kidding!) and realized that none of my friends shared my passion for meshell's music. in fact, most of my friends don't even own her cd's as much as i try to shove her music down their throats! so, i figured i'd just wing it by myself. after all, i'd never visited a foreign country by myself so it would really be an adventure. in line with 2005 being the year of travel and adventure!® of course!

but then it dawned on me. the one person i know (a blogger whom i've met in real life) who would actually embark on such a crazy journey... is lisa!!!

so i sent her an email, (albeit a little skeptical as to whether or not she'd just think i was a babbling fool) laying out the plan and asking her if she'd be interested in joining me. and true to her meshell roots, she was as ecstatic about the idea as i was and had even thought about doing it on her own until she checked ticket prices.

and the rest is history. or soon to be, once we get back. ;)

so, we leave next wednesday and arrive in london the following morning. a british airways special offer ended up getting us two free nights in london which of course worked out extremely well because we'll be attending the meshell/smj show at london's jazz cafe on friday night. then the next morning we arrive in amsterdam, catch meshell/smj (yes, again! pay attention!) that night, and then just chill in amsterdam for a few days before heading back to the good 'ol u s of a.

i'm so excited, i can hardly contain myself! i'm feeling all kindsa grown up now. i'm telling you man... 2005 is the year of travel and adventure!®.