When this adventure across the pond began, I didn’t see a Rolling Stones concert on my radar. Yet there I stood with a huge mass of humanity the other day. Keith Richards mentioned he was happy to be here or anywhere for that matter. There was a best seller about his life and plenty of other reports about his life out there to testify to his statement.
I was glad to be there too. Great energy for a group of us advanced people. I saw a lot of my peer group in attendance, we are getting old. I met some grandpa aged men who told me they follow the Stones any time they tour in Europe. Followers of the Grateful Dead were called “dead heads”. Are followers of the Stones referred to as “stoners”?
But this is not a review of the performance. This is about how it took me almost 33 years to get to a Stones concert. I do not recall what that tour was named. This tour is named FIRE 2014.
I had a back stage pass to a tour that the Stones did in December 1981. Only I didn’t make it to that show as the place I was living burned to the ground and I became to distraught to cope.
I could not stop my pity party to go party with the Stones.
This past week back in Sedona a Forest fire consumed the landscape. Hundreds of acres of beautiful views destroyed by the flames. Once upon a time I had been a volunteer firefighter in Sedona. We trained for just that kind of event every year. We were told it was not a matter of “if” but more likely “when”. It seems “when” finally arrived. Fortunately no homes or lives were destroyed in the fire.
I know first hand what loosing everything materially feels like. That fire in my life was just the beginning of an ending. The best lesson I took from the fire in my life was not to get attached to material things.
The stories of the Phoenix rising out of the flame have materially appeared in my life. Giving me the opportunity to do something I had planned on doing some decades ago. So even thou Mick and the boys have gotten older they still can rock and roll. SedonaStella sang along.