Month: July 2021

It’s too soon to tell | 2020

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

playlist: album 2020 by Bon Jovi (October 2020)

bon-jovi-do-what-you-can-videoThis morning, when I gave myself YouTube time in bed before I got up to start this first day after my birthday, I watched a video of the restoration of an army lighter, found on the beaches of Normandy.

I think my YouTube channel translated the title of the video, so I have no idea how the video is called where you live, but here it is:
UITERST Zeldzame lichtere restauratie Wereldoorlog 2 D-Day 1944

And watching the video made me so happy!
I had already had an amazing birthday, but to see how even this lighter which was in the poorest of shapes, could be brought back to a shiny, fully functioning lighter, with love, time, and skill?
That made my day. 

It really was the icing on the cake, a reminder that even when things look really bad?
And with certainty beyond saving, beyond repair, beyond giving it any place in our living, breathing daily life because whatever this is or used to be?
It’s definitely useless now.

That even that one particular thing, that you were about to Marie Kondo out of your home, has just a good a chance of becoming the eye catcher of your collection, your turning point from when things went up, or the platform from where your life took off, as any other more shiny, more obvious object.

But I already knew that.
Knowing that you should not be too quick in your verdict, had been the main reason why my birthday had started off on such a high, and why I knew I had nothing to be ashamed off.

That despite that gnawing feeling that haunted me since the start of the pandemic, there were actually no real signs my 2020-2021 had indeed been one big failure.
Quite the opposite, in fact.

Because over the course of the last few weeks everything with regard to my Bon Jovi related blogs, YouTube channel, yoga plans, are coming back to life and are coming together as well!
I even feel inspired to pick up my Dutch yoga channel, and other projects or ideas that I started in 2020, but that I couldn’t bring into fruition or I dropped out of.

All ideas are coming back as shiny and new as that second world war lighter.

But the biggest shift in perspective has been when I started organizing my writing under an alterego, dusting off old diaries I stop-started, and articles I published when I thought I was having the worst year of my life.
When I felt so alone, so disconnected and angry with the rest of humanity who in my eyes were an untrustworthy bunch of motherfuckers who were not taking responsibility for every motherfucking thing they had created before Covid;
And now they were all just a little too keen to throw it all on the virus.

While Jon Bon Jovi was washing dishes for his charity organization, when the first chords of Do What You Can were written, and the band pulled back their 2020 March release of the album 2020, to review it, write more songs, and root it even deeper into being the topical, social conscious record it was already intended to be but that got to a whole new level now, obviously;
When all that constructive work was done by the band I admired, I was contemplating if it was possible to break up with humanity.

If I would become a bitcoin trader, would that mean I would never have to see anybody for my survival, on a day to day basis, ever again?
Was there a way I could stop contributing, stop creating?
And I never had to suppress the desire to destroy all my work as often as I have the past 16 months.

There is an African proverb:
“A child that is not embraced by the village, will burn it down to feel its warmth” 
I didn’t need to burn the village, I could burn my own work and the only thing that kept me from it was knowing I would regret it in the future.

That ultimately, regardless of how my life would go, I would need a pen, a blog, a typewriter, SOMETHING! To let go, to express, and if it would all end up oxidized on a deserted beach I was as fine with that as anything.
I didn’t care.

But I did know not to burn the pen, the paper, the typewriter, and also not the old diaries and my old work which I ve learned are of value just for being there, or for being here in my filing cabinet.
They give off a reassuring, comforting glow.

But yes, it was an incredibly tough year, and my work under that alterego and here too, was a mess. I didn’t expect anything of use to come of it.
And then this week, with a big sigh, I dived in and started going through that work and I found a piece I had written two weeks into the pandemic, late March 2020.
And it blew me away….

Like a series of bombs, a sequence of hardcore raw, emotional, truth calling posts exploded in my head and I saw what I thought had been my absolute worst year, the 16 months of pandemic, which would soon include a whole year between birthdays, and a time in my life where for the very first time ever, I had absolutely nothing positive to say about it, from an artistic perspective;
That this work had a high chance of being the best I ever created.

And it could only have been written in that lonely, cut-offness from the world.

My agenda is filling up with dates again.
Summer 2021, and the new year of my life, is the moment when my life is returning to the way it was and added on top of that are new ways of communicating, new websites, new projects, new ways of artistic communication with the world.
All social nourishment which will mean the months ahead will not have the same energy as 2020-2021. I will not be able to recreate what I did then.

And that’s what I mean when I titled this post Too soon to tell.
I don’t mean that if you went through personal tragedy and hardship, it is too soon to tell that you had a horrible time.
You are allowed to grieve and give yourself time to process, recover and regroup.

But if you, like I did, have a bad feeling about 2020-2021 professionally? Artistically?
In the sense of what you have accomplished? 
Or you have a bad feeling about it, psychologically?
Because you don’t feel like the pandemic has made you more resilient, nor agile, nor that you acquired or learned anything you will fall back on in the future?

Then trust me:
It is too soon to tell.

Maybe “tell” is not the right word. It is too soon to SEE.
Because I can tell you right now;
2020-2021 is not what you think it is, or was.

It might look like a green oxidized chunk of metal.
But after cleaning, polishing, and restoring it,
2020 can light a fire so bright, it will warm you for the rest of your life.  

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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Red Virgin | Live From London

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

video: at 2:40 the fan who also knew red lipstick is key, in making your mark 

live from london audience red lipstick

There have been many things that messed me up.
Some bad of course. Like breakups that had the side-effect of breaking me, instead of merely putting an end to a relationship.
Or the humiliating experience when I realized that I would never be able to do things, other people can, without wanting to blow something up.
And out of courtesy, I would choose to blow up my own creative work,  I wouldn’t harm anybody not even myself.
But still. Not good for the ego.
.
In my twenties I was beaten several times in a row, in a memory card game, by a four year old.
That was funny, I thought. And not humiliating at all.
But realizing many of the things people commit to, do on a daily basis, allow for, and so on, when I know I would not make it until noon?
Painful.

However, the absolutely most staggering experience of failure is when the downfall and the failure comes from  a HUGE success! 
Something that went really well, and that you looked forward to learning from and fall back on, and that gave you the feeling you had discovered the secret to life, and boom!
Flat on the face!

The experience, the wisdom, the insight you intended to use as the foundation of your very life, bottomed out before you could even sit on it, lean back, and watch your life unfold in its now perfectly aligned order.

To me, one of those experiences was the Bon Jovi concert in 2019.
It was a PEAK experience (I m capitalizing, to emphasize the elements of success)
which I PREPARED in every way I could
(visiting the location, studying maps, knowing the regulations, studying set lists, videos and lyrics, dressing for the occasion, packing my tiny handbag with the precision of a Mount Everest climber)
and then I WALLED OFF all distractions on the day itself.

I was that one fan who did not make any recordings, did not take one selfie, and I did not post anything on social media.
.
Around 10.45 P.M. I made my way out of the park with everybody else. My ears were ringing, my gums were tingling, and I looked at all the people who had also been there attending that same concert, yet looked so different… 
It took a while before I realized they had attended the concert in a “normal” way. Hanging out with friends, making new ones. They had had something to eat at the many food stalls, drank a few beers, had used the bathroom a time or two I imagine.

And tomorrow they would probably go back to work in a job I would not be able to keep on a good day, let alone the day after an open-air concert on the other side of the country.

To illustrate:
My Bon Jovi concert was in the middle of what proved to be not a one, but a three week period where I ignored e-v’ry-thing. Unknowingly even!
But I was just so absorbed by it, that weeks later I had to contact the landlord of my yoga studio because I had not missed one but two monthly payments!
I had the money, but I just had not attended to my finances.
I had not attended, to anything.

The price had been a lot higher than anticipated (I m not even going to try to describe the mental fallout!) but I was super grateful, and determined to milk this experience for everything it had to offer me.
I still reap the benefits of it.
Daily Bon Jovi Yoga is finally taking flight because it has found its new format the past 24 hours, and that idea was born on that day in 2019.
So it’s not that I didn’t know I had gold, just that the concert recipe of success turned out to be non-repeatable.

You can, or perhaps it’s better to say “I can”, PREPARE for PEAK experiences WALLING OFF all you want, in an attempt to then create a unique experience;
It doesn’t work that way.
You can’t reverse engineer your way through life.
Or I can’t.

One of the painful lessons I learned is that just because I enjoyed preparing the f out of my Bon Jovi concert, does not mean that by preparing something I will automatically create something I enjoy.

In recent years I ve had a couple of job interviews for higher level jobs, and the interviews always went really well.
But it made me oh so resentful….
I would not say I started hating them, but I definitely started resenting such a company for having already “taken” hours (I gave them myself, obviously it was not their fault at all) or days of my time, where I got my head around their production process, their money flows, their customers.
Meanwhile my own daily purpose work had suffered, just like my payments to my landlord had suffered when I had all eyes on Bon Jovi. 

Preparing for something the way I did for a Bon Jovi concert is a process that comes at HUGE costs, and that you can’t just copy-paste-repeat in areas of your life where you strive for worldly success.
So my peak experience at Bon Jovi, didn’t really have applicable lessons the way I thought it would because the key element had been my favorite rock band visiting the park next to my house.
And that was the only situation it was going to work.

I remember my mother complimenting me that I knew a forest nearby so well. I had printed maps, combined routes, but what my mother didn’t know was that the interest had not lasted.
“It didn’t stick,” I said. “And unless Jon Bon Jovi is appointed as forester, I am just not that into it.”

I need to be deeply interested in something, in order to prepare, wall off, and create a peak experience around it. And in all likeliness it’s going to take a man I m into, in order for it to get to the level that Bon Jovi concert had.

Although these lessons have revealed themselves since that concert in 2019, I keep learning more.
The concert really is the proverbial well that keeps on giving!

Two things I learned that I want to share with you, are how this has all inspired me to finally get my head around Bon Jovi yoga. That vision I had in 2019 has taken a generous two years and counting, to take flight.
And the other one is about red lipstick, and I m going to save that one for last because that’s the most sexy one.

Okay, I know you now want to skip and move to the final paragraphs!
LOL
Hold on, I ll be quick, don’t worry.

I have (unexpectedly) given up on the idea of teaching Bon Jovi yoga, in a traditional sense of teaching, because I am not doing Bon Jovi yoga for myself. I m hardly doing any yoga, I m practically yoga free.

When you properly teach yoga (I was a teacher for 15+ years) you need to be doing yoga,
you need to be physically familiar with doing the poses,
and have a daily practice.

Honestly, because I have been doing yoga with Bon Jovi albums since 2019, I did expect that would turn into a daily yoga practice again. The sessions I did were fun, but I always dropped out.
A few years into my career as a yoga teacher, I became a writer as well, and that’s when it all started…
Writing is such an introspective profession, being alone on my mat became the last thing I needed.
I craved connection, not solitude. And having a yoga studio and teaching yoga fulfilled that need. And because I taught a lot of classes, it didn’t really matter that I started practicing less.

I am no longer a yoga teacher and before I went all-in on teaching daily Bon Jovi yoga on YouTube, 
I wanted to get back on my mat in private.
Which then did not happen.
And then Bon Jovi yoga on video also did not happen….

But now I ve flipped it around and I have decided to start “teaching” Bon Jovi yoga online anyway!
As a fan, just like you. Not as a yoga teacher.

All my yoga will be in the video, on screen.
I m SHARING what I do.
Instead of secretly yoga-ing my ass off off-screen and then showing up all poised and in control, and very professional; No.
I m going to show up as the hot, sexy, no-longer professional but definitely more fun than ever Daily Bon Jovi  Yoga practitioner, and we can all laugh en enjoy ourselves as we have fun on the mat.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel HERE 
And the first Daily Bon Jovi Yoga video will go up this week! 
It will be called Runaway, and I ll be taking it up from there, going through the entire catalog.

If you are such a big fan that you re now wondering if I ll be going album by album, and do the deep cuts separately?
Sign up!
You’re the ideal viewer for this series, and I mean it.

But no it’s all integrated. Deep cuts will be done within the chronological order of the albums.

I already made a study of 102 lesser known songs, and although YouTube has removed some of them in the complementary playlist I made, I created the list in writing as well, so the groundwork is already done.
102 Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – 2020
These deep cuts (I think I ll drop the covers, but have not made up my mind) will be incorporated in the series I ll be doing on YouTube. 

One more deep cut paragraph for die-est hardest of fans: 
“Let’s Make It Baby” will be made into a (very sexy I reckon) video for both the New Jersey album as well as These Days. And if you re still with me, and you can immediately “file” this remark in your head and think: “Okay, that makes sense.”
Please sign up because you re so going to love Daily Bon Jovi Yoga on my YouTube!

Remember, as I told you, I m no longer practicing yoga offline, off-screen, so I m practically as new to yoga as you are.
These videos will require zero yoga habit from me, nor from you!
You do not have to be limber or athletic to join. And as it’s on YouTube and created NOW, it’s as much about connection and laughter, as it is about yoga.

So Daily Bon Jovi Yoga. Subscribe HERE. Coming soon.

And then: Lipstick time!

Last year, in a moment of honesty and boldness that I rarely have, I posted a photo and wrote a post about it even I think, about buying condoms and two red lip pencils, to express my faith in restoring my sex life.
And this weekend, I bought new condoms and a mascara called Fear Me, and also a red lipstick. The name was  Red Virgin! 
How could I not fall for that, what an intriguing name.

I had already started with the introductory videos on the channel, wearing red lipstick, and I knew that was the right look for it.
But also: The condom and lip pencil investment early pandemic 2020, did work! 
I did not use all condoms but buying a few new packages and a new 2021 red lipstick this time (I ve also used up one of last year’s red pencils, and am on my second one) seemed like a smart thing to do.
I even took a photo, but unlike last year I do not feel bold enough to post it.

But it did got me thinking about red lipstick, and it brought back memories of the Wembley 1995 dvd (a 90 minute cut of the concert) where a woman with red lipstick plays an important role!
She’s very visible, and a photo of her has been used as a screen shot on YouTube, Vimeo, and during “You Give Love A Bad Name” she is edited in when the lyrics go:

“Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A school boy’s dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye”

Just like me, she prepared for this concert, and she did it well.

She looked so extraordinary, and had such stage presence even though she was part of the crowd.
She could not be ignored. I believe in business success, there is an adage:
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

The platinum blonde woman, with the red nails and the red lipstick in 1995 Wembley concert was so flamboyant and present in the moment. She could not be ignored.

But what I learned, in those two years since the Bon Jovi concert in 2019, is that the only reason she could do that, and be that, and that we still can’t take our eyes off her 25 years later;
Is because of the man, and the band that was ON stage.
She was in full connection with that energy.

And that’s the takeaway for me: 
I m never going to do yoga at home, any more than that woman in Wembley would dress up like that with nowhere to go.

My YouTube, is because I think we all need that place to go.
A place to shine and to buy red lipstick for.

Come join.
.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
Paypalme

.

LIVE FROM LONDON 

Red Virgin 
is the fifth chapter to
“Live from London
Take the stage, rock your life and rule the world”
Click on “Live from London” to read all chapters.

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NEW 2021: Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds 
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Exile On Main Street | work like a rock star

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

It is one of the few Rolling Stones albums I own that was not released when I was alive and aware of it. It is not related to concerts, it’s not one of their ample live albums. Nor is it from my father’s cd collection, which I inherited.
Exile on Main Street.

I have a 2010 double cd edition, and the sole reason I bought it is because the way it came about is illusive, and well documented too. I remember seeing an entire documentary although I have no idea where I saw it, it’s not on YouTube, currently.
The story of this album is what brought me to buy it.

At the time of the recording, The Stones were facing several professional, legal and financial adversities and trauma. They had shifted gears and had started their own record company, but things were far from settled.
The fate of The Stones was standing on the edge of a knife and the recording was a serious business undertaking.

Yet despite of that – or should we conclude “BECAUSE of that”? – at the Villa Nellcôte in the south of France where they were to write and record this album, numerous people stayed and visited, outside the band.
Socializing and fun were as much part of the recording process as writing and recording was.

from The Guardian:
“People appeared, disappeared, no one had a last name, you didn’t know who anybody was,” remembers Robert Greenfield, who was at Nellcôte to interview Keith Richards for Rolling Stone.
“There were 16 people for lunch, and lunch went on for three-and-a-half hours. It was an unparalleled cast of characters.”

Clipboard02There were the people who were with the band, most notably Keith’s partner Anita Pallenberg and their son Marlon. There were fellow musicians, other artists, groupies, technicians, record executives, journalists, and a drug dealer with his entire family.

I’m sure it raised eyebrows even then, but through a 2021 productivity obsessed-lens, the entire scene is downright unthinkable.
And yet, in particular in today’s age, it is so important to realize that chaos and creation always go together.
Chaos and art, always go together.

What lasts through the ages, is what was forged in the heat of something.

One of the things that has been torturing my brain, it’s like a puzzle that doesn’t seem to have an answer, is:
“Where is the art?”

With so many YouTube creators, instagram photographers, online storytellers and offline crafters and handworkers, more than ever before;
WHERE is the ART?!

Statistically speaking, something must have, should have, emerged by now.

And I m going to keep it to fields I know that if something happened there I would have known,
but here we go:
The yoga teacher who is an artist should have emerged.
The blogger who turns out to be the greatest writer of our age, should be known.
The YouTuber who is a performance artist, should be known.

In other words:
The Rolling Stones of our era, should be known.
Yet they are not….

A few weeks ago, I got into a very deep conversation about this, and ever since then the question of two decades of artists missing in action has been on my mind.
And the only solid explanation I had so far, was that the monetizable-ness of these new media has resulted in :
– creations directly being monetized by the creator (f.e. YouTube videos)
– creations supporting services or products that are sold (f.e. writing to sell your product or service)
– creations being shared to create a relationship with your audience

So the creations are very outcome based, whether for dollars or for likes.
And who can blame them, those savvy creators who no longer live hand over fist, but make their own living and absolutely thrive!

From a humanist point of view it’s all good. There has been an artistic revolution where creators can finally live of what they create, either
– from advertising revenue
– selling their art directly,
– by piggybacking selling a product or service onto their art
– or by establishing their own audience, their own fan base.

From the perspective of personal happiness and success, internet has revolutionized art. But, as was on my mind for the past few weeks, it also seems to have taken something from us….
Both collectively, as well as on an individual level.

Because I believe that we have not seen “the real” art, in the mediums I mentioned. 

It’s comparable to the middle ages:
Painters were seen as craftsmen. What woodworkers and leather workers did with wood and leather, they did with paint.
But during the renaissance, painters became artists:
Individual and unique creators.

Modern media is the medieval guild of the artists of today and tomorrow.
And they make a good living there.
The media provide a safe umbrella, just like the guilds did.

This topic, of the nature of art in relationship to modern media, had been on my mind for a while. And I was done thinking about it.
Until today when I encountered Exile on Main Street again, and noticed the difference in work routine then and now! It was so vastly different to what we are used to.

I think for the ones who are called, it would be a very interesting experiment to test our lives in those artistic rock star circumstances of Villa Nellcôte.
Circumstances under which all our routines are broken, and the only thing that comes out of it, is the thing that was created right there and then.

The thing that was forged in the heat of laughter, music, jokes;
Of excess, drama, tension.
Sex.

Art is not born by creating space for it, in neatly weekly intervals and by planning your days in advance.
It is not born at eight thirty AM on Monday morning.

But because you were without guild, without fans, without support, without structure, in a situation that is as chaotic as it is inspiring.

If you want to make a good living of your art, by all means, structure your life.
You are living in the age where financial freedom for artists is more accessible than ever.

But if you want to discover if there is any art left in you?
If you want to discover if you are an artist or not?

Unleash yourself. Strip away everything that can be stripped away.
Break all pattern, all routines, and say yes to everything and everybody at your doorstep.

And the art will come.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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