INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

FIELD WORK AND EULOGY

Author's note: The present chapter is written to a great point just for the narration's needs. It doesn't refer that much to feelings nor is it psychobiography at all. The reason why I wrote it isn't because I actually was in need of that, but more because I had to fill up the heroine's personality. That's why I got too tired after writing it and I cannot say that I was very excited during its writing process, as it is full of  musicological and ethnological information, which is completely irrelevant to my psyche, thus Ingrid's psyche.

Only in the final paragraphs it starts to become again a psychobiography, just like in the start.

During Easter 2016, the Celtic festival took place in Gweedore for the fifth time. However, this time things were different. Now I was a resident of the village, thus I didn't have to book flight tickets nor should I be in a hurry and a rush for anything. Moreover, this time the festival wasn't organised by the Association. The head was me and we decided to organise it as part of Orchidea's Tales, so that we could also include storytelling. Also, this was the first year that I did the storytelling myself, as the other girl moved permanently to the States. And of course, it was expected that I would also sing. The truth was that I wasn't feeling any shy to sing there.

Soon after the festival, we decided that we would start composing our fourth album. But I had quite a few ideas about what I should do. The album's theme was indeed clear, that is Romantic-inspired lyrics and a tragic consequence, caused by the hero's innocence and ignorance, just like in Shakespeare's plays and Sonnets, the operas and ancient Greek drama. However, the musical style wasn't specified yet. And it seemed that we were moving even further from progressive rock. But I can't lie about it. I'm probably to blame for the fact that, because of the band, I lost my innocence in a very young age, however every day was worser for me and I was feeling terrible distress. I felt the need to leave, because I couldn't stand seeing constantly the same faces. I needed to get into a faraway place for some time. And this is what I did!

Soon after Easter time, I decided to do the ethnomusicologist's job. The music I would write was clearly going to be inspired from journeys to other cultures. I wanted to embark on a ship and sail away, just like my grandpa, until I reached a shore. So, I thought I should leave along with the band and do a field work. But the issue was that we didn't know where we would go. When I asked the others' opinion, Lydia replied to me: "The idea was yours. You choose". Ok, this is not how things are going. As long as we are a band, all of us have to take decisions together and not just throw the book to a single person, because then we are prone to misunderstandings about lack of democracy. Anyway, I let this one slide. But as for the others, even though they were really into setting off for this journey, they weren't willing to help me organise it at all. And as I'm not this kind of person who will get in an argument, I surrendered, as I always used to do,  and put down my ass in order to organise the field work all by myself.

There were a few places, in which I'd like to travel, because I was interested about them since a very young age. And these were the places, where the Sea Peoples used to come from in antiquity. When I was young, my dad, as an ethnology graduate, always used to play Middle Eastern music, but also music from the countries of the Mediterranean Sea: Egypt, Israel and Lebanon, but later I also liked listening alone to Armenian music played with zither. These styles had some things in common with Greek music too, so as a musician I was able to notice those similarities. That's why I decided we would go there, in order to do an ethno-musicological field work. I have to admit that the bureaucracy made it really difficult for me to organise the journey (let alone the fact that the others weren't helping at all), because these weren't countries one would visit every day, not even as a tourist. Thus I had to find places to stay, which were clean and safe. Luckily Johanna helped me with that, otherwise it would be impossible for me to organise it all alone.