Did our tour really happen? I ask myself this question when I catch myself taking a step back and assessing our present, in the aftermath of our year-long adventure. We’ve had messages asking us about what we’ve been up to, what we’ve been doing.
Ah, doing. MKIO has been in a state of doing since its inception. Always busy, always being productive, always on the move. And for the first time since the beginning we’ve decided to go inactive for a bit. Didn’t really plan the inactivity. It sort’ve just happened….it’s what we all needed. We needed to rebuild our lives, our selves, re-find our souls. I for one have been hard at work at a day job, paying off all the debt I acquired on tour.
The tour was worth every bit of work that I have to do now for it. Such an amazing, enriching experience. I had no expectations when I went on the road….I just wanted to have the experience of being a full-time musician, adventuring throughout the country, meeting new people, and getting to play music every night. I think I was searching for a piece of myself, but then again that’s usually my modus operandi. I came back with no words to write. I would sit in front of a song for days, weeks at a time with no message worth writing. And so I set it down for a while. I decided to explore different art forms for a bit….have taken up modern dance and drawing. I love dance so much…it’s music in motion for me, a chance to express myself in a completely different way.
I went to classical music concerts, ran a lot, did a lot of yoga, read some books, and spent more time with my very dear friends that I missed so much during the time I had been so busy with the band. And it was through all these little bits of joy in my life that I’ve started hearing words again…
Don’t get me wrong. I actually have been writing songs all along. But they’ve been so different than what I’ve written in the past that I haven’t known where to put them. So I ended up discounting these songs for a while…they mustn’t count if I don’t know what they are, right? Are they Mankind songs? It’s funny how the unknown makes you mistrust yourself.
All of us write so differently now. But it’s when I realized that we all love eachothers work and love working with each other, I guess it really didn’t matter what we call it. It’s just nice to make music, no matter where it fits. When I realized that, I think I re-found music.
We have beautiful plans and visions of the future, but right now we’re just letting ourselves make whatever comes out, with no expectations and no pressure of time. For this reason we haven’t been booking any live shows. I think we really want to be happy with what we make before we share it out. But we miss you all. A lot. It means the world to me when I get little messages here and there from people just saying hello. Hello my friends! We haven’t forgotten you at all…see you soon!