“Technically difficult,” “logistically doubtful,” politically improbable,” “you’re crazy, but good luck,”….I’ve heard it before.
Sitting in my studio one day, about a year after Bridge Music was launched, it occurred to me that whenever anyone asked “what’s next?” I would say something to the effect of “getting to play music on the Eiffel Tower, my original inspiration, would be nice.” Yet I had done nothing to start down that road. I knew that I would pursue it someday, but realized that I could benefit from sustaining the momentum of Bridge Music now and advantageously continue the personal relationships I had developed with politicians, cultural organizations, the music industry and the media. I would only be hurting myself to wait for some mythical, future “right time.”
It seemed as if I was starting all over again from scratch, but my great wife framed it this way:
I wasn’t in the first year of developing Tower Music. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was in the middle
of a 10 year project….the five years it took me to develop Bridge Music was a necessary prelude.
She was so right, for later when I was actually pitching Tower Music to SETE, the Eiffel Tower administration, they remarked, unsolicited, that Bridge Music was my “proof-of-concept” for Tower Music (what great spirit was displayed by the offices and agencies in upstate New York, allowing me the latitude to create Bridge Music…thank you everyone).
This still left me with the challenges presented in not knowing the French language and knowing no one in Paris.
The first challenge was easily solvable and, with an early Christmas present of conversational French CDs, I began learning French, very loosely speaking (…excuse moi de vous deranger monsieur, jai un probleme…je ne parle pas francais, parlez-vous anglais?).
As for the second issue, a very wise man (you know who you are) once told me “If it’s true what they say about ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know,’ then find out who you have to know and go meet them!” Stellar advice
So now my job was to find out who it was I needed to know.