The World of Before You

We’ve heard the simplistic chestnut of wisdom a million times, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Catholic Buddhist here. Don’t believe in Hell. Lucky me. No, for me, the road paved with good intentions creates a far more perilous path – one of estrangement.

It is not enough to say you wish someone well. It is not enough to hope things get better. It is not enough to pray someone or something else will help. Bows and fairy dust and Band-aids are not enough.

Good intentions get you the cheap seats in this scenario. The nosebleed section is reserved for the slothful spectator watching a game while eating stale popcorn and drinking flat New Coke. As bad as New Coke was, it’s nothing compared to the reality for our good-intentions-fella. The object of his intentions looks from the field to the stands, sees goodfella sitting passively by, and feels alone in the fight.

Daniel has a “come to the field and play” moment in the book. While in Africa, Durham uses the expression, “this is a pretty Band-aid on a massive gunshot wound” to describe Daniel’s inability to truly engage at CBSM and in Switzerland. When Chris and I were little, we had the brilliant idea of opening an unyielding pistachio with razor-sharp scissors. Result? I cut off the tip of my finger. About 10 minutes after trying dozens of Band-aids, the little Ayreseinsteins realized the intent of the plaster was great, but just not enough. “MOOOOOOM!?!”  Good intentions coupled with action? There we have it.

Like Daniel, some people just need a push. These folks tend to be afraid to act on their good intentions because they don’t want to be hurt or blamed when things don’t turn out so peachy keen. Good intentions (“I want to help”) plus action (“here I am, helping”) may not result in a happy ending for either person. It can be heartbreaking, disappointing, or even devastating depending upon the situation. C’est la vie because the exact opposite might happen as well. You could be the ringer – the player that saves the day.

Either way, one thing is clear: life doesn’t happen in the cheap seats, my friends.

Churchill used sports metaphors quite a lot and I usually defer to Churchill quotes on all matters. However it’s the man, the myth…Vince Lombardi…who said it best, “Any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”

Victory, for me, is assured if you get on the field. No matter who or what wins in the final hour.

This morning, Amazon gave me great news. My book is now the number one Amazon search when the words “Before You” are put in the search engine.

Now, you are reading this (all 5 of you) thinking that is not exciting news. Ooooh! You are wrong, my little friends.

Unbeknownst to me, a super popular book was published with a similar title shortly before I published. Great. Fabulous book called “Me Before You” (no harm to me in helping that author out, the book is great). When people were searching for my book and typing in “Before You”(all 5 of you), you probably saw the other book. Awesome for me, first-time and completely unknown author. But, now, I am the first result. Literally, I had a party for one in my apartment this morning.

Listen, I have chosen, in the past, to take these challenges as devastating. As I told my manchild person yesterday, he taught me a few things in the past few years. The most important one happened on a mountain. I was struggling with my first climb EVER and he said something like, “just keep moving forward, stop thinking about it so much, do what you need to do to get there.” He’s a smart guy. Sometimes. 😉

When I moved to Switzerland, the dollar was strong and had actual value. Within one month? It fell and it was 1CHF to 1.75USD.

When I moved to Switzerland, the borders were open and it was easy for artists like me to travel around, make money, and get a career going. Unbeknownst to me, just two months earlier, Switzerland had joined the Schengen, throwing the borders on lock-down for non-Schengen (that’s most of the world, by the way) residents.

Switzerland and the US had a great relationship. Within about 6 months of my arrival, the banking crisis and security issues forced my two countries into a War of the Roses.

Great time to plan an international move: the year of 2009.

Cool I’m planning a destination wedding in Afghanistan in 2014. Y’all booking your plane tickets?

In all seriousness, life’s challenges tended to make me crazy, depressed, and ill. Until I heard that advice on the side of the mountain. It’s in my book, it was so powerful to me.

Lately, I’m choosing to laugh. Of course my book debuted weeks after a number one, best seller with an almost identical name! Of course my beloved country attacked my adopted country forcing me to pick up a Canadian accent overnight! That’s funny, right?

Breakups aren’t funny (unless they are with infants that wear biking gear in public). Illness isn’t funny. Death isn’t funny. Poverty, malnutrition, ignorance, betrayal, abuse, neglect. There are serious things happening in this world that are not funny. Those things are heartbreaking.

The rest of the stuff? Trying to laugh. A lot. Can’t help myself.

photo by: Ron Clark (innerimage.ch) at the Grand Dolder Hotel, November 19, 2013

I do believe Jackson Henry and I have done something that will change your life. No matter who you are, what your struggle is, or how you are presently being challenged.

We have written a song that is doing some amazing things. A select few have heard it, including the “Tontechniker” that recorded it Tuesday in Winterthur, Switzerland (www.hardstudios.ch). The song is based on Emily’s struggle for physical well-being in “Before You.” Unbeknownst to me until today, Jackson, my collaborator on our album “Before You: the Songs,” struggled with a rather serious physical knee injury, which is somewhat ongoing. My Sound Engineer, upon recording the song, shared his own struggle after a freakish snowboarding accident, also an ongoing injury.

You just find a way to put one foot in front of the other, right? No matter what the present challenge is: lost job, lost love, lost of health, loss of money, loss of faith.

I’ve had examples from friends this week that shock me. One friend is pregnant after a miscarriage and is feeling sharp pains in her stomach…today she found a lump in her breast. Another friend’s mother clings to life in the same ICU where her father lost his life a few days ago from an unrelated cause. A friend is being kicked out of this country because they don’t want him. Another friend is fairly certain his wife is having an affair with his best friend. A girl, unknown to me until Tuesday night, is in Zürich living in her car because she has a job but not enough money or the right papers for an apartment (LA will fix that, by the way). A buddy, one of the most avid skiers I know, just broke his leg in about 80 bagillion places on the cusp of ski season. That’s just a few and that’s just THIS week. And it’s only Thursday.

“Inside of me is broken…inside of me is uncertain…inside of me is scared…inside of me is wanting…”

Jackson and I both see a “collapse” as sometimes bringing about necessary and restorative change. Sometimes, to be honest, it doesn’t. I just recorded a song about broken dreams and broken backs and I could not expand my own rib cage due to intense and ongoing back and neck pain. Clearly, there are some struggles that just aren’t over yet.

But we still have hope. The above-mentioned friends are posting on FB and via email how hopeful they are. My buddy that is being kicked out? He’s having a big party. My skier buddy is having a “stick a foul sticker on my cast” Apero. Why not? I certainly got my Karen Carpenter on, bum back be damned.

I think this song is gonna give you hope. Whatever you’re going through. Jackson and I are gonna be your Hope Bringers, ok y’all?

@BeforeYouBook and BeforeYou FB page and find the book on amazon.com, bn.com, and in iBookstore

 

Today is a bit of a grey day in Zürich. “Before You” is still on the Hot New Releases list. Hanging on by a thread, but hanging on!

I believe my smile and rather “charming” idiocy have worked together to connect me with some truly remarkable individuals. Today, I’d like to pay tribute to one of those connections because I really must.

On a patio on Viewside Drive in Dallas years ago, I met a pilgrim named Stephen Paulus.

Stephen had written a beautiful, no it’s not enough, a truly awe-some setting of the Presbyterian Affirmation of Faith. There was a small gathering, when he came to Dallas, at DRD and Judi’s house. We happened to be on the patio together when he asked me how long I’d been at HPPC. I told him and said, “but I’m not Presbyterian.” He asked me what I was and I remember saying, “don’t know.” He told me he was a something Buddhist. I hesitate to type the denomination because I’m not sure it matters anyway and I can’t ask him if he still is a ____ Buddhist. What I do know is the conversation about why one was “allowed” to be a ____ Buddhist (I’m a Catholic Buddhist) and not sit in sacrilege was life-altering.

We shared our thoughts about Buddhism for 20 minutes or so. Like him, I did not understand why any Christian would not be a Buddhist as well. “It’s a way of life to me and that enhances the way I practice my religion.” I loved that. I’ve said it many times since hearing it.

What I know is that my dear  __ Buddhist friend is caught between two worlds. Having suffered a stroke in July, he breathes on his own today but remains unresponsive. The man wrote this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhcnxL0xRhc Anyone capable of bringing that into this world? I pray he wakes soon.

I admire his music. I admire his commitment to applauding and championing his colleagues. I admire his commitment to family, faith, fellowship, and authenticity.

Open your eyes, Stephen. There is more to learn from you.

Lou Reed died, which saddens me.

Sure, we all die and he would certainly relish the fact that one of my favorite quote from him was, “It sucks to still be alive when all your albums are out of print.” Okay, it’s a rough paraphrase of his quote, but you get the idea. He was a genius and I feel bummed his “walk on the wild side” here is over.

I went on Huffington Post to read about his death because I was interested to see how his buddies responded. I read the article, it’s pretty good. NY times obit was included. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/27/lou-reed-dead_n_4167976.html

As I scrolled up to find the link to re-post, I was shocked to look to the right and see a book advertisement from amazon.co.uk.

I was shocked for two reasons. Clearly you are a super fan when you read the man’s article BEFORE noticing your own book being advertised next to it.

Second reason for shock…I’m fairly convinced this is a sign. A sign of superior marketing by amazon and Huffington Post? Get real.  Obviously, Lou Reed secretly loved me (and heroin, but not recently) and he’s gonna keep an eye out for me. “What are the signs trying to say?” I think we can all agree this one is clear: Lou Reed + Laura Anne Ayres = together forever. I got ya, Lou. Wish I’d know.

Seriously, shout outs to both Huffington Post and amazon for promoting totally unknown authors their works in addition to the big guns. Bravo to Vook for doing a great job with distribution, as well.

@BeforeYouBook—follow it. Good stuff there. Like this photo.

RIP Lou and call me on the pigphone (my version of the batphone).

Laura Anne, writing from Babus in Zürich

Hello readers and fans of “Before You” and soon-to-be fans of “Before You: the Songs,”

In December of 2010, I had a rather unfortunate beginning to my holiday season. I was alone, really alone. I’d been screamed at in public (a Starbucks, for pity’s sake) by the man I loved and I was feeling rather sorry for myself. Looking back on it, the only part I truly disagree with was the venue.

I was pretty darn needy. Still am, but now I know to whom I can show that vulnerability. Important lesson I learned during that time.

(But, seriously. A Starbucks? LA loved her non-fat, decaf Latte until that day.)

In all seriousness, those holidays were the worst I’ve ever had except for one thing. My precious friend generously offered his beautiful flat in Luzern to me for three weeks, while he was away. He saved my sanity. Never underestimate what an open door can do.

The first days were tough. Everyone was happy because it was Christmas. Oh joy –  no word from my manchild, my family was a billion miles away, and I was alone.

After the third day and third box of wine, I knew I needed to do something. Perhaps it was the stupor that made me think running and writing would be a great combo. I don’t know.

I do know, on day four, I began running like freaking Forrest Gump meets Phoebe from Friends and writing like Hemingway meets some real housewife writing memoirs.

Yes, that’s how all this book began. I decided to run, write a story that was fiction with certain elements of truth, and continue drinking (I decided to run and write, NOT forsake all that is holy).

I wrote “Before You” in three weeks. By the time my friend returned, I’d finished the book. It has changed a bit, especially in the past six months, but the house’s foundation was laid with bad wine, tears, and aching muscles in my buddy’s apartment in my beloved Luzern.

Lots of people, some I don’t know, are writing asking the dreaded questions:  what is truth? what is fiction? and what is somewhere in the middle? I just got a FB post from my sweet friend, Greg, asking me, while I’m writing this! Love my Greg!! I crafted the disclaimer very carefully, not to protect myself. I was an opera singer and I’m somewhat used to being looked at and held in someone else’s judgement. I need to protect the people I love, who are not used to that.

Figuring out what is true or not true in this book is, as Emily’s Pop says, “like putting socks on a rooster.” You can do it, buy do you want to? 😉

For those of you, like Brother (see attached picture proving that socks can and possibly should be put on animals), who must know what a pet looks like with adult footwear, I’ll give you one freebie: Luzern is the most beautiful place on Earth.

And it’s real.

Enjoy!

Model: Bonnie “Bon Ton Ton” Ayres

http://www.amazon.com/Before-You-Laura-Anne-Ayres-ebook/dp/B00FROZ6YO/ref=zg_bsnr_2159_38

Buy it, review it, rate it.

Update on book and soundtrack project.

The first single launched today. It is downloadable on iTunes http://bit.ly/19aHvOf

I am thrilled!

 

LA