Bob Seeger’s iconic Against the Wind album cover. Jim created a beautiful oil painting, carefully recreating the archetypal landscape I had sketched from my imagination. The scene included the river of life, an old monastery, a mystic temple, and distant mountains. Today it hangs in my Palm Beach bedroom and looks down on my carved cherrywood music stand — just two of the treasures that my music has bestowed.
On our urging Universal released both CDs in the fall of 2009. It turned out to be a poor decision, as everyone focused on the love songs CD and my beautiful Seven Journeys never received the media attention it so richly deserved. I suppose my living in the U.S. and being distracted by so many house moves had made it hard for me to focus on promotion.
I asked renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta for a quote for the album sticker, and she kindly wrote, “Hauntingly beautiful … emanating from a timeless realm.” Dan Hill called the CD, “Amazing, ethereal, haunting and exquisite,” and Gene Mascardelli described it as “a stunning collection of cinematic soundscapes. Spiritually infused … Vangelis meets Enya meets Morricone.”
Over my career I have come to realize time and time again that even with a manager or agent, artists have to do most of the networking and promotion themselves. Fortunately, Seven Journeys continues to sell steadily at my concerts and on iTunes, and Peter Bond and I have received many compliments for the original music we created.
Photo Section One
Harrington Lake with Pierre, Margaret, and Justin Trudeau, and Bob Kaplan, 1976.
In the garden of 24 Sussex Drive with Justin, Sacha, and Michel Trudeau, 1978.
Jack Simon and Muffin, Beverly Hills, 1999.
With rock guitarist Steve Morse, 2002.
With my mother, Eileen, and my sister, Vivien, 2005.
With Julio Iglesias, 2006.
Vizcaya, Miami, 2006.
With Gordon Lightfoot, 2007.
In the studio with Esteban, 2007.
Rehearsing with Srdjan Givoje, 2007.
With Joanne Perica in New Canaan, 2007.
Connecticut house, 2008.
My producer, Peter Bond, Seven Journeys, 2008. (Al Gilbert)
At the Met gala in New York, with Jeremy Irons, 2009.
Posing in swimwear after filming Baby Maybe, Connecticut, 2009.
Cover of Liona Boyd Sings Songs of Love with Srdjan Givoje, 2009. (Brian King)
With my parents, John and Eileen Boyd, 2010.
9
Spiritual Searchings
Craving a taste of Europe, my television producer friend Josanne and I took time away from our various projects to fly to Rome. From there we caught the train to Orvieto, where an acquaintance of hers had rented a large hillside villa. The cloudy weather was not ideal, but we met up with a friend from California, drove to Padua for the day, and soaked up the landscape as much as we could, treating ourselves to gelato and, as girlfriends always do, commiserating about men!
Hadn’t we both always fantasized about a little villa in Italy? Where were the romantic men of our dreams hiding? Not in Canada, we had concluded. In our mutual experience, post-divorce dating was one disappointment after another. Why had she moved from Vancouver to Palm Springs and almost relocated to Corsica? And why had I moved from Toronto to California to Miami and then to Connecticut? What were we both searching for? Why were we both driven to work so hard when our contemporaries were starting to retire? We were both liberated women of the sixties who had chosen to “do our thing,” but we now found ourselves not completely satisfied with having to work so hard and with living alone. It seemed that so many women of our generation were all in the exact same situation, and I felt grateful that at least I still had the guitar to keep me company.
Upon my return to New Canaan, I decided to drive up to Lenox, Massachusetts, to spend a few days at a spiritual retreat run by philosopher Andrew Cohen. It necessitated a lengthy drive, during which I took a few wrong turns. I despaired when, after hours behind the wheel, my navigation system guided me half-way up a snowy mountain and announced, “You have arrived at your destination.”
Having only learned to drive at age thirty-four and not possessed of a natural sense of direction like my sister, I was always afraid of getting lost, and the rapidly fading light and falling snowflakes brought me close to tears. I had come on a spiritual trip, but this was certainly not a good way to begin it. I tried to keep calm and after a few more mistakes, ignoring the useless navigation voice, I finally arrived, exhausted and swearing to myself to never again undertake this type of solo drive through unfamiliar territory.
Andrew Cohen had founded Enlightenment Magazine and written many books on spirituality that had resonated with my father, so I thought the retreat might be a beneficial life experience. It was an interesting time, if not terribly enjoyable. I had always loved Wayne Dyer and I had delved into a few books by Ken Wilber and Eckhart Tolle, but in spite of Andrew Cohen’s obviously brilliant mind, I found him a bit abrasive and did not connect well with his persona. It was not altogether surprising to learn that in 2013 his “Utopian experiment” had imploded and he had humbly issued an apology to his followers for his ego-driven behaviour. In any case, I knew that spiritual trips were not for me after all though I rationalized that the long meditations and lectures must surely have done me some good.
When I returned home, I found that my Connecticut and New York friends had all taken off for sunnier climes in the Caribbean or on ski trips, so on Christmas Day I found myself alone in my snowy New England house, where my guitar and I contentedly spent the day composing a new piece of music, a patriotic children’s song called “We’ll Sing a Song for Canada.” A few years later, when I penned “Alone on Christmas Day,” it was this solitary day that provided me with some of the inspiration; although, there was no man in my life who “chose to go” as my lyrics express in the chorus.
In February of 2010 when the winter chills were becoming unbearable, I decided to spend a couple of weeks in Florida learning about nutrition while staying at the Hippocrates