When I turned 40, in 1995, I finally accepted that if music would have had to be an existential leg, it would have happened a long time ago. And since I didn’t mean to live coulda, woulda, shoulda, I went into the desert (south of Tabarka, Tunesia) to do my Rodin…

… and overstand the situation. So far, existentially, I compensated the lack of reliable income from music alone mostly with “bearable” bread and butter jobs of all sorts… and also growing tired of the self-imposed celibacy for many years, it was time to move on anyway, change the ‘element’ allthogether (and still render justice to the inner flame)…
I had to interrupt my desert reasoning to go back and fulfill an obligation, i.e. to play (and mark ‘best man’) for a youth friend’s wedding, where I met this powerful and magical sorceress…

who I’m still with today.
We married 1995 on february 3rd (birthday of my old man)

A year after our first son (Linus-Linton-Maurice) was born, a hefty vertigo threw me into serious disorder (couldn’t walk) and it took a year to grow out of it. That “rock’n’roll”_swindle (as LKJ called it) got me reasoning on yet more issues to “work out”.
At that point, we decided it’s best to ‘switch roles’, i.e. I stay home and Astrid continues to work (which is what she targeted anyway).
I focused on home studio-work and in 1999, our second son Andri was born.
Not so much time anymore to practice extensively, I underwent more inner search as the kids grew.
Originally from rather big family

 

it kind of “imploded” after a nasty rose-war and left me basically with the one brother, Philippe, I kept closer ties with since childhood.

My mother once painted the house where I grew up

with 3 older brothers and a sister…

…it felt best sitting on top of the world: the mighty Sha of the Shametterlings!