Travel Journal (post 1)

February 19, 2022

I bought a Bluetooth keyboard to pair with my iPad mini and now I can work on essays from the road. I am not sure if you have ever tried typing out several hundred words with your thumbs on the screen of an iPad mini but it isn’t very fun or fast. This keyboard thingy seems to be doing the job pretty well so far. Hooray for that!

It is 4:12 AM EST and the ringing in my ears has yet to subside. I attempted typing in the dark. Did not work out so well. I thought I was a poor speller under normal conditions. I just tried to read this crap I typed and it looks more like a cat walking along the keys instead of an adult typing out words. Light back on. I will not keep it on too long though. I am sharing a room with Wes Peters. I try not to be a bad roommate. I like to stay up a bit longer than whomever I share the room so they can fall asleep before I do and I commence snoring. This rarely helps me from waking people but I do like to try. 

I am going to attempt to sleep now. I will pick this back up tomorrow and maybe get to a point. We shall see.

Goodnight.

12:37 PM EST

It is now Saturday, it was Saturday last entry but since I didn’t sleep until early this morning I will consider that time awake as a really long Friday. I am sitting in a Dunkin’ having a Latte with almond milk and pulling the bread away from a breakfast sandwich. We have a two and a half hour drive ahead of us and four hours to make it. I thought I’d check in. 

Nothing much to tell so far. Last night’s gig was a typical college bar gig. Lots of people with lots of young energy doing college age stuff. A part of me misses having that drive and energy. Another part of me wishes they would just go home and stop taking selfies every thirty seconds. This will be one well documented generation. Sadly, they will look back on these times and photos and only remember trying to capture the perfect selfie. That being said I wish I had taken more pics of family and friends. It would be so nice to see them smile when I need a smiling face to brighten up the day.

With this younger generation I have learned a few lessons. Lesson one, Reading FREEBIRD!!!! on a cell phone shoved in your face is just as annoying, if not more so, than some drunk idiot yelling it at you all night long. While the yelling has gone away the pestering and dismissive nature of what you are doing is still there. 

Lesson two: No one of this age group seems to get that playing an instrument while singing takes a ton of concentration. Combine that with a total lack of spacial awareness and you get someone talking at you while you try to entertain. This can be very annoying but it is almost always very funny in a “I’m on a Larry David tv sitcom right now, right?!” sort of way. If I were watching the events unfold on the tv I would be laughing so hard at it. So, a part of me, a part I can’t hide, laughs aloud. Look, if something is funny, even if it distracts me from my task at hand, I am going to laugh. Fact. Honestly, many gigs it feels like we are in room full of five to six feet tall toddlers. All of them vying for favor and attention, tugging at your shirt screaming Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie and NO, NOT THEM, ME!! They search out the stage for set lists and demand you play only the songs they know and like. Once again, if it were a tv show it would be very amusing to watch. I still laugh anyway. 

Lesson Three: It is okay being yourself at all times. This generation is so accepting of people as they come. While I realize there will always be social groups, clicks or a “squad”, these younger adults don’t draw the lines of old. It really is a beautiful thing to see. The diversity in the audiences and in the groups within the audiences is a sight to behold. If you can peel back your own biases and look objectively on these folks you will see that the better world we all worked hard to build is there. Yes, it may have brought along some ideas that are foreign to us old folks but we are getting what we hoped to get. Diversity, inclusion, acceptance do not come about without creating new ways of experiencing the world. People are allowed to have their own ideas. While some of their ideas may seem odd to us, and some may be a terrible waste of time and resources, these generations must be allowed to make up their own minds and make their own mistakes. Heaven knows we certainly did so. That part of the college age experience is my favorite part and my favorite lesson learned.

1:25 AM EST Sunday morning.

Last gig of the weekend has finally drawn to a close. Gear is loaded out and packed away. After a short drive from the venue, a country clubhouse, and numerous slow laps around the parking lot trying to discern the Divinci Code level numbering system used by this Econo Lodge I am sitting alone in the hotel room. It is quit except the ear ringing accompanied by the sound of my heartbeat and my breathing both pulsing inside my ears. As I sit here wondering what to write to you I begin to nod. I hear music and conversation as if I’m standing backstage at a concert hall while the orchestra tunes and the audience shuffles their way to their seats greeting familiar faces on the way to sitting down. It is strange that as I begin to doze off the noise gets louder. I only know that I am awake when the room falls back into silence. It is so loud inside my head. It is a harsh clutter of noise in there. I sit here alone waiting for my mind to silence and slow. 

I’m not really alone, though. You are here. Thank you for being here with me tonight and all weekend long. Seems like a small thing to just read the thoughts of a person traveling for work, but it means a lot to me, your being here. Knowing that you are reading/listening helps quit the din that all to often screams me to sleep.

12:04 PM EST Feb 20, 2022

I’ve stopped for lunch on the way home. I realized on the drive up this morning that I forgot to mention that I lost my voice yesterday morning. I wasn’t able to sing at the show last night and this morning I can’t use voice text while driving. I have to wait until I stop for lunch and gas to announce my estimated time of arrival and deliver a good morning. Otherwise, It is nice to not talk aloud. Sitting in silence and letting my mind wander I hear my internal monologue. It doesn’t actually sound like I sound when speaking. It sounds like a conglomeration of all of the people I know. If I say something my sister would say my internal voice sounds like her, my dad sounds like my dad, my mom sounds like my mom, my niece sounds like my sister and me combined with Sissy Spacek’s Loretta Lynn portrayal, which is how she sounds in real life anyway, and Rachel sounds like Rachel...but, I don’t sound like my outward voice. It is more like words that just appear as if I am reading or typing. I don’t actually hear it at all in my mind. I hear the others just not myself. There is a rhythm and a cadence. I even experience tonal ups and downs for excitement and let down. I just don’t hear, or rather, imagine the sound of a voice. I suppose that is pretty normal, right? 

Anyway, I am unable to sing at all and couldn’t sing last night. It felt weird to just play and not harmonize. While I was able to focus more on playing guitar I couldn’t help feeling like I let the bad down by not jumping in on vocals. It happens. I am blessed that it is only temporary. But for now, I am enjoying the silence and departure from hearing my own BS when talking. 

That is all for now. I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Goodbye.