On the Road

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I was jerked out of my regularly scheduled life for a week of pretending to be a freelance musician. This involved a seemingly endless spate of airports, hotels, rental cars, and meals out. I jetted from L.A. to Atlanta to the middle of Kansas, suppressing terror high above any number of intervening states, washing my hair with different hotel products, and eating an overweening number of dispiriting "continental breakfasts." Musicians' lives are only very slightly about music.

I do a number of these trips a year, and they are always hard for me. I'm a homebody, a scaredy-cat, a creature of routine. I do not like staying up late at night. I do not like schmoozing at receptions. I am terrified of flying; sitting next to crazy people doesn't help. Why, you might ask, do I put myself through this?

It's not the music. Sure, I love music. Yes, performing can be thrilling. And OK, OK, I like signing autographs. But really I do it for the sickening crack that is my regular life splitting open and falling away. I like to be swallowed abruptly by an alien world and then spat out the other side. I like yanking myself into a life that's not my own, wandering around a little, then coming home.

Slipping into and out of your skin is a privilege. I never forget that.