Trying to shoehorn more than

November 11, 2003

Trying to shoehorn more than 24 hours into one day it is possible that you will get to see the sun and the moon from a few more angles than most people normally would. Sometimes you get the whole continuum before the inner collapse. The light is horizontal at this 6am marker. Sleep means failure to achieve. Some say the sleep you miss is never caught up on. There is the partier’s argument for sleeping when you’re dead. That would mean, “if you lose the sleep who cares”. Concentrated life. I am not orange juice or vanilla extract. Sometimes I care. Sometimes I want to stretch it out.
My attempts at calendar cramming are a result of biting off more than I can chew. As a result I juggle in spectacular fashion and when one ball finally drops and rolls under the couch I catch hell from the ringmaster.
Going on the road doesn’t help. Although it reminds me of the olden days when a young man had a singular purpose and all else fell by the wayside without so much as an “um sorry” it is, unfortunately, currently a necessary indulgence. Although much grumbling is done by musicians about the rigours of the road the casual observer must be careful to note the context. Cry foul if the musician bends the context to suit his/her needs. There is the struggling band of single males riding for endless hours in a stench filled van through dangerous conditions and arriving at a cat piss smelling flop house to not so much as day old Kraft dinner. On the other end of the spectrum there are brand new Van Hool busses with leather interiors and double satellite TVs rolling stolidly up to the Four Seasons and letting their Ben Sherman clad faux bed head shoe gazers off for an afternoon nap before catering arrives. I can say I’ve been to the end of that rainbow but I keep turning around and driving through the long hailstorm before the rainbow come into view. Frequently I am the married middle ager in the stench filled van who couch surfs from gig to gig and beer to beer. There is nothing like it to provide the illusion that you haven’t grown up. The difference is you don’t always roll out of the van with the same dumbshit smile. Only half the time. When you’re back to the breaded salmon with mango compote in the downstairs room of the enormodome before walking past the multi modem production office to the swinging motorized lights and the 150 foot smoking stage it seems much easier now to savour every second. The yo-yo effect may be my saving grace.
I know I haven’t won the Stanley Cup of rock. No. I would only stretch my metaphor far enough to describe myself as the wylie free agent who gets rented for a solid run to the western semi final every once in awhile. The way I look at it I still made the NHL of rock. Hell if you get to tune a guitar in the visitor’s dressing room once in a while its not so bad. When one day you’re alone with an acoustic guitar playing for thirty people in town that time forgot and the next day you’re a sideman in the “show” running into the wings of the galvanized iron stage deck with 50,000 watts of flown PA overhead and a sea of faces stretching to the curved horizon. Tomorrow the “and you are?” and the mini-van. I can’t think of anything better to satisfy you, screw your head around and then screw in on properly in the end. There is one other thing that does it better. A family.