Word 72 (Credits)

​Whenever I finish a tour, I find myself thinking back on it like the cut scenes that sometimes play over movie credits. I see a medley of fragments: of people and experiences, lines and laughs, weird food and bad sleep, sometimes a free beer or unexpected falafel. When Andrew and I arrived at Project Project in Omaha, our hosts were drinking Miller Lites, prepping the space for the show, and blasting All Things Considered over the PA. In Fort Worth, we played at a house gallery whose owner was embroiled in a legal fight with the city over whether the shopping cart hanging from a tree in his front yard was art, or hazardous storage. In Chicago, we heard about a cigar smoking race where the competition is who can smoke their cigar the slowest.

This of course squeezes out the boredom, discomfort, and disappointment. But actually I remember all of that well enough. The blessing is the people you visit, seeing slices of their lives, catching up for a few moments and flitting on; the blessing is also the bored moments of rolling countryside and rolling patterns of thought. This is where ideas come from. Andrew’s tweet says it all: “It’s tight how on tour you can plan multiple future tours and threaten to quit music entirely forever in the same sentence.” That’s the fertile dynamic right there. On the one hand, ideas are limitless and possibility is infinite. On the other, one day it will be over, and we don’t know when that day is coming. Both of these things are true. Look closely, at both at the same time.