Tuesday, June 5, 2007

preconceived notions

There’s been a lot of driving in the last few days and very little internet. In fact, pretty much every day in June so far has been mostly filled with driving. We hauled from Oakland to Lawrence without a hotel, sleeping for a few hours at rest areas. After flying home from New York, I spent one day back in Oakland, crashing at my folks place, then met the guys in the same liquor store parking lot as always and took off. You lose any attachment to time in three days of constant driving. There is not a moment where it makes more sense to be either asleep or awake. I don’t know where the time goes, it just… goes.

Getting to travel and perform all the time, there are a lot of moments that pass by which you have spent a lengthy time building up in your head beforehand. When we play an important show, reach a new milestone of some sort, or in this case start a new tour, I collect so many preconceived notions of what the event will be like, I’ll even create a vision of what the setting and various new people will look like in my mind so I can better play out what may or may not go down.

Of course, each time I build something up, the moment comes and obliterates all my preconceived notions. Life passes through it and I’ll be a day or two down the road before I realize that the special event, in which I had allowed myself to become so emotionally enveloped, is gone. What was once a coming context with numerous possibilities is now solidified into a memory. Unalterable, forever gone. The decisions were made however they were made, the situation played out as it played out. Usually that realization is interesting to compare with my imagined version, but sometimes its hard to give it up – you can get attached, I guess, and sometimes the buildup is more satisfying than the actual experience.

Anyway, I had little notion of how this tour would be, and as a whole I have no idea how it will end up. Its been a little more difficult than I had expected, but we have never shared a touring bill with bands that we have connected with faster than Thunderbirds Are Now! and The Junior Varsity. We’re all hanging out in Las Vegas tomorrow for our night off, after only three days on the road together. That’s sort of unheard of and pretty awesome in our book. Tonight my preconceived notion of Kilby Court, an wonderful little shack of a venue in Salt Lake was shattered, but only aesthetically. So many bands that I’ve followed in the past few years have played there, but none of our SLC shows have ever been booked there. It certainly lived up to its praise though, and playing in a little room full of people who know the words is such relief after a nine hour drive.

I’ll update soon. For now I have a nice green carpeted floor to crash out on.