Last night, James and Ryan were walking on either side of me down Hollywood Blvd, the walk of fame passing beneath our feet, and we listed off, out loud, as everyone always does, the strange or all too familiar names embedded in the sidewalk stars. We were moving from a late night dinner to the bar, and Ryan pointed out how casual we were in such a renowned location, that people travel from around the world and walk these few dirty blocks and stare at the names and come home and say they have done it, and how rare of a thing it is for us, based on equal parts circumstance and ambition, to have walked that famous stretch of street enough for our own purposes to treat it like the concrete and metal and marble and plastic that it is, as if it were anywhere.
Aaron asked me why we don't write blogs about this stuff. I mean, we were coming from a taping of Jimmy Kimmel, where Audrye Sessions had invited me at the last minute to see Coldplay, and huddled in the green room as we downed free wine and I scavenged the table full of finger food and nearly said what's up to this guy that I realized wasn't a casual acquaintance of mine but someone I see all the time in supporting television roles, and took a big step backwards as Lakers players excused themselves as they pushed by me through the crowd towards the pool table, and started feeling drunk, and shot the shit with James, who I've been shooting the shit with since pre-school, about how we're so far away from home but we're still hanging out like we're there, while we watched the interviews as they happened on set on flat-screen TVs on the walls, and waited for the word form the security guards for us to move outside to see the short concert...
And back on that street, walking quickly towards the bar, James said that, yeah, even if we don't have any more experiences like that, we have more than enough stories to entertain our kids one day from the places we have already found ourselves, we just keep stumbling in these rooms, and it all doesn't matter, and its all sort of pointless, but it is exciting and special just the same... to which I made the point that I have been in three backstage rooms with that guy from the Strokes that was there, just now, in three different cities, and next time I'm going to actually say something to him, about what an awesome drummer I think he is. And all of those backstage rooms, the feeling is so uncomfortable. I feel so intrusive, I can't talk right, apologetic from my words to my posture, even if I opened the show, or played on the side stage, or my best friend did, and just trying to be invisible, peeling the paper off of my beer bottle, making awkward eye contact with whoever brought me in there, or whoever I brought. Sometimes I even feel like that in my own dressing room in whatever dive we're playing.
I had been at Kimmel a week before too, with Mark, who is producing my album, and my manager, and standing in the dressing room I asked what it is like having a number one record, a couple of the guys had helped me out on a recording earlier this year, and it was made clear to me that the distance between there and playing dives didn't feel that far, and on the other side of such a thing you are still you, and as always, I tried not to seem as nervously excited as I was to be back there, and drank the free booze just the same, and laughed with Mark in the back of the crowd outside in front of the stage about how much we both obsess about everything in music and our lives as it relates to music, and what a good song The Sound Of Settling is, and watched the set, and I sent a text message to my best friend from high school.
And last night, after James and Ryan and I got to the bar and I had one drink and looked at all the people looking cool, really actually enjoying how cool they all looked, wondering where you get a shirt like that or how old she must have been when she started that sleeve of tattoos, and looking down at my shirt and pants and shoes, and not feeling as cool but feeling good still, then said goodnight to the boys and walked up the street to my apartment, just before midnight, and brushed my teeth and showered and laid awake for just a while, and thought about the knots in my back, and how I fucked up the timing on the acoustic on that one song again and again, and worried about how my voice is holding up, and thought about what still needs to be crossed off the list even though I've crossed so much off already, and what exactly am I going to worry about next and then, out of nowhere, fell asleep.
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