Thoughts on the Good Life...

It has been a while since I have come to this place to share my thoughts and adventures.  Summer was busy which in my world means the music has been overwhelmingly amazing.  The sun sets and rises with hope hanging on a dream.  The dream is an illusion of sorts.  You forget how to be "normal" and anything that used to matter to you simply doesn't matter so much any more.  You miss birthdays, weddings, getting together with friends.  As four in the morning creeps up you start to believe you have lost all sense of reality and the dream dissipates into the obsession. You attempt to make sense of the evening's events, and the music before it becomes a faded memory.  You close your eyes and feel it within your soul.  Man, it was a great night.    

Your head hangs heavy and you carry your slightly wasted self into the warm confines of "home."  The emptiness of that space, reminds you that no one really does get it.  It is the reminder of the things that you have given up to continue this life.  It's not the being alone part that gets you, as you learn to become self entertaining and sufficient.  You truly enjoy the quiet reflection that comes from the silence.  The love you get from your family and friends fills the void that everyone has within themselves for love.  It's more a longing for someone that is strong enough to stand beside you, instead of in the shadows.  To support what you are trying to do, someone that will say, "I've missed you."  People too often put you on a pedestal, that you will no doubt get drunk and fall off of at some point.  That they all just stay for a little while.

You again realize that the word "home" becomes as trivial as "normal." You live out of a car, hotel, and backpack; one bag for the laptop, an external hard drive for space, and your slightly overused camera that allows you to keep going on.  No one will ever believe any of this.  You realize that "normal" was the dream you once had too.  Is home where I can cook a great meal and watch movies I desperately want to see?  You want to enjoy being in one space, and have nothing to do.  Nothing in all of it seems to make sense.  Where am I going today, and Why?  You fight within yourself to balance everything that you wanted and begin to wonder if the very thing that defines who you are is the exact thing that robs you of that normalcy everyone takes for granted.      

When you make what you love the most the whole of your being, it changes your perspective on reality quite a bit.  It becomes a slight distorted and skewed.  If you have spent any amount of time on the road, you know that when you do return, nothing is at it seems.  You are changed by what you have seen each time, in small and slight ways.  You begin to feel strange and uncomfortable at the thought of a "dinner with the family."  What do you say again?  What if they ask me about what I do?

You start to be an inverted version of yourself to downplay the extreme situations of what you have seen and done.  You want to be like everyone else, where the most exciting thing of the week is who killed who on Law and Order.  Though you just sat at a dinner table with Bob Weir and talked at great length about the genius of Jerry Garcia.  Make no mistake,  I love this life for those opportunities and moments but, realize that general perception of people makes it hard to be simple.  I was hungry and we talked.  It is all the ultimate journey of self discovery, I guess.  For me, the journey begins again.  
     

I will at least add on some theme music.  

In an NPR interview Ryan Montbleau describes his new song Stay and I can't help but relate.  If you missed it, the recording and interview were very well done.

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/24/131575400/ryan-montbleau-band-night-after-night