Storytellers: The Weather and The Wait

I guess all this thinking started today as I was walking past the green room; A green room I had been in dozens of times before. There was still a sticker from my high school band on the bathroom wall. Mike had his computer open to an interview I did at some festival a few weeks prior. My voice sounded particularly rough, which is par for the course at any festival, but it prompted me to go check out the footage.

I had no idea who the man on that screen was. My energy was visibly drained. Where was the metal t-shirt wearing idealist that started playing Wish You Were Here to impress his grade school girl friend? Where was the accomplished player who had shared the stage with The Rolling Stones, Sting and Pat Metheny – just to name a few? Where was the player who dedicated his life to his craft and keeping his band together? All I saw were dead eyes peering out from behind a cold shell repeating the same old bullshit responses I’ve been shilling out for years. The monotonous rasp of indifference drifted out of the Mac Book speakers like the requiem mass in D minor, and now, as the trailer doors were closing, I realized what the funeral was for.

I can’t keep this pace anymore. The weather and the weight are starting to show.

I’m happy. I really am. I know that sounds like a guy trying to tell himself he’s happy but it’s true. There’s nothing I would rather be doing. It’s just that the time has come to slow down. Decades will pass you by like nothing in this business and it takes some grand event to slap you in the face and wake you up. For me, it was that interview. That fucking interview…jesus I look terrible. How do the guys not see this? Do they see it? Do they think I can’t handle talking about this shit? How does Sarah not see this? Am I the only one that notices I’m dissolving?

Deep breath. Parliament. Street lights. This is my therapist’s office; an idling van and the halogen glow of urban illumination as drunk fans stumble by not noticing me underneath my walking cap of 12 years. Mike is settling. Eric is folding t-shirts. Pat is re-packing the trailer to balance the weight on the axles. Here I am, wondering why none of the aforementioned people and the love of my life can’t see I’ve been fucking destroying myself from the get go. Maybe the destruction is recent. Maybe I’m blowing it out of proportion.

Mike finally gets back to the van excited about us getting into points on our deal and we’re looking for the last of the speed to get us home. I elect to take the speed and the wheel as I have more thinking to do than I would like on a drive home from tour. I fill my to go cup with yerba and cut a few lines off the middle console sharing the powder with my navigator and we pull onto the interstate.

There are few things as nice as an early morning drive. There’s no construction and no lights….save for one…and when that light comes I’m going to have a long talk with the person I couldn’t find on that computer screen and ask him for forgiveness and advice on how to save his life.

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One Response

  1. Wow. You certainly have a way with words, Wade. Keen, acute insights of human emotions and the business of making music, conveyed with a simultaneously lucid and poetic, natural-born easy rhetoric. Will definitely be following this.

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