April 05, 2004

5:07 p.m.

Midwest Tour, First Half

I'm back, I'm back. The story seems too long for just one entry, so here is the first installment:

Wed. 3/24/04

Brrrrr.

I'm in a chilly house in New Jersey.

It's Carol's parents' house. They stay in Florida for the winter, and we've used this place often as a stopover. Carol grew up in this house, and said her folks have been here since before she was born. That's more than 45 years! It's inconceivable to me.

Now they're putting the house on the market so they don't have to make the trip back and forth any more. It must be very unsettling to Carol. Her dad was just diagnosed with a kind of blood cancer. It's not so critical that he's imminently going to die, but it will eventually take him. And now they'll be in Florida and she won't see them very often.

I think I made an entry a few months ago about the security system here, and how it had never been serviced and finally started to malfunction -- but only when the parents were not here, and it was winter, and Carol was coming through by herself about 1 in the morning to stay over. The alarm wouldn't disable, she'd try to get in, and it would go off at a piercing level for an eternity, waking the entire neighborhood until the police came and the alarm company was called and... it wasn't fun, especially after a long drive. That was finally repaired, but now the furnace keeps shutting off. It was supposedly fixed last time they were here (when they arrived it was 34 degrees inside the house), but tonight when we came in, it had shut off again. 45 degrees this time. I was allotted the only electric blanket (they have each other to keep them warm, after all) and I sit in several layers of clothing, typing this with very cold, bony little fingers. Tomorrow we'll get as far as we can and stay at a hotel -- two rooms, I hope.

I pulled out some old CDs on the way tonight, and enjoyed listening to Judy Collins (my God, her albums defined my life in the late 70s) and Nick Drake -- hissandtell got me onto the Black Dog kick and I had to listen repeatedly until my skin crawled. Also JT's newest, October Road -- good grief, how can he still be so good?

The realtor is coming early tomorrow to assess the house. I'm sleeping in Carol's childhood room, by the way -- I think she shared it with her sister, as there are two twin beds here. I think they must be the same twin beds that have been here since, um, around 1960. The lime green shag carpet certainly is. Isn't it funny how parents stop redecorating at a certain point and just let their houses get stuck in time. The window shades are so old, they curl in at the sides, and I have to tape them against the sides of the window so the light doesn't come in. It's a little ritual; when I leave, I untape them, pull them back up (they take several pulls, as the springs aren't very tight any more) and discard the tape. Then I fold up the electric blanket and return it to its plastic zipper bag and replace it in the hall closet -- even though I always use it, and I don't think anyone else has stayed here besides us, all these many months.

This could be the last time. I'm a little nostalgic, and it's not even my house.

Thursday, 3/25

Super 8 Motel, somewhere in Ohio

Interstate 80 is long. It's Texas-sized long. We drove on it all day today, and we'll be on it half the day tomorrow.

We're actually in the town where Chris's relatives live -- I want to say it's his brother's family -- only he didn't want to visit them, so he didn't call when we landed here. But then he was afraid to go out anywhere for dinner, lest some relation see him. There isn't much in the way of restaurants in this little town anyway, so we ended up going to a supermarket and going the rotisserie-chicken-with-salad route. It was pretty darn good, and we talked over dinner about our upcoming dvd-taping, which we had to put off from last week when we were all sick. We also talked about the next album, which is only half written, but we're brainstorming titles and concepts.

Now Chris has just knocked and told me that A Mighty Wind is on tv, so naturally I have to go watch it.

10:25pm Well, that was as good as the first time around.

Funny, this trip, this day. For the last year I've developed some occasional, mild anxiety symptoms. I have no idea why; it could be related to fatigue, or perimenopause, or the vast changes life has thrown at me (the deaths of my parents, an unprecedented lack of intimacy, the growing need to be rooted and safe). It was persistent today. I have to be careful about caffeine now, and I had a little this morning -- but not even a whole cup, and I stretched it out into the afternoon. Hard to believe I was crashing from that. Also my head might be still a little wigged out (haha, no pun intended) from decongestants. But it could also just be itself, and not related to outside things. I wonder on days like this whether I'm really repressing something important that I should be looking at. But for Pete's sake, I look at my baggage constantly! Every day I take it out, shake it around, repack it... Maybe all this is just not productive and I should be doing something else. I don't know what that would be. All I know is that I never used to feel this way and now it can come over me at any time. I suddenly felt so funny around midafternoon that I thought I might have to pull over. My hands were tingling as though I'd hyperventilated. What the hell is wrong with me?

Usually if I can distract myself for a minute or two, it goes away.

I also had a terrible night's sleep last night, in Carol's old bed. The house was freezing, and I had every blanket within reach over me. I felt weighed down and anxious about getting up early, so I didn't go very deep. This morning there was no hot water for showers, as they'd forgotten to turn it on the night before. Good thing we didn't have to pay for that bad hotel!

And although I love actual hotels and I'm very pleased to have my own room tonight, I've been struggling with the anxiety all evening. It's a little better now. I wish I'd brought a good book. Fuckin' A, I don't want to be alone the rest of my life -- not even the rest of this year.

Sometimes I wonder the simplest of things: Will anyone ever kiss me again, anyone who matters?

Maybe I'm a little more damaged than I thought.

I'll have to talk to Rose about this when I get home.

Friday, 9:30am -- So I turned out the light shortly before midnight, and lay down, and my nose wasn't too plugged up and I thought I could breathe, so I slowly drifted off, thinking about a piece of furniture I still want to get for my office, and then my mind's eye turned to the front closet, and the CDs inside, and I mentally checked the CD inventory I brought with me, and

SUDDENLY REMEMBERED THAT I FORGOT TO BRING EXTRA BAND CDs.

*Pop* My eyes were open. Ah, shit. I hate it when this happens. Now Rose has to priority mail a box, again, to someplace we'll be next week. Ah, fuckadoodledoo. I got up and made a note.

Went back to bed and tried to get back to the floating stage. But I still felt anxious, and even wondered if I'd have nightmares. So I said some prayers, talked to mom a little, and did some affirmations. Okay. Now God, my angel, and mom are on the job. I can go to sleep. Now, I'll just drift right off to sleep. I checked the time: 12:18.

Then I started acting out a little scenario with an unknown person, where I felt these things I was feeling but I wasn't here in the hotel room, I was at their house and trying to leave because I couldn't interact normally, and it turned into a kind of therapy session where I was the other person asking the questions, and then I was me answering them. I've done this from time to time to get to the bottom of a problem, and it works pretty well. I talked about exactly how the anxiety felt, how it made me really afraid of losing consciousness, or remaining conscious but just being sick instead.

(Note: Some stuff ahead that includes words like "barfing" and such. Sorry. If you must, you can jump ahead a bunch of paragraphs, but there's some interesting history here. Well, it might be interesting only in that way that a roadside accident is interesting, of course. But remember, I didn't make you read it.)

It was very interesting to hear myself explain exactly why I'm afraid of this, and it made total sense. A couple of years ago I had the worst viral something I've ever had -- I was all by myself at home, and not only was I violently ill, I was as near to blacking out as one can be and still crawl to the toilet. I thought I was going to die. Go back in time, now, maybe another six months to a year, when my mom was still alive. She was in the last stages of emphysema, very frail and mostly housebound. She started having to puke every day, and no one could figure out why. Only she was so weak, she couldn't really accomplish it, and the resulting sound effects were frightening. She could hardly breathe to begin with. And there was just nothing anyone could do. We were all helpless as she slowly failed.

Go back now to maybe 1996, when I was living with the bipolar maniac. We'd had a huge fight, and of course I was blamed for all my "machinations" that had led up to the terrible situation, and he then got so upset that he started heaving into the kitchen sink, and couldn't stop. The tension and emotions were already at peak, and I remember pacing frantically around the apartment with my hands over my ears, praying, "Please let it stop, please let it be all right, please let it stop" over and over, to try to drown out the ghastly noises he was making (because of me, of course).

Later, of course, things got worse, I finally extricated myself from him, and a few months later he hung himself in the family's summer cabin.

So I had this dialog with myself about all these associations with barfing, and said matter of factly, "So of course, in my history of recent years, throwing up leads to death."

Bingo, bornearly.

"Okay," I replied, "sometimes a sickness is serious enough that it can lead to death. But most of the time it makes you feel better."

I had to acknowledge that this was true.

So I thought of my mother, and I started to weep, because if she'd been able to quit smoking she'd be alive and well today. I was so, so sorry she'd smoked, and had to suffer to such an extreme, and I told her I didn't hold it against her in the least, but I was just so sorry. I said something I've never said before, because I don't believe in regretting choices: I said I'd live my whole life again, the whole thing, if there was something I could have done to get her to stop early on, so that she'd be here now.

Finally I stopped weeping, and my nose was now COMPLETELY plugged up. Corked like a wine bottle. Oh, well. Where'd I put that afrin, anyway?

I slept better than I have in many days. Dreamt something about ordering an ice cream cone -- they were as big as basketballs -- and I asked if they had anything with M&Ms in it. (My bandmates names actually start with M and M, and I call them this sometimes.) The woman rolled her eyes and indicated a cone that was already made and waiting. "Yeah," she said, "Children's flavor, two and a quarter."

What this has to do with my band and my mom, I don't know, but I am my mother's child, and I did Scream last night, in a way. And we have to leave in a few minutes for another day's drive, so I'll close this for now.

Oh -- I woke up before I could get the ice cream.

Friday night, after the gig in Wisconsin

I'm sleeping in a 13-year-old's loft bed. Her name is Savannah, the same town in which I was born, and her room is a wreck. I just about cleared a path to the ladder up to the bed. As I recall, I was not famous at age 11 for cleaning my room, either. The second step from the top of the ladder squeaks, as does about an eight inch square area of floorboard near the bottom. I have to check these things out, as I'll be the one creeping out to pee in about five hours when everyone else is still asleep. I hate it when the doors all creak and the floors creak and everyone knows I'm toddling around in a strange hallway looking for the bathroom.

These folks live above the restaurant which they run, and where we played. We had a fun night playing for about fifteen people. The room is small, fortunately, so it looked about half full. One guy drove all the way from Chicago -- about 2-1/2 hours, he said -- because this was the closest we'd be playing to his home city on this tour, and he simply had to see us. Now we're packed up and retired for the night, although the cafe is still open, apparently, because there's music coming from downstairs. I wear earplugs to bed.

We've been informed that there will be buttermilk pancakes at 9:00, so it's worth getting on with sleeping to get up for that. Jesus, I'm tired.

Oh -- speaking of Jesus -- C&C rented The Da Vinci Code on CD for this trip, and have been passing the CDs to me as they finish them. What a cool, absolutely cool story and premise. Now I have to go study Da Vinci when I get back home.

Incidentally, no anxiety today. I could just hear mom saying that I was on an adventure, and suddenly it seemed like that, like any good thing could happen. It hasn't felt that way for a while.

Saturday morning This stranger's bed gave me a good sleep and pleasant dreams, none of which I now remember. The loft is tucked into an alcove, so it's really like being in a den. This flat also has those tall, deepset windows that I love, with plenty of room for plants, or a row of books, on the sills.

Savannah and her brother made a thing last night she calls Puppy Chow -- it's basically Chex cereal, cooked up with chocolate (chips?) in a pot, then tossed into a plastic bag. She's eating it out of hand this morning, pre-pancakes. She weighs about 35 pounds.

Sunday morning, Rockford, WI I have only a few minutes before we have to drive 350 miles. It was a rather stunningly great gig last night, at a little coffee bar in town. I didn't expect much, and was very happily surprised, considering no one knows us here.

Carol said that Tret Fure recently played this venue. I've never seen or heard her, but there was a poster of her in the back. She looks like a construction worker -- honestly, she's built sturdier than most men I know. Later, when the audience started piling in, I figured out why she's popular here. Every woman looked like Tret Fure. In fact, there were pairs of Tret Fures everywhere I turned. I imagined that some of them fell in love with me, even though they looked a little scary.

This coffeehouse has been running since about 1972; when they lost their building years ago, they started using various locations around town, and somehow kept a volunteer force that has been willing to travel and do all the work involved in keeping a series going. It's quite amazing to see this -- so many series die after a few years -- and we were so gratified that the room was full of people who had never seen us before. And this was the first time they'd used this particular room, so it wasn't like their crowd was used to coming there.

It was so live that the sound was a bit mushy onstage, but I think it was okay in the house. Next time they'll put us in one of the larger venues.

They also put us up at a nice hotel, which we've enjoyed immensely. I got my own room again, was able to iron my pants, and enjoyed a night of broken sleep during which I dreamt that someone else got booked into my room and they were trying to barge in when I was in my pajamas. I wasn't mad, though, and called the front desk to tell them they'd made a mistake.

There is a breakfast included here that involves making one's own belgian waffles, so that was fun. We're leaving in about five minutes for some other town I can't remember right now. I'm just following the gold car.

Mmmm, book on tape waiting for me. Da Vinci Code.

Sunday, very late Drove all day, played a nice house concert where our host runs a home brewery. We tried several kinds of mead, about four years old -- orange blossom, apricot, mesquite, and something he calls apple butter which was heavenly, part mulled cider, part orange blossom honey, part actual apple butter. Afterwards we talked to a couple of their friends who have started keeping bees for their own mead-making. Very interesting.

But that wasn't the most interesting part of the day. We were driving down Interstate 90 somewhere in Wisconsin this morning, in the spitting rain, when I checked in for messages at home. There was one from my engineer friend, telling me that Will got his heart yesterday morning.

As I was eating homemade buttermilk pancakes with Wisconsin maple syrup Saturday morning, the kind of pancakes you can only get by whipping the egg whites and folding them evenly in, talking with Bill and Kitty in their little restaurant where we had played the night before, Will was receiving a new heart.

My friend said in the message that so far he was doing fine. Not out of the woods yet, but so far so good.

I burst into tears in the car, so I couldn't tell if my eyes were raining or the windshield was weeping. I picked up the walkie talkie and hailed my bandmates. "Sig left me a message!" I gasped. "Will got a new heart!"

"Do you want to pull over?" Carol asked.

"I don't know!" was all I could say. I couldn't see. I was hyperventilating and the tears were just shooting out of my eyes.

We pulled off the next exit and went to a gas station. I got out and wept in Carol's arms, shaking and laughing and making a lot of noise which I'm sure everyone pumping gas heard. When I'd calmed down we talked about it, amazed. It never occurred to me that he'd have broken ribs. But they have to break ribs to get into the heart cavity. Chris said, "Somewhere, someone else is crying because their loved one died. And here, someone is crying because someone will live." It was too big to grasp.

When we finally got on our way again, I left Dar a message and also my sister Rose. I left the phone on for an hour or two but didn't hear back from Dar, so he might have been in tech rehearsal. That's ten hours out of twelve, and it's theatre hell, so I wasn't sure when he'd get the message. Then I left one for Will, at home so he'd get it later, congratulating him and wishing him well on his new day, in his new life.

********

That rather dwarfs anything else that has happened, of course, but it's also amazing that the day goes on in an ordinary way. It reminds me of paintings by Rene Magritte, that bizarre French artist who painted the faceless guys in bowler hats against a sky background, only there would be a big green apple where the head normally was. Ever since Paul Simon's song, "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War," I've loved Magritte and the way he would paint totally ordinary objects that have seemingly little significance in our lives, only he'd paint them huge in a normal sized room, like an enormous comb on a bed. Or a little dirt pathway winding through a meadow, and every few yards a chair, or a hat, or a book, or a boot. Little commonplace things that we take for granted, he would place in a way to call attention to them. See how wonderful this comb is, how essential. This simple chair, how marvellous. Let us celebrate the ordinary. The way the day goes on, the driving is done and the venue is found and the concert is set up, and it gets colder at night and the stars maybe peek out from behind the clouds, and we figure out our sleeping arrangements and map out the next drive, and I pick out socks and underwear for tomorrow and breathe in and breathe out just as I do every minute of my waking and sleeping life -- --

-- and, hundreds of miles away in another time zone, Will has been given a new heart and feels it beating inside him every time he wakes up, groggy from the painkillers and frequently attended by hospital staff, he feels it and it feels different from his old one, it beats steadily and it's smaller because it hasn't had to work as hard, and maybe he looks over to his bedside table for a little water and he sees his comb there, and suddenly the ordinariness of his comb becomes huge, because under other circumstances he wouldn't be seeing it at all, except now it's after the war and he's got a new chance at continuing life so he'll get to use his comb again, only now with awe, and with reverence at its unspeakable significance.

********

Tomorrow, Madison.