I Have Only One Leg Left

This early spring tour of 2007 has been an adventure of 3 legged proportions. The first leg was Wisconsin & Michigan. The second leg, a loop down to Florida, through Tennessee and back home through the Carolinas, West Virginia, and Ohio. The third and final leg takes me to upstate New York, New York City, and New England, as well as Ohio again. I’ve travelled a lot in the past month and have at least another month on the road. I didn’t think I’d be ok with that, but I sense a change in me.

I’m beginning to feel odd being in the same place more than 1 or 2 nights. The sailor’s mind that tells him “the land feels funny” and I think I am starting to catch that mad disease. Staying in one place has no movement, no sense of going somewhere, no promise of new horizons. Maybe I’m developing ADD or maybe I’m just bored. Whatever it is, I sense a need within me to return to that ocean of interstates, to sail its’ currents of concrete and asphalt that connect the thousands of cities scattered across our nation.

My land fever got the best of me today. At lunchtime I decided to return to Guatemala in July. It feels like time to leave again. It’s always time, really. I know July will be here soon enough, but I can’t wait to see my friends in Guatemala again.

You know, after playing a few shows on the road, I’ve become anxious to record my full album. I can sense it’s inevitability building,  like the lump in your throat growing as you try to fight back the tears. I like waiting for it though. It’s so much better when you can no longer hold it back and the music fights its way out of you. I know then that it’s not me making something out of nothing, but something making nothing out of me – whatever that means. I sense the songs, like storm clouds gathering on the horizon, filing into rank like eager soldiers, ready to unleash their havoc at the word of their commander/muse. (I know, I know… mixed metaphors.) I could run to meet them, but instead I’ll wait. I’d rather they build to a frenzy of unstoppable momentum and crush me, than to somehow tame the forces and avert something tragically beautiful.

So nervously, I wait.

Currently listening:
Continuum
By John Mayer
Release date: 12 September, 2006