groundwork

tour prep: the arts of existence — Part 1

	Next month, I’ll embark on another series of acoustic living room shows.

	Performance begins long before the set list with a growing drift of mental notes. 

In preparation for a tour, I preplan for conjured anomalies — extreme what-ifs — & dream up novel solutions. It’s a default stupor that usually brainstorms to nowhere in dramatic flight.

Occasionally, though, an actual event suddenly validates the imagination in moment-to-moment real time, such as: 

I was pulled off at a Salt Lake City truck stop intending to make a date in San Francisco. An obstinate squall was parked over Reno. Instead of continuing west, I followed an impulse & dipped south to Barstow & ended up in Bakersfield. Ultimately, the loop added four hours, but at least I detoured straight to chicken fried steak & eggs at Zingo's Cafe in the morning & still made the show.  

A healthy belief in delusions requires occasional vindictive rewards.

	When initially laying groundwork for tours, a review of necessary repairs is assessed, then put off due to distraction or denial, e.g. years ago, as a Dayminder bluntly records:

“Tuesday — Car inspected. Tooth extracted.” 

A last-minute emissions & molar multitask. 

A few days later, I was safely emitting west with a healing socket on the scenic Southern Tier. 

Lining the interstate, bare veined limbs reached out as if panicked, holding onto a few dry leaves that just wouldn't let go over purple & brown carpets of their dead, compressed then abandoned by winter.

Car sightings were sparse, passing occasional groups of buildings set off the road in sleepy clusters of bare knuckle industry.

Local radio warned of high winds. In the center divider, a broken feathered bouquet flinched in vibrant orange tones, one wing vertical as if reaching straight up, towards where it was before crosswinds brought it to impact level. 

	The destination was seven hours away — a family-run motel without a website that I’d found on the online outskirts. Forty-two dollars — just off a turnpike. Booking by aol or phone.

Its reviews were sagas of initial-doubt-turned-cherished-personal-memory — dark, innate assumptions revealing a new way of seeing — around expectation — just short of life-changing. Tributes, really. 

Usually, I freestyle stays on remote off-nights, but this find had the must of a grounding anomaly — an open-ended repair to head-off any more unnecessary speculation. 

I immediately made a reservation . . .  

. . . we’ll check in next time with traveling absolutes — the arts of existence — Part 2 . . .