Well, I said I would, and
I am. Under the weight of my perfectionistic tendencies, I have
delayed getting a new journal entry out for some time. The sheer
magnitude of covering all events now passed makes it easier and
easier to put off. This is exactly how I can suddenly go from forgetting
to return a friend’s phone call for a week to not speaking
with him for six months. Ummmm...
Who gives a damn anyway. I will strike out from
the present and delve into the past as whimsy allows. I did start
something about the last European run:
HAIL EUROPA:
PLANES, TRAINS, BUSES, CARS... A BOAT, NEARLY
From the cozy confines of the Doubletree
Hotel in Alsip, Illinois, the stunning Western Fjords of Norway
seem very, very far away. But I was there, I’m sure
of it... no, it couldn’t have been a dream, I have pictures,
I have skin white and slightly bloated with the residual salt
of multiple meat and cheese encounters. Come with me, friends,
let’s relive the legacy...
My wife and I endured three crowded
flights over eighteen hours to reach Oslo. Having my favorite
traveling companion along for the interminable ride made things
far more enjoyable. She seemed slightly perplexed by my traditional
ingestion of three pints of lager in Heathrow at 9:00 AM local
time, but a marriage is nothing if not a journey. It was 5:00
somewhere.
On the bus ride into the city we were
struck by how much Scandinavian design has completely infiltrated
and defined every aspect of what we foreigners refer to as
‘modern.’ We passed barns that looked more progressive
than most new performing arts centers in American cities.
Traipsing through the rest of the country over the next week,
I would come to realize that, comparably speaking, Oslo had
a slightly cold feeling to it. But at the time of our arrival
it seemed to be stone, glass and steel Nirvana sprung up out
of carpet of evergreen. Neither of us had ever been to a place
with such an unmistakable air of newness about it.
After checking into the hotel and taking
a much-needed nap, we headed out for a Thai restaurant that
had been described as cheap and tasty by our Lonely Planet
guidebook. It was indeed tasty, but the arrival of the bill
quickly put to rest all hopes we had kindled about anything
in Scandinavia being cheap. We stopped by an Internet cafe
on the way back to the hotel, then a 7-11, which are in no
short supply in Norway. After sampling a few funky candy bars
at the hotel, we snuggled into our single berths and slept.
The next morning we sampled our first
Norwegian breakfast, a complicated buffet replete with several
varieties of the aforementioned breads, meats and cheeses,
as well as soft-boiled eggs, various pickled cole slaws and
little squeeze tubes of ground salmon eggs called KAVIAR.
Suitably fed, we wandered down to a castle overlooking the
bay.
I was reunited with Andy Nice in the
hotel lobby a few hours later. We walked to the gig for sound
check, then had a pint in an outdoor cafe on a large square
when the sound engineer proved to be absent. Andy had recently
returned from a lovely holiday in Slovenia where he was unmercifully
demonized for swimming naked in the pool of a resort. I assured
him that skinny-dipping was completely accepted, if not expected,
in Norway. A wide, expectant smile spread over his face as
the sun was overtaken by clouds that began spitting rain onto
our little round table.
The gig that night at Cafe Mono was
good, well performed and well-received. No |
Charleston, South Carolina seems a long way from
Alsip, Illinois. Charleston, South Carolina makes Oslo, Norway seem
like another planet. I drove to my gig tonight through a blanket
of fog covering a nearly empty I-26, occasional headlights in soft
focus letting me know that there was actually other life forms traversing
this planet of mist. I had the sensation that if I just gunned it
really hard my rented Nissan Altima would simply rear back and take
flight, becoming one with the earthen clouds that obscured mortal
vision. SR-17 spread out over a very high bridge crossing what appeared
to be a vast expanse of Cumulus Nimbus, stretching the flight metaphor
to very realistic proportions.
On nights like tonight all of this feels more
like time travel than a job. I think that Charleston, South Carolina
would be a great place to grow up, to dream of leaving, then rediscovering
at a later age. I watched the kid that opened up for me tonight
guzzling a shot as I hurried out the door, hauling gear, practically
running back to the anonymous comfort of middle age in the Airport
Radisson. I could see the need for confusion in his eyes, leering
out from under a slight misinterpretation of the Strokes Haircut.
The badge, the requirement of progress. For a brief moment I wanted
to go there with him, pretend like I was stupid enough to want it
all over again, want that, instead of my father’s carefully
prepared path of traveling salesman heartbreak.
Alsip, Illinois, or somewhere close: I’m
watching Joan Baez, whom I am opening a couple of shows for, take
the stage. The very seated and fairly mature crowd of 1200 goes
as nuts as their possibly disappointing lives will allow them to
go for an icon of sixties youth. God, what it must have been like
to be young in the sixties. I see the weight of the vision preached
to these people when I talk to them after the show, their hair gone
mousy, the skin on their faces a road map to somewhere less disagreeable.
One lady tells me she doesn’t like my lyrics; she likes Joan’s,
she likes things with a message, and I’m wondering if the
intellectual laziness that the preaching of the sixties birthed
is any different from the black-and-white couchpotatosity that props
up our current ruling class, the Christian Right. Later that night,
a one man party at the Doubletree featuring many letters written
and never sent by the power of Almighty Jameson’s.
Rock Hill, South Carolina tomorrow. One would
assume that most hills are made of rock. I must be missing the joke,
again.
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