jet lag / the value of recorded music / act like a teen listening to music in bed

it's 5:30am. I'm in bed in nottingham england. extremely jet lagged.

jet lag is very real.

I feel like writing to everyone right now based on circumstances. so much has happened, and I feel that the past month I've been a robot workaholic. this happens on tour, it's not a bad thing. it's a mechanism.

I'm having one of those moments right now where I feel like I'm listening to music for the first time in weeks. I've been on tour for a long stretch now, and the focus on tour is exclusively on the live performance. every night needs to be better than the last, every night needs to feel like a brand new experience with the same songs, every lyric about pain / loss / disconnection or joy needs to be sung from the actual place it was written from. if it isn't... then the experience is crushing. a poorly delivered show on tour is like having the color stripped from your favorite childhood cartoon. feels wrong. distorted. nothing makes sense. so as result, we go to dysfunctional lengths to make sure every night is what it has to be. when I hear recorded music on tour, it only makes me think about playing live. things to change in the set, new ways of looking at it etc etc. but then every once in a while that all slips away and you listen to music in bed again. like a teen.

it's like this: when I was in high school I use to drive from new jersey to manhattan everyday for class. the experience was magical. there was not one day that I drove over the george washington bridge that I didn't feel hit with a tidal wave of excitement. you know, that feeling of excessive emotion. the kind that skips a heart beat and makes you feel massively overwhelmed with everything around you. that's live music for me. yes. driving over the bridge and seeing all of manhattan stretched out if front of me is the exact same feeling I get when I play live or see a live show. like if I actually try to understand what I'm feeling, my head would explode. so I'm left with one option which is to let go and become consumed by it. magic. live music - manhattan. etc.

...and then there's everything else. coming home from school. driving on new jersey highways. tired, spent, adderall wearing off. all the same sights. they never change. all the landmarks become snowballs of weird experience and tragedies. the park use to just be the park, now it's the place where you got 'that phone call that changed everything'. life altering experiences lay their brand on all of the places you've grown up around. it's a different kind of consuming feeling. one that release itself extremely slowly inside of you, sometimes without you even knowing it. that's recorded music for me. I listened to 'that' song before I ever felt depression, or I heard 'this' song the day we broke up. songs and the specific recordings of them become time machines to moments you're not always ready to be rocketed back to. but then.... just like coming home one random day... it's completely different. you know that feeling? driving up your street and it all looks completely different. like you're seeing it the way someone else might. someone with no attachment. just taking the entire thing in at the moment it's happening. completely not weighed down by all of the life you lived there. that's exactly what can happen with recorded music for me. it's painful and strange and often feels like a self loathing suicide mission to hear your favorite songs, but it all becomes worth it one random night in bed... and you never know when it's going to hit. you never know when you will get to hear 'at my most beautiful' by REM for the first time again. or when you'll get to hear 'these days' by nico for the first time again. I mean holy shit, one day, could be decades, you're going to put on abbey road and not think of 'her' or 'then' or when 'you were less complicated'. I can't wait for that day.

sometimes I feel like a ham running around city to city telling the same stories, playing the same songs .. etc .. and then other times, like right now, it all makes a bit of sense. remembering the other side of it. sitting in bed listening to my favorite songs and knowing that a nuclear war could be happening outside my window and I wouldn't give a shit. it started here, and it always culminates here. whether it's the end of a tour, end of an era, or just waking up in a strange place realizing you're a bit different - it's just back to zero. listening to music on headphones in bed will always bind us.

so, on a semi related note- thanks for an amazing leg 1 of tour. steel train fans are people I'm proud to be in a room with. . ok. talk soon.

ps. here are the songs that inspired that just now.

ambulance ltd - stay where you are
REM - at my most beautiful
the mountain goats - cotton
the breeders - wicked little town from hedwig and the angry inch
nico - these days

pps. got a big announcement coming. vinyl nerds be ready....... b-side nerds be ready..... ummm. astronauts be ready.......