Well, the old tour diary has been hideously erratic this time around but with good reason and I have a cute little anecdote with which to illustrate my point: the other morning I woke up my van in Valdosta, GA ready to shit my pants and barf right away. (This is after I’ve been offered places to stay by three or four of the really nice guys in Valdosta, all of which I’ve passed up in order to drink more green beer leftover from St. Patrick’s Day.) Though I had no business driving, I quickly found a McDonald’s, always the place to go when shitting/barfing is on your mind. I hobbled inside to only a few disdainful looks from the locals lining up for their breakfast. Thank fucking God the one stall in the bathroom was vacant, so I dropped trou and laid my burden down. My sphincter was still fluttering when I realized that I was going to puke, so I stood up and turned around, my pants still down and barfed into the toilet I had just shit and pissed in. The force of my vomit was great enough that it made one little drop of the shit water splash up the good eighteen inches to my eye, and I knew that I got a good fruitful drop cause it fucking stung. Which is to say that I haven’t written much in the old tour diary because I’ve been expending my time and energy on other, just as worthwhile pursuits. When I walked out of the stall, a couple of guys were staring at me. “What, you never heard anybody puke before?” I said, and walked out.
Last night was disheartening, if not disastrous. Yeoman’s Pub in Tampa, FL—my gig there was pretty meager when I was coming through on my way out to the West Coast, but it had been during a torrential rain, and I figured that’s what did it. But it was pretty empty when I got there and only got thinner. When I went on, there was about four people in there including the two bartenders. It didn’t hurt that I was totally fucking hungover from my exploits in Valdosta, either. But then the booker and his pal were fucking with the sound and the volume on my guitar amp while I was playing… Christ. Though I should have just trundled off to bed after my set and gotten the rest I so sorely needed, I stayed up late and got drunk and slept in the van. Oh, the van, the van, the van.
I ate at yet another Waffle House, then felt ill and had to lounge at yet another rest stop. It was way too hot to sleep in the van, so I tried to sleep outside on a towel w/ a pillow, wearing just my cut-offs (the stares just roll off my fucking back now. Oh, and inflame me with hatred both for the assholes who resent having me around their children and against me for being the kind of guy I wouldn’t want around my children). It took about ten minutes for the fucking ants and bizarre flying insects to discover me and start biting me. Still, I managed a pretty good mood on the highway for a while. Things have been going well, I think, some decent shows, the encore at the Larimer Lounge in Denver, the spontaneous applause in the middle of “Home” at the Hi Dive in Denver, the encore and the spontaneous applause in the middle of “Home” at the Atomic Cantina in ABQ, the show in Atlanta w/ the Dirtbombs and .45s, the offer of opening for Neko Case in Houston (still yet to come through, and I think it’s going to go south, but still…), the news that Jay Braun put “Took You in My Arms” at the opening of his reel and that Jon Spencer loves the reel. Last night was craptacular, but it sits ill with me not because things have been bad for a long time, but because things have been good and I’m getting spoiled. Tonight promises to be a tough one, though.
What finally sank my mood today was reading the free weekly here in Gainesville. God, so many fucking bands, all doing so much better than I am! Granted, I’ve only been doing what I’m doing seriously for six months, and they’ve been doing it far longer, w/ the commitment and full velocity of a group of people behind them, and sometimes label support and money and whatever, but still, right now it feels like I won’t have any of those things and fuck it, I’m so alone right now. I need someone else, and I really don’t want anyone else on board. Except Allison, but somehow Allison doesn’t feel like another person, she just feels like another part of me. But Jesus, just having her around to play cards with or shoot pool with would be fucking heaven.
Posted by Mishka at March 27, 2004 11:54 PMyou don't really care how other people feel about you or what they think about you or even how you affect them so i'm going to assume that this comment means absolutely nothing to you. it's hard to beleive that you would even have a place where someone could "comment" besides yourself. your words are all that matter to you and because of that i feel sorry for you. you lead a sad life and have nothing invested in people. don't worry i am not making this long because you won't even read the whole thing, probably. i do hope, somehow, your life takes a turn for the better. i would hate to live the way you live - without hope. maybe you should look for some. do you even ask yourself the hard questions or do you just waste your time living on the surface of misery?
Posted by: doesn't matter at June 4, 2004 03:10 PMI am sorry for what I said. Please forgive me.
Posted by: still doesn't matter at June 7, 2004 02:29 PMOkay, the temptation is to write a flip response to this (like maybe something with capitalization?) but it appears to have been written in earnest so I'll respond in earnest: I do care what people think of me. Yesterday I spent a long time thinking that I worry too much about what folks think of me, so it's kind of a compliment that someone thinks I don't care what people think of me. If I created discomfort for someone by puking in a McDonald's bathroom, well, I'm not sorry, it was one tenth the discomfort I was feeling. Perhaps if they cared how their actions affected people, they wouldn't have stared at me when it was clear I wasn't having a great morning. I don't hate 'em for it, though. Sure, my life is sad at times. Throwing up in a strange town could be considered sad. I also think it's funny, nothing is funnier to me than my misfortunes. My life isn't sad at all, though. I'm in love, for one. And I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing right now. My life would strike me as much sadder if I was one of the schlubs getting breakfast at McDonald's one morning before heading to a depressing dead-end job that made me feel so smug that I could condescend to someone getting sick. I, too, hope my life takes a turn for the better, but I don't live without hope (as evinced by the first phrase of this sentence-- remember?). And that last bit about the hard questions-- what hard questions? Like am I ready to accept our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into my heart? Maybe read a little more of my blog and then tell me what hard questions I haven't asked myself. Oh, and your phrase "the surface of misery" lacks the zip that it could have: how about "living in a well of misery"? If you reread the sentence, the connotation is that I'm wasting my life by not delving into the depths of misery, which if you'd read anything else, you'd realize that that's not the case at all, but I don't think that's the point you're making. I don't forgive you; post your e-mail address next time and maybe then I'll consider it.
Posted by: Mishka at June 10, 2004 05:26 PMWell, I forgive you, Mishka, even if you haven't accepted me into your heart. Yet.
Posted by: Jesus H. Christ at June 11, 2004 08:43 PMsince when does Jesus have a middle name?