I woke yesterday a good distance from home. Intentionally. A place I had been before, but not in a good many years. A worthy trip, for sure. But exhausting. I laid my head back down in my own bed that later night. Much later. After a few hundred miles of driving.

Most folks I shared the destination with went by quicker means of travel. I stuck to the terrestrial route for means of transport of equipment. The big drum is a pain to get on a plane, after all. But there was more to it than that. Maybe being born at the end of the twentieth century has something to do with it. Or it could be the influence of the land from which I come and how though certainly vast and diverse, it is connected by ways of arterial transport than can be transversed by an individual with a function automobile. And I happen to be such an individual.

But it is something else. I find the highway meditative. Sure, the level of that depends on timing and congestion. Traffic can be insufferable, but the road when open seems just as freeing to me as it always had been. And in that, I find a sort of sublime introspection.

This was stoked sonically, of course.

The method I employ was tested the last time this same trip was made, some six or so years ago. And to great success, but I expanded and varied the list this time. I ask of friends who are fellow original noise makers to suggest three albums each, to be listened to from beginning to end. Those recommendations are then varied about, moving from one soul’s suggestion, to another’s, and another’s- until it winds back and the second suggestion from each set of souls is run through.

All of them gems. I have good taste in musical friends.

An interesting aspect of this occurred to me sometime during the return venture homeward. Seeming obvious, each person would only suggest something that they themselves enjoy. But that is not what struck me. It was rather the realization that each of these choices were more than just their preference. These people know me well enough to know what I tend to enjoy. So, in their selection there must have been some aspect of intention towards my enjoyment based upon some educated guesswork. Be it a conscious choice or not.  

What I found was the profound flow between similarity and difference between each of the choices and choosers. That the songwriter who couldn’t play a scale to save his life suggested a collection of music of the early Rock and Roll era filled with lead guitar playing that bounced between technical and simple, but always potent and profound. That another musician whose own work is filled with well thought out blends of rhythm and melodic instrumentation, suggested a live record from one of the greatest, but most bare bones songwriters of the last century. One who we would likely both agree that non-scale player formerly mentioned friend of ours is likely a successor of that bare bones but undeniably potent legacy.

And these just being two of the many instances in which this had occurred. I’ll ponder upon it some more, I’m sure. But not here. Sometime later on with something with strings in my hands. Something that I can make sing, or might make me sing.  

Funny enough, while in the intended destination, I had been performing live music myself. Hell, I suppose that was really the point and purpose of the whole thing. Strange that it doesn’t occur that way outright to me. Perhaps because the tunes were not of my own creation. Though to give myself credit. I do my own arranging. Electric guitar and Scottish highland bagpipes are not a combination I am the first to break ground on. Not by a long shot. But no one I’ve seen does it the way we do. Especially not this particular weekend, where bagpipes and guitars were in no shortage, but were otherwise segregated.

And my showmanship was certainly not lacking. I can still win a crowd, albeit drunk on St. Paddy’s day. Though the argument can be made that is a hard crowd to win over. But win them we did, over and over again, in each performance. Gig after gig, venue after venue. Lightning sets, often squeezed between the hired live performers. And although perhaps skeptical at first, it was the respect and accolades received from these other musicians that hit harder than a thousand drunks combined. Dudes who play covers night after night in bars see a lot of music and a lot of acts. And deal with a mountain of bullshit. To have them be impressed by what you and your group are doing is no shortchange.

So, a success. Outward into the world and received positively by all who witnessed. And yet, I feel not the overwhelming ecstasy of success. There seems a strange emptiness in all that. Though that has subsided with the reduction of physical exhaustion. Still, there is this seeming emptiness in spite of it all. That this path short of perfection will never be enough to satiate me. Doomed to want more and more and never less. And within this, my many failures rise to the surface. All the cruelties I have cast, whether intended or not arriving in the mental forefront while anything of a positive persuasion is stripped of its merit.

Or, at least that is the feeling held when I rose to pack my car and hit the road.

Once a few hundred miles flew past, recommended music ringing within the frame of my destination achieving machine, that feeling evolved. Not emptiness anymore. Something else. Something more like stillness. A peace with progress, while not conceding movement towards the future. But a sense of being that seems to never move despite its constant motion. A blend of what was, is and will ever be- all shrouded in mystery and clarity. Making perfect sense, just beyond my comprehension.

There is an image that stands out. Of the travel and not the destination, for it seems they exist as separate sort of experiences. Within my mind’s own categorization.  

The side of the earth I was occupying was shifting its way away from the light of our star. The sky all stained with the sorts of colors our atmosphere makes when it feels like being pretty. Passing over the Potomac, beyond the sensational and famous tree blossoms of the place and time of year- I could spy the structures famous for this civilization’s administration types, ultimately of this whole vast landmass. Offices and monuments and the ones that blend the two, ones where hanging about are those folks that allegedly run the joint.

As I saw them, occupied and functioning, even if closing for the night. But before long after laying witness, I thought of what this would look like as a ruin. Not the catastrophe kind, where all is wasteland. Just after enough time passed for their position and relevance to fall into the forgotten. As went with much of the ancients before. Overgrown and crumbling. Perhaps abandoned. Perhaps occupied by souls that know nothing of what these statues and shelters once were. I imagine that they would not care much if they were to receive and complete and thorough explanation of the point and purpose of it all. I suppose it wouldn’t be what they see as any kind of useful.

I wondered about this and thought it profound in its aesthetic. Never mind the fact that by the time such a sight was to occur, I myself would be long reduced back into abyss.

Maybe it’s this ego I wield, but I thought that there could be something left behind by your humble narrator. Whatever form that takes.

It’s definitely the ego. Doesn’t make it impossible, though.