Nurse the Hate: Hate The Tour

I am very much looking forward to going to Europe and playing this upcoming run of shows.  I like to spend each day traveling to a new city with completely new sights and experiences.  I like the feeling of the van being a safe cocoon in a sea of uncertainty.  I like that each day presents the possibility of great triumph or failure.  I like meeting new people and hearing their stories, the crazier the better.  I like walking alone in small museums having my imagination explode looking at art from people I had previously never heard a whisper about.  New food.  New drinks.  New everything.  Each day when we wake up anything can happen.  It is just us out there alone with our stupid songs we made up in the basement.

Stasis is the enemy.  Though looking at that line it appears like something from something I am typing in a remote cabin in the woods that I vaguely refer to as “My Manifesto”, I am willing to accept it.  I have often thought about getting a place in the woods where I could type 3786 pages of run on sentences of foggy dogma, but I could never find the time to get the aluminum foil I would need to put over the windows.  Plus, who wants to have to hike out of a remote wilderness location whenever you need a six pack or a loaf of bread?  Too much hassle.  I will stand by the thought though.  If one is not in motion moving forward, one withers and dies.

I strangely only feel normal when I am in motion as I am on tour.  It is somehow more honest singing songs about urine filled plastic bottles to Germans in nightclubs than uttering phrases like “we need to bring down the CPM by packaging the D2 before the deal sunsets”.  That this is an actual phrase I heard this week is not really as important as the fact that the person uttering it was completely serious and thought they were doing something of great importance.  Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one that notes the absurdity of the world of business.  Paradigm shift.  Super serve.  Hyper local.  Low hanging fruit and deep dives.  Crazy.

We live in a world that provides the illusion of great choice.  Can I really become a globe trotting wine expert?  Maybe.  Can I become a dive instructor in Fiji?  Maybe, but then again do I really want to live in a squalid apartment in Fiji, especially when the term “squalid” in Fiji must be so far beyond what is even on the outer edge of the American imagination of “squalid”?   There must be insects there the size of Maine Lobsters that are crazy mutations between spiders and scorpions.  I sure don’t want one of those popping out of “the slop hole” down the hall of my apartment building and stinging me in my Johnson.  Next thing you know you are on the beach by a bonfire biting down on a stick while two heavily tattooed native guys hold you down as the “doctor” pulls a fish hook stinger thing out of your swollen angry phallus.  No thanks.

I have considered moving to a strange country and taking some sort of vague interesting job.  In this fantasy life I am making a comfortable yet not extravagant living in a low stress job like being the brand ambassador for Vueve Cliquet champagne.  I can see myself at the Monaco Grand Prix pouring La Grande Dame champagne while charmingly chatting up people like the Princess, Michael Caine and Lenny Kravitz trackside before ignoring their fabulous after party and instead sitting at a small seaside café at Nice talking to my dear friend Jean-Claude over a glass of pastis.  “Parties are fine Jean-Claude, but a night like this is best spent alone enjoying the pain of a love lost.  I have nothing Jean-Claude… Nothing…”  Jean-Claude would then grunt while wiping down the quartz counter.  (Jean-Claude in truth doesn’t really care for me, but lets me ramble on as I do tip very well on my Vueve Cliquet expense account.  He knows I will eventually talk myself out and later tearfully walk down the misty alley towards my tasteful seaside flat possessively holding a small mysterious key I carry with me everywhere in my pocket.)  

I have also considered moving to Northern California like a modern day Tom Joad.  I passed up a great opportunity to buy a property years ago in the midst of the real estate panic.  This is my one great economic regret.  In this current plan, I somehow scoop this property back up at the Chicken Little sale price of 2009.  This mountain top home looks majestically down on the Napa Valley providing amazing views, even from the lap pool.  I will buy this property in a fevered rush of passionate excitement, not doing any of the normal due diligence.  Soon after moving I will discover it is structurally unsound after the last round of earthquakes, and it will either slide into the valley or burn up in a forest fire.  Maybe both.  State Farm will, of course, fuck me and not provide coverage for either case with a murky explanation of “Yes, while you do have fire coverage if it is an Act of God, I don’t know how you can prove this was an Act of God.  God would never set something on fire AND send it down a mountain in a mudslide.  Good day sir!”  The agent will drive away and leave me in the smoldering ash with nothing.  This will place me as another one of those filthy long haired guys muttering to themselves that look like dirty .38 Special roadies and beg for spare change around dodgy streets in San Francisco.  Eh, it’s an option.

Until I re-invent myself for my last Great Act, I look forward to traveling and singing songs I believe about with my friends.  I am going to drink fine Belgian Ale at Pits.  I am going to share a few Rothaus Pils with my pals in Stuttgart.  I will try to avoid horrible schnapps in Finnegan Shinnegan.  I am going to go to bed late and wake up early.  I don’t want to miss anything as who knows when I will do it again.  I am going to see amazing things I don’t even know about and suffer through disasters I can’t even imagine.

I can’t wait.