At various points in my life i have kept a kind of journal or running record of thoughts, philosophies, questions, insights, details and goings ons. But in the past few years i’ve barely taken the time to write down anything, except for occasional bloggings, twitterings or random letters.

Tonight i am holed up in a hotel in Philadelphia… It’s sunday night and i am haggard. My crew is on the tour bus headed for Mississippi, and i am here for 2 or 3 days to sleep as much as possible. Last week smashed, we played to sold out off the hook crowds in Boston, DC, New York, and Philly… all 4 venues were packed to the gills and the energy of the people was extremely intense, yet super positive and inspiring.

What stands out to me though is how natural, comfortable, even matter-of-fact each event was. While technical issues always abound, and with a road crew that is working tirelessly, each night had an automatic flow, kind of like it happened exactly as i expected or something. Not that it is boring or unimportant. But it was just that… i want to say this without any negative conotation: it didn’t feel like anything new. in a GOOD WAY. It felt super easy and natural. What was rigorous was EVERYTHING other than the 2 or 3 hours on stage. On stage it’s like poetry unfolding blindly and effortlessly. That’s how it feels. Like telling a story you know by heart even though it’s never been told before. i guess im just trying to say that playing the music feels more natural and insane than ever before.

Today I awoke at 2 or 3 pm, my ‘voice’ was almost completely gone. I lay around for a few hours, and then got up long enough to catch a cab to whole foods, kind of float through the isles, assemble a menu of healthy food to take back to the hotel like a bear preparing for winter hibernation…I came right home, ate butternut squash soup and cornbread, made some peppermint tea, and lay back down. Tonight will be my first night not drinking red wine in months, probably one of 4 or 5 nights of the entire year. I love red wine.

Anyhow, my friend Nadia gave me ‘Get in the Van’ by Henry Rollins: kind of a tour journal of his years on the road with Black Flag. I tore through half of the book, and was struck by how it only detailed a few years, and i have been on a grinding tear-out schedule for almost 3 times that. Granted i was not slogging through the suffocatingly violent culture of self-abusive 1980’s punk rock. But nonetheless, i realized that 15 years have passed and very little of it has been recorded. …so much insanity and absolutely LOCO situations and adventures. I am mega inspired to try and record some of it down…

Not like i want people reading a book about my life in the future, but *i* want to be able to recollect those memories, either just for the dose of nostalgia, or to share them with friends.

So i figured i would start up taking at least a small daily or semi-daily record. Who knows if i will keep it up…most likely i will not.

At least it got me started again.

Maybe i will post some of it here on the blog if i end up writing anything i wanna share.

🙂