How often do you get to see the ones you love?
Touring is often a zero-sum game; it works when everyone’s willing to give a little without expecting much in return. On paper, this makes no sense. In person, well…
You have breakfast with the same people every morning. Most of your waking hours are spent in an enclosed space, breathing the same air, often exerting as little motion as possible, moving through environments that change as rapidly as the state of this year’s election cycle. When at last it comes time to rest, everything’s great until last night’s dinner moves through everyone at the same time, and a war for the single available toilet immediately and sometimes violently commences.
Lunch is usually skipped or relegated to a pit stop; the prospect of dinner remains optimistic until sound check, when “work mode” kicks in; you reluctantly accept Taco Bell as your knight in shining armor (again), promising yourself and your bandmates that we will encourage each other to do better. In jest.
Phone calls to our loved ones are reserved for the early morning, the late evening, or preceded by “Hey, you’re on speakerphone!”
Your time is tugged by guilt, gyrating between the euphoria of living life on the road and the hope that it’s all worth it. It takes a miracle for it to be worth it.
And I’m not afraid to admit that the miracle’s not in us.
There’s a time in adulthood when people you used to see every day become yearly visits. When the siblings come in for the holidays, or something like that. Suddenly it becomes a matter of intention rather than routine. If I’m seeing you once a year for the rest of our lives then we’ve probably got like 50 days left together on this earth; what will we make of it?
So yes, we’ll add a couple of detours to the drive; skip breakfast so we can share dinner; be late to sound check or stay up past a responsible hour; for that is the benefit of being in a touring band, a joy that cannot be contained.
How often is not the question.
You’re worth it.