Rain Tour

Re-ordered the set list in Whistler and got a good response. Good way to end the tour after the lackluster crowds in Van, Vic, and Tof. That got Mike down, but we played well in any case. Hard starting out, as an unknown, between-genres band. But the last show was kickass.

Going home. Long long drive. But the obligations are over. I relax and smoke hash, which plunges me into the paradox – light, spacey feeling and suffocating dread. Have to intentionally steady my mind, to avoid drowning. A lot of mantras and internal calisthenics, mental muscle workout.

Trying to describe massive emotion. Impossibility of coping. Hyper-sensitivity. All pain, past, present and future, all possibility of pain, feels impossible to feel. When brought into a feedback loop of negativity, the delay between feeling and fading is excessive, an unconscious loop, repeating cycle… but paisley is innocent and fun ~ beauty and joy in abstraction ~ a good loop if you can get into it. Feedback loops can be positive too. Easy to forget that. Great to remember.

Plunged back into negative loop land by Mike talking. Unfortunate, because there’s plenty of good things in it. He reminds me of Jenn a lot, hard-edged exterior, quick, articulate and honest about what is on his mind, but compassionate to the core, a conversational catalyst and family man, very real, here and now, oriented to the good and chafed with the grit of reality. But I tumble into the negative, non-abstract specifications of my inadequacies and awkward fits into my hallucinatory misconceptions surrounding an ill-conceived definition of society. 16 drams is poetic.

Paranoia, fretting over my character, am I playing this right? What is right? Nothing it seems, feedback loop focused on flaws. Beauty is brighter and more beautiful, but the ugliness and painfulness is harsher than anything, wins, buries the beauty. But that is why playing music, improvisation, is probably the best use of my time, in such a state. Ideas are musical, intense expression, can be negative, in a good way.

Eriatarka on the car stereo, my favourite song. If Mike and the others would agree to cover this, I’d sign a waiver, in blood, obliging me to be in this band for a decade.