I want what I want. We all do, I guess, and I just happen to surround myself with people who are willing to admit that. On one Defiance, Ohio tour, bored in the van, we broke out the guitar and went around exchanging verses, teasing each other about the things that we secretly (or not so secretly) desired. The other night in Brooklyn, Ryan voicing his frustration about the reality of setting up, playing, and getting everyone at the show cleared out in 20 minutes was transformed by the rumor mill as "We're Defiance, Ohio and we get what we want!" We may want what we want, and each of us is frustrated in our own ways when that doesn't happen, but we definitely don't always get what we want.
On this tour, its been hard for any of the 30 or so of us to get what we want. Some people want to feel more safe on the bus, others want to go swimming, others want more sleep, or better sleep, while others want to eat when they're hungry instead of when there's time. Even when you get pretty much what you want, its hard to see your friends not getting what they want. Because, isn't that what we all want more than anything? An easy, perfect world where resources are not finite and where one persons desires don't mitigate another's?
What I want, on this tour at least, is to be more of a part of the things that I see that excite me or inspire me instead of being this passing observer. Ryan would tell me that this is stupid and that I am a part of these things but just in a different, less easily identifiable and less easy to pat myself on the back way. Maybe he's right. What I want is to be able to take some of the inspiration and ideas that I get from seeing so many people and places and having so many conversations, both with people I meet and with my tourmates and do something right away with them instead of being stuck with this bus and this routine. I want to do things while the ideas still seem fresh and possible because I know that the responsibilities that I've put off from back home will catch up to me and quell my momentum like an anchor as will the tug of daily life and fun for fun's sake. Ryan would say that this is stupid and that the festering and the waiting is what makes ideas into things that are better in the end and that having to balance them, or preserve them with other things pulling at your life makes the things that you make better. Again, maybe he's right.
Still, it feels like that's the rub of tour. Lots of inspiration, little that can be done with it. I've gotten to do some just for fun stuff, though that makes me forget about frustrations, at least for a little. These are things like skate sessions in Binghamton and Philly or hiking and a nighttime trip to the water in Maine. These things seem so necessary as the days leading up to them always seem so stressful. I've gotten to see old friends and I think that maybe being around so many people all the time has made me feel a little less awkward and a little better at conversation so I can appreciate these friends a little more than on my other travels.
So, I can't complain about not getting what I want. Most of the time I don't really know what I want, necessarily, so I guess I don't really know whether or not I'm getting what I want. Ultimately, I get to do some things that are pretty fun and hang out with some people who are pretty nice and that's always a good thing.
posted by geoff on 6/30/2005 06:58:00 PM
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Before tour, I was sleeping in the tree house behind my house, my old room now inhabited by a recent Bloomington immigrant while I was across the Atlantic. It was nice to sleep up in the tree, but noisy. I would fall asleep to the sound of crickets and frogs and I would wake up to the sound of birds or people talking on the street. Last night I slept in West Philadelphia and woke up to city sounds - cars, trolleys, and dump trucks. With the sound of the dump truck and all it's clattering of steel and hissing of hydraulics, I couldn't help but think of that morning in Binghamton, and I realized that I would now always hear the sound of a dump truck differently, not with a sense of foreboding or sadness, just differently.
We drove through the night from Detroit to Binghamton, NY. Following those great lakes on the US side, we dared not to try to get our sketchy asses through the Canadian border. I must have slept, but it was hard to believe because I could never seem to get comfortable. On this tour, I've realized that sleeping in a moving vehicle works okay for passing time, but does little for alleviating fatigue.
Looking around the bus, everyone was twisted and contorted with heads dangling off of seats, feet pressed high against the windows, or heads tucked into little balls resting gently on the back of the seat ahead. For the silence, the scene seemed so unnatural. One could imagine a disconcerting scenario where any one of us could have woken up and, for a second, thought that the bus was lying in a ditch after a horrible accident the way that our bodies were all twisted and strewn across the floor. One could have gasped in horror before realizing that the bus was not, after all, crumpled and twisted, but instead quietly pressing on through the night past the rusty cities and towns that line the great lakes.
A day later, after the show in Binghamton, we had been crammed, the thirty or so of us, in the extra rooms of a house inhabited by some people kind enough to put up with all of us. We nestled in where we could. I found some space in an attic room with Matte, Will, and Benji, amidst the broken window glass and the other relics of the house's previous inhabitants. They had been frat boys, apparently and they had left such strange relics as some expensive work boots spray-painted gold as part of some strange ritual and the remnants of a porn collection with DVD titles like "interracial love" (or something similar but more crassly worded). Those of us sleeping in the attic were just waking up when we heard a grinding sound and then a crash and then shouts of "call 911!" We rushed downstairs, through our numbers, and out the door to find that a garbage truck had lost control and flipped over in the middle of the street, maybe 10 yards from where the school bus was parked, and exactly where the school bus would have been parked had we not backed it up to avoid blocking a driveway. I sat on the porch and watched as neighbors trickled from their houses to examine the carnage. The driver, who had managed to climb free of the dump truck, was staggering around deliriously. EMTs and cops arrived at the scene, followed shortly thereafter by a TV news crew.
It is strange to be a spectator to tragedy. Mere feet from the accident, and the realization that the multi-ton vehicle that crashed could have easily been the one that I was riding in, I don't have any new found sense of my own mortality and don't feel much at all other than a bit of concern for the victims. Fresh air doesn't make that much of a difference, I guess, in terms of distinguishing real life from Rescue 911 or COPS. But it is minutes, perhaps, or yards, that allow this indifference. I heard that Erin had to run from the path of the careening vehicle. Chris was sleeping on the school bus, saved only by friction. Sherri ran to the side of the dump truck where the sanitation workers who had been hanging on to the back of the truck had been thrown and lay in pools of blood. On the porch, we remarked at how slow-moving and confused the emergency workers and police seemed, but Sherri told of how she, seeing the blood, was paralyzed, not knowing what to do to help the people laying in the street as people on the sidewalk screamed "DON'T TOUCH HIM!" at her.
I think all the time about those who lose their lives because of war or poverty or desperation or sadness, but I guess I hardly ever think of being wiped out by dumb circumstance.
Later in the day of the dump truck crash, we found that the tires on the bus were looking a little worn and some couldn't help but think that we might end up like the dump truck. The tires ended up being fine, but shit, tons of metal is still tons of metal.
posted by geoff on 6/27/2005 04:56:00 PM
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