TRANSITIONS

I am back in Tokyo now. I want to talk a little bit about something that I think a lot of musicians struggle with. This is one of the most difficult things for me, and it marks a big difference between the lives of traveling performer/teachers and people who stay at home.

It's the difficulty of transitioning between being on the road and being at home, sometimes with lots of down time before the next trip. Being on the road is usuallly relaxing. It's different from life off the road (otherwise known as reality) in that there are no responisibilities to speak of: just getting up and getting to wherever you are supposed to be, either a gig or some workshop or teaching situation. Even when the tour is a busy one, there is often a fair amount of unstructured time in hotels, or walking around some old European square or Japanese temple garden. Also, people make a much bigger fuss about you when you are on the road than they do when you are home. Plus, there is a constant stream of people: people to play with, people to hang out with, people taking you places or bringing you presents. All in all, it's pretty pleasant, and I tend to forget about my off-the-road life when I am traveling. But once you get back, the responsibilites return--there are bills to pay, long term goals to work on, errands to run, all the details that make up everyday life. Of course, there are wonderful things that you can't do on the road, things you can only do when you are home: spending time with friends and loved ones, practicing, improving your living situation, exercise, eating better, composing. (Every musician is different in terms of how productive they manage to be on the road, but suffice it to say that for most of us it is easier to set up a productive routine when you are at home. For me, it is a constant struggle to be more productive while traveling, but one that I don't put a lot of pressure on myself about. Just getting through the tour and having fun is enough. In general, I do pretty well with writing on the road, whether for a book, responding to emails or writing this blog, and this last tour I spent a lot of time working on rhythmic practicing, odd meter exercises that Johannes Weidenmuller showed me. But if I slip into periods of sleeping late and not doing too much beyond making my gigs, so be it. Over time you learn how much you can handle and travel can be surprisingly draining. For example, and this is a common experience among musicians that I have spoken with, traveling with a wife can be exhausting, because they often want to sightsee during the day. Most musicians don't want to put in 6 to 8 hours of walking around before the gig. You tend to want to save much of your energy for the playing.) But I can also appreciate the pleasures of a Chet Baker sort of life, not the drug addiction, but the fact that he didn't have an apartment for the last years of his life, and traveled constantly going from gig to gig. Of course, someone had to book all the gigs to support this constant traveling, there's always got to be a grownup somewhere in the picture.

I guess what I like about being on the road is that it is all about CONTENT. By that I mean, it's about music: performing it, playing it, talking about it, teaching it. You don't need to do things like go to the Department of Motor Vehicles when you are on the road. But I'd better sign off now. My wife just came home and we have to go take my computer in to be repaired and then I need to start working on my next visa application. (Sigh.)