limits

Sometimes I forget that my body has limits. I tend to push myself with no thought of consequence. I don't need too much sleep to function so I'll stay up late. Maybe drive after the show, crash in the car until daytime and then walk around all day and this never used to bother me. I've managed to get sick on the last two tours though. A little throat congestion doesn’t really bother my tuba playing too much but singing has been really problematic. I guess I don't fully consider that when you're alone there's very little downtime. You can't just crash out in the back of the van while someone else drives. Also, I'm gathering new found respect for solo acts. It's tough being up there alone because there's nothing else going on to draw attention, even for a moment. Even if it's brief it helps to be able to step back out of the picture at a show. When you're the only one up there that's just not possible. Last night's show in Aspen was a bit of a struggle. I got a little light headed and my limbs were a little rubbery and I had trouble holding it all together. There's a lot for me to keep track of and manage during these sets which involves a lot of sharp, relaxed concentration. After the show I drove up the mountain pass towards Buena Vista and crashed in the car along a river. It was quite peaceful and beautiful. I woke up early and finished the journey to Buena Vista where I'm meeting a friend of a friend. When I hit town it was pretty early and I pulled in to a coffee shop/bakery. I asked the women at the counter if there was a drug store around at which I could get some allergy medicine which apparently was an invitation for a strange man to tell me all about his persistent athletes foot. Apparently it's really hard to clean that stuff out in between the toes. In addition he got the athletes foot doing work for a year for this guy who never paid him. Apparently this guy has the whole town fooled because he's really a drug dealer who goes down to South America all the time. This gentleman with the athlete's foot then pulled me aside and leaned in real close (a little too close) and told me that he was on death row but was exonerated and that the townspeople still see him as a criminal and that no one likes him and that, in fact, they're all out to get him. Apparently Buena Vista is really mostly a prison town in which either everybody's been to prison or there are lots of prisons or everyone is in the imprisoning business. It was a little hard to tell which. I tried to get a couple words in edgewise but he quickly cut me off having, it seemed, a whole lot that he absolutely needed to tell me in what he feared would be far too little time. I quickly found out that he studied the violin as a child. That he quit at an early age. That he has now picked up the mandolin. That he is very upset that people have asked him to play the mandolin for them in what I could vaguely translate as some kind of challenge of his abilities. I found out about his father's military career and various other sundries. All this was crammed into about 5-10 minutes of conversation as I attempted to escape to the pharmacy to get some drugs that would hopefully alleviate my pounding sinuses. Before I escaped he told me that he doesn't understand how people can not want to talk to each other and I decided not to point out that we really hadn't had a conversation. I think of a conversation as going in two directions. Nevertheless he needed an audience and I was happy to help him out...to a point.