June 20th, 2024. Probably.

These are my last images of home before we are whisked away by our friend Amy to BWI. The room is prepped for my nephews. I wish them luck. Things are sort of in order for a given value of order, and by the time I’m writing this, I’m sadly disappointed, as I was hoping that George (my brother) would have a home in considerable disarray to make me feel better about my own. Alas. He’ll make do with our squalor. Also – Prince’s no doubt heartfelt emotions on our impending departure were not immediately obvious.

Amy shows up. We get in the Amymobile. We depart.

I am unworldly. Not in a good ethereal kinda alien way. In the Opposite of Worldly kinda way. I am not on the road, I’m traveling, and I am thoroughly out of my element. Disconcerted and lost. Operating on charm and instinct and with faith that if millions of people manage to do x than I must be able to do x too, has been demonstrated to be utterly, completely and thoroughly wrong.

We’ve been planning to visit my brother in Brussels, and my friend Ana in Sweden, for about 6 months. And by “planning”, I definitely mean, “I bought tickets”. “Planning” has definitely been more about how my various organizations (and cat) function for about a month while I’m not around and less about how I actually navigate the process of getting from point A (my door in Baltimore, MD) to point B (my brother’s door in Waluwe-Saint-Pierre, Brussels, Belgium).

A sad sidebar to our departure: While waiting at BWI we learned that our friend Tom Prasada-Rao has died. He was the ultimate of even keel, the Zen godfather of the east coast folk scene, returned from his South West sojourns just in time for a pandemic. A sad-eyed, soft-voiced, smiling icon who wrote simple songs like koans that it took me multiple listens to decode into their full complexity. As much as I hate to say it, we’d been thinking about his death for a while, with organizations saying “this may be morbid, but we should start planning a memorial show NOW [before he dies]”. My argument that maybe doing something while he’s ALIVE, even if he can’t attend, he can listen over the Wonder of the Internet or whatever, was deemed to be something no-one had IMMEDIATE time to perpetrate. Whatever memorial shows come together will now happen in our absence and beyond the fact that this saddens me, I’m also aware that the folk scene runs on connections and our absence from these events is… not ideal.

There’s so, so much more than just buying tickets and spending the money, getting a passport and hoping for the best.

Holy crap. Airports. Holy crap. Airplanes. Holy crap. People.

I’m stunned by how thoroughly out of my depth I am.

As a touring musician, even in towns I don’t know and in scenes I’m clueless about and doing things I have NO knowledge of, people want to see you succeed – and you’ve got a reason to be there. I think I’ve spent 20+ years of my Life knowing that even when I’m stumbling around, someone is going to take notice of me, sympathize, empathize, and show me that I’m pushing on the pull door, trying to put my card in upside down, pressing the button NEXT to where it says “enter” rather than pressing the “enter” button. All of the absolutely mortifying tiny mistakes that I think of as being very, very human are perhaps simply just me, and the universe takes pity because I have… great hair? A weird laugh? A guitar case on my back?

Who even knows.

My experience with international travel has a lot more to do with shoving, pushing, being yelled at and officials rolling their eyes as I radiate stupidity.

Despite this, I’m enjoying the experience. I should embrace my ignorance perhaps. And let it shine.

Off into the sky with us. After a half hour fueling delay that made us very nervous for our connection in Iceland, we leapt into the sky, totally failing to sleep on our 6 hour trans-Atlantic flight.

To the unflappable man who, after we wound our way through all the lines that, by signage and text and lots of pointy arrows, sure SEEMED to be OUR line taking us to OUR departure gate, took one look at my passport and said “Play? Go straight through there and get in THAT line” apparently pointing directly through a mass of people and crowd control barriers with signage that did NOT seem to apply to us or our departure gate? Thank you. We got there. I know you were worried.

To the unamused TSA officer who patiently held my finger pick, d20 and packet of tissues while demanding to know what ELSE was in my pockets, I’m sorry that the next item was a USED tissue. You seemed to take this in stride, and if you had any emotion on the subject, whether disgust or humour, you did NOT let it show.

To the many, many people who stopped randomly to consult their phones causing near collisions while at turns walking swiftly and slowly and swiftly again through the international departures concourse… I was one of you.

The horrible realization that somewhere before Iceland, the sun came back UP again. Later we come to realize that we won’t actually see the night sky again till we return home. The Keflavik airport seemed really cool, and it’s a shame we had to head through at speed. Also – the brief moments we spent with the landscape of Iceland : I’d never dreamed how very ALIEN it was. I’d seen it in movies, I’ve seen it on TV. To see black beaches and strange foliage laid out beneath you like that – smoking mountains in the distance – heavy, grey, sullen skies – I want to come back HERE!

To the people that ran into us and shoved? Fuck you. Somehow I managed NOT to bump, curse, run over or elbow you, your face, your stupid furry luggage OR your horrible child.

To the little woman in the strange transparent box who stamped my passport in Keflavik: I’m sorry I was so very, very confused and unprepared for your questions. I’d been awake for 31 of the previous 36 hours and you were at the end of a lot of mysterious queuing controls and paths past mysterious signage and electronic kiosks all covered in plastic strangely reminiscent to first stepping onto the USS Cygnus just on the edge of the Black Hole and I had NO idea what time it was or even particularly what country I was in, and certainly had no idea I was stepping into passport control. I swear, my wife knew the answers to your questions and I feel that you passed me through the gate more on my obvious inane harmlessness than because I’d actually given you the information you sought.

After another 3 hours in the air, Belgium rolls out beneath us as we head in for our landing.

On the ground in Brussels we’re happy but groggy. The first thing of note was this not-very-Hobbit Hobbit Hotel.

To the woman with all the tattoos and cool piercings who kept yelling “go deeper, go DEEPER” when I think what she meant was “form a tightly-spaced queue in preparation for getting on this bus that will take you to the plane who’s connection you’re NOT going to miss after all” perhaps you can understand my befuddlement, if not my accompanying amusement.

To the woman with all the fuzzy bags who shoved past us getting OFF that plane. Fuck you. We were getting there.

And to my brother, who was absolutely NOT where I was expecting to see him upon FINALLY exciting the absolutely immense, strange and beautiful and oddly 90s shopping mall-like Brussels Airport, I absolutely did NOT intend to walk rapidly past you, but you were absolutely correct to shove me out of the way and hug Kristen first.

Holy crap.

I wish I felt getting home was going to be ANY easier.