We’re driving east across the northern edge of Ohio, flat lands all around us, Paul Simon singing on the stereo, distant contrails etching the sky above the flat-bottomed clouds. It’s Easter day and I’m thinking about toll roads. They’re the epitome of time vs money the full manifestation of the concept that with money you can literally buy time. We’ll probably spend around $25 on tolls today, worthy of portions of the I-95 corridor, but it’ll probably get us home just shy of dinner and that’s worth the cash. Not too long ago, the math would’ve been different as we had more time than money. Now the equation is inversed.
Yesterday we played Coffee Amici. We haven’t been there in a long, long time and it’s wonderful to hit up a place that seems so very unchanged. Coffeehouse, music-Loving locals, great sound. It’s a tips gig and as such I hate giving away a Saturday night for it, and yet that place is good for the soul. An older crowd that nevertheless doesn’t flinch from the fiercer side of ilyAIMY. Not a Counting and Stay Close crowd per se, but Glom of Nit and Elephant Joke and Kashmir no question. We’d raged out west through the I-70 corridor, made our way back and up to Findlay, and then last night crashed with old, old friends up in Toledo, OH. Our first time in that town. My impression of it was pretty positive, but we only got to see it in the dark and then in the almost hallucinatory glare of the morning sun as we aim the Hyundai East and get on the road. It’s about 8 hours, and all of us are going to need stretch breaks so that time will flex its muscles and worm its way thoroughly into the rest of our day. Even a late dinner is perhaps optimistic.
Intense memories coupled with songs. That word “coupled”. Yeah. We’re driving eastbound over Pittsburgh and the season and the sound and storm are coming together to make my mind drift. Yeah. That word “coming”. Well, I’m not going to go into a lot
of detail here because that just wouldn’t be right. But I AM thinking about aesthetics and sights and sounds and textures on a broader scale than the completely carnal – watching the road flash past, there’s something dissatisfying about traveling in a flat line out and a flat line back. We try to avoid it, aiming for circles and loops instead. It’s just vastly smarter gig-wise, and even if you DO have things lined up coming and going (in and out – damn it) there’s just this feeling of undoing what you’ve done, picking up the line you’ve laid down (laid)… it’s sort of disheartening, like you’d taken steps forward only to end up retracing your steps right back to where you came from. On a loop there’s a feeling of circuit, of travel. On a straight line it’s just… going back from whence you came.
Came.
This trip is a line, flat out and flat back with that jog north up to Toledo just to break the pattern – but the changing of the seasons is softening the blow somewhat. I the week since we last drove this particular highway spring has most definitely sprung, and landscapes that were black and white with trailed drifts of snow and barren branches have blossomed into vibrant swaths of colour. Flashing past at 70mph the blurs surrounding the interstate would do any Impressionist proud and do wonders for blotting out that “we were JUST THERE” feeling…
Yeah. Right… right there.
