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15 May 2003 [written 6 April 2003] Writing from a hotel room in Philly (right by the stadium, no less). Played Princeton earlier today. On our way back for a taping at WXPN tomorrow. I am in need of a manager, I’ve decided. I can’t handle this workload gracefully. Michael’s in a constant state of annoyance with me these days, I suspect — I’m not easily reachable, the email’s piling up, plans are made but the reality never quite materializes. There are a great many things that need doing that I don't do well. Time to bring in the professionals. What I do enjoy, and do well: performing. Making friends with people who come to the shows. Traveling. Keeping a relatively grueling schedule. I’m at the end of an 11-day stretch of consecutive shows (got a one-day breather tomorrow, not counting the World Café radio show, before I dive into another 6-day run), and I’m still flying high. As I told the wonderful audience at The Point last Thursday, "I can’t believe I get to feel good for a living." Some thoughts I’ve had, on these long drives through new places… 1. I've said this before, in several interviews and Q&As, but the egocentrism thing really gets to me. The absolute self-absorbedness that this profession encourages. I talk to reporters about me, I look for my name on marquees and placards in the record store, and then I go play in front of a bunch of people whose focus is entirely on me, and who want my signature afterwards. Having everything center on myself, pretty much 24 hours a day, is dangerous, I can tell. I have to recalibrate mentally every once in a while, and remember what I'm here to do. 2. Right now I am a good listening-room performer. I know how to connect with a room of 100 attentive people. Will it scale? What I’m doing currently — does it apply to a room of 500? 1000? 10,000? It may be hard to bear the weight of an audience that size, as a solo performer. What happens when a band is added to the mix? What’s lost: the lyrics? The story? The sense of intimacy, of real communication? How will I deal with that? How does performing work at that order of magnitude? 3. Future touring will be different. As a not-super-famous solo musician I can enter people’s lives for a while — sleep on their couches, go out to dinner with strangers, hang around a college campus for an afternoon. Later on, I imagine, it’ll be more about hotel rooms and getting on the bus in the morning. Having people in each town become a blur of faces, with no quality time to spend with any one, because there are too many. And a crew of, say, twelve people can’t exactly up and go to dinner with someone after the gig, spontaneously. The whole thing will probably be more about building camaraderie with my traveling companions, becoming close through weeks of 24-7 togetherness. I think I may find myself missing the way it is now, in the early days. 4. I’m happy on the road. I’m so much so, in fact, that it only took about five days for me to get restless when I got home from the southwest tour. I don’t get homesick — how can I, when it’s like coming home to a new family every night? This, too, poses certain dangers. What do I do with this newfound wanderlust? Will it fade? Or only grow stronger? Will I become incapable of being happy at home? Where will home be, really? Cautious thoughts for heady times. But for now, the bed beckons. - VT
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