A Quick One (While I'm Away)
....In New York
This weekend I am in “The Capital Region” of New York to play a handful of gigs with The Outta Sites, including a tiki event tonight called Ohana, not to be confused with Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival in Dana Point. Every summer The Outta Sites gets together to play tiki events and yearly summer party one-offs. It’s always a great time as this 60’s forward band is about goofy, schticky fun and making people dance.
Kelly and I had an early flight out of Burbank and the day started kinda stressful. I have yet to get my “Real ID” and I forgot, or naively didn’t know, that it was needed to travel now. After that realization, I panicked because I didn’t bring my passport, figuring since I was flying domestically, it would have been unnecessary. When I got to the TSA line, I was asked to stand in a tertiary separate line off to the side where I waited for everyone to go through the Pre Check line, then the regular line one by one, as I counted the seconds getting closer to my departure time. This third line felt like a passive aggressive way to punish those who haven’t fallen in line yet. An agent came up to me and the other woman in line asked why we didn’t have the “Real ID” and I lied and said “it was in the mail” and showed them my DMV ID and school ID, which didn’t matter to them. I was given a red card to attach to my plane ticket and was set on my way, with literal seconds to kill before my flight.
Stubbornly, I don't want a Real ID. I understand it as a way to keep identification consistent in a federal sense, but it doesn’t make the name itself (REAL ID) less annoying and my mind naturally goes to a place in which I feel there is a more insidious reason for it. I’ll let this Reddit user say it “Given how annoying it is to have the right documents to get one, it's probably to shit on minorities and make immigrants have a hard time flying.”
Instead of allowing that frustration to sustain and ruin my time, I let it pass. Obviously, it was my fault that I dont have the ID, but small irritants like that have the potential to ruin my day, as I tend to ruminate. Not today, Satan…
Once we got in the air and above the clouds, I was entranced. It was as if we were flying over an ocean of cotton or giant mattress with a seam line that weaved in every direction. I couldn’t help but to stare blankly at it, which probably made me seem like a weirdo, because I wasn’t looking at my phone.
We got to Albany and went straight to rehearsal, which happened to be in a venue called The Hanger On The Hudson. It was very local. Rustic, lived in, and smelled of wet wood. There were random accouterments on the wall, like old score boards, gargoyles, decorative grecian pillars and the seats were pulled from an old movie theatre. I imagine that shows there are a gas, but alas, we were only rehearsing. Maybe next time.
I woke up this morning and went on a run through the area and was again astounded by nature. This place (Schenectady, NY) is new to me and I had no idea what the climate would be, so I was pleasantly surprised by how green it was. Aside from the lovely greenery and the feeling of crispy wind hitting my body, I also had the company of the birds chirping and the ducks quacking. I got a bit lost and found an aviation museum with old war planes, which was cool and again, surprising.
This isn’t about sharing a travelog (well, not entirely) it’s more to share that I was able to, in 24 hours, get out of my head, let go of my ego, and consider my surroundings in a way that I don’t normally do. Being worried and in my head about all of the things I have to worry about on a daily basis (money, work, school, LIFE) gets so much of my attention that I decided this weekend to divert rhis attention to the moment. I figured if I was to be out of my normal physical element, I could get out of my mental element and be with friends, play music and find the little things that the world gives me instead of finding it superficially.
So far, this trip has been a lovely reminder to stop, breathe and to look outside to see what nature already gives us instead of searching for little hits of dopamine on my phone. Oh, and rock and roll.
More of that to come.
Thanks for reading!