When people have asked me where I live, I used to joke “on the Greyhound.”   The first time I heard, “Kathy, I said as we boarded the Greyhound in Pittsburgh,” from Simon & Garfunkel’s “America,”  I thought the Greyhound was cool.   The only time I rode it as a child was with my two sisters, from Calgary to Vancouver and back, when we went to visit my grandparents.   On the way back there was an avalanche in Revelstoke, which created a five-hour detour.  When my parents came to the station in Calgary to pick us up and we weren’t there, they went to the counter and asked if there was any information. Apparently, the woman at the counter suggested that we had probably just run away from home.  My poor mother said we weren’t those kinds of kids, and the woman said that all parents think that.  Customer service has never been the strong-point of the Ol’ Blue Chariot, but even at thirteen years old I remember the special feeling I got reading my book in the wee hours of the night, riding through the Rockies in the darkness with my overhead light on.  A soldier across the aisle had asked me what I was reading.  It felt like an adventure.  They even gave out granola bars and juice boxes in those days and showed movies.  That was before they introduced Wi-Fi and everyone had their own device.

I recently found a pencil drawing I made at about seventeen years old.  It was at one of a few art-therapy sessions I was sent to because, well, let’s just say, I was feeling a bit more distraught than usual for a while.  The drawing was faint, but it was of a girl leaning her head against a bus window, with a somewhat blank stare.  I remember the therapist asking me where the girl was going.  “I don’t know,” I said. “She just likes the ride.”  If there is foreshadowing in life, that was surely a moment of it.

Years later, when I decided to go full-time with my music, I confided in a fellow singer-songwriter whom I had met in Toronto.  He laughed and said there was no way I could be a Canadian touring artist without a car and a driver’s license.   That Greyhound Discovery Pass was like the universe saying, “Oh yeah? Watch her!”

Indeed, the best thing that happened to me, as far as I was concerned, was discovering “The Discovery Pass.”   Greyhound used to issue it as an option instead of individual tickets, and I would pay $600 for two months of unlimited Greyhound travel in any direction.   This included the States, but without a proper work-permit to go play shows there, I never did, and I had enough to do in Canada anyway.  This was my ticket, no pun intended, to a full-time music career without an agent, manager and publicist.  All I needed were a handful of guaranty gigs (meaning, agreed-upon pay regardless of turn-out), and the rest could be filled with pass-the-hat or ticket gigs which I could afford to risk because I didn’t have to pay any extra money to travel to them.  I was couch-surfing while touring anyway, and getting pretty hefty favours as far as recordings prices went, so really, those six hundred dollars were my only expense other than pressing CDs, the odd bar of soap and toothpaste, tampons, and the food and drink which, at least once a day, if it was a gig-day, I often didn’t have to pay for anyway.

God, I rode that bus everywhere.  Toronto to Thunder Bay, (21 hours), sometimes with a stop in Sault St. Marie, Thunder Bay to Winnipeg or Saskatoon, from there to Calgary, or Edmonton, and through the various towns of the Okanogan and British Columbia, to Vancouver, to Vancouver Island, and back again.   I became acquainted with the tiniest of stops, the fifty-cent second hand, terrible romance novels in the Wawa corner store pit-stop, the vending machines in North Bay where there was a one-hour wait at five in the morning with nobody working there, the graffiti at the Red Deer station that said “Have no Fear, Have Music,” the convenience store at the stop between Toronto and Ottawa that reeked so badly of moth balls, whatever food you bought there tasted like them too, and the cowboy saloon-style convenience store in the middle of the Rockies on the way to Nelson, that advertised, “now selling Samosas.”

I once had a 24-hour ride that popped me out in Brandon, Manitoba, to play a bar-gig until 1.a.m., only to get on again at 2.am. to head to Alberta, another 24-hour ride.  I once had a four-hour wait between the gig and the 6.am. departure from Golden, B.C., where the gas-station store worker drank vodka and “jammed” with me, playing a bucket as a drum while I sang some Johnny Cash song at his request.  I would play a gig in Peterborough, and then hop on at 4.am. and continue on to Toronto for a matinee show the next say.  I rolled around through the Okanogan, and had a six hour wait in Kelowna, even though I was only one hour away from Penticton where I needed to be.    I rode it to the States and back twice, (boarder patrol on a Greyhound is quite a circus, let me tell you).     Some have asked if I feel safe on it, especially after that horrific and infamous beheading, but I have lived in Jerusalem where, for a period, buses were blowing up or getting shot at every few days, so one freak occurrence in Canada wasn’t going to phase me.

I’ve seen sunrises and sunsets over mountains, prairies and forests, thunderstorms and blizzards, all through Greyhound bus windows.  I have heard snippets of hundreds of strange conversations about family feuds, prison, drugs, reunions and heartbreaks. I’ve heard people talking to their loved ones on their cell phones, and at annoying times, listening to their music too loudly through headphones. I’ve heard babies cry and get comforted, seen people be helpful or pretend to be sleeping so they wouldn’t have to give up the seat next to theirs.   I’ve stood and smoked cigarettes in pit-stop parking lots, in silence with the other smokers, or in smokers’ conversations where for six or seven minutes you share some life-story and then get back on the bus to your seats never to meet again    I’ve squatted over moving toilets after too much coffee and pumped liberal amounts of sanitising gel onto my hands, can conjure the smell of the cleaner all the buses use. The smell lives in some part of my brain like it’s as common as the smell of a rose. I’ve stepped over many pairs of legs of sleeping passengers who spread across the aisle for something akin to comfort, and I have heard the variations of dozens of bus-drivers giving their welcome-aboard spiel, some with good senses of humour, some with bad ones, and some with none at all.  One driver sang John Prine songs into the announcement microphone as we arrived into each stop.

The Greyhound may be crazy, but it was kind of my one consistent home.  For someone who travels pretty much full time, I still get anxious about each journey:  The packing, the prepping, the timing of getting to the station on time, the worry over whether they’ll let me bring the guitar on board rather than put it with the luggage, which, during winter means it’s in a freezing cold place for hours, on top of bouncing around with suitcases.  I was once told by a station official that I couldn’t bring it on board because it could potentially be used as a weapon.  I looked at her like it was obviously crazy and she said “if you don’t believe me I can show you the policy in writing.”  Those Greyhound workers in the stations can be awfully power-trippy and nonsensical.   I just got on the bus with the guitar anyway.  The Greyhound is one of the only places where I am actually defiant, though I’m smartly quiet about it.   I worry about whether my luggage is overweight and whether I’ll be charged for it, or if they’ll notice that I have one too many carry-ons.   And there is always some anxiety about shifting scenery, leaving whomever I’ve been staying with and arriving in the next place with the next set of people.  

But when I board the bus and nestle into my seat, (preferably a window seat so there is something to lean on, and preferably, two seats to myself which makes all the difference in the world to comfort), there is this incredible wave of relief. I’m on, I’m seated, and now I can just sit there and not worry about anything until the ride is over.  It’s out of my hands, and that is a surprisingly glorious feeling.  The letting go of control for a set number of hours has its own therapeutic value.

When I’m not on the Greyhound, except for the very rare times I am house-sitting alone, I am always around people, a guest in their space.  There is always conversation, and a lot of it.  These conversations are intense experiences of human encounter and they give me much to think about, to ponder and philosophise, and when I’m going from show to show and home to home, there is often not enough time to process it.    Tour-exhaustion has as much to do with this as it does with performance fatigue. Those several-hour stretches on the bus have been for me like a kind of sanctuary, where the turning wheels below me allow my mind to do the same without any interruption.   There ain’t nothing like staring out a window for hours with scenery rolling by to clear the mind.

The pattern is almost always the same. I put the guitar in the overhead compartment, placing my to-go mug of coffee on the seat, (and often spilling some, I’ve learned to bring napkins).  My carry-on goes by my feet, my purse as a kind of pillow.   I watch as other people board and let my mind invent little stories about each one.   I pray nobody sits beside me so I will have more room.  I settle in and get comfortable, and I use that term very loosely. Over time I have nearly perfected the as-close-to-comfortable-as-one-can-get techniques.  It is as though Greyhound seats were designed by a torture-specialist.  No matter how you try to position yourself for something akin to sleep, there is always, always something jabbing you somewhere.  I have a travel neck-pillow that I move from neck to back and even under my butt sometimes, all in the efforts to prevent pain in the various parts of my body that, over the years, have begun to complain more. And I always bring an extra two sweaters to try and soften the hard bits that dig into me, the arm-rest, or the window-sill.

I have also nearly perfected my bus snacks, which is no small feat when you’ve discovered, twenty years too late, that you have always had a wheat allergy.  It’s just as well, since the only stops for food the bus makes are in fast food joints, or Tim Horton's, (I won’t pretend I don’t miss the doughnuts, though). The only restaurants are the Husky station in Golden, B.C. and the diner in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where there’s a statue of Spock from Star Trek, and the greasiest food I’ve ever had in my life.   Sure, the odd treat is ok, but if you spend as much time on the Greyhound as I have, you don’t really want to partake in those indulgences lest you end up with premature heart disease.  Those who have seen me off to the station have likely seen me prepare my feast of a dozen rice-cake and peanut butter sandwiches.  Those things would survive an apocalypse.  Their only downside is that they leave you looking like you’ve been through some kind of Styrofoam explosion.

And so, as prepared as can be, I wait for the bus to start rolling.  I wait for the announcements to come and go, and then I lean my head against the window and fall into something like sleep.  It is not quite sleep. It is almost more like a meditation.  It feels very much like I enter some other layer of consciousness where the thoughts in my head sort themselves out without any direction from me.  It feels like a clearing of conversational debris, a sweeping, an unconscious synthesising. All the worries tumble around and, one by one, they leave and I come out of it feeling mentally refreshed and ready to think about something in a focused way.  When I come to, or wake up, I usually take out my little laptop. 

In the beginning there was never Wi-Fi on the buses, so I would either listen to tracks I was working on, or write long journal entries, poems and sometimes songs.  I would think about where I had been, I would plan what to say at my next show, I would daydream about my future and try to sort out what felt unresolved in my past.  I would try to find meaning in the short-term memories of where I had just been, and in the long-term memories that rose in me out of a subconscious suggestion of relevance.  Rolling along on the Trans Canada Highway seemed to be the perfect place to do this because it was like the concretisation of the metaphor of being on life’s journey.  I was on the road, but really, I was, in those moments and hours, on the actual road.

I had, long ago, on a bus from Ottawa to Montreal, written a spoken-word piece that never saw the light of day. The notebook it was in got lost and I was never quite able to remember it, but it went something like this:
 
“On the bus from North Bay to Alberta,
Or from Antwerp to Berlin,
I’m not in the place I’m going to
nor where I have just been,
The highway stretching out for miles
Just kind of sets me free,
Because I am just now,
But too, just was, and soon will be.
When I die, just spread my ashes where the cargo loads,
So I don’t have to choose a place, I’ll just stay on the roads.”
 
A few years ago, I went with my Discovery Pass to the counter in order to get my luggage tag.  The guy said, very nonchalantly, “oh we’re not doing those anymore after October.”   He had no idea who he was saying that too, and I had no idea what I was going to do.    It was around that time I found out that Via Rail had an on-board entertainment program, which meant if I got accepted, I could travel Toronto to Vancouver, or Montreal to Halifax, for free in exchange for performing for the passengers.  I have been a Via performer ever since, which has been an incredible experience but has also meant I don’t stop in as many towns along the way.   Thunder Bay, which was at least a once-a-year stop, or Brandon, or even Winnipeg, just don’t end up happening anymore.    But I’ve still been riding Ol’ Blue all over Alberta and British Columbia, still living the humble dream of sharing my songs and stories with the people of Canada, still able to afford it despite the measly income playing these shows provides.

And now I have read that come this October, the Greyhound will discontinue altogether from Saskatchewan Westward.    Even if I learn how to drive, I won’t realistically be able to go from never having driven to suddenly driving through the Rockies alone, and how will I be able to afford a car, and gas, and insurance?  I would have to make a lot more money doing what I do, for that scenario or for hiring a driver, and who in their right mind would come along on my never-ending tour?   At a time where venues are paying less if not closing down altogether, and people are paying for music less because they can download it illegally or stream it, riding the Greyhound was my answer to the dire financial reality of music-as-income.   With the bus gone, my touring survival remains to be seen.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way.  I’ve had many obstacles before and persevered, and so I am very curious to see what the next chapter brings.  But one thing is for sure.  The Greyhound is as imprinted on my ass as it is in my heart and mind.  This is the end of an era, and I shall look back on it with fond memories of hours and hours and years and years, during which my little determined self said, “Yes, I can do this. Yes, I WILL do this,” all while staring out a window, taking in that one-and-only smell of Greyhound disinfectant.  
 
 

Gillian Snider’s home was not the first I entered in my travels, but its warmth and colours and the stories its walls told spoke so deeply to me, it was the first I sat down in to write about houses.   I had arrived that day by Greyhound bus on a cross-Canada tour, pulled my giant rolling suitcase, which I lived out of, over gravelly back-streets, with one wheel broken and my guitar case slung over my shoulder, along with my purse which was heavy with my laptop.  Gillian wouldn’t be home from work for another few hours. We had not yet met.  A bar owner in Thunder Bay named Sheila, who hosted several touring musicians, had told me that if I was going to Saskatoon I should ask Gillian if I could play a house concert.  I had followed up on her advice, and now here I was. 
Gillian had instructed me to let myself in and to say the dogs’ names, Dante and Clyde, so they might stop barking when I came through the door.  They did not bark at all, as it turned out.  They were gigantic and gorgeous, the one black and the other mottled.  I said hello to both of them and reached out my arm, low so as not to be threatening, so they could come and lick my hand.  Their friendly tail-wagging welcome made me glad.  It was uncomplicated, as far as weary arrivals go. No talking necessary.
I was relieved to close the door behind me and free myself from my coat and my luggage and boots.  I made myself a cup of tea with the red, old-fashioned kettle that was there on the stove.  The tea was easy to find in the white wooden cupboards, as were the mugs. I selected a dark ceramic one, noting that the choosing of a mug was always something I did with great consideration.  The fridge, where I looked for milk for my tea, was packed to the gills.   The kitchen floor was checkered and the whole room was charmingly unmodern.  Not too clean, not too dirty.  Just right.
The dogs settled in the living room, flopped down on the large, soft couches.  There were two cats, I was told, but they had not revealed themselves yet.  The room was dim and full of pet hair. There were dark, evocative paintings on the wall, and there was a blue rug beneath the old-fashioned trunk-turned-coffee table.  Plants with outstretched vines, a piano, guitar, accordion, and a music stand all stood perfectly positioned on the wooden floor.  It looked like a scene from a play that was about to begin, and was indeed, where I would be playing.
The adjacent dining room was brighter.  A big, oval wooden table stood at its centre, taking up most of the room, and there was a large book-case taking up most of the far wall, brimming over with books of all sorts, some new and some tattered and old, titles that beckoned me to stay longer than I could.   A window overlooked the back yard, and the wall that framed the kitchen doorway had photographs and children’s drawings, knick-knacks, and posters.   There was hardly an empty space to be found.
Everywhere my eyes looked, there was the cluttered accumulation of a family and music life lived.  Still alone, I could almost hear the echoes of children playing and growing, the clunking of dishes, the footsteps.  It was magical.  There was so much presence of life spilling from every saved object and item, and it occurred to me that it had not become this way all at once.  It sank in that many years of living had created this.
 I had not seen a house like this in quite some time.   Most of the places I had been staying in were apartments of students and musicians.  There’d been guitars and records and beer bottles but hardly any books, and certainly no children’s drawings.  This was a house I could relate to, though the ones I grew up in never accumulated quite as many artifacts.  My family had moved every few years and each of our homes gave glimpses only of various family chapters.   This was a house like the ones I used to babysit in when I was earning money in my teenage years.  This was a house like the ones I used to imagine having, the type of house I used to want before the road became my home.  This house was a home.  It evoked both comfort and a twinge of sorrow.
I took out my notebook to describe it because I realised it moved me to witness it in the midst of my transitory travels, and it wasn’t just personal, about what I used to imagine and never got.  It was about my fascination with these units of shelter where babies are raised thinking it is their whole universe, that children run in and out of with muddy shoes and gushing stories, between school and friends and activities, then teenagers, then adults returning for visits.   It was about the joys and sorrows that the walls contain over years.  It was about the structures that house the meaning of time itself.
After the show, where several people had gathered to listen to my songs, eat snacks from trays and plates and talk about life, when only Gillian and I were left in the kitchen, we began the great conversation, filling each other in on our lives.  We had interesting points of intersection that made us feel like the greatest of friends.  Such different backgrounds, and yet we had had similar experiences, similar losses, similar reactions and thoughts and reflections.  I talked about one day having a home and she talked about one day leaving the one we were standing in.
The shower upstairs, where I went to soothe my tired muscles before going to bed, had a selection of soaps and body washes, shampoos and conditioners and cleansers and razors and I thought about how all the bathrooms I see have different ones, and how people go out and buy these products with their various, coloured packaging and their many scents. I wondered how they made their choices, and how so many of us seldom finish one product before we buy another, wanting a change, but not wanting to let the old one go.  I stood under the hot water and opened a few to smell them, as if I could get to know about life itself if I did.  My senses were grateful for the fragrant information.
I missed my old bathroom collection.   I missed my old books.  I missed the idea that I would one day have a dog or a cat or maybe even children.  But I also knew how much I loved seeing so many homes, and loved that I would see so many more, that I would stand in other kitchens with other interesting people, getting to know myself better as they talked about themselves.  I thought about the fact that I did not want Gillian to leave one day, because I wanted this house to be here forever for me to keep visiting.  I knew it didn’t work that way.  I wondered if I would ever live somewhere again.
I’ve seen the inside of several other fridges since then.  I have spoken to many more people about their lives and mine, while sitting at their dining room table eating their food.  I have stood in many more showers smelling the soap in an effort to absorb who they are into my understanding.   I have pet many more dogs and cats, played with more babies, glanced with fascination at book titles on other people’s shelves, paintings on other people’s walls, and photographs, and drawings.  I have figured out ovens, and faucets, and coffee machines, found the kettle and tea and chosen mugs for myself to drink out of, found the light switches in the dark, fumbling.  I have slept on many beds and couches knowing my home is not a unit of shelter but hundreds of different ones belonging to others, spread over cities and countries and continents. I have left and returned to the same ones, and encountered new ones on each leg of my long journey, and I have been grateful beyond words for the privilege to visit in every single one.
This morning I read that Gillian’s house had a fire.  Thankfully, everyone, including the pets, was rescued. They were told, at first, that the house would have to be demolished, but as it turns out, they will be able to salvage the structure with some rebuilding.  It is too early to tell.  I can’t imagine any of the books survived, and it is heartbreaking to think of the children’s drawings gone, and all those records and plants.  Gillian remains the stoic and positive person I’ve known her to be, grateful that everyone is safe.
It was just today I was sifting through boxes of mine at my parents’ place, wondering why I’ve kept old university essays of mine, old letters and photographs. If I had a home, they might be out on display, but as it stands, they are just filed away.  For the first time in years it occurred to me that I know who I am without these old artifacts, that whatever traces of me I have clung to by hanging on to them, will be with me regardless, integrated into the very fabric of my soul.   
Gillian told me that the firefighters saved the musical instruments after they got all the pets out to safety.  I had offered her my accordion, which sits at a friend’s place in Berlin, in case hers hadn’t survived.  When I found out the instruments were rescued I was not only relieved, I thought it a marvellously poetic gesture on the part of the firefighters.
What matters most? That everyone is safe, yes, but that we can keep playing music, literally and figuratively, is what gives us that crucial vitality, our meaning. The songs we sing and the stories we tell keep every piece of evidence that we have lived lives and we are still thriving.  Artifacts are beautiful to hold and show, to hang on walls, but they disintegrate and fade, are vulnerable to the elements, just as our very bodies are, here for a time, then gone.   If the stories and songs of our lives and loves can survive and still be shared, we have not lost a thing. We are lucky. 
If this house doesn’t make it, I will be visiting Gillian wherever she creates her new home.  Perhaps, one day, she will visit me in mine.  Perhaps I will bring her a book as a gift, or some fragrant soap.  Perhaps we will draw new pictures.
 
 
 
 

I was sitting in a cafe in Halifax. Cafe Cempoal, to be exact.  It is a cafe that feels like two living rooms of a house belonging to someone warm, eclectic and welcoming.   I felt comfortable immediately, and there was good music playing that made me dance around as I checked out the decor.   I wondered how my stuff would go over and how to best deliver it.   The audience was a meandering but listening type. I watched them order their coffees (respectfully quietly) as I sang, glad to see them not get the all too ubiquitous "to-go" cup. I saw their expression of curiosity as they walked into my sound, and the way they found a place to sit and take it in.   Each one gave off a lovely energy and spoke words of appreciation to me.   

In the end, it was the owner himself who took the time to sit the most with me, and we got to talking about songwriting.  He asked the kinds of questions I like, the kind that indicated he'd thought about this stuff before and the kind that indicated he had been listening, was connecting, or trying to connect.   I left feeling satisfied about the gentleness but meaningfulness of the exchange. A good musical experience, and a good afternoon in my books.

Later in the evening, I came across a youtube clip of a filmed radio interview I did in Holland a few years ago.  The show was called Music Magic, and took place in a town called Almere. I'd forgotten about it, watched a bit to jog my memory, and partway through, I realised I was talking about some of those same questions about my writing process that had come up in the cafe. 

I felt too awkward to send the owner a link to it, partly because it seemed egotistical, and partly because it's hard to hear what I'm saying and there's a lot of Dutch in between. I also look like an exhausted, mousy,  graduate student, and am speaking in my weird "I'm-in-Europe" accent, plus there's an hour or so of it, and only ten minutes pertained to our conversation.  It's also embarrassing to see just how much I talk once I get going. 

I decided to try to capture the relevant parts, and then figured why not share it with everyone who might be interested in my linguistics-philosophy-spirituality-of-creativity-nerdy-academic bent on the art of songwriting.  So here is the excerpt. I'll add the link too, if you want to sit through it, by all means:

INTERVIEWER:  Orit, I also read something I think it’s wonderful to read. “I am in love with words.” Can you explain that?  What is your love with words?

ME: First of all I’ve always loved languages.  I grew up speaking Hebrew and English, and, already, this is wonderful, having two languages from the start.  Knowing where the words come from and how they’re built… if you go to Germany and the word for “glove” is ‘hand-shoe”, this is fantastic, right? A shoe for your hand, of course it makes sense, and … if you learn the idioms from different languages, you learn about the people and the way they see the world, and this is such a beautiful way to get to know people.  So, already, I  have a fascination with language.
    As a writer, of course this is an obsession for me, because finding the right words for something, there’s knowledge that you have *before* you have the words for it.  It’s totally fascinating to me. That you know something but you have not yet found words for it is philosophically fascinating.   The process  that you have to go through in order to find the words, is actually the process of finding truth, right? You have to try different words until you feel that you’ve hit truth, and this is totally amazing to me.
    And the power that words have to move people to tears or to laughter, to make peace or make war, this is amazing, what power words have, so this is an obsession, for sure.
 
INTERVIEWER:   Ok, so the language itself, the words that you use in your lyrics, does poetry mean a lot to you? Do your lyrics, your texts have to be poetic or not at all, sometimes straight, down to earth?
 
ME:    I think to a large extent they are straight, down to earth, I’m not looking to be fancy at all, this is not my point. I don’t like poetry when it’s trying to be fancy, or when it’s trying to be unclear. I think *being* clear is the mission.   But... I’m trying to say as much as possible with as few words, because this is the point, I think, of writing a poem or a song.  We must make a million meanings with one simple phrase.
 
INTERVIEWER    and then contain it within a melody

ME :  Luckily for me, the melody comes together. 

INTERVIEWER:  So, as I understand it, the both come to you, the melody and the text.

ME:  Yes, usually.

INTERVIEWER:   and so, what drives you to write a song? Is it a feeling that you have, or maybe you’re sitting on top of a mountain looking to the far horizons, contemplating about life and the universe, or just love, or whatever?

ME:    The way I describe it is that I am somebody who is contemplating a lot by nature, so I’m always thinking words.  There are thoughts and thoughts and thoughts in my head.  And every so often, one phrase from all the other thoughts comes louder.  And when this happens, I go, “ah, this is a line.”  And when that happens, I noticed, usually I’m thinking about people, situations, fears, anxieties, loves, tragedies, joys, all of it, love is a big theme of course, also, and when I feel, "ah, this is a line,”  it’s because  “Oh, this is so *human*."  Of all my experiences, when something pops into my head as “ah, this is what being a human being is all about," that’s when I go to write it as a song, because it also means everyone else will know what I’m talking about, otherwise there’s no point.

INTERVIEWER:   I know what you mean, I can relate to this, because you can write a song about a lady across the street that doesn’t mean anything….

ME:    Well, you *can* if you do it in a way where you express exactly what you’re thinking and feeling in a way where people know they’ve felt it and thought it too.  You know what I mean? You can write a song about absolutely anything, but it’s what you do with it and why you’re writing it and what is the point of it that matters.  
 
INTERVIEWER:  So it has to have a point.

ME:    Yes, and this is what I was saying earlier when I was talking about looking for the truth.  I don’t know if I’m hearing you right when I hear you presenting your show, but you’re saying something like “the music is emotion,” Is that right?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes

ME:   And this is 100%  what it’s about for me. You have to ask, “what is the emotion?” and when you can find the honesty of emotion then you have a song.


****

   The link to the interview can be found here: 

​It was my idea to go stand there and have my photo taken.  I was going to post it as a half-joke to the folks who’ve kept insisting, despite the air of cliché it’s always struck me with, that I should do an album cover of me standing on, or by train tracks.  It was going to be a “here you go,” with a smirk.
My friend stood with the phone camera, waiting for me to get to the spot you see me standing on- a beautiful bridge over a creek.  There wasn’t any thought in my head whatsoever suggesting I shouldn’t do this, other than the slight pinch of ‘maybe it’s egotistical and vain to ask to have your photo taken.’
As my feet crossed the transition of tracks that were on a gravel path to the bridge itself, the spaces between the wooden railroad ties became open windows to the creek below.    The width between them was enough for a foot to fall through, but at worst, that would twist an ankle, bruise a shin.  These were logical thoughts in my head, as well as, “there’s no reason for you to slip through since you know you should place your feet on the wood, not in the space between the wood.”    What I’m trying to say is, there was nothing to be afraid of.
So when my heart started pounding and I felt dizzy and terrified and panic-stricken and regretful and frozen, I knew damn well that this was an unreasonable feeling.  The thought, “oh my God I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I CAN’T DO THIS” got louder in my brain and came out my mouth, as my friend explained to me what I already knew, which was, I couldn’t possibly fall through, it was physically impossible to do so.  
But seeing the running creek far below me made my head swim.  I knew it was ridiculous. I crawled to photo-position on my hands and knees which did nothing to help as it meant gazing directly at the depth of my imagined fall.   
What strikes me the most is that I don’t think it was even falling to the creek that I was imagining. I was dreading the jolt of fear I would have if my hand or foot slipped through, the split second of intense fear that it would induce in me before the thickness of the rest of me would prevent any more of my body from falling, was enough of a reason to be afraid.  I was essentially afraid of the intense sensation of fear, and upset at my irrationality.
I stood up long enough to have a few photos taken. I tried laughing it off and admitted I was being ridiculous.  I went carefully back to the metal edges, the “side-walks” of the bridge, and waited for my heart to stop pounding.  It took way longer than I thought it would.  Probably a few minutes but it wasn’t like being in safety immediately fixed it.  It was pounding in surprise and dismay at my own total lack of control.   It was pounding at its pounding.
Fear of heights is relatively new to me.  Something that’s reared its head in the past few years or so.   I’m still in a state within it where I’m willing to do things like climb a fire-tower ladder that climbs 120 feet in the air, or climb into my fireman-friend’s firetruck basket and get sent up in the air high above all the tallest buildings in a Berlin neighbourhood. I’m willing to do it for the experience, but I am terrified while it’s happening. I don’t enjoy it, I just feel proud for having done it.
“Courage isn’t not having fear. Courage is having fear but doing it anyway.”  I’ve been called courageous umpteen times over my touring years of hobo existence, and this has been said to me when I’ve replied, “But I’m scared all the time.”
What’s bugging me is that I have more fears than I used to. They say that’s normal with aging, and I’m definitely afraid of aging, but I hate that I’m afraid of becoming more afraid.  And I hate to think that becoming more afraid is going to make me cross fewer bridges.  I hope I’ll keep crossing them anyway, and I hope I’ll learn to calm down while I’m on them, rather than rush to get off.  Though they say that highly anxious people are more likely to survive disasters, so maybe I should listen to the ‘get off the bridge’ voice?  I’m not sure.  I’m afraid of indecision too.

​On the last night aboard the train, after a two-hour singing session with smiling participants young and old, Walter, the sweetheart in charge of the park car let us know the stars were visible from the dome car, and that he had turned off the lights there to make it even better.  He was done for the night but we were free to sit up there and stargaze. I took my St. Paddy’s day Bailey’s-on-ice with me and climbed the few steps up.
Vikas, whose voice took me a moment to recognise, the father of two who had sat and smiled and sang along in the earlier music session, was sitting in the darkness, one row ahead of me. He said hello as I got into my seat. He had been there for a while, and had a constellation app on a device which, when pointed at the sky, drew lines between the stars and identified planets.
We began a conversation that was first about why certain constellations could be one’s favourite (mine is Orion, and it is because my dad showed it to me when I was little, my go-to constellation).   We went quickly and obviously to the notion of being overwhelmed by the vastness of it all, agreed how tiny and insignificant we were, but, I added, even more remarkable is that, even so, we have immense and endless creative capacity.
The conversation ebbed and flowed between gentle points and gentle counterpoints.  Easily, without any forcefulness or pride, in gentle tones in the darkness, we compared life-notes, delighting in our mutual affinity for public transit, for travel, for less time watching television and more time engaging with the natural world around us, for learning, and as we did the moon rose up, yellow and hazy.
As the train moved, serpentine, through the rocky night-terrain of the Canadian Shield, from one minute to the next the moon went from being on our far left to our far right, and sometimes it sat right above the body of the train, and the winding metal roof, which we could see from our raised and windowed dome car, would glimmer in the moonlight.   I had never before realised what a winding path the train tracks took. It took the moon to reveal it.  
I told him I had written a poem once in which I noted that the moon knows me best, because as I travel from place to place, it is the only constant witness to my life. Why does it feel like if we look at the moon it is looking back, I asked, even though we know it is not sentient?  Maybe it is because we are made of the same stuff, stardust, he replied.  And maybe words cannot explain why we feel it cares about us the way we care about it.  Maybe some things are better without explanation.
We sat and continued these thoughts out loud, watching the trees in the darkness, enjoying the smooth sound and motion of the long train, talking of life choices, goals and randomness, of courage and change, and of humbleness. We knew the next day we would be arriving in Toronto, and life would go back to its hectic pace.
So for now, we sat and enjoyed the feeling of timelessness that only a night trip can provide, our train ride to the moon.  We knew we’d never get there, but the journey was spectacular.  #MyRoadLife

    ---    Last night, I was out at an event, which, like most events, involved some conversations with strangers.  That is nothing new for me, and since I had been performing, I was already a ‘somebody’   which removes the often awkward pressure of introducing myself to people.  When I’ve just been performing, people come to me with an obvious segue to conversation, and, as I’m buzzed on post performance adrenaline, I can chat with relative ease and confidence, and even come off as charming.
The event ended, and the hangers-on were going to a pub for some drinks. I joined.  I sat next to a man I had already been talking to for a while before we shifted locations.  The seated proximity allowed us to go between group chatter and face-to-face deepening conversation, further away from the sharing of anecdotes and jokes to more spiritual and philosophical matters.  We took turns between the two, with a natural kind of tempo.
I don’t remember what led to the remark, but he said, “I believe we choose our reactions.” He hit upon something I had specifically been thinking about all week, if not my whole life.
“Hmmmm. I’m not entirely sure about that.  There are a lot of things that happen to people that affect them beyond their choice to be affected,” I argued.
He seemed to understand what I was saying, but insisted upon his point, that ultimately, it was our choice.
“It sounds somewhat privileged to me,” I said, and I think he understood what I was saying a little better. But he still insisted that we have the power over our own reactions.
I think I agreed that we had power and choice over what I called our functional reactions, that is, what we do, but that we didn’t necessarily have a choice over our emotional reaction, or how we felt.  He still begged to differ.  I told him I didn’t agree, but that we didn’t have to agree on everything, and we moved on, enjoying the rest of our conversation – a friendly, interesting person I would gladly speak with again.
I fell asleep fairly easily that night, and perhaps the gin and tonic and a bit of earlier wine were of help.  But tonight, a night later, sleep wouldn’t come.  I’d had a good day, wrote an amusing song, saw my sister and nephews, ate well, had gone for a walk, and I spent the rest of my evening continuing to re-work old pieces of writing that happen to deal with some fairly traumatic personal events, a task I have been putting off for a long time even though I know I need to do it, a task I had finally started just two days ago, after a four-year hiatus.
And since, for the last few nights, I have also been engaged in the reading of a novel before sleeping, I thought I would turn to it, so I could take a step back from my own writing.   But the two somehow intertwined tonight.  Tonight of all nights the novel turned a very dark corner, and lines within it resonated a little too deeply, and I sensed the agitation spread throughout my body as I kept reading, which I did despite my discomfort, hoping for resolution which didn’t come.
Putting it away, turning off the night light, laying my head on the pillow, I tried to let my thoughts flow without controlling them, as is said to be beneficial, or wise, or both, and what rose within my mind was a string of memories of times I had felt afraid to the core, reaching back as far as to my five-year-old self, hearing the television news my parents watched in the evening.  My heart wasn’t pounding from the same fear, but from the knowledge that there had always been some around.
I was just that kind of kid, I guess. I’ve met other people who’ve confessed a nervous constitution, lying awake for nights, dreading the same violent or dire tragedy they had just seen in a movie or read about falling upon them.  I guess I’m just one of those people.   Aside from far too detailed war books, I remember books I’d been given to read about sexual abuse, god knows why they were given to me, with such graphic descriptions of depraved violence as to scar me for life.  Even as a reader of non horrific fiction I am altered, dazed for weeks after reading, walking with the character of the book inhabiting my skin and thoughts.  So imagine what scary and tragic books do to me. Imagine what real life does to me.  And growing up in a place and within a group, so to speak, where I knew I was without question a target of potential violence from a very young age was certainly significant to my said nervous constitution.
I let the thoughts flow, and after recognising the ubiquity of fear in me for as long as I can remember, my thoughts led me to times I had been held in a lover’s arms, and the grateful, albeit fleeting, sense of safety that such an embrace would grant me. 
But when you have enough romantic connections go bad, that doesn’t work so well either anymore to assuage your anxieties.   
And to go farther back to memories of the comfort of parents’ arms, the tragedy of how long ago it was, having learned they too are vulnerable, fallible, is too much to bare as far as comfort seeking goes.
To be perfectly clear, I am not always afraid.  “Courageous” is a word that gets thrown around a lot by people describing my life.  It’s that when I am, all of my fears rise up at once. And then I want comfort. And comfort is no longer comforting because everything that once comforted is itself broken.
And I just want to feel safe so badly.
It is so bloody basic.
I remember a sculpture I made at seventeen. When asked to explain it, I said it represented the inability of the protector to protect.
And just last week I went to my first ever counseling session. It was a little protocol-y, I went out of curiosity, I went because it was free, but also out of growing fatigue for my own symptoms of anxiety, my lowering physical tolerance for the chronic adrenaline heights.  I went because, though I assure you I am mostly fine, when I’m not fine, I am deeply distressed, shaky, and terrified.   Sure, we all are.  I put on a grin and do what I have to do. But my insides are flipping out as I do, and I want to go hide under a rock only I know I’d be scared there too.  I told the counselor that I thought it was more crazy to not have the reactions I have.  She stared at me a bit blankly.
But according to my new friend, we choose our reactions.
And I cannot help but feel like that is a comment judging my reactions as too dramatic, too messy, too needy, too immature. He wasn’t directing his opinion at me personally. He knows nothing of my personal story.  It was the personal implication of his stance. If I follow his logic, I should choose to be better-adjusted and happier, and it is ultimately my fault if I am having a negative reaction.  But I am not convinced. Because I have already chosen to try to be positive my whole life. I have chosen to turn my feelings toward productive creative work, I have chosen to be kind to people, to talk about peace-making, chosen to listen to the other side of arguments, even when that has meant suspending my terror to try to understand the actions and feelings of those who have instilled it in me. I have chosen to look at all human beings as vulnerable and worthy of love, despite their misguidedness of action and danger to me and others.
But even with all these vigilant, life-long choices, I am often a prisoner of my reactions. My efforts to choose positive reaction, to choose diplomacy, to seek some kind of evasive peace of mind, have perhaps also suffocated me.  And the truth of my actual, internal reactions has been burning in me, trying to come out, finding peculiar outlets, like muscle spasms, injuries, headaches, stomach aches, stray thoughts, text-book markers of post-traumatic stress disorder I am, frankly, very tired of, partly because of what they physically do to me, and partly because I feel like a failure for having them.
So I don’t know what to make of my friend’s claim.
Do I choose those reactions? It’s hard to believe that I do.
It’s hard to believe that having nightmares that leave you crying in the morning is a choice.  It’s hard not to find his utterance quaint and ignorant and seriously lacking in empathy, though I am certain that it is not how he intends it. I am fairly certain he means it motivationally, or self-convincingly.
I’m tired. Is that, too, a chosen reaction?
I am not blind, of course, to the partial truth in what he is saying. It is obvious. The notion exists for a reason. There exists in the human mind and spirit and body an incredible capacity to overcome, and to turn anger into peaceful productivity, self-improvement, benevolent action, social change. I commend and encourage it, and, god knows, I try it.
And of course, I can choose not to be annoyed at a lost item, or at a minor but irritating miscommunication, a stain on my favourite shirt. I often wonder why anyone lets themselves be as bothered by such trivialities as they are.  So on that level, I agree with my new friend. We can choose, on small scale things, to not be bothered and just go with the flow. I’d say with eight years of road under my belt, I even excel at that.
But don’t take away from me the truth that when my guard is down, when I have held on tight to my fortress of dignity all day, for days on end, that when someone spits in my face, when someone threatens my survival or implies its threat, that I am choosing to be offended or scared by it.
You’re damn fucking right I’m scared and offended.  And they? Have they not chosen to scare and offend me?
If it’s my own choice for feeling this way, if it is my own choice, this not ‘letting it go’, then yes. Fine. I’ll take full responsibility for it.  I choose to be outraged, I choose to be sickened, I choose to be full of grief, I choose to be lacking in grace as I process what has happened to me and what happens around me, and I choose to wallow in guilt about my own misgivings. And yes, how dare I not keep these reactions in better check and seek more personal “wellness” in between my productive, wonderful positivity?
But I am not asking for help in emotion management. I am not wishing these emotions away, so much as asking for the permission to speak about them.  I am pleading for attention to DO SOMETHING about all those horrific things out there that have me so bloody afraid, sad and angry.  Maybe the attention shouldn’t constantly be about how to feel okay about everything.  Everything is not ok.  Maybe some attention should be put toward gathering our fear and outrage and grief so we can collectively advocate and facilitate real social change.
Maybe he IS right.  I still don’t think I choose my miserable moments or sensitivities. I think perhaps people choose to numb themselves to theirs. And you may choose to agree, or write me off as foolish. I choose to go on feeling, either way.