There is something that negates time ,working and making a living from being on the road. I have just left a cafe and said goodbye to the guy making the cofee and as I left I thre in “ I'll see you next year” and its strange but true line. This is my third visit to this cafe and its always been on this annual tour. You walk back in each time like it was only a week ago you were last there but its been a year, 365 days- give or take a few. But its the same, the same staff, the same menu, its stayed locked in its place in time as I myself have felt locked in time. The only difference is maybe now when I catch my reflection in a window on entering I have a few greyer hairs in my beard or my face wears a few new lines . But it all feels like I've only been away a few days,. Now looking back its been 3 years and that time while I am at home may have gone past fast but being back it feels like it never happened..
Maybe its the nature of the work and the way we live and travel in this microcosm of the world. This crew that has mainly stayed the same year after year. But its scary to think the time that has run under all our own personal bridges since I first joined this tour e years ago.
A lot of the last ten years of my life has been like that. Some days time is irrelevant. Other than the set out times for lobby calls, load ins and soundchecks, and of course performance times, but the rest is so invisible. We rarely keep track of days or dates. Weekends are completely meaningless and public holidays are for the rest of the world. 9-5 job days are a thing of the past if they were ever your past and now we operate in this bubble where we define our own times, breakfasts at whenever we fit them in, dinner maybe at 5 then again at 1am. And days off turned into weekends at your own whim.
In so many ways I put this lifestlyle down to the reason I still feel 18 at times.. I don't feel the 40 year old I am approaching in a couple of years. I hope I never do.
