It's been an eventful week. A series of random happenings leave me wondering what the heck comes next? After heading out of Tampa around 8am, I began my journey to the hills of Tennessee. There's something strangely sobering about an extended drive alone that makes you realize there are still several things you want out of the place you left, and leave you wondering if you'll be able to replace them in the place you're going. I guess I'm just a coward. Anyway, after arriving in Nashville, I forced my tired way through a depressing show and decided to find some random place to sleep. It was about 60 degrees outside and, after (bathing?) in some apparently freezing river of Tennessee, I somehow wound up talking to a Jewish hotel owner who, after haggling with me for 15 minutes, ended up letting me get a room for $20. Since I didn't need a shower anymore, I went to bed and tried to figure out what on earth I was doing in God-forgotten Tennessee.
I awoke the next morning around 6:15 to some random dude waltzing into my room and, after a brief second of awkward glances, he calmly asked if I was checking out at eleven because he had just paid for the room and they had apparently double booked it. He then proceeded to say that, were I checking out, he would simply go get coffee or something for a while and return rather than bother the man at the counter who had given him such a good rate. "Okay." I replied, "there's nothing weird at all about that..."
Deciding I had better give the man his room, I departed and made my way to Madison to meet with a man about a horse (okay it was a job interview...just roll with it). Upon my arrival, I realized that it was actually only 6am and my clocks were still on Eastern Standard Time. Seeing that I had 10 hours before I was supposed to interview, I found an amazing cemetery, parked beneath some pine trees and slept for nine. Thanks to the nutritional supplement I received from some pancakes and the energy boost that came from re-arranging my house truck, the interview went well...although the weather looks gloomy.
Bored and hungry, I headed downtown to figure things out. There was this amazing group of typically cynical, hipster street performers playing outside of a boot store I ended up hanging out with (the hipsters, not the boot store). After throwing around music and so forth, we all ended up at this sweet, little, indie elitist's paradise to play an open show. I love how raspy my voice has been in the two days I've been up here. I want to put my voice in a jar and take it all around the world with me. I met a bunch of people and ended up hanging out with these girls from Illinois and Virginia, discussing time travel and the bizarre relational habits of a nearby couple. When it was all over, we had decided to start a storm chasing company and name our van Stormchaser Carl. The weather looks threatening.
The girls left for wherever and I drove around awhile and found an under construction golf course to park on. It was violently windy and, within 10 minutes, it started to rain. I sat in the back of my truck eating crackers and writing a song about hating things; all the while being amazed at how hard it was raining. 2:30am: I went to sleep. Around 4 am, I woke up to the sound of, what appeared to be, a freight train barreling toward my truck. Except it wasn't a freight train. It was already super windy, but out of nowhere, my entire truck (which was facing west) spun around and was blown about twenty feet from where I had originally parked. Now that I was facing the opposite direction I was previously, I looked out the only window my truck bed provides. Ironically enough, my phone rang with a weather warning to inform me that there was a severe tornado warning within 1 mile of my location. I believed it. Mainly because I could see it. There was a tornado right outside my truck that had just caused me to do a complete 180 and slide 20 feet across the green of the 16th hole. It was strangely loud and, despite the fact that it was dark out side, everything kind of looked greenish for an hour or two. I'm not really sure what happened after that because I went back to bed and thanked God for rain. 5:30am. Headlights. Redlights. 1 Light, 2 Light, Red Light, Blue Light. This one is a little cop, this one says this sleep must stop. Knock knock, knock knock. You're trespassing. Don't you see the sign that says Trespassers Will? That's short for Trespassers William. You have to leave. I was too exhausted to argue and too cold to even really worry the fact that a branch had knocked a huge dent into the side of my truck and was now laying on my hood. Ces la vie I guess. I talked to my dad awhile before crashing in a Wal-Mart parking lot for the next 4 hours. It hasn't stopped raining now for the last two days. For some reason I'm outside of Knoxville tonight. I was thinking a lot and guess I just kept driving after I left the city. It's raining too hard to really know exactly where I am. Judging by the fact that it's unusually cold and mountainous I'd have to say I'm somewhere in the mountains. It's pretty here though. I like the acoustics of playing guitar in a sardine can-esque truck topper in the rain. Something calmingly nostalgic about the whole situation. It's like my primitive roots are being quenched. Living in my aluminum covered wagon, searching for the last pale smile in the west...
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