The Vortex..(for lack of better term and/or title)

Listen:

We went to dinner with friends tonight (who’s new blog i have carelessly not endorsed! dah! it will happen soon. perhaps tomorrow?)   Anyway, while at dinner tonight i told them of an existential moment i allow myself to have at the close of each and every concert i play.  I called it The Vortex because i needed a title to continue my story, and perhaps The Vortex it will remain.  

Basically it’s this:  

When a show is finished, the 90 or so seconds from the time i put my sticks down, grab my water bottle, stand up, give Evan a “good game” and walk off stage is usually scored with audience applause.  There is about 12 seconds immediately following those 90 seconds each night when i find myself alone, just off stage, not totally “backstage” but definitely out of sight. I’ve begun to go back to real life, but one foot is still in performance mode.  I check my phone for missed calls or texts, but still keep an eye out for an encore song.  I can see my suitcase and my running shoes and gym shorts, but i keep one In Ear Monitor in place because i’m not quite ready for the adrenaline to stop flowing.  

Before me is a half eaten veggie tray, my laptop still open to Facebook or CNN.com, my car keys which have fallen out of my bag in atrophy because my car is 800 miles away in a Kansas City driveway;  a sticky note with an “800 number” written on it so i can activate a rebate card for Amanda to buy groceries to fill a refrigerator i won’t see for days and days.   Behind me is a stage still thick with heat from the bodies of four guys playing music for an hour and a half, and house lights dim and stage lights burning down in multi-color, outlining where exactly the guitar players need to stand to be seen.  The low hum of amplifiers finally receiving a much needed rest, and my fellow Americans by the hundreds, sometimes the thousands, cheering; thanking us for our performance, usually urging for one more song. 

And there i am, right smack dab in the middle of The Vortex. Not totally finished with the show, and not totally reintroduced back in to society. For 12 seconds a night, i transcend time and my surroundings, and you know what?  For all the things i feel like i take for granted in this crazy world i find myself in; I never take that moment lightly.  I make myself appreciate it. I make myself feel it.  I take a mental snapshot every single night and say to myself, “you lucky man, never complain about where you are in life.”