I've had my second bath in three days today, just to try and wash my cuts out. The dirt is hanging tough though, maybe it wants my fingers to look like seal, kissed from a rose. I look at the newly formed scars and can remember how some of them got there, others not so much. V-shaped scar on my little finger opened up from a beer bottle smashing across my hand. The zipper etchings across my inner index finger as if caused by some miniature wolverine. The bruises and cuts across each knee could have been caused by any number of things. I don't remember splitting my lip open, but it's there all the same, purple and warm to the touch. I'm sitting here now in my kitchen, a world away from the fortnight that was, listening to Gideon Coe playing all my heroes on the DAB. This time last week I would likely have been in some sort of metaphorical bin, head swimming with alcohol and music-induced rage, or happiness for that matter. If I rack my brains hard enough I could probably work out my exact place in the world back then, but that would be missing the point. Tour isn't about the precise details, it isn't about the specific faces or stages or t-shirts or anything like that. It's about the greater whole, the sense of freedom, the feeling of responsibility with a lower case 'R', a sense of a diminished world, living for the van, for the next bed, for the next beer, for the next 30 minute set and whatever chaos that brings. I'm not for the tiniest second believing that I've done anything new or revolutionary, every beer soaked venue plastered with a patchwork quilt of bands that never made it keep my feet firmly on this stale earth. I'm walking the footsteps of countless teenage dreamers and twenty something revolutionaries, who felt they had something to tell the world, through riffs or poetry or whatever. People who for however long stepped off the path chosen for them and tried to choose a direction for themselves - one clubhouse at a time. But just because it's nothing new doesn't mean it's nothing special. These last few weeks are full of memories and experiences that everyone, including myself, will take with them for the rest of our lives. We may end up sat behind a desk making money for people we never meet, or stuck in a domestic existence that saps every rebellious energy argument by argument. But one thing no-one can take from us is our experiences, they will always be ours, embarrassing, exhilarating, painful, or lost in a haze of beer and whiskey. For 10 days, we could be more like the human beings we always dreamed of being and maybe even find some fleeting moments of happiness.
