Miles from Here
Inches from There
90 minutes from Nothingsburg

Tour season has come in on the lion's back, tip toeing thru the sleeping lambs. Playing catch-up with the many months I squandered taking it easy. The front yard is wherever the wheels are resting. Most often I'm walking the dogs or doing yoga at a service station off the M4 or the Autobahn, tasting salty sea tears on a Channel, North Sea, or Baltic ferry, or I'm down in the basement trying to wake up the instrument within.

The accent of the everyday local no longer phases the senses. We are all Japanese, German, Bohemian, and Glaswegian. Some of us just have a little more wine in the system where others may have Waffle House.
Some days you wake up to find your home parked quaintly by a pond well stocked with ducks and Dutch roses and your neighbor is a Crow named Sheryl and the Town Mayer is a very gracious and gentle John.

And In the backyard, 50,000 of your closest friends.

I always pinch myself when I read my name on a poster, especially when the other names in close proximity are iconic. Am I a contest winner or just a cartoon character drawn into a cheesy remake of an awesome original? (My Before Picture)

Club scenes welcome each new day with smoke machines. The days' headlines are the previous bands' backstage graffiti. We basement dwellers suit up like a sports team and ready ourselves with Yacht Funk, music of '77, a great year of our lord. And we unite like Ghostbusters armed with our immune systems for the new onslaught of slime oozing between rounds of applause.

Time doesn't actually exist.

I've been away from home for exactly 40 days. I use a strip of black and white photo-booth pictures of you and I as a bookmark thru various reads. You sleep with Pulitzer and I sleep alone.

Thinning.

But NOT tired - (Please Stop Asking)
Never assume
Anything.

The road is long and seamless. Even over water. And though the tar is paved in blood of the last animals on earth, it is also a path paved in love & light, where every direction is just a roundabout way home.

I am closer to God than ever.
I am closer to you than ever.

-mraz n'manchester

(photos by Michael Leroy Bram)