Currently, Dennis is on the road stage managing the World Ballet Series company as they tour Swan Lake across the country until November. His current location is somewhere between Long Beach (last night’s performance) and Fresno (tonight’s) as he travels in a van with a crew of tech folkx while the dancers are on a giant bus a few miles behind. As he was gearing up for the trip, my memories began sending out little space capsules filled with perception/reality moments around my on-the-road experiences of yore as a music journalist and beyond. What wanderlust looks like in before and after settings.

When I was a wee-tyke-teenager and thought of traveling with a band, the fantasy was end-to-end intrigue: new exotic cities, deep conversations with musicians sitting in the back of a bus, nighttime road lights flashing like strobes as I listened to them wax on with secrets they’d never told anyone else. (Funny I never thought of myself as the performer stepping off the coach for soundcheck and show—that is obviously a post for another day, or maybe one I keep writing over and over again between the lines.) In reality, the only times I spent on band buses were few and far between. The closest I got to deep conversation was with Eddie Vedder in Groningen, Netherlands, in 1992 when we talked about abortion rights while sitting in a middle row of the bus. No streetlights. Middle of the day. The bus did drive a short distance to a graveyard as I remember–although I have no memory of why that particular destination. The other bus moment I had was a brief city-to-city connection when I was writing a (very small) book (pamphlet almost) on Bush. There was no conversation regarding anything deep. In fact there was no conversation at all because the entire band and crew (excepting the driver) were so deeply addicted to watching DVDs of The X Files on the mounted television in the bus that nobody was allowed to speak during the hours of viewing, which were always.

Then there were the hotel rooms. Early in my music-J career I’d imagined a Chelsea Hotel sort of existence of the travel variety. Every lobby filled with touring artists hanging out spontaneously breaking into song and deep intellectual thought…or at least just great celebrity sightings. That never happened. I did go to the Chelsea Hotel, mostly to use the lobby as a cut-through on my way to the El Quixote restaurant next door. And for a story in SPIN‘s June 1991 issue, I wrote a one-pager about the storied place complete with a shot of a Sid&Nancy-style setup that was billed as fashion and got us some kind of product advertising. But by this time, the nineties, there were no Patti’s or Andy’s or Lou’s to ogle. And these days, well… the hotel’s doors have reopened, rooms retrofitted, but obviously none of that spark exists (cue this doc for stories).

The first hotel I stepped into as a journalist was circa late 80s in London where I’d been sent by Rolling Stone to cover a music festival. Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde were among the performers. I remember them most because A) legend, B) backstage they gave journalists wearing leather (shoes and the like) a hard time. Or maybe that was just Chrissie, but yet …. a sharp flashback. Also acute was my excitement about being put up in a posh hotel. The night before the show, I’d walked into the lobby of this fancy-pants place (can’t actually remember the name) wired on adrenaline, gotten my key (actual brass affairs back then), walked into my room and was flushed with a sense of joy and my own importance. I may have (probably did) jumped on the massive bed, pulled back the brocade curtains for a view of some park or other, and opened up all the things that I could open (mini fridge, armoire, closets), then I took a bath with a glass of something (probably bubbly). That a year later, I was back in London on my first trip for SPIN to interview the Cure and walked into a room so decidedly different from that first luxe moment I think I instantly understood the difference between the magazines. No bouncing on the bed (rickety), ooh-ing at the view behind the curtains (brick wall), or opening cabinets (nothing to find there). Definitely no bath (only a tiny shower stall). Maybe I had a shot of whisky alone someplace outside the room, which helped me sleep?!

Over time I waxed and waned at many hotels that fell somewhere in between the first luxe landing and that next down-market moment. I even had a regular spot in Seattle that I booked into on my many trips to that city in the early 1990s: The Warwick. If walls could talk…well, they wouldn’t have squat to say except that I probably snored. Possibly they might have heard some sniffling because toward the end of my time at SPIN, I have a vivid memory of being so homesick to stop traveling and stay put in my apartment on 14th street that I was despondent. I felt a bone-deep sadness sitting and staring out the window at the Warwick into the dark night and feeling gut-empty loneliness. My toenails, hair follicles, the whole of me was aching for familiar and for connection, which I had come to discover is not often a thing when you travel to get a story. I was stepping into other people’s lives. I wasn’t in the band so that camaraderie didn’t exist. I knew some people, but they were all living their home lives and I was visiting. There was an emotional distance I was meant to keep in order to stay objective (actually, this last bit is something of a joke given my MO was to become besties with my subject so they’d tell me everything. See tour bus fantasy above. This method didn’t really work, although I had some good conversations, I wouldn’t say the friendships forged were the forever type).

None of these moments are meant to be played as tiny violin solos of sorrow. Although they do remind me that everything is shaded with so much nuance as to be moot in the way of sketching a life template. I did love most of my career travels, watching and writing and generally taking in experience. On the other hand, I also ached to return home and maybe become a bookstore clerk who never went anywhere. Both desires were true. Only one happened (so far). As my honey travels up the west coast and then across the country with this merry band of leaping ladies&gentlemen, he’s working his proverbial tail off living a whole range of adventure and yearning. I’m living vicariously through daily photos and stories. And in this moment, that’s all good as I open the curtains and stare at the butterflies, watch the cats dance (and disrupt), and make my own bed (almost) every morning.