August 20, 2010: The Tragically Hip - Escape is at Hand for the Travellin Man

The Tragically Hip - Escape is at Hand for the Travellin Man: youtube.com/watch?v=_JBsHeBE3Jc

This song hit me hard when I first heard it. It's a fleeting thing.

I'd like to say, now, that what makes me love this song is in part the element of the traveling musician lifestyle. I don't fill my role as traveling musician enough to claim that though; I might be gone 2 weeks to a month per year at this point, if I'm lucky. It does, though, capture nicely that meeting like minded artists, sharing a night together and moving on as happens when playing different venues in different cities with different bands. At times I want for those people to stay and continue along this mutually fulfilling point we've created but we all must move on to another venue and do the same, create a new point with a new group of people, move on to new. And trying to hold onto that moment too long can be foolish, if a little romantic.

But it's not so much that theme that gets me, I'm sure, as I had no concept of touring at 17 years old (about the time I heard and loved this song most). Maybe it was a touch of the dreamer in me that gravitated toward that theme. No, though, I think it was the moving aspect that got me. Beyond the duty of moving in this vocation it is an aspect of my life which I have adopted fully; I move, dispel nostalgia and hold every moment as sacred. Not as much as I'd like but as much as I can handle at least. This movement sometimes brings to the body romantic notions of getting those lost moments back, but those notions are never if rarely acted upon. What has happened has happened and remains so. Whatever happens here cannot happen again.

And this corresponds with notions of time. I'm reading a book right now in which the author discusses death and the way a persons life will be remembered, especially concerning the subject of biography. It is difficult to put ones life down to paper for the reason that there may be one moment which defines ones life fully and that moment could be their death, at which point it is of course too late to put ones life to paper. But that moment could also be, for example, the reading of a certain book. One reads a book at a young age and says, "How have I gone so long without reading this?" and it changes their whole perspective. That same person, though, perhaps may not read that book until later in life, is given the same revelation then instead of at that young age, but the moment still holds weight. In this case the story of ones life may be irrelevant until that particular moment. So how does one go about writing their life? Their defining moment is always just ahead, just out of reach, impossible to define until the end.