A few days after getting back home I found myself busy working
as a piano tuner in the Toronto area. My first call was from a gentleman named
Arif who needed a tune-up on his upright piano. As it turned out he lived in my
neighbourhood, so I happily agreed to head over the next morning with my piano
tools and a monolithic fuckin’ Tim Horton’s coffee. As I approached the house I
saw the 2 of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life exiting. A
fellow wearing a NOFX t-shirt and pyjama pants greeted me at the top of the
steps. “Who the hell is this dude?” I wondered. You can usually tell a man’s worth by the amount of beautiful women in
his general vicinity and no, Ted Bundy, dead ones don’t count, that’s cheating.
He showed me to his piano and after a few friendly words, I got to work
thinking that this guy looked all too familiar. Halfway through the job I
looked up on the wall and saw a gold record: Protest the Hero.
Fatality had opened for Protest the Hero a few summers
earlier and having seen them perform, I have to say that I find them to be one
of the most professional and exceptional live bands out there. I recalled
needing to take a piss during their set on a big outdoor festival stage
surrounded by wilderness. I went walking to the tree line in the distant
darkness 150 paces left of the stage and I accidentally trudged into a marsh
like a bumbling asshole. Try bouncing back from that socially: being in a
public place with hundreds of people after getting soaked up to your waist in
swamp water, lily pads and otter cum. I don’t think even Johnny Depp could
charm his way out of that one!
I talked with Arif about life after tour and how getting
home, I couldn’t help but feel like a fuddy-duddy after the infinite momentum
and night-after-night excitement of tour life had grinded to a halt. You ought
to see me on the first day I get home from a long tour, trying in vain to make
my cats watch me play the acoustic guitar with my shirt off, crying. He had a
good laugh and told me that that is the price of admission for such an amazing
and unique experience. He told me about an article he had read about Buzz Aldrin
and how his life turned to shit after he walked on the moon in 1969. I guess
after walking on a giant space rock and watching the shimmering twilight of the
cosmos from 384,400 kilometers above everything you have ever known, somehow waiting
in line for an Arby’s cheese melt loses its allure pretty quick. Upon coming
home to earth, his mother (would you believe her name was Marion Moon?)
committed suicide due to the instant overwhelming celebrity of the family; he
then destroyed his marriage and became a miserable alcoholic. I would have
thought it would have been the other two that lost it: Neil Armstrong from the
pressure of being the first to walk on the moon, or Michael Collins for
literally being the most isolated man in the universe.
Tour to me is like going to space. You load up your
spaceship with all that you will need for your extended stay, you strap in and
shoot across the globe to uncharted territory with nothing to protect you but
your sheer determination, creativity and passion. You are isolated from all
that you hold dear, and you make the choice to sacrifice all that you once knew
just for a rare chance to chase that ever elusive 45 minutes of magic that has
gotten you out of bed since you were a child. And, like most astronauts you are
always trying to get as much Tang as you can get your hands on! In my eyes, for
the most part, humans are all the same. I feel as though we are all just trying
to find that delicate balance between our inner demons and our dreams. How can
we make this trip to the moon last forever? What kind of magic are we chasing?
Spencer “Back to the coal mines” LeVon
