8/21/10 – Philadelphia, PA

We wake at a super-secret compound near Bethlehem, PA. The secrets of this super secret compound must remain secretive. But Dear Reader, let me tell you–there is scintillating conversation, there is delicious food, there is laundry, there is a room for each of us, there is a pool. Our spirits are put right. We sleep, we feast, we wander, we swim, we sleep some more, we read the internets, we write the emails, we read the books, we sleep. Oh, and we also film a video for “You’re Alight.”

And then we drive to Philly. Last time out, Philly was our favorite show. A man on the street called our merch man Mike “Rocky”. We inadvertently ate racist cheesesteaks. We danced on tables to the soulful strains of The Boss.

We arrive at North Star Bar and realize we’re not on the show posters. This presents an interesting opportunity for anonymity. We could get up there and play Dokken covers, and perhaps no one would bat an eye.

But then we realize that there are some people there to see us. So we become ourselves and play our hearts out.

The stage is very high, dizzyingly so, and I keep picturing myself falling off of it. It’s an irrational fear, sort of like whenever i walk through a shoplifting detector at a store and expect that it will go off. That somehow I’ve gone crazy, stolen a bunch of merchandise and then had an amnesia attack and so when I’m wrestled to the ground and caught with thousands of dollars of merchandise, I’ll be as surprised as anyone.

Yeah, anyway, I don’t fall off the stage and neither does anyone else.

Afterwards, we hang out and eat the most brilliant snack ever–funnel cake fries. (It’s crushing to see an ad for them at Burger King on the PA Turnpike the next day). Nathan is drinking mezcal, and with each shot, he keeps telling me how he won’t be hung over because it’s such a pure drink. He is cracking us all up, as usual.

We return to the compounds and sleep in our own rooms, a luxury that almost makes me lonely. We’ve melded into a single organism and now I feel like I’m missing three limbs.