Lisa Savidge

Tour Journal: Day 7

Woke up this morning to the sound of the person in the room above me apparently training for a marathon…  I say this because they literally did not stop clomping around for a good 90 minutes…  Yeah, I was watching the clock.  I tried taking an extra Valium to see if I couldn’t catch a few more hours of sleep since the show tonight will be a late one, but it wasn’t to be.  I finally decided to grab a shower, but the power suddenly went out.  I could clearly hear someone else talking to the management about it from outside, so I figured it would sort itself out in due course, which it did…  At which point, there was no hot water.  Great.

Well, I just kicked around a bit – catching the latest Daily Show on streaming to give the water heaters to do their thing – all the while floating in the benzo haze that comes with dosing twice in a 12 hour period – and eventually was able to clean up and get the day started.

Oh, that’s the other thing…  In all of the prep for the tour, I’d completely forgotten about my own supplies and the fact that my next appointment to get refills of the myriad pills that make my day-to-day possible fell smack in the middle of the tour.  Luckily, Angel was able to get my prescriptions and fed-ex them up here, so today is actually the first day of the tour that I’m able to drop the severe rationing – seeing how much pain and discomfort I can take between doses so I won’t run out – and actually hit some kind of equilibrium.  It’s a rather comforting thought.

I decided to walk across the bridge into the better part of town to see about grabbing some breakfast…  I hadn’t been in the car for a solid 12 hours and that suited me just fine.  As I walked, I got to thinking…  Portland is a fine little town; definitely a cool place, but something always rubbed me kind of the wrong way here.  It can’t really be the weather, since I’ve never had any qualms in Seattle, but I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

As the cyclists blew by me in their utterly elaborate get-ups and I found my way to some little cafe for some kind of extremely elaborate dish (I couldn’t even tell you what was in it or how it was made – just some eggs and toast or whatever was not to be found on the menu) it sort of dawned on me.  LA’s always been kind of weird to me on account of people seeming to be really intense about all of the wrong things (a condition that seems to have spread along the 10 to Phoenix, as well) whereas here, people seem to be intense about just about everything.  On the surface, it’s an extremely casual town, but as you really get into it nobody does anything halfway here.

Take the cyclists.  They don’t just get a bike…  They get the most elaborate bike for their given purpose, the wardrobe to match, the particular kind of bag, etc.  Seems like a lot of that goes on around here (that actually seems to be the main running joke on the very funny Portlandia).  It’s not a bad thing at all…  I admire people’s dedication to doing everything with gusto, and that’s certainly been a running theme to how I’ve approached music (both the songs themselves, and what we do with them), but I have trouble relaxing when everyone around is extremely involved in something or other all of the time.  Overall, I’d say that’s more my problem than Portland’s, but it means I don’t exactly fit in here all the same.

As I made my way back over the bridge, I noticed a little sign for the suicide help line…  Not, in and of itself, and uncommon sight on bridges pretty much anywhere I’ve been, but this one struck me as a little odd.  There was a big picture of a flower on the top, and the text was quite small.  I tried to imagine, being in a suicidal state of mind, how somebody might notice what the sign is about in order for them to consider making the call.  I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some academic somewhere who came up with the design, having found that the dominating picture of the flower somehow increases the odds of someone calling or something like that.  Like, this little piece of metal could very well be the culmination of somebody’s doctoral thesis.  Kind of an odd field of study, but when you’re looking to do something original with your research I guess you take what you can get.

This also had me peering over the bridge as I crossed, trying to figure out where one would jump if that’s what they were looking to do.  The first part was a drop straight onto concrete, but not terribly high to where it would be a sure thing (and this seems like something you would want to be sure about).  Any further up, and that puts you over the water, which I imagine would break your fall some.  I guess you’d need to go head-first on the concrete part, but that strikes me as being perhaps a bit on the gruesome side.

Anyway, I also caught a bit of vertigo doing this, which terrified me.  I’ve never been good with heights, though a passer-by probably wouldn’t notice.  That’s the upside to being terrified all of the time…  That an unseen bomb is suddenly going to go off, that every stranger is a potential assailant, that each time the phone rings it bears the worst of news, or that even the mailbox is looking to indirectly kill me with whatever horrors lay within those envelopes…  You learn to stop showing weakness (lest those assassins in every corner see an opportunity to strike).  I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but it is what it is.

Well, the rest should be arriving soon, so I need to start working on my state of mind so I can perform tonight.  The show isn’t ’till late, so maybe (if anyone has the urge) I’ll have some company to walk downtown a bit and settle my nerves.  I think about the hollywood version of what playing is supposed to be like…  Thinking of 8-mile and Mr. Mathers vomiting from the pressure and freezing up.  It isn’t like that at all…  It’s just something you do.  I imagine that if I wasn’t already so anxious all of the time, it wouldn’t be an issue at all.  Or maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe that’s why all of those rock stars shoot all of that smack and guzzle all of that hard booze…  To get the courage to get on stage.  I’ve never played an arena, so who knows?  I guess I assume that that would actually be easier – you don’t have to interact with the audience before or after the show at all, the promoter isn’t breathing down your neck about how many people are going to show up, professionals are handling all of the technical stuff, all of that.  It’ll be interesting to see if it ever happens.

All right, off to hopefully find some serenity and hopefully play the best show yet.  Time will tell.

Posted in Lisa Savidge/Lisa Savidge, National Shows, Tour · April 7th, 2011 · Comments (0)