Travel for the Homebody

If you are a kid flying on a commercial flight, you want to see the cockpit and meet the pilots -and it’s roughly forty years before 9/11, here’s what you do: Bring along crayons and paper, draw and color a picture of the airplane you are flying in, let’s say a Boeing 707, being sure to include the name of the airline on the plane. Then call the stewardess (yes, that’s what they were called then) and tell her while wearing an adorable expression: “I drew this for the pilot, can you take it to him?”

After you’ve landed in Tampa, Florida and have just seen your first palm trees through the window, on your way off the plane you will be invited into the cockpit and greeted by the pilot himself.

“Billy, have you ever seen a grown man…”

No, no, not like that. He’ll thank you for your drawing, show you the controls and light up the ten thousand indicator lights all at once with a “check bulb” function and of course give you a plastic set of ‘wings’.

This is an actual set of wings I got as a kid
on a flight to Tampa, Florida.

Works every time! -until you’re around twenty-five anyways, then they seem think it’s creepy or something… That might be different if you’re a women though.

“Brenda, have you ever been in the mile high club?”

I have always loved to travel.

I have always been a homebody.

Those statements are not a contradiction. Not any more than I am.

Both travel and home have always been very important to me. When I was younger, the scales were very much tipped towards travel. A trip to my grandparents’ house was always an event I looked forward to as a child. One of the first professions I professed an interest in was truck driver.

I think I dreamed of travel non-stop after that. I used to put on headphones that weren’t plugged into anything because, to me, it mimicked the noise of being on a jet.

I used to watch the trucks heading out of town on Route 332 bound for I-90 and the World as far as I knew.

Finally, when I was eighteen I was able to go on my first unsupervised road trip. I drove my brother, myself and a friend of ours named Heiki Lara to a youth retreat in Eastern Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, my brother and Heiki both live in that general area now. The youth retreat kinda sucked but the road trip was great simply because we were on our own and on the road.

I never missed an opportunity to travel after that: Taking my sister to camp, picking up a German friend of hers at JFK in New York (a full day of driving), or helping a friend move to Nashville just for the road trip.

Just after college, I drove my beat-up ’74 Chevy van from NY to Georgia non-stop just to see a girl.

The driving force behind that trip gave new meaning to the term “wanderlust”.

I loved being gone, but I always returned home. Except for once...

The morning I pulled onto I90-West in a small moving truck headed for Los Angeles, there was no home to return to, it had been sold. I drove away down the Thruway with a dream in my heart but tears in my eyes as my homeland got smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

When I started working in game shows in LA, I started traveling four to six times a year, more than I ever had. Then I became a full-time musician for a while and traveled all the time.

I have stayed in Hotel rooms for eleven days at a time, and I have stayed in hotel rooms for eleven minutes total—just enough time for a quick shower.

I have ridden in a tour bus non-stop night and day (except for fuel stops) from Massachusetts to Southern California. The surreal part of that was riding right past my old exit 44 (Canandaigua, NY) at 3AM without being able to stop and see anyone I know and love.

After traveling like that for a while the romance of the road started to look like a truck stop and smell like a tour bus. Being at home became the vacation and vacation was had become work.

Though I still love to be on the road but I love being at home more. When I am home and settled in I am loath even to go out to the store, just ask my wife.

What is home though? I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. It can be said that Audra is my 'home'; I’ve never felt so at-home with anyone. Where is our home? Not that an apartment can’t be a home, but it’s not for us, not really.

Is it a state? Is it a state of mind? Is "home" it the journey home?

Perhaps if I get some paper and crayons, draw a nice picture of my ‘home’ and send it up to the pilot, he’ll give me a set of wings and show me the way.

Journal:

I had almost forgotten about this feature. I put it on hold while I posted my Christmas story and never brought it back.

I spent a week in New York (downstate but not quite the city) for show biz stuff. I was too far away to see any family or friends from home. There was an old friend that I was going to meet but I wound up getting a nasty cold and had to cancel.

Next Saturday when I post my next blog I will be posting it from Toronto where I will be working on another show. New York and Toronto in January, I sure can pick’em huh?

I was able to record a new demo version of “Loser’s Treason” with a revised vocal melody and new percussive elements. I sent it to my producer but I haven’t been able to talk with him about it yet so I don’t know if it sucks or not yet.

I will be able to use my hotel time to do some editing and pre mixing of the album. There are a couple backup singers I need to prepare parts for “Loser’s Treason”, “Sugar on the Snow” and “The Cider Miller’s Daughter”. A friend of mine is going to record a guitar solo for “Loser’s” and I need to get him a good set of tracks to work with.

It’s becoming clear that completing the CD is going to be an exercise in faith and compromise.  Since I am doing most of it myself, there’s a certain amount of anxiety in putting a hault to revisions, corrections, and tweaking and calling it ‘done’. I'll have to relinquish all control and release it to the World and set it adrift into the ether of history.

I am plenty brave when it comes to posting files of my works-in-progress as long as I can hide behind the excuse that it’s “…a rough mix, it’s not done yet”.

Why look, there’s that link now: http://www.reverbnation.com/joeltjohnson -have a listen.

Like raising a child, the purpose of creating this music is to send it out into the World to its destined ears, not to be kept at home till it’s unemployed and living in my basement twenty years later.