A sort of tour diary from The Antlers

by Peter Silberman

Starting

We’re not far in, maybe 3 days.  Our eyes are open more than we’re used to and we’re thinking about that and talking about that.  This is all exhausting, always exhausting, and by all accounts Michael and Darby should be falling asleep with feet near the brake and I should be the first to pass out when we get to the Super 8.  But we’re not.

We’re out of Florence, Kentucky, away from a water tower reading “Florence, Y’all.” (The town is southern but unassuming, the water tower is surprising.) We’re past Ohio and bordering Kentucky,  toward Tennessee. Now we’re wanting a camera.  Nothing great, nothing horrible, somewhere in-between, running us somewhere in the realm of eighty and one-hundred twenty dollars.  This is an investment, we say, long term.  We regrettably stop at a megastore.  They’re out, completely out of small junky point-and-shoot digital cameras.  “Okay,” and we head to the parking lot.

We’re approached from the opposite direction by a man, ponytail separate from the top of his head, bag thrown over shoulder.  He’s “too” friendly, suspiciously, religiously.  He’s stopping us to talk – he’s seen our plates and he knows where we’re from.  He’s from out of town too.  He wants to talk for awhile.  This is not improving, and we walk faster, to the van.  He’s shouting behind us, “I hate your band! I hope you fail!”

Alright.

This much is inevitable.  Aggression, confusing strangers, oddness.  But sometimes you’re not alone, there’s another group like you (or completely unlike you) driving a few miles ahead or behind.  If you can find people you understand, that’s a start.  If you find people you can spend 23 hours of every day for several weeks with, you’re set.  If you find people that understand you, that you can spend that much time with and leave without knowing them in that capacity again, you’re fucked in a wonderful way.

Continuing

By now we’re starting to think alike.  Making the same movements, wanting the same food, reacting to things the same way.  We call it “tour brain,” and the further in we get, the harder it is to divorce.

It’s not a terrible problem. In fact, it’s kind of surreal.  But we’ve done it for about half the tour now and the time for change has come.  The solution is exchange, and we trade out a member with Au Revoir Simone. Heather goes with Michael & Darby, and I go with the remainder of ARS.  Antlers have a (temporary) minivan and ARS have a hallway of a yellow van – a magic school bus, as I think of it.  We’re in west Texas; we’re going to Tucson.  We travel through flat unending plains and farming fields, craggy desert and stony mountains.  Six hours. Bordering on long, bordering on Mexico, but the more we drive the shorter it becomes, the further we are from Mexico.  We stop some along the way, notably, for the name alone, in a town called Bowie.  We use the restroom. We take pictures. We leave.

The magic school bus arrives in Tucson under black clouds, trailing behind the rest of the group by a few minutes.  We find food nearby in a grocery, I take a phone call and end up talking to a stranger for an hour, walking in and out of aisles in this grocery store with directional loss.  The conversation ends, I’ve been wandering for an hour having chosen no food.  I make quick decisions and leave.

There’s reunion and running across rooms and hands on backs when we return with plastic bags.  Black clouds hang with lightning and wind, but rainless all night.  We’re paying attention less and sinking more, standing next to one another but twenty feet apart.

We all sleep in a house in the desert; the suburban northeast with trees removed, hilly and horsed, cactus and mountain.  The two bands are about to split for a day, which is unnerving.  Now we know one another. Now we’re used to one another. We ought not be away from one another.  Michael and I find a coffee shop run by ten year-olds and sit in the morning, behind a middle-aged pair discussing gruesome dental surgery and similar topics that make breakfast difficult.  Antlers and ARS join and split at this place.  We’re going to San Diego without them; they’re going to LA without us.  The magic school bus pulls out and becomes the color of Arizona.

Going

We reach California as I’ve always known it.  Bright & slower, though the coldest state of the trip.  June is everywhere but here and nobody adjusts.  California opposes my memory, grey and speeding forward, everything ending.

We slide through border inspection, nervous but with nothing.  There’s about three of these.  Before San Diego there are mountains built out of small stones.  It’s an amazing drive and we stop for a while to walk through the desert and Darby gets hit by spiked cactus debris carried by strong winds.  We’re in a sharp valley of high stones with wind that’s stronger ten feet above the ground, knocking us down.  There are pictures of this somewhere.

San Diego’s quiet and we have dinner in a fifties diner.  “What it is” has replaced “hello” several times, everything’s pink.  We’re not there long, we stay outside of town, with Darby’s relatives.  The next morning we leave for Los Angeles, prepared to lose things we know to unfamiliarity and lose people we know to the chandelier seduction of the El Rey Theater.  We’re proven wrong.  We all join together, we get stuck backstage during sets and run out in between.

Santa Barbara is stranger. Like the past but with wealth, sun without warmth.  We all have a final dinner together about a block from the club, surprised by good food in an unfamiliar place.  We finish and walk outside, where California in the evening finally feels like summer at night, more like the last days before September.  We’re all linking arms and there’s some sort of magic in everything.

The next evening is the last, in San Francisco.  We all find ourselves at a venue of excessive beauty, all of us slightly better dressed.  Annie has made a cardboard cutout of my face and attached it to a pillow with my borrowed shirt.  We steal shirts from their merch and wear them before the last song.  We finish, they begin, and we watch them once more.  They are positive and warm and this will stay with us for a while.  The show ends, and blurrily we all run upstairs.  Fake Peter and I trade shirts.

We’re outside now, vans next to one another preparing to leave in different directions.  Au Revoir Simone is going to Portland, we are not.  Darby & Michael are about to drive from San Francisco to Chapel Hill in about two days, where our next show is.  Soon, I’ll be flying from San Francisco to Atlanta to play a bizarre solo show that is the missing link between the tour we are on and the tour we are about to begin.  Everyone spends too much time on the sidewalk wishing this split was imaginary instead of something so much like the last day of summer camp.  They close the door to the magic school bus. Darby and Michael close the door to the minivan. I close a car door.  That’s it.

An old and very close friend (also named Peter) spends the rest of the evening with me in San Francisco.  My flight is at six and it’s midnight.  We spend a few hours walking around a shut down Haight, climbing hills and falling down them. We attempt to find some sort of overlook which fails by way of crossing the Golden Gate too many times and paying too many tolls.  Eventually we find a beach where the sun is rising and for a few more hours we walk in the sand, unsure of how we’ve managed to stay awake this long.  Me, unsure of what I’m doing at all.  We shake the sand off our feet and put our shoes back on and Peter drives me to the airport and we split with no spare time.

I wait in the security line for a while, they take my pocketknife from me and I board after thirty hours awake and thirteen days in a dream.

Advising

Ultimately, that’s how this goes, it starts and ends and starts and so on for as long as you’ll let it. You’ll eat off-schedule and be up late and sleep in the car the next day.  You’ll stop at truck stops and pick up waste-of-moneys or decorative plates that say something stupid, heavily discounted romance novels and Jesus paraphernalia.  You’ll be tired and your clothes will get stretched out, you’ll eat very healthily when fed and terribly when not, you’ll stab holes in soda cans and go out to the van after it’s been parked to look for the lighter lost under the seat.  If you’re somewhere warm and have some day free you should find somewhere to swim, or if you’re in a rush, stop driving halfway through the mountains and get out for awhile.  Stand around, don’t talk for a bit.  Walk in separate directions and come back in ten minutes.

You should sleep in the van but not the entire trip.  Get coffee when you’re bored and look out the window wide awake.  Don’t listen to the music you listen to when you’re home.  Or if you miss home, only listen to that music, but not for too long.  Take vitamins if you can remember to and call friends & family if you can manage to.  Take pictures, but not so many that you’re absent.  Drink cheap beer and appreciate the fact that it’s probably free, treat yourself to a nicer one now and again.  If you don’t have to wear shoes, don’t wear shoes.  Do whatever keeps you from nervously scratching away at your skin or totally separated from yourself, from getting tired and falling asleep first or sleeping with your eyes open and your head up, dropping down until your neck picks it up again.   Summer repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats but it’s different every time.