This must be the place: ‘Through countless deserts, dreams and jests, lady on the water, rest my head upon your chest’
Early Saturday morning guitar pickin'. Garret K. Woodward photo
Hello from Room 813 of the Cambria hotel in downtown Asheville. It’s Sunday night, nearing 10 p.m. Warm air outside on the patio overlooking the skyline of a city I’ve orbited for the last 12 years, a place near and dear to my heart and soul, thoughts and visions.
The large eighth floor patio area is quiet, at least at this moment. Day four of AVLfest winds down, with the hotel guests in our suite still roaming around within vicinity of Haywood and College streets, onward to Biltmore Avenue. Monday morning comes early. But, for now, onward into the mischief and mayhem of the city at night.
The One Stop. Asheville Music Hall. Late night greasy burgers at The Vault. The Orange Peel. Shanghai Dumpling House. Pizza at Contrada. Hemingway’s Cuban restaurant for Saturday brunch. Citizen Vinyl. And four morning jaunts in a row to Summit Coffee in the Grove Arcade for a vanilla cappuccino to set the rest of the day and its unknown adventures into motion.
AVLfest: 350 bands, 25 stages, 22 music venues, four days. Organized chaos, all wrapped within “where to from here?” to catch the next band, whether known or by happenstance, who may just become part of the soundtrack of your life on an otherwise quiet Friday afternoon in the midst your existence unfolding — moment-by-moment, song-by-song, interaction-by-interaction.
Countless conversations. Numerous interviews with artists and bands about their craft while once again on assignment. The depths of the written word being navigated carefully in the presence of the sacred, ancient art that is live performance. Love at first guitar lick. Beauty discovered within lyrical aptitude of timelessness and vigor. The simple notion that music is, truly, the universal language.
I sit on the couch. “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” is on the hotel TV. The light of the glowing box illuminating the dark suite. Memories of watching the film in my childhood farmhouse up on the Canadian Border. My young mind eager and excited over the imagination of battling the bad guys in the name of all that is good and just in the firmness of earth and the greater ether surrounding.
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Those days seem so damn long ago. More so fuzzy memories of some long, lost chapter of my ongoing journey to somewhere, anywhere. It almost feels like a dream, like it didn’t even happen. The farmhouse was sold almost 20 years ago. And I’ve called Western North Carolina home since 2012. The clock keeps ticking. The world keeps spinning. People come. People go. What remains is the love shared, hopefully. How do you even comprehend it all, eh?
The swirling of life. The remembrance of those six feet below or thousands of miles away. Daily chores and obligations. Wake up and get going, go to bed and do it all over again. The unrolling of your life each morning. The culmination and reflection of whatever transpires within those 24 hours on the wall calendar in your kitchen or tacked up on the walls of your subconscious.
This may seem like a ramble. But, in essence, it’s what we all have whirling and twirling within each of your own minds, within each of our own paths and eventual outcomes to the other side, wherever that may be and whatever timeframe that may fall into. Come hell or high water, we continue to stay on the ride. But, as the late comedian Bill Hicks once said, don’t forget: “it’s just a ride.”
My girlfriend, Sarah, is holding court on the other side of the hotel couch. During Star Wars commercial breaks, she speaks of her late mother and how she misses her, wishing she could simply call her up in the midnight hour and ask advice as how to proceed properly into the next chapter of her life.
The world is a heavy place. And has been so since the dawn of humanity. Our emotions run wild and free. Lightness to darkness and back again. The pendulum of the human condition in a perpetual state. Too close to the edge of insanity, only to slowly, carefully creep backwards into reality, or some semblance of balance with what baggage lies in the rearview mirror, what hopes and dreams are out there just beyond the horizon of the windshield.
Headlights and taillights of what’s left of the Sunday night into early Monday morning cars passing by along Patton Avenue, way down below the hotel patio. Silhouettes of the Blue Ridge Mountains cradling the city. Silent storefronts across the way in the Grove Arcade. Anonymous figures wandering by on Page Avenue or in the distance along Asheland Avenue.
More words to type out tomorrow, most likely at Orchard Coffee in downtown Waynesville, way over that ridge to the west, just past the mountainous silhouettes guarding our backyards and our ways and means. Fingers rolling along, up and over the keyboard. The deadlines remain, as they always do. But, so do I, thankfully.
And just as things start to feel heavy, perhaps more than the normal ebb and flow of being a single kind soul in an overwhelming world of possibilities and pitfalls, a professional cornhole tournament appears on the glowing box on the wall of the hotel suite. Two teams battling it out with bean bags and wooden platforms usually found at local breweries and family reunions.
The absurdity of late night TV, especially for someone like myself that hasn’t had cable in over a decade. And of professional cornhole leagues televised on the CBS Sports Network. No judgment. I love partaking in the game itself. If anything, the bean bags and high-fives between competitors eases my restless thoughts, a slight grin of appreciation for the spectacle with each well-executed toss.
And yet, it is what it is, right? The ongoing undulation of society, whether it be Star Wars reruns, highly-competitive cornhole leagues or some dude like myself overlooking a city where most are already cozy in their beds awaiting tomorrow. Onward, with head held high.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
