PureVolume

I’m on a beach. It’s cyan, film-scratched and silent. I feel it in the air. I feel it in the wind off of the water. I feel it in the waves crashing feet in front of me. I feel it in little lips of water hitting my bare feet. I close my eyes. I outstretch my arms and tilt my head back. I let it all encompass me. Every thought escapes my body. I know what I’m feeling is divine. It feels like orgasm. It feels like the warmth of liquor mixed with the chills of drug revelation. It feels like the answer to a lifetime of internal questions. I have found the formula. I have found the path to something that can only be expressed in three letters: God.
I open my eyes and still feel it. I stretch my limbs. I wiggle my fingers and my toes. The feeling stays with me. I turn to my friends. My band and the other bands from tour are with me. I mold my ecstasy smile into the shape of words to tell everyone that God is everywhere. I begin doing my best to trace my steps towards awakening. I want them all to get it. I want them to feel what I feel. As my mouth opens, a turd floats up and almost hits one of my friend’s feet. He’s sitting in a lawn-chair at the scar of where ocean meets land. He jumps up and everyone freaks out and crowds around him. Typical. Shit always seems to get in the way. I lose my train of thought. Enlightenment escapes me. Some guy in a wetsuit rides by on a whale. He has saved it from a guy who had had a giant fishing pole…

…I wake up slowly.

I wipe sleep from my eyes and realize that it's another one of what has become hundreds of migraine mornings where we're stuck in traffic; bullets in all our heads and only multi-media memories of the night before resonating in the remaining cells of our brains. It doesn't matter what highway we're on, what state we're in or what time it is. At least, it doesn't matter to me. We're not home.
I rub my neck and sit for a bit looking out the window at stale and stagnant air. I decide to begin going through footage shot from last night, the bulk of which is not of the actual show but rather is of the debauchery that took place when all the lights went on, when everyone went home, and when we went back to being nobodies. That has become when tour really starts. I haven't seen a mirror in days, fearing the worst, and knowing from the video that I'm watching that bloated has taken on a whole new dimension. The camera again starts tainting the image of what I thought was a fun night. It looks like I'd better start another list of apologies to make up for being more of an ass then I thought I was. Disgusted, I fast forward through the rest.
Bren is sitting in the way back writing something on an old shitty acoustic guitar, unknowingly laying down the soundtrack to this moment in our lives. Shirtless due to a night of spilling and with his voice still hoarse from yelling into the early morning hours, he rudely asks Dave to fade the music to the front so he can hear what he's doing.
Dave sits in the driver's seat, shades in place and hair combed. He fiddles with the knobs letting out a sigh. We haven't moved but a crawl in minutes. Me and Bren mumble something under our breath about whatever music he has blaring, projecting the image of cool; whatever next big thing that so-and-so has introduced him to that he will now talk about for the next two weeks using the word "amazing" at least three dozen times. It's probably European, it may or may not be trendy, what do I know?
Joe rides shotgun cell phone to his ear and atlas strewn across his lap. He's an A.D.H.D multi-tasker but his is the only mind free of hangover. Trying to find the best alternate route, and not being able to get in touch with the promoter, he excitedly shouts new discoveries to Dave who's not listening or pretending not to anyway. He leaves a professional message, hangs up and dials or manager.
Colin has just woken up; he cracks a warm beer and sits anxiously with a pack of cigarettes resting in his crotch. He thinks about just cracking a window and lighting one of the little white cylinders that is filled with his black death. He glances at asthmatic eyes that glare from the driver's seat in the rearview mirror and decides to keep his tiny little funerals safe in his five dollar pack, at least for now.
Our brand new white sixteen-passenger van with brand new trailer in tow starts trudging forward, not paid for, as traffic begins letting up. The steering wheel resumes cheating west; inching this tin can's way across America one day at a time. It reeks of stale beer bullet fumes as empty cans clatter around loudly. We pass a car recently engulfed in the red angry tongues of flame and instead of putting my camera down as planned; I excitedly start filming the Honda inferno. That's life.
I finally lay my camera down to rest and pick up my notebook in order to start putting words to the chords and the melodies haunting me from the backbench. With visions of what has truly become a blackout life, the pen begins to move..."only a blueprint of negatives indented on the bloodied fist that rests in the cavity of your chest." Little did I know then that no one would ever hear this refrain because in months we would cut the rope, setting free the dead horse that we had been carrying around. Lying to rest the carcass known as Orange Island. The corpse that had begun weighing us down instead of what it once did; it once had set us free. And what a good-looking corpse it is. We lived fast, we loved even faster and we died in our prime.