Driving To California: Thursday March 23rd.

The bus is full and rowdy and I feel like I've spent a week in Vegas although we were there for only 48 hours. I like that we are driving towards San Francisco. Some places you connect with. I always feel at home in San Francisco, much as I do in Beijing or Berlin or Venice. I used to try to understand this resonance, this recognition I have with certain places I've been lucky enough to visit but I can't, not definitively. Now I don't try; I just enjoy the feeling of being somewhere that feels like it could be home - in another life. So few things are definitive - that's one of the joys of life, dui ma?

I have taken to lying in my bunk and listening to music. Space is a premium on tour. After weeks of being surrounded by people - even people you love and care deeply for - a feeling of privacy is something to cherish. Sometimes, a tiny beige curtain on your bunk is what keeps you together. Something that's hard to convey about touring is how the small, mundane things become the most important things. A little peace and quiet in your bunk, some clean laundry, a regular meal that doesn't cost $50, a phone call from a friend about a TV show you both watch....these are the anchors of normalcy that help to keep you centered on tour. All the glamourous crap - and most of it isn't so glamourous, turth be told - is much overrated. I'm not saying it's not fun, but it's a sugar high. And too much of it leaves you cranky and overtired; a five-year-old who missed their nap at a big birthday party.

However, when you feel disconnected sometimes the only thing to do is to feel disconnected. Sometimes the only company you can keep are the sad feelings in songs. Last night in my bunk I listened to Emiliana singing Fisherman's Woman over and over and over. I was glad to hear all the sadness in that song, all the loneliness. Sad feelings aren't any worse than glad feelings, they're just different. It's pointless to ignore them--and any feeling beats the alternative.

In the morning, when we drive into the city, the South Bay looks green and lush after the baked browns of Vegas; the ocean pours into the bay with a fresh tide running under the bridges; the skyline is an excited cardiograph against the crisp, blue sky and I feel optimistic again. I check my i-pod and hear Emiliana singing her lonesome song and in this glorious morning the song feels out of place and I can't quite recognise what I felt the night before. I feel duplicitous coiling the headphones and putting the music away; a penitent equivocating after absolution. Remembering how much I'd disappeared into the music I'm almost embarrased, as though I'd shared an intimacy the night before when I should have stayed quiet. I sit at the front of the bus, feeling, as countless thousands have before, that somehow, in someway, California will deliver on the promise of it's blue skies, green hills, and golden sun. There is everything to look forward to now.

By 5PM there is torrential rain.

I always forget that California is the bitchslap state.