And who doesn’t love a drive through Oconomowoc, Wisconsin
Though I prefer the one I do on Wednesday, where I don’t stop
not even at Pik n’ Save, because Hava Nashira is just at the other end
and let’s not waste time. I prefer that drive to the one I do on Sunday,
where I also don’t stop, because an airplane is on the other end,
and it will not wait for my nostalgia. On Sunday, Ocnomowoc is a
reminder of something I won’t see for another year. On Sunday
people break out in song at mid-west airports and security doesn’t know
what to do. On Sunday the Hava Nashira hangover begins and if you
do it right, it doesn’t go away. But I don’t recall ever doing it right.
Pretty soon the non Oconomowoc world starts calling on the phone,
or sending emails that say things like Oh it sounds amazing, I hope
you had a great time, and now can we get to that thing that we talked
about before you left, and this other thing came up we need you to get on,
and you’re kind of okay with it as long as you can do it in seventy-five
part harmony, and as long as you can sit in the front row while it’s happening,
and your soul starts to make room for the other fifty-one weeks, and
pretty soon your time zone takes over and it starts to get the way it was
before you left. Except for the spark inside you, and the digital recordings
you listen to over and over, and pretty soon your fingers are on your guitars,
or pianos or hammer dulcimers, in the buildings you do the work you do
in cities all over the world, where you become the ambassadors you
were taught to be. There is a light and it never goes out. You are that light
and together we illuminate the world. Let’s shine so bright in one year’s time.
Next year in Oconomowoc.