song of the day: not the same / ben folds
word of the day: auriform / shaped like an ear
the last show of the 9-City tour of the Netherlands was in Roosendahl, and it kicked ass. first of all, it was at a venue called The Music Temple, how can you go wrong? and sure enough as its name suggests, the owners, staff, and fans do indeed consider their live music to be sacred. i showed up and there were like 50 different fliers of me, each one intricately altered as an individual work of art by the venue's resident artist (who happened to be dressed up as a murdering NUN when i got there- it was halloween of course, and she had the full nun outfit going, with blood stains and a sort of satanic make-up thing going, very nicely done). her work on the fliers flipped all of us out, she had created a different "persona" of stuart davis for each one. i'm going to use them in a video, so you'll see what the heck i'm talking about, it's quite hard to describe but it must have taken a long, long time to do.
having spent the last two weeks meeting hundreds of people from end to end of Holland, i have to say that i really, really love the Dutch. my experience of basically every person i met or interacted with was very positive. for that matter, all the people that came to the shows from Belgium, Germany, AUSTRALIA (yeah, the all-time record breaking WINNERS for the FARTHEST DISTANCE EVER TRAVELLED TO REACH A STU SHOW- they were there for several shows)- everyone i got to hang out with was amazing. it's really the most amazing job, to travel all over the place and meet all these people who blow my mind, and to show up night after night and be greeted by strangers who treat you like family from the first moment. makes me wanna turn around and amplify the love in the world.
in roosendahl, after i had finished what i thought would be my last song, i was off the stage, people were chanting for an encore, and then finally this dude (from Spain?) just came over and literally wrapped his arms around me, lifted me up, and squarely planted my ass back on stage in front of the microphone. he was like, "YOU DO, YOU DO SONG! SONG NOW!" and he lovingly lofted my in his arms back on stage. alright, then. so i did another, and it was a good choice mister. my last song of the tour was Chow Down, which had become one of my favorites on this tour.
after the gig, we drove back to Goes (i think, is that where it was? or Baarland?), i slept for two hours, then got in the car and drove a couple hours to Schipol airport (Amsterdam), i said good bye to my heros, the all-time monk miracle workers Rinus, Desiree', and Tanja (by phone) who, with Tycho, booked the whole tour and have firmly established me in Holland for many years to come, i will be returning to tour. i checked in at the airport, spent an hour in the passport line alone, then security check, another security check, waiting for the plane. a nine hour flight to newark, nj, where i go through customs, get my guitars, check my guitars again, get on another plane, fly to denver, and i am one tired, beat, fatigued mother by this time. i basically haven't slept in two weeks, we've driven thousands of kilometers, and the adrenaline buzz of the love has kept me going, but now i am freaking crashing. it's snowing in Denver, cold, and it takes a long time for the guitars to arrive. finally, i go out, about a half hour later, my wife and i drive off and go back home, it's a white-out of snow on the highway, we have to drive super super slow the whole way home. i finally fall asleep about 24 hours after having left holland, and i drift off into a very grateful, amazed feeling, laying next to my wife (my favorite human being in the whole world), listening to my daughter breathing, and i think how incredible it is to be a human being on planet earth. what an infinite puzzle to be alive.
