to whomever still actually reads this.
I read an interview recentley with Rob Fusco(former One King Down vocalist/Current Most Precious Blood vocalist) and i came across a question and answer that i feel highly pertains to me and why i am the way i am now. who knows.
read on:
LAMBGOAT:Speaking of touring, I remember a particular part in the book "Get In The Van" by Rollins where he was out of his mind and Ian Mackaye saw him and began to cry because he said Henry had "road burn." Have you ever had such a thing? What kind of psychological strain does so much traveling cause?
ROB: Road burn? Absolutely. Every tour. Without fail. It's unlike anything, this stress, except maybe shell shock, if there's much of a difference there at all. Tour enough and it becomes like war in a way. You catch yourself in the thousand-yard stare, you question your sanity, your connections, your worth...everything. The days blend together, you lose track of your location. Sometimes you wonder if you're going to make it home.
Something which immediately jumps to mind is the amount of thinking you'll tend to do. In this profession there is a LOT of down time - in the van, in the hotel, before sound check, after sound check, after the show... Too much of anything is not a good thing, especially thinking. Left unchecked, my thoughts root through some very stony soil and they grow deep quickly. Speaking personally, after time I find myself entertaining some fantastic (and completely laughable) hypothetical scenarios which eventually germinate into distrust and high-level paranoia, obsessions, nightmares... it eventually changes the way I think and behave towards people, and I'm conscious of it, but powerless against it, which leads to shame and guilt...it's a dreadful cycle to anticipate.
I think that this deep response is more so a symptom of my own psychology and not necessarily a by-product of tour, but I couldn't say truthfully that tour doesn't affect me or magnify my inherent and already nearly unmanageable psychological flaws. I'm afraid of these patterns permanently altering my brain chemistry, if they haven't done so already. Ah, fuck it. There's no way for me to know anyway, I suppose. But yes, after a while you really do feel very disconnected and out of your head and it absolutely will affect you in strange ways. For example, when I return from tour, I am, for quite a while, completely socially inept. I feel almost crippled, dumbed and unable to interact with people on a reasonable level. The burnout had the potential to be pretty debilitating. For example, once after coming home from a particularly long and trying tour I tried to go food shopping but instead just blankly shuffled through the store's aisles and left empty-handed. I feel like I fail miserably at the most elementary functions and it's a difficulty to re-acclimate for a long time. Things aren't quite the same for a while after returning to the world, as the vets put it (ah, the parallels between tour and warfare). Yes, such simple tasks tend to feel infinitely complex. It's almost like living in two wholly different worlds which you must relearn upon returning each time. Then again, like I said, this could have very little to do with tour itself. I could be that I'm just mildly retarded. The more I analyze it, the more plausible that possibility seems.
Aside from the psychological strain, one's body takes a fucking beating just by virtue of the work. Sleep on enough floors and your shoulders and back will never forgive you.
read on:
LAMBGOAT:Speaking of touring, I remember a particular part in the book "Get In The Van" by Rollins where he was out of his mind and Ian Mackaye saw him and began to cry because he said Henry had "road burn." Have you ever had such a thing? What kind of psychological strain does so much traveling cause?
ROB: Road burn? Absolutely. Every tour. Without fail. It's unlike anything, this stress, except maybe shell shock, if there's much of a difference there at all. Tour enough and it becomes like war in a way. You catch yourself in the thousand-yard stare, you question your sanity, your connections, your worth...everything. The days blend together, you lose track of your location. Sometimes you wonder if you're going to make it home.
Something which immediately jumps to mind is the amount of thinking you'll tend to do. In this profession there is a LOT of down time - in the van, in the hotel, before sound check, after sound check, after the show... Too much of anything is not a good thing, especially thinking. Left unchecked, my thoughts root through some very stony soil and they grow deep quickly. Speaking personally, after time I find myself entertaining some fantastic (and completely laughable) hypothetical scenarios which eventually germinate into distrust and high-level paranoia, obsessions, nightmares... it eventually changes the way I think and behave towards people, and I'm conscious of it, but powerless against it, which leads to shame and guilt...it's a dreadful cycle to anticipate.
I think that this deep response is more so a symptom of my own psychology and not necessarily a by-product of tour, but I couldn't say truthfully that tour doesn't affect me or magnify my inherent and already nearly unmanageable psychological flaws. I'm afraid of these patterns permanently altering my brain chemistry, if they haven't done so already. Ah, fuck it. There's no way for me to know anyway, I suppose. But yes, after a while you really do feel very disconnected and out of your head and it absolutely will affect you in strange ways. For example, when I return from tour, I am, for quite a while, completely socially inept. I feel almost crippled, dumbed and unable to interact with people on a reasonable level. The burnout had the potential to be pretty debilitating. For example, once after coming home from a particularly long and trying tour I tried to go food shopping but instead just blankly shuffled through the store's aisles and left empty-handed. I feel like I fail miserably at the most elementary functions and it's a difficulty to re-acclimate for a long time. Things aren't quite the same for a while after returning to the world, as the vets put it (ah, the parallels between tour and warfare). Yes, such simple tasks tend to feel infinitely complex. It's almost like living in two wholly different worlds which you must relearn upon returning each time. Then again, like I said, this could have very little to do with tour itself. I could be that I'm just mildly retarded. The more I analyze it, the more plausible that possibility seems.
Aside from the psychological strain, one's body takes a fucking beating just by virtue of the work. Sleep on enough floors and your shoulders and back will never forgive you.