The Studio is a State of Mind (pt. 5)

Somewhere, sometime.

5AM.

Sometime in 2014.

Somewhere in Fishers, IN.

The phone alarm kicks off its melody I've learned to hate. I changed it a month ago, and a month before that, but changing it does nothing for the disdain.

She is already in the shower. She is a schoolteacher who gets to the classroom hours before anyone else. I make a quick Keurig cup for her - black, no room - and pull on my running shoes.

Morning is dark but turns to a gun-metal gray that will bring September heat with the sunrise. The air is already heavy with moisture.

The run goes out of the neighborhood and onto the main thoroughfare with the Speedway gas station, the Kroger supermarket, the Irish pub, the sports bar, the ice cream place. After an hour, I'm back, stretching, covered in sweat and morning dew.

Wide awake.

She's left now, preparing a lesson plan at the high school a few blocks over. I shower and eat, glowing from having "eaten the frog" first thing in the morning.

In two hours I will have to back the car out of the garage and crawl the Interstate with the rest of the commuters heading south to the city like ants on a pheromone trail. But these next two hours are sacred hours.

My DAW is in a room at the front of the house. It smells like a new coat of paint and carpet that's been installed within the last few years. The window outside looks across the street at another house that's nearly identical except for the second story.

Saturday, I'll pull the kitchen table back to set up the drum rug and some mics. The dining "room" is off the side of the kitchen, off the side of the living room. All open concept. Likely identical to the house next door and the one across the street.

A set of sliding patio doors opens from the dining room to the side door. It looks out over a lawn, partially ours, partially the neighbors. All mowed in perfect diagonal lines. Identical, except they have a box garden and we don't. Upstairs, a maneki neko cat comes to life with the sunrise, waving at no one.

But today, this morning, I'm in the studio. A room at the front of the house that housed someone's sports memorabilia or a game room at one time. Someone's sewing workshop.

It feels like mine, and yet it doesn't. My guitars hang on the wall, and a spinnet piano stands along one wall. A newly bought Neumann towers over the desk for me to work out some vocals through. Breakfast sits next to the mousepad. I'm dressed for my commuter job already.

I am a round peg trying to be square. I feel out of place. I feel like shit that I feel out of place. But I have always felt out of place. Out of sorts. Out of mind. Out of time.

Hanging on to a state of mind over a sacred two hours.

I don't know it yet, but in less than two years this will all be gone, and things will never be the same.

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What I’m reading: The Velvet Underground and Nico (Joe Harvard, for 33 1/3)

What I'm listening to: Return to the Void (Shape of Despair)

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