The Altogether Stranger

ANTIFRAGILITY ON TOUR

A few days ago we were driving south on the New Jersey turnpike after our show in New York City. It was midnight & we were passing tall smokestacks topped with forever flames. Trick birthday candles that not even God’s wish, a breath, could blow out.
I unbuckled my shoes - blood caked on the heels, empty wrappers spilling from every door pocket, old batteries rolling around on the floorboard clanking against glass water bottles, popcorn crumbs, suitcase spilling across the backseat - watching tractor trailers pass us on the right. I said to Guy, “this is no kind of a life for a person.”
And he said, “what, getting to play to a full room of people & have the freedom to move around the whole world sharing the things you make?”
I always ask him terrible, rhetorical questions like that, but he always humors me with that same steady response.

Flipping through a coffee shop book on Ikigai - a Japanese concept of discovering your purpose through exploring the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. I caught the term antifragility. It was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and he describes it as the ability of a system to not only withstand but actually benefit from stress, volatility, or uncertainty. I wrote this in capital letters in my notebook & soon afterwards came across an essay on how The Comfortable Life Is Killing You

If we dare to look beyond the surface and listen to what psychology, philosophy, and science are trying to tell us, the message is clear: a life soaked in too much safety and comfort slowly erodes us. Comfort, in excess, dulls the spirit—and the longer we cling to it, the more we drift into a quiet, unnoticed decline.

If you’re constantly fleeing friction, you’re dying.

There’s no hope for a fruitful existence if you refuse to face the inevitable uncertainties of life. The more we shield ourselves from uncertainty, the more vulnerable we become. Each safeguard deepens the very void we seek to escape
~ from “The Comfortable Life is Killing You” by Erik Rittenberry

With these motivational words & phrases in my pocket - the same pocket of the same pants I’ll be wearing for the next two months - I feel a little of my old spirit of the vagabond return to me. The one who slept in cars, on couches & floors, the one who often traveled alone & learned to pee in clandestine spaces, the one who wore the same socks for days, the one who used baby powder for shampoo & turned her underwear inside out and outside in again. The one I was before I got soft.

The security, familiarity and routine of home is essential for me to create work, but that phase ended a couple weeks ago as we packed up our house and moved away from Los Angeles. The process has been a massive stripping away. Guy & I let go of more than half of our belongings, shipped 9 boxes home to Virginia, loaded up the Prius & drove across country to the farm in Virginia. We then pared down our things to fit into one large suitcase - we each get one side of it to squeeze in two months worth of clothes, shoes, toiletries & a tambourine. In addition, we carry a guitar, a Nord keyboard, a small suitcase full of pedals &cables and, of course, the Omnichord. Every single thing we need we have to be able to carry on the train. It’s a lesson in bearing the weight of belongings. Each item is a literal weight on our shoulders.

But I find my pleasures more abundantly now. When the sun shines. With an excellently pulled shot of espresso. Geraniums in window boxes. Getting teary eyed watching John Lennon sing “Mother” in One To One beside an older British man in a near-empty theater. Accommodating airline attendants. Every small kindness feels luminous with blessing.

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Today, May 1, sees the premiere of the film Guy & I spent the last few months creating in advance of our record’s official release tomorrow, May 2. You can follow the video link above to watch the film premiere LIVE with us in just a few hours at 11am LA/ 2pm NYC/ 7pm London/ 8pm Paris. If you miss the premiere, it will remain on youtube for your viewing pleasure…until the grid goes down.

FULL ALBUM out May 2
TOUR