I've written before about my morning ritual with the yellow legal pad. It's nothing unusual, me getting my bearings by writing down the events of the day. The same list is already in my phone's calendar app, but if I write it down on paper it seems to stamp the day a little more firmly on my brain. On Sundays I go one better, writing down the entire week to come.
So this morning I wrote that we have morning practice every day due to an afternoon heat wave, I'm doing a video interview with the LA Public Library on Wednesday (moderated by my good friend, television producer Steve Sandoval), there's a dinner with family at Nomads, and my sweetie has a midweek birthday. That should be an interesting day.
Wednesday morning, sitting down for the breakfast buffet at the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel in Narita, I had a little time on my hands. I didn't just write the schedule, I spontaneously wrote small essays about the little things that floated in and out of my head during the flight. You could call them journal entries, though they were less therapy, more focused: fitness, future, hopes, dreams. The words flowed in a way I had not anticipated. An hour passed.
If I'd typed the words on my laptop I would have edited on the fly, stopping to reread and punctuate — like I'm doing now. But pen on paper demands freedom. Soul.
Much of the inspiration came from visiting a place called Bar Martha the night before. A "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" cab drive through downtown Tokyo preceded the visit. The outside was nondescript. The inside was an ocean of inspiration: a cool back bar, speakers the size of refrigerators, bartenders who didn't speak, letting the music take the focus. No loud talking was permitted. The music washed over me.
My buddy Chris Teske, the driving force behind the Tokyo visit, pointed out that they were open until 3. If not for an enormous level of exhaustion after flying all day, I could have sat there until last call. I've been to a handful of places in my lifetime that really challenged me as an artist to think in a profoundly different way. Bar Martha was one of them.
So I went back to my room, slept hard, woke up, and my heart was calling for me to write. The flight home wasn't until 5 pm (we were only there a day). Chris was off to take a Gray Line tour. I killed time with a train into Narita's old town, then a walk through the shaded, manicured grounds of the old temple. I found myself exploring the dense forest area behind, then sitting on a stone bench to appreciate the beauty. It was 88 degrees and muggy. I sweat through my shirt. It dawned on me that I was sitting in the temple graveyard but I was more than happy to be still and contemplative with the souls of the departed.
This Grief World Tour has taken me so many places in the last six months. None were planned. A surprise in every city. From Bar Martha to breakfast with my writing pad to the cemetery with its enormous rock shrines. I did not go on a whirlwind trip to Japan in search of these moments. They found me. Made those bookend ten-hour flights worth it. I don't know where I'm headed next but I'm not saying no to anyplace.