I don't mean metaphorically, like forgetting your troubles amidst the enchanting sights and sounds, or surrendering your ego to experience the oneness of the universe. I mean lost, as in don't know where you are.
Last night, Ron and I got hopelessly mislaid while driving home from Electric Kite Studio, where we had made some scratch tracks. One wrong turn set us way off course. Even though we quickly realized what we'd done, there was no way to right ourselves, no place to exit and get back on the road where we were supposed to be. Unfortunately, it seemed that all the roads were like that. And by "roads," I mean freeways. I've never seen so many freeways crisscrossing each other in my life.
Many stops for directions later, we found our way back to the hotel, having learned an important lesson: Wherever we wanted to be in the future, we needed to give ourselves plenty of time for traveling.
The next day, we were scheduled to record in RCA Studio B, located in downtown Nashville, at 5:30 p.m. The trip was supposed to take maybe 15 minutes. Playing it safe, we left at 4:45.
We got there at 6:00.
Ugh.
It could've been worse. We kept calling Ben, the recording engineer, to ask for directions every time we veered off course AGAIN. Everyone at the studio knew we weren't back at the hotel smoking heroin. (Heroin is something you can smoke, right? I don't do drugs.) When we finally got there, nobody seemed mad.
Still, half an hour late. That just kills me.
At least we didn't get lost on the way back.
Kidding. We totally got lost on the way back. So, so lost.
The moral of the story? Use GPS. Except, we tried that. Ron signed up for a 30-day free trial of some GPS app or another, then held the phone close to his face, preparing to give it instructions. In my mind I heard Scotty: "Compuuuuuter?" We hadn't quite reached our glorious Star Trek future, however. The voice recognition software never understood what Ron was trying to say. He gave up after it decided that we wanted to get to Maryland.
Yes, we did try giving it written directions instead. I even managed to type in our correct destination. What I couldn't do was make it comprehend that we wanted it to tell us how to GO THERE.
* * *
My next Nashville entry will be about music, I promise. I probably should've skipped right to the part about music. It's just, when we finally got to our hotel room around 1:30 a.m. or so, and I cracked open my tiny journal, I was so keyed up about our multitudinous attempts to unlose ourselves that I couldn't even try to write about the studio experience until I furiously scribbled our tales of getting lost. You would have had to be there to truly understand how frustrating it was. Maybe you should've been there. You're probably a better navigator than me.
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