On My First Travelogue in Nine Years

I've been in Portland for a little over six and a half months, testing all the waters, getting all the sealegs. Nothing quite enforces the idea of radio being the medium all about the now with a job where everything changes so constantly. It's been a bubble unto itself that gets to isolate me to some degree from everything else in the world, and for that I'm entirely grateful. Nothing has stayed the same from month to month and I'm rolling with the tide and trying, in all things, to slow down.

My time at KMHD gave me the time and ability to pull off something I realized I haven't done in nine years-- write a longread travelogue about a music festival. I'm forever haunted by projects I've failed to complete about travels past like heists gone wrong-- Montreal, New Orleans. I cherish my loving ramblings, my verbal snapshots of moments long past-- cold, expensive New York the first time around; the most professionally fulfilling week I've ever felt in sweet, beloved Durham; Austin all through the good old days.

I never quite figured out how to write a book, even though I know I have one in me. I also know that books, like any large project, are mostly composed through momentum, and I do know how to maintain that. One day, I'll collect these travelogues and other essays together into a book (if they don't get lost in digital rabbit holes, odd legalities, or actual physical memory). In the meantime, my second time ever in New York is another chapter.

Give it some time, take in these new characters in my life and the return of old friends. Let me tell you a long rambling story that somehow ties together in the end (while I have the chance to). I've always wanted to go to Winter Jazz Fest and I'm really glad I was able to take it all in and make something about it.