How do you cope on tour?

Dear Serena,

Although still on a break from ‘officially’ answering the Files, I couldn’t help but look at some of the letters as I drove through the gorgeous Slovakian countryside on my way to Budapest, and it inspired me to write a little report from the front line.

Despite various viral events, sprains, assorted injuries and temporary disablements, the band is fit, happy, and in good shape. The shows are outstanding, feel deeply musical, and we are enjoying them immensely. Those couple of hours on stage are intense and concentrated and there is a feeling of supreme metaphysical possibility where anything can happen, and frequently does. When performing, I experience an aliveness where I feel close to the living and to the dead. It seems that the show affords both band and audience moments of acute spiritual intimacy and communion, unlike anything that can be found outside of our own particular cathedrals – sex, nature, religion, identity, whatever. The new songs seem purpose-built for the live experience. Frogs, Wild God, Song of the Lake, Cinnamon Horses and Long Dark Night become massive, emotional gestures, reaching a dimension way beyond the album versions. This is the natural potential of live music and performance – an incontestable and explicit transcendent exchange, and it is awesome! If this all sounds hyperbolic and a bit self-congratulatory, forgive me, I am excited. We all are.

So, Serena, how do we cope on tour? Well, I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I thought I knew most forms of the touring experience intimately, from total chaos, debauchery and discord to a weird, unbelievably repetitious, OCD-like, sock-folding orderedness – but this tour feels different.

G. K. Chesterton wrote –

“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”

This goes some way towards describing the current tour. We play furiously as if our very lives depend upon it (which they do), but around that the reins of our time together are lightly held; we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we eat and drink together nightly, and we laugh a lot – these are times of good humour.

Chesterton also said –

“Moderate strength is shown in violence. Supreme strength is shown in levity.”

– which, I think, can speak to the broad power of these live performances. Violent, yes. Sorrowful, sure. Close to laughter, always.

It remains a great joy to play to you all, wherever you may be.

Love, Nick

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