#oliviawillsonpiper

I'm in my San Antonio hotel room, awaiting Show Four. I can see how a person might get used to this. New city, new hotel, comfy bed (fingers crossed), tiny writing desk/table/bureau for me to sit at and pour out my adventures from the night before.

But there is a not insubstantial quantity of animals at home who need me back, not to mention a boss who will notice if I'm not back and re-chained to my oar at the proper time.

So I will continue on with the time allotted to me.

Last night was the Cactus Cafe in Austin and this had me feeling a lot of feelings (in my feelings? as the kids say?) If all eventualities are still playing out every where at any given time, four-years-younger me was still wandering the halls, looking for the cafe.

I was still there taking pictures with Marty where I accidentally hit record and ended up getting a video of the table top and random audio of our weird conversation (90% of conversations with Marty are probably weird conversations and I am 100% here for that), me with my hotel room freshly cancelled out from under me still talks to Salim (he has kind eyes... He's tall. Like me. Most people aren't tall like me. Why is he talking to me?), talks to Danny (who will go home to England and yet - on the other side of a stack of calendar pages - will still become my Skype guitar mentor). Maybe in some reality we still have our Austin hotel room and all is well, maybe in some realties, we hit a deer on the way home (Hill Country Deer roulette is a thing, y'all, never doubt.)

The stage curtains are still red at the Cactus Cafe. The whole thing felt small. Like when you return to a childhood classroom after a growth of years and wonder at the doll-sized tables and chairs, hooks for coats and backpacks now at stooping level.

The audience was good. A very respectable number. Quiet and attentive. Joe and Salim are appreciably tighter as a duo than just a couple of days ago. The songs with Oliva (all songs should be with Olivia. That should be the rule. If you want your song to be exponentially more gorgeous, allow her to deftly draw her bow across it) have grown from one to two ("Friends for Life" and now "Miette.")

Curfew at 10 doesn't afford Marty the same relaxed approach as previously. He still banters... he just tries to do it quickly/more condensed. Still. A sight to behold. I mentioned to Danny ("Laish" from the last tour, 2018) that we didn't get back from Celina last weekend until after 2am. You know how Marty loves to talk. That man, he agrees, loves to talk. But I don't think any one of us who have met him would have it any other way.

If there were ever enough time, I would love to take Marty strolling in some cool, storied old cemetery. He has prefaced "Hopes and Fears" each night with mention of a love story occurring during the Industrial Revolution where people were being eaten by machines just miles from the picturesque English countryside.

I wonder what he would say at the Colorado mining town cemeteries we've been to in years gone by where my favorite thing to do was walk amongst the headstones and imagine the tragedies that went with each short span between dashes. Injury, illness, tragedy... anything has to be infinitely more interesting and therefore romantic than the angry, disposable society of today.

It was a good show. The best possible incubator for what is about to happen because I'm surely about to be standing in Philly tomorrow (philly... philly... philadelphia. TOMORROW. Wake up. Terrifying miracle of modern air travel *POOF* other side of the US) wondering where all that good will and attentiveness went.

Salim gives voice to exactly what I'm thinking (he gestures to me twice last night to come back over to where he is because I wander off when people want to talk to him. Still, watching him wave at me, I stifle the urge to turn around and look behind me. Surely, he's waving at someone else.)

The touring unit, Salim says (Joe, Salim, Marty and Olivia) are hitting their stride and perfecting their performance (story about Venice here, speaking in different accents, counting in different languages, story about the arrival of "I Don't Think So" in one day's work)... just to only have one night left and done. This is the kind of situation where you want this to be the beginning, the warm up, not the end.

The East dates will not be like any of this. I know that. And I worry. He doesn't need me to worry. He's an old pro at this, but I also remember very clearly standing in the West Salem gig in 2020 and just being so angry while forks clattered against plates and people just would not *shut up*. They talked over Rhett too which is bizarre to me as this is who most of them are paying specifically to see (I still have only the most basic concept of Rhett. I know he is kind and gives off similar good feelings as Salim... but I also know he's on TV. Like, a lot). These audiences will be looking for a tipple, looking for a gnosh and the music will be a backdrop that a lot of them will barely pay attention to.

I'm glad for the Texas gigs. I'm glad for the love that has been afforded everyone so far. So so much.

Salim mentioned liking the response gotten so far to "Protect Your Peace," a lovely song Salim has been weaving around a piece of audience participation that has - so far - gone beautifully. I feel like this song is probably not even going to be tried on the next leg of shows... just a feeling.

But an old, dear friend of mine I've never actually met in person bought EIGHT tickets for Philly so there is as much positive mojo as anyone could possibly want right out of the gate.

And Sarah and me and my husband will be there. Which means, no matter how hard he has to fight to win the room every night... the cheering section from home will still be there.

And doubtless, there will be someone there every night that was just like I was. Someone who didn't know that some guy they've never heard of from Texas is EXACTLY what they needed to include to make their listening, their *living* experience that much better.

And winning one person is WINNING.

I deserve it...? I had a series of misfortunes last year from month 1 to month 12. A bunch of bad things happened... but she lost her brother. I lost a dear friend, but she lost blood. That she qualifies my good time like this is one of the many things I have faced lately that I haven't the brain power to deal with or the words to articulate. There is a secret sadness marked on her heart with her brother's name and yet she and her family are making sure we can leave town for an extended period of time without fearing for our menagerie of creatures; beloved furry and feathery companions.

You deserve it.

I have never deserved anything a day in my life.

I don't know why I think this way. I try to be mindful because I have heard similar declarations from friends and that they don't understand their own worth and that they are deserving of good things... sometimes the amount of sense such statements lack... I want to shake them. Shake sense in to them. Which means someone out there probably wants to shake me for similar reasons.

All I can think of is mirror pieces. Pieces of lots of things. The great shattering. The Tower of Babbel. When everything broke and we were all cast apart as diminished creatures, you ended up with a piece I need. I have the pieces you need, but if you don't talk to me... I'll never know. And vice versa.

I gave her a song.

He gave me books to read that changed my life.

She gave voice to my own ponderings: why isn't anything beautiful anymore? (She makes everything she touches more beautiful. The world is truly a more beautiful place simply by her existence in it.) The cars all the look the same, the buildings all look the same. There are no more great monuments to time and place and humanity in our weird throw away culture.

All of this is to say, human experience is the great unifier... if we let it be.

And we are on tour again. Rental car trouble and a flight change right out of the gate, but we are there.

I tell the nice couple in front of us at the Mucky Duck in Houston last night. Salim? We're with him. All the Texas dates and then? Then after San Antonio, we fly to Philadelphia and keep going with him and Rhett Miller.

I'm not trying to brag. I promise. I am trying to articulate the amazing amount of luck that has lead me to this place on this night (fabulous little venue -- try the shepard's pie with a Princess Peach mocktail... you won't be sorry!)

My husband stirs next to me. He makes some sort of noise of dissent when I say "we" … "we are with them." But we are. I'm not playing pretend like so many years ago where "going on tour" meant being at all the same shows as a certain band who would wave and maybe say my name, "Hi, Liz!" while they went to their air conditioned dressing rooms and I sat outside in the heat... heat... heat... it was always heat. And I wouldn't eat or drink so I could keep my place in line and then when the band finally hit the stage: I'd be so dehydrated, many times I would swoon.

Told the guitar player that once, "I thought that was you!" He smiled. Smiled. That happened. Hit the ground in Austin so many years ago. And no one cared. Especially not the people a younger, more naïve me would have done anything for.

Misplaced allegiance.

No. it's not that way this time.

This time Marty Willson-Piper gets the biggest smile on his face when he sees us. His [beautiful, radiant, wonderful] wife, Olivia, comes to say hello. Salim's friend [powerhouse, force for good, appreciator of cats] Sarah sits with us at our table for a bit. Salim's brilliant guitar player friend, Joe Reyes, tells me it's nice to see me. Salim asks us how we like The Duck.

Salim, infinitely patient, described it to me as a sort of exposure therapy: if I am around good, kind people who like me and want me around long enough maybe I will start to finally believe that is what I deserve.

I truly don't know what I deserve, but I believe Salim and the others when they talk. And I am smart enough to know I am currently living a life others only dream of.

"How do you go on tour, Liz"? I was asked after last time. You go after what you want. You don't give in to fear. I just happened to meet a strange, tall, talented man that radiated vibes of goodness and caring and instead of crawling off in a bush to be intimated as is per my usual, I went after what I wanted: yes, sir, I know we are both adults and therefore this is awkward beyond imagining, but you sing pretty songs that touch my heart. Please be my friend.