Road Trip

My favorite person in the world to travel with is my sixteen year old son. I was just away from home for eight days to teach at the MFA residency, so I decided that Atlas and I would hit the road. 

The Catskills. I snagged some tickets to see the band Deer Tick and I booked a hotel room and off we went.

Deer Tick was amazing and part of why the night was so great was the venue, the Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY. 

Our tickets were standing room only but we had a great view on the balcony just over the stage. 

My favorite song of the night was a song about sobriety, called "Look How Clean I Am." The band came to the stage with so much energy.

In the car, on the way home today, I said to my son, "I like it when artists seem like they're singing or writing or painting as if their life depended on it." 

Atlas said he knew what I meant. That kind of urgency, a feeling like the artist has been waiting years to let that creativity fly, a feeling of extremely high stakes. Let me see you sweat when you put that paragraph down on the page or shake as you lean into the mic.

We woke up this morning and went to breakfast near our hotel, a place called the Fellow Mountain Cafe. 

Then we drove to Bard College and looked around the campus. My friend Lisa went to Bard and it was fun having a look around. 

We tried to stop at Dia Beacon on the way home to look at some art, but they were closed for the holiday. 

Two days of roaming around in a new place with my son is just what I needed.

As always, thank you for reading.