For 5-years, I have led a local rock band in Anchorage called Last Train. It has been many things to me - a creative outlet, venue for stress relief and camaraderie of friends. We've toured around Alaska, recorded original CD's, and gotten some critical acclaim and local/international radio play. In short, it's been a BLAST.
As acclaimed movie and TV producer John X. Kim wrote of our first CD on Amazon, "There is a wine-making term called "terroir," roughly translated as "a sense of place," which is used to describe how many fine wines, especially artisanal wines, evince the place whence they came from..." It dawns on me now, especially now, that my wife and I are about to leave the very place where I came from, move our worldly belongings aboard a very small floating home and embark on a journey over great expanses of water, to exotic countries. My sense of place, my terroir, is going to rapidly change - and keep changing for the next 2 years.
In my early fifties, I live in my hometown; have grown children and a steady job, so the prospect of uprooting and floating away is somewhat different than I had once imagined it when I was 18. It's downright daunting. Sure I've wanted to do this all my life, but I've found it surprisingly wrenching to do things like give our landlord notice, hit send on my resignation email, sell prized possessions on eBay, etc. This Saturday will mark the end of my bands career, or at least my near-term involvement. We'll play our last show and release our second full length CD. It will be the culmination of very hard work, a celebration and a farewell - to more than my band mates. It will symbolize to me - the end of the life I've known, and the beginning of a new one yet to discover. Oh man, here we go!