I know I’ve written about this before, but I’m on a plane, and am apparently too cheap to spring for the inflight internet to check. No, I’m going to claim that it’s because I want to be in the moment, not checked out Googling around the internet. Then I’m going to wonder if I should admit that I spent the first three quarters of the flight binge-watching Spider Noir.

Sure.

But my life – I’m going to indulge in the plural: lives – aren’t particularly well integrated with each other. The farm. Flying. My ship/software life. Music. I’m sure there are a couple more that are escaping me at the moment. And shifting from one to the other always makes me feel a little like I’m thrashing around like one of the Hogwarts kids when they dose themselves with polyjuice potion. I’m in the middle of one of those thrashes now.

Diligent readers will know that I’ve been in Colorado for a couple of weeks. First visiting old friends, and then immersing myself in Song School. My “music” life. And immerse is an apt word for the experience. The enveloping curve of the St. Vrain River notwithstanding, Song School is intellectually and emotionally all-consuming.

You go because you want to open yourself to all that your instructors, fellow musicians and friends can pour into you. And you’re there to pour yourself out for them. You go to Amy Speace’s class because you’re ready for her to make you cry as you break through to a new awareness of how to bring your song to life on stage. You go to Ron’s because you’re willing to put on silly headbands, leap around like a ballerina and play pattycake to help him coax the best out of your voice. You commit to putting all your artistic talents on the table in a speed-writing quickdraw with Steve Poltz, getting up there and playing the song that you’ve just written, from scratch, in the past 20 minutes. Wait – you can’t write a song in 20 minutes! Actually, it turns out that, with Poltz’s coaching and manic energy, you can. And each and everyone in the class does it. And we sing and – yes – dance wildly to each others’ songs, and collapse, laughing, in joy and exhaustion when we’re done.

And this goes on from when yoga class ends at 9:30 in the morning, until when the last song circle winds up, somewhere in the small hours of the morning. Then you stumble back to your tent, or wherever you’re sleeping, to catch a few hours of sleep before you wake up the next morning to do it again, and again.

Did I mention that it’s in the mid-90’s, and you’re mostly outdoors in tents spread across the Planet Bluegrass campus? No air conditioning, other than what shade you can find, and the always-waiting St. Vrain, burbling past at the foot of the canyon walls.

Of course you bond with your fellow students, whether you’ve known them for decades, or just met last night. There are stories that no one who wasn’t there will understand. Thursday, as it ends, you go down to the river, singing in a deliberate musical baptism. It’s a commonly voiced sentiment that you stay down there in the river a little longer than you might, because you know that when you come out, Song School will truly be over.

Then, after one last night of music and stories and laughter and tears, you emerge, on Friday morning, exhausted and sleep-deprived to…well, to the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest. Where your close-knit community of a couple hundred is overrun by about 5000 “Festivarians” pouring in for a weekend of loud revelry with national acts who are as big as they get in the world of folk music (Jesse Welles, Ani DiFranco, John McCutcheon, Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlins – those sort of folks). It’s a bit of a shock.

There were upsides, of course, to the invasion. Amid the chaos, I heard someone ask, “Pablo? Pablo Cohn?” It was Tim Davis, who I met – if you can believe it – in the town square in Ushuaia about three years ago. And South Pole historian (and true OAE legend) Bill Spindler saw that I was nearby and flagged me down electronically. And Tarah who…well, we just started chatting in Longmont a few days earlier, while she and her daughter were waiting for sushi, and it turned out we had a ton of musical friends in common, and now she was camping just across the lane.

Anyhow, it was time. Time to re-emerge to the greater world of wherever we all had come from. I won’t pretend that I didn’t deal with farm stuff while I was at song school. But when I did, I’ll confess that it was with more perfunctory attention that it deserved. And I’m sure I’m going to regret some of the “Yeah, sure, go ahead” email messages I sent out in reply to stuff that, for all I can remember, might have been, well, regrettable.

And OpenRVDAS, my software project? In, letsee, less than two weeks(?!?) I need to saddle up again and get on an icebreaker for a training run up to Alaska. Oh – right, I hadn’t mentioned that, had I? Came up at the last minute, so of course I just said “yes.” Right? More on that later, I suppose.

But it’s mid-summer on the farm. In addition to the usual administration, everything’s growing faster than we can deal with it, we’re flailing about with keeping infrastructure running, and still fighting with the City about building permits and zoning that they changed out from under us. I really need to be putting serious time into that. And the jump from late-night harmonies by lantern light to permit applications, insurance forms, budgets and tractor repair is going to be a rough one.

Fortunately, Devon and I have gotten used to rough transitions. Mostly mine, to be fair. But we’ve learned to make space for each other. To both give and ask for a little extra grace after touchdown. Thirty-plus years of marriage will do that for you, if you pay even the least bit of attention. So we know it’s coming.

(On the train now, northbound to the ferry, so Oh – here’s a posting from a decade ago: https://davidpablocohn.com/2016/07/31/lost-in-geographic-translation/)

Also: Aside from having to tell you about the upcoming Alaska thing, I need to tell you that I’ve got some musical appearances coming up!

• Sat-Sun, Sept 5-6th – I’ll be in Richland Washington at the Tumbleweed Acoustic Music Festival, performing both with the inimitable Emily Groff, and as a finalist in their songwriter competition.
• Fri, Sept 11th – with Emily Groff at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival
• Sun, Sept 27 at 7:00 – Live on the air on KPTZ, with host Phil Andrus, for music and discussion on his Cats in Our Laps show