The Convergent Zone

This is not really a travel story. Mostly, it is a thank you note.

Over the weekend I participated in a conference about travel and food writing and photography. A travel writing friend had been badgering me to go for years, in fact, the last time we’d talked she wanted me to promise that I’d set aside all my Nerd’s Eye View income for the year to go. I had the amazing good fortune to be invited to join the faculty this year, and off I went to co-teach Travel Writing and Blogging in the Digital Age, a slot I shared with a travel writing editor who published some of my first stories — including two about the ukulele.

To say I enjoyed it would be a shallow description. It was exciting, interesting, inspiring, all the things you want from a conference. The audience for the panel session on blogging was so engaged it was like picking up a live wire. My class went well. One of my students was so overcome with the sense of what was possible, I thought she might cry. Later she said to me, “I feel like I’ve been shot out of a rocket.” Every night I’d return to my hotel room and lie awake, my brain a beehive of ideas and energy. I didn’t sleep much.

On Friday, I went back to my room before the evening sessions to take a shower and call home.

“Um, you seem to have a new ukulele,” said the husband.

“No I don’t,” I said, “I’m just supposed to have a set of strings.”

“I’ll send you pictures,” he responded.

The uke was a gift from Alan Okami at Ko’Aloha ukulele. I’d visited their shop in Honolulu a few years back. Al donated a uke two years ago for Passports with Purpose, our Seattle founded travelbloggers fundraiser and we’d become internet friends as a result of that experience.  I had emailed Al for advice about a little uke I had that was behaving badly. Al said he’d send me some strings, that should fix it. I looked at the pictures of that pretty little soprano for a while, and then, I emailed Al.

“You know, there’s a ukulele under those strings you sent me,” I said. “There must be some mistake.”

His response, paraphrased somewhat, “No, no mistake. We’ve wanted to do this for a while now. You spread the love of the ukulele around. That’s good for us, good for our business. It’s a thank you.”

I take my uke with me most places, it’s little and I like to play it while sitting alone in hotel rooms. If there are people around to play with me, it’s a bonus. There’s a newspaper guy I know, he messes with the uke some; we’ve been at conferences together and now, he’ll bring a uke if he knows I’m coming along. He was at the conference and after an hour or so of Saturday night karaoke, we ended up on the patio passing his uke back and forth. There were a dozen or so writers there, some students at the conference, some instructors.

I have stage fright. Sort of. Well, I did have stage fright at one point, but I have been practicing being in front of the room in all kinds of contexts. I play in a community theater type “band”, I do open mic with my ukulele club. Several years back, I was invited to share a session at a big conference in Austin, Texas — a session on blogging. It was my first time talking blogging at the front of the room, I was very nervous and the room was packed. Probably, if you’d handed my a ukulele there and asked me to play, I’d have thrown up on your shoes. I don’t feel that way any more.

“Can you play that song, you know, the one by the huge guy with the impossible last name?” one of the writers asked.

“Kamakawiwa’ole” said the editor.

“Yeah, actually, I can play that,” I said. And I did and everybody who was sitting there sang along.

Rocket Man is one of the first songs I learned how to play on the uke. I’ve never played it at open mic, but I play it a lot when I’m alone in my hotel rooms. It’s kind of a sad song, and if you travel alone a lot, as many travel writers do, the lyrics start to glue themselves to your situation. “Packed my bags last night pre-flight….it’s lonely out in space…. it’s just my job, five days a week.” I don’t know if I’m the man — the person — they think I am at home but when I’m out there in the world being a a travel writer, I can understand that feeling. When I’m at home, I sit at my keyboard and type and I go to meetings and cook dinner and avoid putting away the laundry. When I’m traveling, that stuff is all behind me. I’m someone else, or rather, I’m me a thousand times more.

Once, I was driving up Interstate 5 from Oregon, back home to Seattle. I was alone and I had turned the radio all the way up. Rocket Man was on. I was singing, loud. I looked over at the next car and there were four guys, college 20-somethings, doing exactly the same thing. We looked at each other and smiled, big.

On the patio with all those travel writers, I played Rocket Man, and everybody sang.

When I got home, I tuned my new ukulele, the soprano from Alan and Ko’Aloha. And I played Rocket Man.

I recorded it this morning with the new uke, my hair all crazy and my voice tired and sore. There’s a chord mis-step which I left in, not because I’m too lazy to edit it out, but because it’s what happens when you play live.  It’s an off key thank you to everyone for music and writing and possibilities and connections and serendipity and mistakes and learning and generosity and humor and indulgence and the kinds of places where all those things converge.

I hope you’ll sing along.

• Lavinia Spalding: Behind the Scenes at the 2011 Book Passage Travel and Food Writing & Photography Conference
• Lauren Quinn: Book Ends at Book Passage
• Jill Robinson: The Best Version of Yourself