Tour Diary 8/21 (Patreon)

TL;DR: Things are good

In a sense, the "In Case I Die" Tour was sort of my first tour ever. Sure, I'd gone on 2-3 week self-booked DIY tours a few times, playing at dive bars and punk basements to a handful of die-hards or nobody at all, but that was it. Many of the people I ran into became friends, or at least something like friends, and due to these shows' intimacy it was easy to connect with people.

Much like today, many of these people came to my show with preconceived notions about who I was/what to expect, but they all knew that my crowd would be small enough that the show was going to be something personal. So the "crowds" would often go out of their way to be welcoming, polite, kind, and supportive, the way you'd be if you were going to see a friend do stand up at an open mic. I had yet to develop such intensely parasocial relationships with such a large number of such complete strangers. Nowadays, people come to my show with so many more assumptions going into it, a good chunk of them likely super inaccurate, a good chunk of them being due to some painful misconceptions, and due to the sheer numbers and increased anonymity they create, the dynamic is unavoidably wildly different.

It was impossible, as far as I'm concerned, for me to predict what a more popular version of me's shows would entail. I could guess, but never be certain what sorts of personalities were likely to be in attendance, because it had gone from a tiny sub-sub-sub-culture to a much more public endeavor. I wasn't sure what sort of goals my audience members would tend to have for the night; would they want to party? Dance? Get laid? Get high and trip out? Contemplate quietly? Sing along till their voices hurt? Laugh? Cry? Fangirl? I didn't know what sort of energy or vibration to expect any more than they did, and if I don't know what they want, I don't know how to give it to them.

I've often said that I believe good art happens when you give your audience something they want, and really good art happens when you give them something they didn't know they could ask for. My goal has always been to try my best to shoot for the latter, and when my moonshot fails, to take comfort in and enjoy landing among the stars of the former. But on the "In Case I Die" tour, I didn't even know for sure where the stars were. I/Me/Myself? Thermodynamic Lawyer? The Spotify top fives? Or was it something more abstract, more vibrational?

At the time, many of my diary entries gave reports of unruly and chaotic audiences, whose heckling, attempts to participate, and occasionally aggressive attempts to get my attention, get attention from the rest of the crowd, or disrupt the performances ranged from simply calling out something silly to trying to give me a diaphonized rat skeleton in a jar. I knew who I was as a live artist; a solo singer-songwriter and alternative comedian with a focus on trying to create emotional arcs in my shows. But many people at the time had absolutely no way of knowing this; and in that sense, it was my first time touring. My first time playing for people with so much less direct personal familiarity, so many more presuppositions, and so much less reason to be patient with me when I pull out my notes, flub my punchlines, and choke back a shaky voice when my open mic slot doesn't go as planned.

Of course, my lack of experience wasn't the sole factor to blame for the difficulties I faced. The truth is many of those audiences did have a handful of people in them who were genuinely rather inarguably poorly behaved; but art is a collaboration between audience member and performer. While on a few occasions I was able to guess accurately on the nature of the aforementioned stars and fall back on them, my moonshots were often going against a grain. I would do things the way I knew them, the way they always were; and they would quite often be almost impossible to make work. I kept trying, a resentment and bitterness curdling inside me with the catalyst of a then-constantly looming sense of impending doom, fear and anger toward the creepshow fans, and crushing sense of isolation. As far as I could tell, these were not my people. They didn't understand me any better than were I to play at a frat house. Or so it felt, anyway.

Something's different this time around though. It's not just that the crowds are older and therefore more mature and less likely to be intentionally disruptive. Adults get drunk all the time; and there are plenty of 18 year olds who are less mature than plenty of 17 year olds. I suppose part of it is because what I do live is better known and understood than it was, so expectations that better match reality are more common, but that's not the whole thing either. Practice and experience would be a practical way of describing a good portion of what's changed, and those factors have made a huge difference of course, but it's deeper than that. Acceptance is a big part of it, yeah, but the ability to accept things as they are is hard-earned and comes from a place that I couldn't see or understand up until very recently.

I find myself doing better with particularly vocal and/or what I have now decided to refer to as "challenging" crowds. I feel less discouragement when a punch line gets stopped on or some theater kid tries to get ahead of me with a bit (although cut that out, it's a dick move) because I've learned to see that as a jumping off point for more humor and sometimes more direct connection with an audience member - even if it's (playfully, but still) contentious or bordering on fully confrontational. I can do it with a smile, and have that smile be genuine - holding both my irritation and my gratitude in mind at the same time. I find myself cracking up onstage, and feeling less fear of going out on limbs when a good riff pops into my head.

I think the anxiety that used to govern so much of my life, combined with and harsh catalyst for all the anger and bitter loneliness I felt for so long, had convinced me that I had nothing in common with anyone. It had me walking into a room, looking around, and seeing people who only thought they understood anything about what I was really doing and the ugly isolation that has defined my life, work, and self-image. It was the same feeling I used to get in the lunch room at high school - the few "outcast" people who would tolerate me sitting with them felt no closer to me than the "popular" or "jock" types.

But the past month has sort of changed everything. I've showed parts of myself to the world that I feared would be rejected, I've put out a more personal album and more privately meaningful material than I ever have, intimate parts of me I of course would never have showed anyone were exposed and scrutinized, and my fans were challenged to stand by my side or not under threat of being ostracized from echo chambers. Despite lyrics that revealed difficult or shameful parts of myself, despite the public madness, and despite it all, I was accepted, appreciated, and supported for precisely who I was the whole way through. Because I've been so thoroughly seen now, that support feels more like genuine support for who I genuinely am than ever before.

It made me realize that insecurity was governing so much bitterness. Don't get me wrong, the whole "Will Wood hates his fans thing" has always been bullshit, I'm not saying my bitterness was toward the individuals themselves nor am I saying "my fans" bother me. Some people are jerks in every population, that's it, and my having complained about the small handful of creeps is not me disliking the folks who follow my stuff at large. "I hate you kids" in Sex Drugs Rock 'n' Roll is a song lyric, and it's not meant to be taken seriously. I mean that there was a cynicism, a bitterness toward the world, and a difficulty feeling like I was seeing and being seen. Now, I find myself looking out into the audience and recognizing something I couldn't see before - that no, these are kind of my people after all.

When I step out on stage now, I see people with whom I have many of the best and worst parts of myself in common with. Come to think of it, self-loathing was probably influencing those hesitancies and difficulties as well. Sure, we might not have all the same political or social opinions, we might not have precisely the same struggles and flaws, they might not have the same weirdness, quirks, internal mutations, and hardwired cultural deviancy I've found in my self-exploration, and they might not always get what I do. But ultimately, something has hit me as of late that has me sitting on the bus feeling full of a new and previously rare warmth today.

Last night I made eye contact with fans and gave fist bumps from stage, riffed with people between jokes and songs, and took time to speak with and share thoughts and feelings with fans who stuck around after the show, and the whole time I felt like there was something underneath it all that was connecting us. I felt a stronger empathy, a stronger sense of empathy being directed toward me, and a feeling that the fan I was speaking to and I were up against something together. Like we were on a team. Against the world, and against ourselves.

It feels like the thing I say before playing bones. Sure, maybe the stuff on the outside isn't all the same. Hell, maybe we're wildly different even quite a few layers down. But the framework that makes us what we are, the architecture that gives us our shape, our bones - I can see them better than ever and I can tell mine are being seen as well. And our skeletons share a lot. 

I know people have expressed worry, and some have reached out to me wishing me well and telling me their concerns. I want you all to know I deeply appreciate your support and kindness, but that I am doing wonderfully. I hope you're staying safe and taking care of yourselves as well. What we've got, whatever it is, is tough stuff, but if I can get through it, so can you.

Much love,
-ww