The Comeback

I'm Robert Lee Reddinger.

I'm in a band called Farewell Flight, but we're changing our name to Indian Summer on this tour. Our shirts will all be designed around images of firewater, headdresses, and casinos*. In other words, an illustration of a typical tour night when we were young and full of rock star dreams and sleeping in a van in Oklahoma, trying to get drunk off 3.2% beer.

In the last five years, this band has seeped into my pores and lined my veins and filled in the wrinkles appearing around my eyes and has somewhat become me, for better or for worse.

When I was in college, my favorite professor would pray before each class. And he would always ask God to forgive him and us for our sins of commission, but also our sins of omission. That always struck me, because it's hard to realize that it's a sin to not act on what you know is right, or even not use what you've been given in your life. I don't have any regrets for things I've done, but I have a hell of a lot of regrets for things that I haven't done. One of those things I'm attempting to repair right now, on here.

I've forgotten how to write and how to love to write, and I want to remember again.

I hope to begin again because I used to love words and love sharing my words with others, but I think I've just forgotten what it means to me because I've been trying so hard to keep going at this other art (music), and it takes more air from me than I can bear to breathe and I just don't want it to drag me under because I can't take the failure of what I've wasted in my own mediocrity. I want this to be my life vest, and even if it doesn't save me, it'll at least let me float for a little while.

I also hope I don't write any more run-on sentences like I did at the beginning of that last paragraph.

Right now I'm in Akron, Ohio. I watched football today, I played darts today, I drank beer today, and I ate a delicious Galley Boy burger from Swenson's Drive-In. Tomorrow I'll be in Riverview, Michigan.

And now I will sleep.





*but not really