A new month is at hand, and the final chapter of The Delusional Grandeur Tour: Last Stand of a Rock Star is about to begin. I’ve been a little lax of late as to keeping the tour posting schedule up to date, but that’s been intentional. I’m vamping. I’m stalling. I’m extending for as long as possible because once this is over, it’s over. The end date is tentatively scheduled for November – though I may just call the finish at our holiday party in December.
From the start, it’s all been in my head, and that finds its final resolution, such as it is, in the very title of this tour: Delusional Grandeur.
Back in 1995, when I embarked upon my very first jaunt – Chameleon in Motion: The Friendship Tour – it was very much the same scenario. Traveling was my means of escape, while serving simultaneously as a way of connecting to my friends who had scattered upon our matriculation at various universities. At the time, it was just me in my parents’ car, mostly shuttling between Boston and Rochester, living out of suitcases and dorm rooms, gleefully nomadic and avoiding all real-world responsibility.
We were so young then – all of two short decades – and we knew so little of the world. That didn’t matter – we thought we knew it all, and that innocent, exuberant, indefatigable attitude carried us through any happy ignorance.
That may be the most remarkable change – the shift in the way we view the world. Essentially, we remain very much the same people we were in our 20’s. Circumstances and situations may have changed, but once you hit 25 or so, most of us are pretty solid in the people we are going to become. Personally, I feel the same as I did as when I was fifteen – in the best, and mostly worst, ways that you can imagine.
Having said that, some things have changed. Almost all of my friends from that time – who fortunately remain my friends at this time – have had children and grown families, settled down and bought homes, and we now see them on vacations or when traveling through their necks of the woods. It’s been a while since I tore through their towns with feathered robes hanging from a wardrobe rack in the back, a silk scarf flailing wildly in the wind from the end of an antenna (NOT a good idea). But somewhere I still feel the same excitement and anticipation, even as we near the end of it all.
There’s a show yet to be seen…
