galacticturtlefromwildspace
Galactic Turtle's Earth Adventures
Another Day, Another Crisis
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New Beginnings
Working in the creative industries means a job is rarely ever just a job. It’s rarely ever a clock in, do the work, and go home situation. Often, you’re putting a piece of yourself - if not all of yourself - into this idea. You watch it grow. You see it unveiled in quite a spectacular fashion, birthed into the public eye. So when something comes to an abrupt and unexpected end, I’m guessing it feels a lot like a breakup. Though I can’t say for sure. I’ve never been on date.
So in that tradition, on a hot summer night in June, I was sitting on the floor of my new half-unpacked apartment in front of the TV, watching the massacre of the Jedi Order in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, a ridiculously large bowl of ice cream in my hands. I’m not crying. I’m not even sure if I’m sad. Adrift, maybe. Unsure. A little scared. Stubbornly content. Primarily wondering…
What now?
If I were looking at my life like the plot of a movie, I’d find the timing of the upending of my life to be… sensibly timed? It seems to be happening to a lot of my friends on this cusp bridging age twenty-nine to age thirty. Two close friends of mine have been let go from jobs they’ve had since they graduated college. Another two friends are getting married. One is selling her house, quitting her job, and moving across the country with her boyfriend (while everyone else is wondering why they’re not tying the knot before they go). Even I just formally moved out of my parents’ house, narrowly avoiding the dreaded cultural scenario where I’m a thirty year old still living in my childhood bedroom with my Star Wars bedsheets. Not that I really minded. But I’ve been accumulating so much (Star Wars) stuff over the years and I’d hit this groove in my career where things felt steady so… why not?
Then I quit. Was talked into un-quitting. And was then fired over the course of three days. My main gig - the thing that was supposed to pay for this new apartment of mine - was gone.
I typically say I’m not a creative person. No one wants to see my drawings. No one wants to hear me play an instrument. No one wants to see me dance or hear me sing. A few people want to see what I’ve written, but not enough to call myself a writer. I’m a roadie. A tour manager, specifically. I’ve been all across North and South America, dragging dozens of people and millions of dollars worth of equipment with me. Clubs, theaters, arenas, stadiums, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen most of it with a crew that felt a lot like family, with whom I could sit teetering on the edge of my sanity and bone tired in a Walmart parking lot at 3am dreaming about what’s next.
The reason for my quitting in the first place was typical in a lot of ways. A tale as old as time. A rookie mistake on my part. No paper trail for agreements made on a handshake with someone I trusted. A string of missed payments. Bold attempts at manipulation. A boss who seemed to be living in a different version of reality from everyone else. This crew I’d come together with all had similar complaints. They all said they wanted to quit. But it was just me who was angered enough to actually do it. And that’s just how it is sometimes. Everyone needs to live with their choices.
The good thing about all this is that I’ve been doing what I do for ten years now. I’m confident enough to say I’m good at what I do. But I’ve also seen enough to know that being good doesn’t cut it. So now I’m leveraging my connections for all they’re worth while also rapidly attempting to expand my network, get my hands involved in as many things as possible. There’s some really promising stuff just beyond my reach that would start a whole new adventure for me. That’s how I’m choosing to look at this.
Perhaps my twenties were just a trial run. A very informative chapter of my life, to be sure. But now where there was once a castle is now an empty field where the soil is rich, my hands no longer soft but calloused.
Give me a little sunshine and a little rain.
Get ready because here I come.
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Memory: Midsummer
I don't think it occurred to me as a child that nightclubs or dive bars or crazy rock concerts existed. "Rockstar" existed in my vocabulary similar to "superhero" or "witch." I knew what one was, but my idea of a rockstar was of a person who existed only in fiction. My idea of performance mainly was relegated to my own piano recitals and occasional outings to see the orchestra. However, my fascination with the stage didn't start there. Instead, it began in the spring of 2004 when I was dragged out of the house on a rainy night with my parents to watch my older sister act in our school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Sitting in rows of those metal folding chairs, I was expecting to zone out for the next two hours, mind already on the snacks I'd seen on the way in. Instead, I was alarmed when all the lights turned off, confused when lights of different colors were brought up on stage, bewildered by the mist that seemed to pour out of nowhere, and before I knew it I was turned all the way around in my chair when eventually a spotlight started blazing from afar.
Who turned that light on? Where did that mist come from? And, oh, the set. So much detailing. A forest inside this dusty school auditorium. And who on earth are those people scurrying about dressed in black; no costume, no lines?
Even now, I couldn't really tell you - without Googling - what that play is about. But I remember going home, the name of our school's theater club burned into my brain, a five year countdown clock ticking away for me to get to high school so I could finally join and figure out how a bunch of kids did that.
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Tour Life: The Pack
January 20th, 2023.
Months of planning all culminate with "the pack." It's the last thing - plus or minus rehearsals - that happens before the start of a tour. "The pack" could refer to a lot of things. You could be packing a suitcase, a car, a van, a truck, or even an entire cargo plane. But to make the same show happen in cities across the country or the continent or the world, you're probably going to need to bring stuff with you.
My biggest tour had four trucks - three for production and one for merch. Other tours have dozens of trucks and I can only imagine how that works out. My first tour of 2023 is almost all fly dates and we're not trucking anything. That means everything we need is either coming on the plane with us (production gear) or getting shipped out to venues ahead of time (merch).
Yesterday I left my home base of Philadelphia and am now in Seattle - home of the company that hired me to run this thing. I'm here to solidify "the pack." Luckily this show is pretty simple. What made today more complicated is that merch production started way later than it should have which meant there was no time to ship a whole bunch of it out to the first city. So what am I doing tomorrow? I'm getting on a plane with all our production gear and a crap ton of t-shirts and hoodies. Counting my blessings that there's no vinyl this time around. It doesn't make sense how much boxes of that stuff weigh.
The most important part of the pack (on my end) is labeling and inventory. I like to have every single thing documented down to the cables. If this were a more extensive tour going to multiple countries, I'd have to get a carnet made which is basically a manifest that lets your stuff go around the world and (hopefully) not get caught up in customs and seized by a foreign government. This particular tour is only going to the US and Canada. I've heard it might get extended to Mexico and South America but... that wouldn't be until April and I've got a whole other tour to worry about between then and now.
Today started bright and early with a visit to the shop that's printing all our merch - an uncomfortably clean place with the most mellow dog I've ever interacted with. I was introduced as the Tour Manager, the man there first responding with a look of surprise then a list of questions about my entire life story as we loaded up the back of a pick-up truck. It happens more often than you'd think. Like I've said, everyone wants to hear about the crazy stuff.
I also got a call from the tour's Production Manager. We've worked together a lot in the past and the last tour we did together was nothing short of traumatic (talk about crazy stuff). With her I walked through everything from production world I was getting my hands dirty with and with a final thumbs up, I got a preview of everything the two of us have to catch up on once we meet up tomorrow. Sure I saw her as recently as last October, but I did a whole other tour in the interim and so did she.
It's good to make friends in this business. I don't think touring would be bearable without them. They know what the life is like, they know the language, and it doesn't take long before they've seen you at your best and at your worst such is the case when you live with your coworkers.
If this were a more complicated gig, she would've been supervising the pack instead of me. When she's called in to do things it's less sorting through a bunch of cases in an office building and more having a crew of eight guys and a forklift pulling stuff from an entire warehouse worth of inventory to tetris into trucks. And you only get to that part after a few days of building the lighting package - taking a bunch of lights out of their cases and pre-rigging it on several pieces of truss with all the cabling. It's tedious but cuts hours off of load in time that we don't have. Meanwhile, I'm on the phone with a company called Rock-It Cargo making sure our final manifest is legit and we're prepared to get everything out of LA or Nashville to its first destination on time.
In the past, we've stood together on a giant soundstage - the outline of a semi-truck taped out on the floor - as we tried to think through our pack. That was after days of conflict with the show designer who was supposed to give us a show that would fit into two bus trailers. But the artist was willing to break the budget by upgrading to a whole truck instead of cutting down on any production elements. What a sneaky move. I really don't like designers. Where's that extra budget for hotel rooms and catering, huh? (spoiler alert: it only came up when an artist threw a tantrum about not getting to have a penthouse suite at a certain hotel - crazy story snippet)
Alas, the first pack of 2023 is done. Let's just hope the person I get at the airline check-in counter tomorrow is in a good mood.
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Memory: First Loser
I was probably six years old the first time I picked up a tennis racquet, somewhere in the ballpark of 1999. I admired Venus Williams even though I'd never seen her play. I'd seen news clips though and my church congregation kept her in their prayers.
Coach Rich wore sunglasses so often I can't actually recall what his eyes looked like or if I ever saw them. His skin always tanned and never burned - not like all the other white kids I'd spend the summers with at that tennis camp.
The sun on the courts was always brutal but I was determined to do well and didn't complain. I'd sit under the one tree available that provided generous shade during lunch breaks watching Coach Rich set up the courts for the afternoon, frowning when it became apparent we'd be starting off the second session with sprints.
All the other kids had memberships to the neighboring country club where they'd go to get blasted by the air conditioning, jump in the pool, and eat popsicles. I didn't mind though. I wasn't a talker. Not on the court, not at school, and not at home. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my mom actually signed me up for tennis because it was a solitary endeavor that nonetheless put me in a position to meet more people - to open up.
The summer camp always hosted its own tournament for the slightly older kids and I was first allowed to participate in the summer of 2002. The idea of competition made me nervous. Parents and siblings would come to watch. I knew I was a decent player, but the idea of participating in the tournament probably made me the most stressed out I'd ever been in my very short life. I expected to be out after day one.
But I soon became acquainted with adrenaline. For several matches over multiple days, I'd go on and off the court without a word, visor down to thwart any even accidental eye contact. I could hear other adults talking about me. Some came up to compliment the way I was playing.
On the final day, my parents and grandparents came, my mom smug at the fact that the other kids seemed a bit wary of me. I won't pretend to remember the details of that final match, but I remember clearly the way the silver medal looked in my hands. I wasn't upset about it. I knew I had a lot to be proud of. I never expected to get that far.
Under the shade of the tree, I showed my grandfather who stood tall in his American flag baseball cap. Like everyone else, he said good job. Then he said:
"But remember, second place just means you're the first loser."
I let the words process. I grinned. I agreed.
That next summer I marched into his kitchen and tossed my gold medal onto the table.
I didn't know that this would mark the end of my time with Coach Rich. I didn't know that the final conversation he'd had with my dad over by the equipment shed was about how I'd outgrown the camp beating kids two or three years older than me.
But I knew what competition tasted like now. I knew what the pressure of eyes watching me felt like. I knew what it was like to start with my hands shaking but end with them steady.
Still, there was no way for me to comprehend at the time how much more I truly had to learn.
The mountain I thought I'd climbed had only just barely been a hill.
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So THIS is Tumblr...
My grandmother always told me I should keep a diary. My mom did too.
If you look around the house, you're sure to find various notebooks with one or two or ten pages filled out detailing whatever thoughts were going through my ten or thirteen or fifteen-year-old brain. But all attempts were short-lived. I didn't really see the point of it. I got distracted. I was more interested in writing about imaginary worlds where all my feelings would materialize into conflicts that would leave land scorched for as far as the eye could see, that would topple empires, that would lead to great discoveries, that would let me rest my head in a garden that only existed inside of it.
But I haven't been a teenager for a while. As I've grown older and more sentimental and keep ending up in places and situations where everyone else is asking, "Why aren't you writing this down?" I've been tempted to give in. I've told myself that maybe it could be therapeutic. It's my last year as a twenty-something and, at the moment, it's looking like it's going to be just as if not more eventful than a lot of the things leading up to this point.
So I thought of Tumblr. I avoided this place from its inception through high school and college. Then I mostly forgot about it. However, when contemplating the concept of airing my thoughts into the digital void, I remembered this place that had caused such a stir among my peers who were eyeball deep in emo bands, vampires, and anime.
Alas, here I am. I suppose I should get to it.
January 14th, 2023. You can call me Turtle. I'm a Tour Manager. Think of any live show you've ever seen or wanted to see. Did you manage to grab those Taylor Swift tickets? Ever fancied seeing Hamilton? This past holiday season, did you make it out to see The Nutcracker? You ever see those late night talk shows that always bring on a musical guest? Did you get excited about that Coachella lineup announcement?
I'm the type of person who makes sure everyone and everything gets to where it needs to be when it needs to be on time and within budget so the show can happen. My stuff is in Philadelphia but I live wherever work takes me dragging along a backpack and a carry-on sized suitcase because it's bothersome being weighed down by your own belongings.
Everyone wants to hear the crazy stories and every year I save a few that are Christmas dinner table friendly. Because it is true that one thing I don't have to deal with is monotony. Dull days are few and far between to the extent that I welcome them with open arms. Everything is loud and fast-paced and emotional and relentless, controlled chaos from start to finish. Is it romantic or is it hell? I can't say. But I do know that if you'd be happy doing anything else, odds are you won't stick around for long. I don't say that part to people very often.
For whatever reason, I've been doing this now for ten years which is... insane for me to think about.
In five days I ship off to do it all again, a short run around America and Canada. I'll be back just after sunrise on Valentine's Day assuming I'm not trapped in Vancouver by an armageddon snowstorm like I was leading up to Christmas.
What am I feeling? Cautiously optimistic. It's not a complicated show and I'm going out with a lot of experienced - if not opinionated - people. This will be the easiest gig I have all year. Nonetheless, I'm thinking about all the things that could go wrong because if I didn't, I wouldn't be doing my job. The thing about touring is that something (or many somethings) will always go wrong so putting in the work in advance to preemptively circumvent the little fires so that I'll only have to worry about the big ones is a vital process.
Simultaneously, I'm still tying up the odds and ends from two tours I had at the end of 2022... mountains of receipts and such. I'm also prepping for my next tour in March and am already being copied on email threads between booking agents trying to piece together a world tour I have this fall. That is honestly the thing I'm most worried about in the back of my mind.
You see, I've never actually fully done a world tour before. I've only ever been to North and South America. This one will be throwing Europe, Asia, and Australia into the mix. While this opportunity feels well earned, the downside of becoming a tour manager at twenty-two is that when it comes to new opportunities, you're always the one in charge which means any mistake you make is going to be quite public and spectacular which is another reason why I'm always so anxiously thorough. Luckily, the anxious part isn't very obvious to most people.
Leaving home always tugs at me a little bit. It's less about the onset of homesickness and more about stepping into another unknown. Home is stable, consistent, and reliable. But the second I walk into that first airport it's like starting at level one of a whole new game.
I take a deep breath and look straight ahead knowing this is the last moment of rest I'll have until I beat the game.
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