I booked a flight to New York using Webjet and now I want to stand up and sing. It is a great travesty that I cannot stand up on my seat and belt out in my baritone, “The hills are alive with the sound of music!” Oh believe me, I want to. And I would. Every ounce of organ feels this should be sung. But the FAA has dumb rules about such things.

I’m quite elated to be returning to New York. I’m also rather sad to be leaving Minneapolis, after only a week. And I am sorry to have left my family after a six-week visit. I remind myself that this is the current life I have signed up for, and the only thing that would be more difficult than leaving would be staying put. As I texted a new friend I made in Minneapolis who I wish I’d had more time with, “We are all always missing out on most things, which is why everything we do should be a burning passion.”

My plane from Minneapolis is about to take off to deliver me to New York. The new portable electronic rules allows me to keep my iPhone on to type this post. It’s 6am, but I’m wired as Tigger on a trampoline. I’m only a few hours away from New York! New York! New York! I’ll paraphrase something I read once, New York is like a tiger, riding a dragon, fighting a bear, riding a dinosaur, next to an explosion, in Outer Space. This is how I describe New York to people.

I’m reflective because planes are my temples, where I feel both infinite and incredibly tiny and insignificant. The day I stop feeling reverence while in the sky is a day I should stay on the ground.

Later tonight I am meeting up with a poet/musician from Iceland, HEK, in Time Square. This is his first time in America. I met him last year in Reykjavik, Iceland on the outside patio of The Celtic Cross when in a crowd I walked up to him and said, “You’re a musician, aren’t you?” I had never done that before, walked up to a stranger and accused him of his profession. But I was right, so the musical force must be strong with Hek. Things lead to things, and in the next three weeks he and I will be playing four shows in New York City.

I’ll spare you the causal chain that led to all this, but I can never help tracing back the everything that has led to this–what led to Iceland, what led to what led to Iceland, and what led to what led to what led to that. It goes back forever and as the spider web of our lives grows denser, my sense of wonder before it does too.

Where will it all lead? I wonder, especially on planes, hoping that wherever it leads there will be coffee and sandwiches, friends, music and beer at the end of every path embarked upon. As long as there is these things, there will always be something to get jacked up about.

If you are in the area, please come out to one, or some, or (the best) all of our shows!