With all of the traveling that you've been doing lately, you've made a game out of figuring the best way to divvy up your time. In selecting flight preferences to excavate the ultimate balance between getting enough rest, and having enough sun while on land to frolic whatever new grounds you find yourself to claim stakes in. You stayed in Chicago two extra days, for two extra reasons:

1) To build with your midwest contingent, and

2) Because you can.

"Because You Can" has been your recent catchphrase lately. Maybe not something that you say aloud, but definitely a mental note that, for the past few weeks, you've been hoisting around like a letterman jacket post-tryout season. You thrill yourself in stacking shit to do, getting giddy when people react to the boldness/insanity/stupidity of your daily agendas. You wait for it--for someone to give you the cue to boast.

Person: "Sup man."

You: "Wadduuuuup."

Person: "What are you doing on Saturday?"

You: "Oh, yenno, just waking up at 5:30am to fly out of Chicago, land in Oakland at 10:30, do an iLL-Lit show in Davis at 3 and then drive to Mountainview to catch the Bjork concert."
Person: "What the hell, are you crazy?? Why would you do that to yourself??"

You: "Because I can."

Holler back, pimp. Unsure of whether all this is really going to happen without your eyes exploding in your skull, you opt to sleep early the night before your early morning flight: 1am. Within four blinks you find yourself at some ungodly hour that you're sure is reserved for only three kinds of people: Zombies, Wal*Mart employees, and hunters...of Zombies.

As you shove a limp dollar bill into the CTA machine, you hear the train to the airport rumble away above you. It sounds like a 20-minute wait you weren't hoping for. The next 14 hours are pretty much a blur, somewhat involving metal detectors, sitting in seats, an awkward outdoor daytime gig, and ending up in Jozee's apartment at 6:30 in the evening. You are very excited. Jozee and Sarah Dayley are the only two people that didn't react to your invitation to see Bjork as abhorrently as if you were proposing a hippopotamus orgy.

You: "We're not in a rush are we?"

Sarah Dayley looks up from her Vice mag for a second, before directing her attention back to the skater pics, and nonchalantly chirping, "We sort of are."

Jozee cushions his lips against Roxie, the fire-red glass contraption that has graced many a night like this. The haze snakes from his pursed lips, his eyebrows curved not unlike the Sean Connery Bond. He exhales, ballooning the cloud into pure opacity and sets Roxie on the table. "There are opening acts," he says. Which basically means, "Yeah, we'll be late."

You've been looking forward to the Bjork show for a hot minute. She's in that list of people you have to see in concert before you die. Along with Stevie Wonder, Prince, Sade, Jay-Z, and God. Luckily, unlike others on that list, tickets to the Bjork show weren't the cost of a small island. Lawn seats, baby! The part of the Shoreline Amphitheater where the audience is hoarded like cattle, where you're so far back that the performer is reduced to a mere speck projecting sound from the open dome as the only indication that they are in fact a person and not a Christmas light.

Two hours into the drive, the three of you decide that getting directions would've been a good idea. You slither back and forth on the 101, u-turning exits and winding up on completely wrong freeways. 411 calls are made. Voicemails are left. You speculate whether Mountainview is north or south of San Jose, squinting to make out signs to let you know the exit is coming up. When you finally wander into the right vicinity, your contrived "Whooo!" is embittered by the fact that you've all become quite demoralized and sure that you've already missed the show. As you trek toward the auditorium, you search for any sign as to whether or not the drive has been in vain.

"They're playing transition music," huffs Jozee with a smile. The queen hasn't come on yet. You rush into the venue gates and Jozee goes straight to the $8 cups of beer while you contemplate over some ridiculously overpriced piece of paper sneakily named a "poster." The weather's warm, Bjork is in town, and you're extremely blazed. It. Is. The. Life.

As you make your way to the lawn, you're taken aback by the 25,000-capacity amphitheater packed to the nostrils. As if on queue, as soon as you find a crack between bodies big enough for you to see the stage, the horns come on, the sparks starts shooting, the lasers beam, and the Icelandic speck appears. All the songs you recognize come on, but you know that your Bjork fan-ness only stretches as far as knowing songs as "the one where she's wailing at the end" and "the one with the video where the robots are kissing." It doesn't matter though. You don't need to be as die-hard as the group of people in front of you dressed like forest nymphs and most likely spazzed out on acid. At shows like this, all else goes. You probably get a good 4 feet of air the way you start hopping up and down when HyperBallad comes on. There are far too many sounds, smells, colors for you to take in without your head exploding (that's your second explosion reference this day). And when it's all finished, there's not much more you can do but stand and watch the theater empty of people filled to the brim solely by the babbles of one person.

And this is your life. Arranging your travel itinerary for your shows in order to catch someone else's. Because the greats are those who make watching the show feel just as glamourous as starring in it. Regardless of how many contracts you fax through, mics you soundcheck, books you sign and plane ticket stubs you have lying around under your car seats, you will always be, above everything else, a fan.