My original plan didn’t involve 1980s cult classics. It involved communing with nature, meditating and the deep breathing of clean mountain air. But it turns out, on Monday night at least, what I really wanted was pie and an inspirational movie.
Best line in Flashdance (second only to 'As a matter of fact, I fucked his brains out')? "If you let go of your dream, you die."
For obvious reasons, Pie and Movie Night is a favourite of mine. I have it whenever I am emotionally depleted, exhausted or freaked out. Pie equals comfort in my world. And when paired with the sweet aroma of inspiration... It’s heaven, that’s what.
I need to be clear here. When I say pie, I don’t mean a cute little slice after a healthy, vegetable-soaked dinner. No. I mean, sitting down in front of the TV with a whole pie and a fork and calling that dinner. It is decadent and ridiculous and I love it.
Now you know my secret. Don’t judge me. Let’s move on. To another of my Favourite Things - The Highway Drive.
I don’t know if I’ve written at length about how deeply happy a highway drive makes me. I’ve heard yoga referred to as ‘moving meditation.’ Well, call this Road Yoga. Roga? Whatever.
Six or seven hours on the highway, by myself, is the most spiritually uplifting and creatively fulfilling thing I can think of. That and running for two hours, but that requires a little something called Physical Fitness, which I appear to have misplaced somewhere.
Driving requires a certain amount of concentration, of course, but it’s not the same level of concentration as, say, disarming a nuclear bomb. So the parts of your mind that aren’t paying attention to the yellow line or the yahoo in the pickup doing 140 can wander and play. Sometimes your attention will be present with the scenery. Sometimes you will wonder how Fleetwood Mac got so effing awesome. Sometimes you will be focused on your rage and confusion at the Honda Civic Of The Variable Speed in front of you. And sometimes, if you're lucky, a bestselling novel will just pop into your head.
See, I have this favourite patch of Highway 1. It’s just past Revelstoke and it’s lined with burnout roadside motels that probably have vibrating beds and cockroaches, and there’s a random Go-Kart place where no one ever go-karts, and also a sad little trailer park next to a pile of rusted cars. So, not exactly scenic. But, it’s still my favourite piece of road.
Of course, there’s something about how it opens out to six lanes after you’ve been stuck behind a single lane of slow-ass RVs for three hours. Or about how once you hit Revelstoke, you’re Almost There because it’s only a couple of hours until Kelowna or Salmon Arm, which is Really Almost There. If you’re going to the beachy-lakey places in BC, that is.
But for me, this is the point at which the ideas are really flowing. When the highway opens out like that, it’s as though God opens the floodgates and a tsunami of creativity engulfs my car. Whole stories will emerge unbidden. Scenes of dialogue for plays or movies. Fabulous characters, themes and concepts. Or in yesterday’s case, a full album of songs celebrating the tough times with your loved one.
Rough Patch Greatest Hits – available now from K-Tel Records – features such timeless classics as Happy Awkward Anniversary, Baby, Let’s Get Counseling, and the hit single I’ll Stay (At My Mother’s Tonight).
And there’s more where that came from. Much, much more.
The point, for today, is this: when you find something that works, just do it already. I don’t care about sugar and saturated fat – Pie and Movie Night is about feeding myself exactly what I need, physically and emotionally. I don’t give a damn about gas prices either. Highway driving is essential for my creativity and my soul, and for a measly sixty bucks, I spent the entire day tapped in and connected to grace. I was my hope-addled, dream junkie self again! And that, to borrow from Mastercard’s masterful ad campaign, is priceless.
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