Notes from the Boneyard: Buried in the static

The Boneyard isn’t just a place. It’s a frequency.

You tune into it late at night when the air conditioning hum turns into a distant choir and you feel like you’ve been in this hotel room many times before.

There is no sleep within these walls.

Only the idea of sleep.

The ice machine rattles in the distance.

A man down the hall is arguing with someone on speaker phone, or maybe with himself.

The TV is on but the volume is down. Some late night talk show selling useless junk.

I think its the shopping channel. I lie there, counting the towns I’ve been on this tour.

After a while they all begin to look the same.

I’m getting restless now. It’s 3.07am.

I make coffee and flick through pages of the Bible.

Every hotel has one, waiting to be found in the bedside drawer.

I look at my guitar in the corner, standing there like an old tree.

It’s getting more sleep than I am.

I reach for it and pluck a chord, but it comes out all wrong.

I try to hum a melody I wrote in a town called Mooncoin, but it gets buried in the static of the mini-fridge.

The carpet smells like mildew and spilled beer.

There’s some faint writing on the wall left by a musician that played here, many years ago. A legend, maybe.

Or maybe just me, last week.

Who knows.

Time doesn’t seem to exist here.

I scrawl lyrics onto a napkin with a pen that doesn’t work.

It’s getting ridiculous now; 4.30am.

The television is glowing with static snow.

For a second I see a face in the noise.

Maybe it’s mine.

I turn off the TV to be in darkness, but outside, a neon sign flickers, illuminating the room in bright blue.

I’m too tired to close the curtains.

It’ll be dawn soon, and the sun will bleed through the window, and the morning will attack without warning. Like it always does.

I lie on the bed with the guitar across my chest.

We’re both out of tune.

I begin to drift off, and for a second I think about setting the alarm for a time that doesn’t exist.