One Night in Burma

We arrive at my brother's apartment after another late night in Yangon. Burma sleeps well tonight. But we don't. It's my last night of a month long trip to Southeast Asia. Five cities and three countries. I don't know what to make of it all. It feels like an endless weekend. And I love endless weekends. And now it's 1:30 am and I leave in less than 24 hours.

My brother picks up his guitar and plays a couple of chords he's been working on over the last few months. It sounds great. What it lacks in lyrics it makes up for in rhythm. It's got a folky twang to it. The type of song you'd hear from The Band; as if Robbie Robertson had drafted a prequel to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

And so we sat. Thinking about where those chords would take us. "To Carolina" I said. And so we wrote. As brothers. United with the power of a 4 inch blunt pencil and a piece of scrap paper. "It's got to be about lost love" my brother said, and of course it was.

We played it on and on. Into the late hours of the night. As if a month long trip had met its climax at this one song. But it's not about the song. It never was. It was the building of ideas. It was the stories shared between us. It was those few hours that made the 15 hour flight to Southeast Asia so worthwhile. It was one hell of a night. It was one night in Burma that I'll never forget.