On Nov. 9, 2016, I boarded the Lake Shore Limited, Amtrak’s overnight service from New York to Chicago. I had with me a small suitcase stuffed with a week’s worth of clothes, half a dozen books, a bright blue Casio wristwatch, and a cheap digital camera I’d picked up at Best Buy on my way to Penn Station. My phone remained at home.

Over the next 13 days, I would log 8,980 miles aboard six trains, traversing 31 states, subsisting mainly on Three Cheese Tortellini with Creamy Pesto Sauce and Vegetable Medley. During this time, I had conversations with upward of 80 strangers, almost all of whom I met over meals in the dining car. Aside from what I was told by other passengers, I consumed no news in any form during my trip.

In the months leading up to the presidential election, I’d been working on a passel of new songs for a run of shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, on the heels of years spent zigzagging the country in a tour bus, I was thinking about travel, and the varied impulses that have given rise to travel throughout history, as an organizing principle. But I wanted to write something that was at the very least framed by a personal journey, if not entirely personal in its content.