I’ve made myself a little writing closet inside an actual closet in an 80s apartment in a slapped-together 80s apartment complex. I’m in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve come to hang out with my sweet pals (and bandmate) Jon and Jen Rauhouse.
I left my house on Christmas day and started a roadtrip across the country to get here. It felt really good, it had been forever since I’d driven across America. I saw the naked winter trees drenched in sunset across the mountains of Pennsylvania, their never-ending carpet of fallen leaves illuminating them from below. I drove into the early morning fog at the south end of Lake Michigan, through Gary, Indiana into Chicago – an industrial wetland that is surreal and enchanted in early morning mist, where iron bridges and factories look like brontosauruses in their natural habitat. I half-expected the iron ribs of an off-ramp bridge to twist and flex like a Jurassic creature pulling its head up out of the water to casually watch me speed past.
I saw the amber and gold grass from Illinois to New Mexico looking so soft and touchable. The sunsets were on fire. By night I drove through the hills of Missouri with its tiny towns nestled in like little jewels, some still covered in Christmas lights? I stumbled across a homemade light festival in Callao, MO. I wandered around in the cold air for an hour or so marveling at the thoughtful hand-painted ornaments and displays complete with a player piano, a train, and hot chocolate. I had the place pretty much to myself and couldn’t believe my good fortune. What a strange, kind, thoughtful little world glowing at the end of a tiny street. Frozen fireworks coming out of strings of uncountable extension cords. Donations accepted through slots in old coffee can lids.
I saw the first towering grain silos across central Illinois. They looked as if they had been erected centuries ago by wheat pharaohs… but then came the white turbines whose difference in scale from the already ridiculous silos kicks me in the flight response nerve. They are something truly alien and hostile to inner,feral me. I don’t like that I can see them from airplanes. They look like evil klansman robots crawling slowly across the subjugated farmlands. Since I had last driven the I-55, the 35 and the 40 by day, THOUSANDS of giant wind turbines had been erected across the middle of the country and they seem to pin the tightly homogenized crops onto the surface of Earth. At night they blink in eerily synchronized red lights that cover the entire horizon. Only nature is supposed to cover the entire horizon. It makes me incredibly uneasy. It is farmland, and yet the only time I saw cows between Illinois and Texas was on a massive, reeking feedlot. The “industry” of farming here is despair. Right before Amarillo I saw a huge pile of turbines destroyed by an ice storm. I was so relieved that they could die, and that it was nature who killed them.
The border of New Mexico offered some relief. Endless plateau landscape dotted with tiny, crumbling brick huts. Big birds in the sky; abandoned gas stations along Route 66, some that I even remember being open 10 years ago; big tough busted up cottonwood trees ponting their wind-splintered fingers toward the sky. And the clouds… sigh. They remind me of all the Southwest desert landscape films of the 80s that made me want to run toward Arizona at full speed. Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Bagdad Cafe, True Stories, and so on. Which makes me wonder, where did you guys in the 80s Southwest want to escape to since you already were living in the canvas of endless space and sunlight?
And there’s that restless feeling again; I could leave The Lung today… start over, assume a new identity, become a better version if not a new person. A crack would form down my back like a cicada nymph and I could crawl out and dry my lighter, smarter winged self in the sun. I’d never look back. Such a cliche, and even the idea of escaping is a slightly nauseating show of privilege. It’s a real feeling that does hurt though, especially because I love The Lung and its resident species and its moods. Maybe one day I will feel like I belong somewhere for more than a couple years without the inner-screamies. Maybe I just belong in transit?
I grew up in the 80s in the Southwest, practically on the border between NM and AZ (and I can tell you, if anyone thinks the sun-baked weirdness of Raising Arizona was exaggerated for cinematic purposes, I can testify that it was NOT!) Being from a tiny nowhere town I could only dream of a City, any City...just somewhere where SOMETHING was happening (that something being punk rock shows, mostly! ...I ended up in Dallas, sooo...Meh?)
But, the infinitude of the desert sky...the endless blue day and at night, the STARS, oh the STARS -- I miss it the most...to the point where if I don't visit often enough I start to feel antsy, like I need to go back and recharge by laying out under the desert night sky and soaking in the universe...
Oh, and the green chile, of course!😄
As a SW 80s kid, I could only think about being somewhere green. I didn't realize how majestic the sky was. I see it now, when I go back to visit. But, when I was in my 20s all I wanted was green trees, to walk to cafes, and the ocean (hence moving to the Bay). I wanted to be an oceanographer but I was surrounded by desert :-). I now love both and consider them both "home."