I meet a lot of wildlife at gas stations, especially late at night. The cheap wood-paneled hallway of memories of tours past in my mind is alive with the sound of neon bulbs flickering on and off. They sing like the crickets of that anti-natural space. The smell of diesel. The chunking of the fuel regulator doling gallons into the tank of the van or the bus, everyone else has disappeared inside the gas station, or asleep in the vehicle. It is one of the most isolating feelings you can have without panicking. It’s a temporary exhale in a life of managed chaos that is touring. It’s often beautiful. And it often puts my imagination into hyper mode.
I did not expect to wake up and be put smack in the middle of a mid-century oil painting, but also I woke up yesterday to being bit by a stag beetle in my bed. Commensal species are the best, I don't love them in my sheets tho. There actually really is no borders between our worlds. we are in the wild.
This is exquisite. "[T]he sinister hint of agricultural stubble at the edge of the circle of neon light" is a fishhook through my cheek. Love love love.
I’ll never see a gas station in the same way. I remember visiting Texas for the first time. I drove from Austin to Houston to Dallas and back to Austin. It was an education on the state as I drove past billboard after billboard promoting guns or the evils of abortion. I know Texas is way more than the sum of these couple of parts, but it’s all I remember as a gay liberal yankee.
I wish I could go back in time and read this essay before that trip and all the stops at Buckys for gas.
These posts are such great work, in depth observations and they sit with me for far longer than it takes to read them.
Neko, your writing just sings. So vivid and immersive. You captured the feelings and thought processing one has in those spaces perfectly. Thank you for this!
I may not enjoy all my encounters with Neko's thinking and writing and performing and living; but, I come away from them all with a feeling of heightened awareness and possibly an insight or two that I might otherwise have missed. It may just be that she bears witness to a world at a tipping point; it may be that she bring a focus of icy clarity and responsibility to what she observes. She breaks the smudged and dirty glass we isolate behind. The world is noticeably worse as we encounter, through her writing, the vision of a stuffed whooping crane, and wonder what the metaphor really is...she shares her vision, and yet shares some hope. We may terraform the world into something that isn't suitable for human and other existence, but humanity and nature will find ways to positively subvert the whole thing.
I have had Waterloo Sunset bouncing off the walls of my brain for several days. This piece is not carried along by music; but, it seems to me that every thing Neko Case says and does is has a rhythm and scale and key and a bit of Boudicca burning Londinium but realizing that she may not triumph, but life will over the forces that oppose it. https://youtu.be/YIlxLO-XjX0
No image sums us up better than a preserved, glass-encased Whooping Crane.
I have worked in dog kennels, and got paid for poop removal. That poop put food on my table! Here's some fun thoughts: how about stuffed/taxidermied humans? wasn't that in "Planet of the Apes? The most intelligent "other mammal" takes over completely. Don't forget "Soylent Green". McDonalds motto food, folks, and fun becomes "fun folks food!" Pass the HFCS ketchup.
I miss traveling myself. But I'm through with having a fucking car in southern california. N
I did not expect to wake up and be put smack in the middle of a mid-century oil painting, but also I woke up yesterday to being bit by a stag beetle in my bed. Commensal species are the best, I don't love them in my sheets tho. There actually really is no borders between our worlds. we are in the wild.
That taxidermied Whooping crane really punched me in the gut.
This is exquisite. "[T]he sinister hint of agricultural stubble at the edge of the circle of neon light" is a fishhook through my cheek. Love love love.
I’ll never see a gas station in the same way. I remember visiting Texas for the first time. I drove from Austin to Houston to Dallas and back to Austin. It was an education on the state as I drove past billboard after billboard promoting guns or the evils of abortion. I know Texas is way more than the sum of these couple of parts, but it’s all I remember as a gay liberal yankee.
I wish I could go back in time and read this essay before that trip and all the stops at Buckys for gas.
These posts are such great work, in depth observations and they sit with me for far longer than it takes to read them.
Neko, your writing just sings. So vivid and immersive. You captured the feelings and thought processing one has in those spaces perfectly. Thank you for this!
poop is indeed a great equalizer
Her prose is not weak and we know it....
I may not enjoy all my encounters with Neko's thinking and writing and performing and living; but, I come away from them all with a feeling of heightened awareness and possibly an insight or two that I might otherwise have missed. It may just be that she bears witness to a world at a tipping point; it may be that she bring a focus of icy clarity and responsibility to what she observes. She breaks the smudged and dirty glass we isolate behind. The world is noticeably worse as we encounter, through her writing, the vision of a stuffed whooping crane, and wonder what the metaphor really is...she shares her vision, and yet shares some hope. We may terraform the world into something that isn't suitable for human and other existence, but humanity and nature will find ways to positively subvert the whole thing.
I have had Waterloo Sunset bouncing off the walls of my brain for several days. This piece is not carried along by music; but, it seems to me that every thing Neko Case says and does is has a rhythm and scale and key and a bit of Boudicca burning Londinium but realizing that she may not triumph, but life will over the forces that oppose it. https://youtu.be/YIlxLO-XjX0
No image sums us up better than a preserved, glass-encased Whooping Crane.
I have worked in dog kennels, and got paid for poop removal. That poop put food on my table! Here's some fun thoughts: how about stuffed/taxidermied humans? wasn't that in "Planet of the Apes? The most intelligent "other mammal" takes over completely. Don't forget "Soylent Green". McDonalds motto food, folks, and fun becomes "fun folks food!" Pass the HFCS ketchup.
I miss traveling myself. But I'm through with having a fucking car in southern california. N
“Yo let’s get some poop” that’s what I say to my wife when it’s time for dinner