of dislocation & graceful unravelling

peripatetic (ramble)

Most of my writing comes from my 1.7-mile walk home from work at night:

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Toward New Orleans on the Ponchartrain Causeway, July 2004 | selenographie & Amul Kumar

“I carried that fabulous and carnal image of New Orleans with me like a poetic wound for the next two years.” —Andrei Codrescu, from “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” as printed in New Orleans, Mon Amour

“I was in a sort of ecstasy, […] Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty … I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves.’ Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.” —Stendhal (syndrome)

"Vacations are desperate things even if you are not old and retired. I have always felt keenly the unbearable pathos of tourism, the lonely masses of the twentieth century shuffling through each others’ cities in small, insulated units looking for innocence. It’s there somewhere, riddled with the holes the clock punched in it."

Andrei Codrescu, from “Vacation Angst” as printed in New Orleans, Mon Amour

One time I went on tour with my good friends Mouser. I napped in the van & kept waking up mid-song while Mercer was manning the stereo, so I dreamed a magical combination of Snakefinger + Todd Rundgren.

Dorothea Lange: “Toward Los Angeles,” California, March 1937 (for the Farm Security Administration)

I got a little obsessed with Google-Maps for a minute there.

Highway Songs

robbery-of-the-heart:

orangealert:

dontcookbilly:

“Route 66” and Against Me!’s “Untitled” both mention US Route 66, “Born To Run” mentions Route 9 (“Sprung from cages on highway 9”), “Highway 49” is obvious, and I’m not going to link to America’s “Ventura Highway” for the route 101 references…hmm can anybody think of any more songs about US highways?

Best Friends Forever’s best song, Eisenhower Is The Father, is all about the Interstate Highway System.

I love that Best Friends Forever song!

Off the top of my head, I can also think of - well, there is of course Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited.” And The Foxboro Hot Tubs’ “Highway 1,” and The Original Brothers and Sisters of Love’s “Highway 2,” Ben Weaver’s “694 Blues,” and the Lisa Marr Experiment song “In California” mentions the 405.  I know I have more, most of my favorite songs are traveling songs, but I’m drawing a blank…

“Love Shack” by The B-52’s!  “I’m headin’ down the Atlanta Highway…”
When I was a kid, this lyric raised the Atlanta Highway to mythic proportions, just like Route 66.  Now that I actually live in Athens, though, I realize the Atlanta highway just takes you to… the mall.  Or, y’know…Atlanta.