Notebook

What is the power of a first memory? They are such peculiar creatures, these fuzzy impressions and garbled snapshots that teach us how to see the world. I’m pretty sure my first memory is bawling at the mannequin in the opening credits of Happy Days, which led to a childhood phobia that required my mom to cover my eyes whenever we entered a department store. This gradually mellowed into a grown-up interest in the uncanny valley.

Another early memory came to mind the other night while I idled in a Taco Bell parking lot and ate a Crunchwrap Supreme because sometimes I hate myself. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I caught a shift in the light that left me remembering a hot summer night spent laying in the backseat while Superman played at a drive-in theater (or, after doing the math, more likely Superman II). My parents sat in the front seats watching, but I was facing the other direction, staring out the back window at a red neon horse with wings. It was the old Pegasus sign for Mobil gas station, and I remember thinking that winged creature in the sky must have something to do with words like heaven and god.

My first reaction to this memory is sorrow for my parents because I’m sure they didn’t choose the movie. So there they were, dutifully watching Superman II on my behalf while I preferred to watch a gas station sign. But I have a hunch this small moment cemented my lifelong fixation on night driving and lonesome gas stations.

For a glimpse into the brainpan of America, you can’t beat late-night AM radio with its paranoid callers, heavy-breathing preachers, and baroque debates about whether aliens are interfering with our thoughts.

“—they might not be fuzzy little beings at all. But that doesn’t automatically make them devils or representatives of Lucifer. It might make them simply creations, just as we are creations. And we could have been tampered with.”

“Well, I think they’re tampering with us now.”

It’s the sound of a nation mumbling to itself late at night, long after it should have gone to bed. Driving alone in the dark, I’m moved by these lonely and sometimes frantic voices searching for a pattern in the stars, their souls, or the CIA that might provide clues for how to live.

Tonight I stitched together a few recordings from a late-night drive and added some reverb and drone. And somewhere between the discussion about alien tampering and the angel of death, you can hear my turn signal blinking while I idled at an empty intersection in the middle of America.

AM Radio Scan

2020 | Download

The great American eclipse was three years ago today, a cosmic event that covered the nation coast to coast. I remember how the temperature plummeted as the world was cast in silvery light. And the gorgeous sight of everyone studying the sky with their cardboard glasses. There’s a dark resonance between that moment and these days of masked faces. We could use another extraterrestrial event.

Heading west on Interstate 70, there’s a beautiful sunset and it’ll have to do for tonight.

Gas stations, car dealerships, and strip malls streak past the windshield. Old waltzes bleed through the radio static and voices howl about wearing masks. Late-night callers connect the dots between wildfires, traffic accidents, and factory explosions.

Hard cut to Hank Williams doing “I Saw the Light” back in ’48—worries and fears I claimed for my own, then like the blind man that God gave back his sight, praise the Lord, I saw the —

“Welcome back to Gun Talk, you’re on the air.”
“Any advice on the best place to buy a thousand rounds?”

Low – I’m On Fire

Dead Man’s Town: A Tribute to Born in the USA | Lightning Rod, 2014 | More

Yes, I wept during Biden’s convention speech. And I was annoyed by my tears, even a little ashamed. But why?

I wanted to flatter myself as a media-savvy cynic who’s immune to a televised assault on my emotions. But I sniffled through those well-produced biopics as I remembered my bouts with grief and loss, and I found reassurance in home-video clips of folks telling stories about Biden shepherding them through difficulty and mourning. (And now I half-expect Biden will appear at my bedside when my time comes.) Catharsis doesn’t care about the cause.

Yet part of me was still mad. Not just because my preferred candidate didn’t win, but because of the political fuckery before Super Tuesday when the powers-that-be seemed hellbent on manufacturing consensus for restoring the “normal” that led to someone like Trump in the first place.

But February was years ago. Before lockdowns and masks. Before 175,000 unnecessary dead. Our lives have been tinted by too many new shades of grief and uncertainty—universal emotions that can draw us closer if given a chance. So I’m heartened by the prospect of a president who can speak honestly about the shock of sudden loss, who is fluent in sorrow and knows how to reckon with grief. An empathy machine sounds like a pretty good leader right now.

Somewhere in southeastern Ohio, I drove past two ranch houses sitting side by side with tidy sidewalks and neatly mowed lawns. The house on the left had a row of signs running down the property line between the two homes: Trump 2020, Law & Order, and Keep America Great. Their neighbor matched them sign for sign: Biden 2020, Black Lives Matter, and a handmade placard that said Love Wins. These two teams of signs blare at each other day and night, an endless argument by proxy.

I’ve been thinking about symbols lately, how we can condense entire worlds of history and sensation into an apple or serpent, a cross or a star. The image lingers, not the plot.

There’s a national coin shortage because of the pandemic. Fear of contamination. Reduced production at the U.S. Mint. But today the S&P 500 hit a record high and stocks are officially back in a bull market. That’s another symbol, but one without reference to reality.

Seefeel – Signals (Momentum 1.3 Remix)

i-01 | Promo, 1994 | More

A woman at the supermarket kept making a noise I could not decipher. It was a sound that reminded me of the thin line between laughter and a sob, how the mechanics are basically the same.

In the parking lot I scrolled through predictions from health experts and historians of an awful autumn. Everything I click reads like one long jeremiad. Today I learned this term comes from Jeremiah, the “weeping prophet” who foresaw Jerusalem’s downfall and developed the “city lament” in which collective grief blurs with nostalgia for god’s kindness in the past.

These are biblical times. The pandemic continues. Evacuations in Northern California as more fires burn. The area has experienced ten thousand lightning strikes over the past three days. Meanwhile, a former president issued a grave warning that our current president is a threat to democracy. I registered to become a poll worker on Election Day.

Low – Violence

Long Division | Vernon Yard, 1995 | Bandcamp

Somewhere north of Columbus, we tuned in to the first night of the Democratic National Convention. News anchors repeated the phrase “unconventional convention” again and again. Then came two hours of tear-jerking montages, a Springsteen song, politicians in their living rooms, and people looking in the wrong direction because video conferencing is still awkward and wrong. It was a stark reminder that we now live in a world without crowds. (A line from Don DeLillo’s Mao II comes to mind: “To become a crowd is to keep out death.”) The effect was a weirdly intimate blend of traditional political banality delivered by decontextualized faces that could have been live, prerecorded, or algorithmically generated. But there were some welcome signs of reassurance and hope, aside from whenever the actual candidate appeared.

The most powerful moment came from a woman whose father believed the president’s pandemic denial and paid with his life. “There are two Americas,” she said. “The America that Donald Trump lives in, and the America that my father died in.” This should become a slogan.

I haven’t been running much at the cabin in the woods. I gave up after a suicidal jog along a loopy stretch of road where monstrous pickup trucks Tokyo-drifted around the curves. This afternoon I drove to a path along the Scioto River, and I thought I’d run an easy three or four miles. Although it had only been a week since my last run, my body creaked and juddered. Even worse, I was bored out of my skull, checking my watch every two minutes and wondering if I should start smoking again.

The body remembers slowly and forgets very quickly. This lesson also applies to writing. A day or two passes without working on my book, and my brains start panting and wheezing the next time I sit at my desk. Why are you making up stories? Let’s do something else instead. The daily routine isn’t poetic or even interesting. There are no flashes of insight, no white-hot burst of motivation that fuels me until dawn. God knows I’ve waited long enough for these things to show up. From now on, it’s just a steady grind.

Ohio. Storms today. Maybe it’s because I’m back in the Midwest, but a memory flashed to mind that I haven’t thought about in years. I was six years old and playing with some of the neighborhood kids in a park somewhere south of Chicago. The sky turned black and green. The sound of something terrible filled the air, a cosmic revving that stopped us cold on the grass. Our little faces tilted up as we watched the clouds swirl. I remember the texture of the air, the sense of something being sucked from the world before it returned in terrible form. Maybe it was the barometer dropping, the rearrangement of air pressure. Decades later, this sensation returns whenever the telephone rings with bad news.

The grown-ups argued about whether we should take shelter in the cars or under the trees. But here comes my mom, racing toward us across the field, scooping me into her arms—maybe scooping all of us because she was a hero that day, the way she scooched us under the picnic tables while she lay on top of me, her breath in my ear saying don’t worry, hunny bunny, it’s gonna be alright while that terrible engine crossed the sky and took the roof of a nearby gazebo with it.

I remember her face that day, filled with love and instinct and knowing exactly what to do. I knew she would have died for me, for any of us. Sometimes I fight to remember her this way. Because as the years passed, she didn’t know what to do. Most of the time, none of us do. But we have our moments.

Tropic of Cancer – I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over

Stop Suffering | Blackest Ever Black, 2015 | Bandcamp

We’ve entered the last stretch of summer when everything is overripe and so green it feels obscene. The alien whirr of the cicadas enhances the uncanny mood. They spend years underground feeding on the roots of trees before emerging to buzz for a few weeks so they can find a mate, breed, and die. The ones that surface every seventeen years are classified into Broods I through XXIII, which enhances their mythos. I think we’re in the neighborhood of Brood X, but their cycles are getting screwy because of climate change.

Strange how I can fall asleep to traffic, sirens, and yelling in the city, but a few cicadas chirruping in the countryside leave me feeling frazzled and existential. Maybe it’s because they sound so synthetic, like a machine on the fritz. Surely I’ve heard cicadas before, but tonight they sound extraterrestrial—have I never paid attention? Ohio’s forests are noisier and more surreal than I expected.

Each night I drive twelve miles from the cabin to a nearby town where I can pick up a signal and join the grid. I check my email. I send files to whoever needs them. I spend thirty seconds scrolling through the news, just long enough so I don’t scream.

I enjoy these midnight drives. Mist rises from the fields, and my headlights catch the shining eyes of deer. Along the town’s empty Main Street, the faces of men and women who’ve served in the military hang from the lampposts. The doctor’s office has a sign that says, “Doctors can cure, but only Jesus can heal.”

Tonight I’m idling in the vast parking lot of a strip mall anchored by a Walmart. It’s a deeply American scene here after hours. Teenagers drag race from the shuttered Chinese buffet to the Lawn & Garden side of the Walmart, their cars tricked out with neon and earsplitting engines. An old man pushes a shopping car filled with metal scrap and hollers about demons. A few middle-aged guys toss a football while their wives cheer from the bed of a pickup. Beneath the sodium lights, it looks like a futuristic sport.

This parking lot is an inspiring office after midnight.