Cowboys, there must be cowboys at least, someone might insist.
Well, there are still cowboys in Texas, but despite my vast collection of acoustic, guitar-laden music, I have never been acquainted with one. For that I am sometimes ashamed.
Just as I am drawn to Jesus-referenced music, I am equally driven to seek out bands that worship horses (Band of Horses), mountains (Iron & Wine), the ocean (Bright Eyes; Okkervil River), North Carolina, South Carolina or any Carolina (M. Ward) or getting shot (Wilco; in their case, I think it’s about getting vaccinations shots, not 50-Cent kind of shot).
I don’t know where this connectedness comes from. I imagine that most people who like this kind of stuff like to have picnics, go on road trips for fun, camp deep in the woods, hike up and down mountains, basically feel one with nature and their surroundings. I choose to do none of that. The idea of all of those things sounds pleasing to many folks, but in reality, once I am placed in any situation like that, I long for my laptop, Ipod and cortisone creams.
On a roadtrip from Houston to Seattle in 2005, my ex and I drove through supposedly beautiful places like Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Oregon. The wind in Kansas, the mountains of Colorado, the flatness of Wyoming and the rolling dune hills of Oregon, all of these things frightened me nearly to tears. Unintelligible fear overcame me, and all I could do was turn up Jeff Tweedy’s voice in my head to console me. Ironically these countryside backgrounds were the most appropriate for the music coming from my car speakers, but I wanted them gone. I wanted to see storefronts, coffeeshops and people in full-length pants.
I’m writing this entry while sitting in a café in Guatemala City with several SUVs and high end vehicles parked in the parking lot, a group of Korean women near me chatting and enjoying their frappés. Jeff Tweedy sings to me from his more twangy days of Being There, about being “red-eyed and blue”, and all is right with the world.
