Day 13, contemplating evil, aesthics and brotherhood

After watching the nearly full moon vanish into the hills I went to the lobby, filled up on coffee and headed out into the now black morning. Soon the first splashes of sun hit the mountaintops, the black morning seeking shelter in the canyons and crevasses of the high snow dusted crests. After the truck warmed up a bit I put on the first album by Suicide. I thought of the first time I heard this record. I had since heard some punk rock, which was easy to relate to because of its basic, conservative form; it was simply stripped down rock, and its message of protest was in many ways just an updated version of any protest song. You could trace it to Dylan, to Buffaloe Springfield, to Neil Young. But THIS?

I ripped it off the turntable after spot checking each track. Then the record seemed to be evil, its sinister and grimy synths a sick parody of 1950s pop set to a cheap drum machine. Then there were the lyrics and their delivery. Alan Vega's voice describing murder, suicide, poverty all with the sure and confident crooning of a sexual predator set on getting you into his car.

I kept driving up 190 east as the sun was flooding the mountains and foohills, still the lowlands remaining in the dark, and I thought how the desert was like a canvas upon which I could bring to light the darkest recesses or praise the highest sentiments. My thoughts were going back and forth between the beauty unfolding in front of me, and events like the Tate LaBianca murders.

As the record played on, I realized that what repelled me by that record over 30 years ago is that it challenged the middle class belief that all will work out, with a lot of love and work, that a newer, more just world could emerge. What I know now is that New York in the late 1970s and early 80s was one of the most singularly brutal places on the planet, and that this record was the sound of young people in the center of that brutality. Its honesty, desperation and perversity make it an important record, the form, content and quality of the songs make it a perfect record.

I used to wonder about the process in which what I used to find repugnant became something I later came to call beautiful. I know now that there is no singular thing by which this happens. You grow, you experience things, if you are smart and lucky, and willing, you put yourself in the place of others. You walk among them, eat with them, tell stories and hear theirs. By seeking out what is NOT you, you can become closer to saying without cliché, that you are a brother of All.

I pushed on up the mountains, pulled over to watch a coyote, and ended up in a town in Nevada that was in effect, a five mile long strip mall, the employees who tended them living in trailers scattered on the outskirts.

I found what I was looking for, and left. On the way back I encountered this amazing dust storm. I pulled over to watch it grow and move, seeing the upward streams of sand and dirt rush to form a huge cloud covering at least two miles. As it grew, it moved towards a town I had to pass through. I no longer was playing Suicide, but Faust, the deep groovey psychedelia fitting both the drama of the dust storm, as well as the flowering desert floor, shining streams and colorful mountains.

After I got back to my hotel I went out across the road into the dunes and spent some time with these shadows, looking like a fine, alien calligraphy on the desert sands.