Is there something inherently American about leaving home? About going out into the world and finding something?
You’re either leaving your small town for the dreams of the big city, leaving the city for a simpler life, leaving the suburbs for anything but that; but Americans are always leaving and looking around.
Well, she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn't help thinkin' that there
Was a little more to life
Somewhere else
I love my life for the most part. But even still, I often fantasize about disappearing. Packing my things up and getting the hell out of dodge.
These American journeys often involve the open road, the never ending nature of a road before you and no obligations. Some food, some money in your pocket, and a dream.
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I’ve gone to look for America
I watched John Ford’s The Searchers a few days ago. John Wayne plays a racist asshole uncle who tries to track down his niece across the American Southwest after the Civil War. He’s not very good at tracking people down and he’s a really shitty uncle. But, in a way, he personifies the American individual. Dead-set on doing things his way, wrangling the open road, and shooting his way through anyone that questions him.
I mean, it’s in the title, he’s a searcher. For what, is not quite clear. But it never seems to matter to him, or to anyone. Americans love to search, they’re not as keen on finding. Finding implies an end, it implies the searching is done. But the searching is the only part anyone wants to do.
It’s a town full of losers
I’m pulling out of here to win
I also rewatched Rango which is about a dimwitted, sheltered, lizard who is thrust into the ‘real world’ of the American west and has to fake his way through bravery to win over the townsfolk.
When it comes to my own dreams of escaping to dry, hot, tumbleweed towns in search of “America”, I think its fair to say I’m much more Rango than John Wayne. And I think most of us are too.
We fantasize of escape, open-roads, new opportunities, and “America”. But what we really want is a little break. A break from rent, bills, obligations, monotony, whatever it is that weighs heavy on us.
I don’t really know my point here. Maybe escapism is bad. Maybe its good. Maybe the journey is worth taking. Maybe its better in movies and music than in practice.
Maybe this whole thing is just a lot of hot air.
But I’m no cowboy. I grew up in New Jersey. I’m a sheltered pet lizard who just wants to wear his Hawaiian shirt, sit under a heat lamp, close his eyes, and listen to music. Because the songs always sound better than the real thing.
Thanks for listening,
Will
#116 Like a Lizard Under a Heat Lamp
Not only a great piece, but another reminder that Chuck Berry was a rare genius. No one else could have sung “Working on a T-bone steak a la carty” and left it unclear whether he was joking.