After working 10 hours today (sounds tiring, but not that bad), I was anxious to get to this blog. Anxious because I have to be in the right mindset to do it the way I would like. These frames of time where I feel "ready" are fleeting, and when I am in a position that I can pinch it at the top, I hasten. I have to turn the TV off; there has to be little other noises than the clicking of each key, sometimes working up a small sweat if the mind is generous enough to allow idea flow that precipitates exceptionally-intense typing.
I wanted to write tonight mostly because where I am in On The Road dictates that I start to focus on the Musically-Inspired Geographical Location[s] of the day. Unfortunately (for this blog, and somewhat for my reading experience. Kerouac wanted to portray that "life on the road is fast" through On The Road. It simply just takes adjusting to), the pace of the book zooms three-thousand miles across the American continent in a matter of some fifty pages and back east in considerably fewer. I am immensely enjoying my new-found access to Charleston County Library's CD collection, and it is only day one. I quickly realized that only being able to have 5 CDs checked out at a time would alter my experience, but I have found that it helps me listen to those CDs that I especially like a few dozen times. I have already listened to Alison Brown's Fair Weather three times today. I revel in being able to enjoy multiple CDs of musician's I've been wanting to listen to for a long time but whose music I have not had ready access to, such as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss. There's even a copy of Lyle Lovett's Pontiac at my neighborhood branch that I am especially hankering over after getting a taste of Cash.
Musically-Inspired Geographical Location of the day
This Location on the tenth day of November is San Francisco, California. Before I continue, it would be arrogant and dodgy of me to say that I simply threw a curve ball at the audience (if there's anybody reading. Hello? anybody out there??) by placing the location of "Frisco" in Texas. It is more the case that Kerouac's writing curved me to think that Jack was taking a bus to Texas to spend time with his fellow west-going travelers before hitting the Pacific Coast, because it was written that he would visit Neal and Allen. There is a Frisco in Texas, but Frisco is common-knowledge slang for San Francisco (not common to me, embarassingly). He was of course heading to grand ol' San Fran, and would actually not join with his friends in Texas as planned this time around.
San Francisco has most assuredly had one sentimental air after the other cast on it, from Bob Dylan to Gillian Welch. It needs no introduction; no background information. I focus on the song Wayside/Back In Time. I hold this first Location as beautiful and even holy (in the sense of one's road of life being a holy journey), for Wayside/Back In Time is the first Gillian Welch number that hit my ears, in a small, local music venue on the island of my childhood. There weren't many people there. Joel Timmons, Ward Buckheister (who played a beautiful trombone) and "noodle" were on stage, singing out her mournful, melancholy chant: "back baby, back in time, back. . . when you were mine". There were very few (maybe ten) people hearing their music, and even fewer listening -- heck, probably just me listening, whilst everybody set it in the background to their laughing friends and alcohol (again, that perfect moment: a one-on-one soul-commune, just Joel, Ward, and "noodle's" voice one-ness to me). The lyric goes
Peaches in the Summertime, apples in the Fall
If I can't have you all the time, I won't have none at all
If I can't have you all the time, I won't have none at all
Well I wish I was in Frisco, with a brand new pair of shoes,
'Stead I'm sittin' here in Nashville, with Norman's Nashville Blues
'Stead I'm sittin' here in Nashville, with Norman's Nashville Blues
There's nothing else to say now
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