Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin', into the future...

Something about being on the road, hands on the steering wheel, vista rushing up slowly from the horizon, then slipping quickly through peripheral vision into the rear view mirror, a Doppler-effect meditation. So many people have said that when they had kids the best way to get them to sleep was to throw them into the car and within an instant  they were snoozing. For me, open road disappearing into infinity, mountains, blue sky, time slows down seemingly to a halt and inspiration quickens, the leavening of travel.

Rambling across the historic west in slo-mo, I ponder events past and how time compresses them into neat packets. Lives encapsulated in cocoons of dates in time... Robert Leroy Johnson, Born May 8, 1911-Died August 16, 1938. His life to him in the moment, I surmise, seemed infinite but was cut short and encircled forever, yet the resonance of his presence as a formative blues musician travels infinitely forward in time to enrich the lives of whoever is sympathetically drawn to his creativity. We circle closer each day, like moths in the light to the mystical cross roads that in many ways became the defining heart of his music and message. Robert Johnson spent most of his life on the road playing music, integrating the richness of his life on the road in honky tonks, juke joints, Saturday night dances, parties when requested, street corners, wherever the muse called him. He lived in the moment with many names and remained an obscure entertainer despite the fact that his attempts at recording drew little attention. Robert, being street educated, learned the art of pleasing people and it is said that he had women friends scattered throughout his travels in the south, mid-west, north, and into Canada. He parlayed this skill of learning quickly to play the popular standards of his time and could hear a song and almost immediately pick it out on his guitar, harmonica, or jaw harp, sometimes called jew's harp, or lamellophone. Robert, despite his social familiarity, was a loner and those musicians who remembered him said that on those occasions that they played with him in whatever setting, he would suddenly disappear and not be seen again until reconnecting in a distant location. The call of the muse was strong in him.

If I can "turn" a phrase, the record of Robert's musical recordings remain with us today thanks to his connection with Vitagraph, where he made eleven recordings, some of which were released as what was known then as "race records."

Johnson's death remains a mystery to this day and there are at least three locations where he was laid to rest -- having died, it is rumored, from being poisoned by a jealous husband or boyfriend of one of his paramours. Ruth and I will be visiting at least one of these places to see if we can feel his bones speak to us from in the earth. This will help us build our spiritual mojo bag, which I will speak of in an upcoming blog.

Robert Johnson's life has particular interest to me as he is so symbolic of the nameless wanderer, mover with the wind, listener to the voice of his creative muse, a being in the moment, his life symbolized in many ways in the "0" Tarot card, "The Fool," the eternal nameless traveler who carries life's learned experiences over his shoulder from mountain to valley unencumbered. We travel in emulation of this representation and seek to let it move through us into the infinite expanse of our own time travel.

The hills are alive, with the sound of music...

Sound is all around us.

From the moment of our birth we are immersed in and join with the vibration of our world. It is a blessing. Or is it? The brain is selective in reasoning and choosing where its attention is placed because if not, we would quickly go crazy in the unlimited stimulation of our senses. It makes for an interesting exercise or meditation to stop for a moment and directly think about thinking: "This moment, what do I hear, or see, or smell, touch, taste, and feel?" Pick one and epistemize! (If you look this word up in the dictionary--epistemology--you'll see I've been a bit creative with the definition.) Everything is a noisemaker, no matter how quiet. We come out of the womb and the sound of our precious air passing through our vocal chords informs us and others that we have and can use our uniqueness to communicate with our environment. The mastery of this sound making sense joins consciously or not with the call of life's myriad questions, why are we here? What is our destiny? How do we manipulate these tools to bring pleasure and reason to ourselves and others?

Since the birth of man, back in the mists of antiquity, deep in the heart of Africa, we have used sound to discover ourselves and share with our tribes. If we travel back in time speculatively perhaps 30, 60, 100,000    years, the fact that we can create word sounds at all is a mouthful. Just try and have a conversation with man's best friend, the dog. Most probably we spoke with clicks, pops and other emotionally-related sounds that morphed in time into recognizable Subject, Verb, Object (S.V.O) combinations. Some linguists debate this order which might translate into something like this: The woman eats an elephant. Woman subject, eats the verb, and elephant, the object. Wait a minute! What does this have to do with music, you ask? Hold that thought... It could make sense in some way to switch this order: The elephant eats a woman. but nevertheless sound order brings with it meaning and this can be very critical in the order of things. Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! Linguists claim that just about all living and dead languages can be traced to this SVO combination. Now! It doesn't take such a big stretch to see music, our attempt to add rhythm to a world of drudgery, pain, pleasure, and the passing on of history without yet a written form. Perhaps it began simply as a call and response system. "Can you hear me?" "Yes I can." "I am speaking." "I am listening." "This is what I have learned." "We are listening and hearing." "This is how I'm feeling today." "We are hearing and appreciating." "Dinner is running over there." "OK, let's go after it!"

Let's move forward in time and 100 men are moving a 50-ton rectangular carved stone up an incline to place it in perfect position next to and above its mate: Call- "This huge stone is hard to move." Response-"This huge stone is hard to move." Call- "Push on 3 and it'll be in the groove...1,2,3, push!" Hey! Wait a minute. Add a few lines, change the rhythm and you get: "I don't know why I have to push these heavy stones? No, I don't know why I have to push these heavy stones? I'm pushin' em all day long now, and I'm feelin' it in my bones." This is sounding suspiciously close to a blues riff, eh?! As time progressed and man moved from a hunter gatherer society to that of agricultural, working in the fields tilling and toiling, it became natural to use our musical skills to ease the passing of time and share camaraderie. We find this rhythmic call and response today in many church services and in our music, particularly. Let's bring this all back to the blues after all, in the defined format of "field hollers" and the standard by which we hear these musical patterns expressed. For a fascinating and much more detailed description of how the blues musical pattern is expressed lyrically and in chord structure, please check out this link to hear some samples from Wikipedia. Is this fun or what?! Feel free to comment, correct, add, or muse. James Taggart, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and History at Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania wrote, "Humans have the ability to share experience through narratives that shape an emotional and cognitive understanding of our world, and empathy is one of the many complicated social and psychological processes shaped by that exchange." Our music and specifically the blues reinforces that social empathy that runs deep in humanity and is the glue that binds us to each other through time.

3 padres, 20 soldiers, 11 servants, 35 mules, 65 cattle, and 140 horses

One hundred and thirteen miles inside Arizona. Destination, Painted Rocks Petroglyphs. Our campsite, an ancient confluence of Indian and explorer trails over the centuries, a pile of rocks marked mostly with the signs, signals, and advertisements of human civilization, proclamations of good hunting, means of acquisition, weather, composition of home and travel habitation, sexual expression, animals and human culture. Later, western notations: Juan was here, 1785. Speaking of which, Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto visited here in 1795 on his travels from the San Francisco Bay Area down into southern California, across into Arizona and down deep into Mexico. We have traveled much of his route and will be leaving him here to continue across Arizona into New Mexico. As the title lists, Juan had quite a regiment and support team, including Indian guides, to allow him to pass through the many tribes and regions safely. It must have been an incredible logistical trek, and word of this strange group of horses with men on top must have created quite a stir at the time. One thing we can thank Juan for was, if his presence hadn't graced the continent, we would very possibly be speaking Russian, as their explorers had a very keen interest in the New World at the time. As it was, the Russian immigrants and claims only grabbed the extreme California coastal regions.

The temperature was an even 100 degrees when we rolled into the campground. No one was in sight camping, though two cars were parked in the day use area. We found an acceptable site close to the petroglyphs and restrooms, set up tent, cracked open the obligatory ice-cold champagne welcome-home bottle, and set up chairs in the shade of our car to wait out the sinking sun.

I went out to quickly explore a center section shade structure and see if there might be a BLM info guide. Sitting in the coolness of the shelter, two men, looking heavily sunburned, sat drinking cheap beer and invited me to partake. They worked about five miles away in a huge sun-powered electric generation station. I mean huge. It took about ten minutes of driving to cross one side of this plant, which was lined with uncountable numbers of parabolic mirrors focusing the sun into a closed-loop plasma heat collecting system that boiled water much like a nuclear plant takes the radiation heat to make steam. They told me that just being in the presence of the mirror system required a tolerance of close to 150-degree heat. The skin of one man was actually peeling off his face as he compiled a report of the day's activities. They said that the shade of the petroglyphs provided a respite to the grueling temperatures...that, and a lot of beer. Our conversation ratcheted up as they realized that I totally understood the technology and could carry on an intelligent discourse. We talked about the science of it, and they had a lot to say about the economics -- apparently, billions in taxpayer dollars that went to a Spanish company, as they were ahead of America in designing these systems. Their beer was cheap and although the conversation was interesting, the champagne and my sweetie called to me like a siren song.

The temperature dropped to a perfect 75 degrees and we cooked up a delicious stir-fry, then went out to photograph the rock inscriptions. We could see the impending light on the eastern horizon of a half moon to rise. A previous camper had left a healthy dose of firewood, and the celebration kicked up a notch. With music playing on our iPod speaker, we recreated the rituals of the ancient past, which came flooding back to our psyches and danced around the campfire, one hand waving free. In time, slumber and waning embers called us. I woke with a start for some reason and peered out of the tent, sensing something moving. Frozen in the moonlight was the shimmering silver coat of a coyote, staring directly at me with crystal eyes. We exchanged souls for a minute instant and I shushed a warning to avoid our camp table with its dinner remnants. The coyote performed a cartoon turn and disappeared in an instant...was it real? I got up, climbed outside, and surveyed the moonlit landscape. Everything was as it was supposed to be, except for a forgotten trash bag that had remained untouched to be put out of temptation. The night passed somnolently until morning revealed a gift on our camp table of one carefully crafted and placed artistic piece of remembrance scat!

Highway 25 Revisited

...after driving several hours through Central California in a geographic swoon, the vista became more and more desert-like, and the heat of mid-day penetrated through the car windows, baking us slowly. We turned of Highway 25 onto 33 and our world began to change. Ruth fell into a snooze and slowly, like the emergence of Joshua Trees across the landscape growing more common by the minute, were oil field pump jacks soon spreading as far as the eye could see. Connecting these strange creatures that look like the classic science department demonstration of the bird dipping its beak into water on steroids, were pipelines, valves, and hardware of every sort. Traveling down 101 south and Interstate 5 you get a taste of this huge oilfield called the Midway-Sunset, but Highway 25 bisects it eerily.

As beings on the crust of the earth we often forget what's below our feet and the geologic history that made it so. This whole area of South Central California has been under the influence of the San Andreas fault for millions of years with land being subducted and pulled north creating huge changes in the look of the continent. The entire San Joaquin Valley is such a rich agricultural region because it was a sediment-filled depression left over from a huge inland sea 65 million years ago. Holy cow, wrap your head around that time line! The base of this rich depression saw huge land shifts and what was once a sea. Over time the land pushed up and away, creating the mountain chains surrounding Los Angeles, most popularly, the San Gabriels, and the rich, hot, verdant worlds of the Mesozoic and Tertiary periods became subducted deep into the earth creating huge oil fields...not created by dead dinosaurs as my students often say! These oil fields that Ruth and I now cross over are the largest in America and to visualize the extraction of the ancient history of organic life to our daily use is to fall into an Alice in Wonderland time travel adventure.

Most traffic in this area consists of company pickup trucks, tankers, and heavy equipment. We pulled into the small town of McKittrick -- an oil company town, needless to say, and purchased our ice cooler refill at the McKittrick store. Waiting in the car for Ruth's emergence with ice, I saw the McKittrick Hotel, and property being sold with the same name. A couple of old guys crossed the barren street to purchase cigarettes looking drained of life and filled with alcohol. We pressed on to the Town of Taft.

The town of Taft is built directly over the oil fields. What do the people of Taft dream of a night with the subtle rumbles of earth's movement and the slow but steady suck of her ancient organic fluid from her womb? This town is frozen in time. Its stores and businesses are mostly shuttered. We spy two young girls cruising the street near the once-grand movie theater, lonely, seeking entertainment. An occasional hot muscle car passes by and I get the feeling of the 50s being played back in slow motion. I walk out and take a picture of the elaborate neon of the Fox Theater, mentally unstable as the curtain of time shifts me forward and back...the force of the blues is strong here...

6,650 miles in front and 350 behind...

Swerving off of Highway 101 south into Mission San Juan Bautista, the origin of the Hitchcock Film, Vertigo, we spend the night at Pinnacles National Park and narrowly avoided ravens stealing our chocolate chip cookie bag. The next day we tooled along Highway 25 south paralleling Interstate 5 like in a flying dream, road swerving and curving, lifting and falling, our Prius catching the movement of the road in tiny hillocks just enough to create a roller coaster and a gentle rocking cradle effect to put us into a peaceful meditative state. It brings to mind those classic car commercials from the 50s with boat-like Chrysler Imperials or Chevy Impalas cruising the back roads of America, camera car hidden in front to capture the looks of joy in the passengers faces as they ride into the golden area of America on the road. As we drive along it soon becomes apparent that our car is a siren call for all chipmunks to throw themselves toward our car from the fields on each side of the road in a desperate suicide test. They watch us coming from afar, standing like Meercats above their lair and then tear full speed in synchronous speed with our car approaching ALMOST in simultaneous time to then just miss the wheels.We are unwilling participants in the "playing chicken with chipmunks" game!

The road out of Hollister that we travel bears the scars and movement of a tumultuous earthquake-driven topography in every direction, like sheets and bedspread following a loving tussle. Deer, wild turkeys, hawks, occasional coyote catch our eyes, and of course the ubiquitous Jacob's Aermotor wind turbines that provided electric power or water pumping before the electrification of our country in the 30s and 40s across America, stand on every homestead. These turbines were considered the Cadillac of machines. Richard Byrd, the Antarctic explorer brought one to Antarctica in 1933 and it ran until 1955. Most remain a broken tower of memory but a few have been restored and spin with the constant wind that buffets our car as we spin along the road south.

Passing through Lake Elizabeth near San Bernardino we spied an unusual looking, huge several story building made of stone, with scores of choppers lined up in front. We looked at each other and instantly shouted, "We've got to stop here!" pulling over so fast that we almost created a rear end collision with a 58 Chevy pickup tailgating us. Motorcycle clubs with their bad boys and molls were everywhere, shiny chrome and deep-throated rumbling engines, however, didn't exactly reflect the thinning pony-tailed, fat-paunched, leathered hombres, and their ridden-very-hard-and-not-put-away "babes in back."  One "package" in  particular with 6-inch stiletto heels and black tights had put so much money into her "top end" that she ran out of money for the back 40...or 50! Thick black mascara on heavily-lidded eyes and a walk that set up a hush like the wind in a bamboo forest followed her as she passed.

Highway 61 Meets Route 66

OK, not literally. Be patient, we'll get there.

Our first stop was, of course, lunch; in beautiful downtown San Juan Bautista, the town that time forgot. Aside from the mission -- which actually charges admission, not surprised, but thank you, No, the Church already has more money than God ever dreamed of -- San Juan Bautista mainly consists of The Alameda, or Third Street, depending on which name you prefer. Antique shops line the streets, and charming little restaurants, most of which have lovely flower-bedecked patios where you can enjoy your pitcher of margaritas in the dappled shade. Which we did. With a rotary luncheon to our left and a bar mitzvah to our right. We might be allowed to have the blues.

After lunch, we continued down the hypnotic Highway 25 to The Pinnacles National Park. The place was deserted when we arrived, but by nightfall it was full. The noisiest neighbors we had, though, were the local sapsuckers, whose cheery "whack-up! whack-up! whack-up!" kept our slumbers light.

But, after that bucolic interlude, it was time for something different. In keeping with our vow to avoid interstates, we stuck to small back highways, curving through the yellow-brown hills of central California. Cows, apparently, like the blues. We had Howlin' Wolf on the stereo when we pulled over for a quick lunch next to a paddock. They all stood up, meandered over, and cocked their heads at the music. I guess cows have a right to have the blues, we all know where they're heading.

(And I must insert here that, having seen the newest Star Trek: Into Darkness, I can with all certainty say that, if you lose command of the Enterprise, even if you are James Tiberius Kirk, you can have the blues. JJ Abrams at least got that right; listen carefully.)

Missionaries. Vaqueros. Mormons. Gold! ?. And there, in a nutshell, is the history of San Bernardino, where we are staying overnight in the 1949 icon, The Wigwam Motel (http://wigwammotel.com), where every room is a wigwam. I know, it's a bit of a detour on our way to San Diego (San Diego? On the way to New Orleans? Be patient, all will be revealed), but sleeping in a wigwam is worth every mile. This motel was built to house travelers on The Mother Road, Route 66, and I often sigh for the days when such kitschy architecture was in vogue, where every place had its different personality, where you never knew *quite* what to expect. In a world of Days Inns and Marriotts and everything the same, this place is awesome, clean and comfortable, with a welcoming staff. All I can say is, come here and stay while you can. It's another piece of Americana that is all too few and far between.

Why the Blues, and Why the Blog?

Why the Blues?
     US Highway 61, The Blues Highway, rivals Route 66 as the most famous road in American music lore.
     Dozens of blues artists have recorded songs about Highway 61, guys like Sunnyland Slim, James “Son” Thomas, “Honeyboy” Edwards, Big Joe Williams, Joe McCoy, Charlie Musselwhite, Johnny Young, Eddie Burns, and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Even Bob Dylan paid tribute.
     For every artist who wrote a song about it, even more of them traveled this storied highway, singing the blues as they went. Robert Johnson died and is buried just about in sight of it. It was at the famed Crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 that he sold his soul to the Devil for the chance to be a great bluesman. I think Johnson got the best part of the deal.

Why the Blog?
     Simple. We want to hear the blues, live the blues, travel the blues, and then share the blues. From the raggediest juke joint to the tinniest-sounding honky tonk, from Mississippi sharecropper cabins to the shiny, sophisticated clubs of Saint Louis and Chicago, from the Delta to the big city, we're spending the summer in search of the blues. 
     Who has the blues? Why do they have the blues? How do you get the blues? And why would you want them? You've already read some of Ben's reporting on that, but there's more.
     If we throw in a review from time to time of the local BBQ joints, diners, motels, and laundromats along the way, you'll understand. It's all part of the search.
     Recorder is ON, laptops are CHARGED, Prius is GASSED UP -- let's go get The Blues. 

Dangerous adventure

It has been spoken and sung by our African American brothers and sisters that the roots of the blues derives from repression, deprivation, pain in relationship, and overall struggle in life, a means of undergound communication of a mindset of mutual recognition in a sea of troubles. Traveling in and with the blues has been an integral part of human expression shaping the wave of music we enjoy today as it has been sung from the savannas of Africa, chained in the holds of slave ships, to the back breaking toil on land in the service of others, on to the towns and cities wherever work, opportunity, or the lack of, arises. Blues is the virus of deep human emotion passed from one to another both bonding and releasing us to and from each other on life's journeys.

So Ruth and I are setting out on a Gypsy Journey, a dangerous adventure in search of the blues around America with a focus on the south to north movement of the origins of this music and the people who were its mouthpiece up along and near highway 61 to Chicago. But the blues may be found  hidden or exposed throughout the arteries of this nation. We are traveling in search of its presence.

Who can have the blues? What does it mean? How can the color blue, so calming and peaceful, so popular, connote such pain and emotion? Our preliminary discussions have been revealing and humorous: If you drive an old run down Cadillac or Buick you can have the blues. We are driving a Prius. If you have a regular job you can't have the blues. We are steady workers. If you don't have enough money to pay your house rent, you can have the blues. We make regular mortgage payments. If you are in a stable relationship you can't have the blues. We are happily connected long term. This is dangerous territory here! You can have the blues on some street corners, but not in a mall; probably not an airport, but--most definitely--in a train or bus station. The blues thrives in rainy weather, the sun pushes it away. We have some serious exploration and research in our quest to come.

The days grow short now until we depart. Our plans have been months in the making, reading history, watching videos of the roots of the blues such as Martin Scorsese's,The Blues, numerous other titles on the history of Juke Joints, Highway 61, Robert Johnson , Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and more, biopics. We're staging our car for the several months ahead, traveling light which is another companion of the blues. For months, Ruth and I have plotted out a route, with many possible side branches, around the US and Canada, and Ruth will shortly compile this into a driving recipe book for adventure. We've prepped camera and sound gear with days of blues musical montage to support the hours to be spent watching the roads stream past our windows, and the country slowly, magically, changing form around us.