Blog of Nambot

Dear Blog,

Today was my first day back to work after being holed up with the flu for an entire week. Being sick and awake sucks, but dreaming when you're sick is awesome. There's really no reason to be awake unless you're eating. Here's one of the dreams I had:

There was a huge hike going on in my hometown alongside the south fork of the Yuba River. If you've never been to the Yuba, google it. Even uncoordinated people who confront moving bodies of water with extreme awkwardness or hate the outdoors completely will make an exception for this river. It sits at the bottom of a steep canyon lined with huge pine trees. Rocks jut out everywhere and the rapids kill thrill-seeking tourists a lot, but most people go to the river to lay around. The water is clean and clear, warm in the summer, deep in some places, and it runs over gigantic granite boulders. There are tall slate cliffs wherever the surrounding mountains are steep, and the rocks and the canyon shrink as the river heads toward the Sacramento Valley. All in all, it's a good place to spend every waking hour of your life when you don't absolutely have to be somewhere else.

Annnyway... in the dream, I was wading in the river during this hike. All kinds of people, kids, old folks, suburbanites, etc., were hopping over rocks on their way downstream. Everybody was wearing visors, aqua socks, and numbers like marathon runners. They were sponsored by their friends and neighbors, and were raising money for the Sierra Club or something. The finish line was at Bridgeport, and there was a terrible BBQ and ridiculous prizes awaiting the hikers. Standing waist deep in the water, I was totally annoyed with these interlopers. In my dream I was a "riverist," and it was my job to keep all of the rocks in the river organized. This seems pretty impractical, but most days I looked out for precariously balanced rocks and settled them into stationary positions. Imbalance and disorganization might be the result of interlopers, but was usually caused by strong storms that raised the water level and pushed the rocks around. I'd figure out which large rocks had shifted with the crazy currents, and try to resettle them in safe places where they wouldn't tip over and smash people. I was out on the day of the hike because the traffic was causing debris and rocks to fall into the river, and I was there to keep an eye on things. I kept yelling at people, telling them to take it easy and be a little lighter on their feet. I enjoyed giving everyone a hard time.

The End.

Dear Blog,

1. While I was riding my bike home from work on Bowery tonight, I accidentally pulled up beside this little chinatown bus full of passengers. Out of nowhere a man stepped out from between parked cars and stood right in front of me with one arm in the air. Simultaneously, the bus driver slowed the bus down, reached across the passenger seat, and stretched his arm through the open window. The two men appeared to be hi-fiving at a very inopportune moment for me. Instead of slapping hands, the bus driver passed something down to the man on the street that was about the size of my shoe and turned out to be... a wad of cash big enough to buy two pet dolphins, and a 4Runner.

2. Instead of riding directly home, I took a little jaunt through Prospect Park where I saw a woman walking a dog that was wearing what appeared to be a fiber optic light-up collar. Awesome! The sun had just set, so the dog was totally tricked out and very visible compared to other dogs. The dog's owner set it loose in the long valley at the north end of the park. As soon as it was off-leash, the dog bolted out into the night, racing through the trees like a little sparkly torpedo. It was the raddest.

3. A little Bonnie Tyler for you, oh blog reader, because your happiness is important to me. Also, if you have free moment, watch from 1:20 to 1:35 a few times in a row. That part where Bonnie disappears for a second is almost unbearable! OMG I cannot stop watching it:

Today I was so homesick for California that I used google street view to navigate from my parents house to my high school.

Hipsters take heed! Peek out from beneath your greasy side-part for a few seconds to observe the mini-movement before you that’s fraught with drinking and kicking things. Still not big enough to be called a scene, country music is coming from bars, little venues, and country fucks who found their way out of the proverbial sticks. (As a side note, this ramble is courtesy of Animal Collective, the not-country band who have an album named Country Fuck, and the The Felice Brothers, both of whom appeared at the All Points West music festival yesterday)

Remember, perhaps, where you came from, and I don’t mean Oberlin or Purchase. Think back a little farther, if you can bear it, to the time before college when you were trapped in your parent’s house in ruralville. Remember how you worked day and night at the only movie theater or record store in town so that you could afford the gas that kept you mobile and away from the clutches of your nuclear family? You fled to the library, the outdoors, some backwoods rave, and into the arms of some atheist, some queer, and the most blue-blooded classmates you could find. On the weekends, you and your friends drove two hours to get to a red state punk rock dungeon in Omaha, Asheville, Kansas City, Gainesville, Columbus, Denver, Austin, Missoula, or even Portland(s), Sacramento, or (god forbid) Salt Lake City. Is it any wonder that you’re playing in a noise band and hiding behind your hair in Brooklyn? Yet you somehow eventually discovered singers your rural yuppie parents might have avoided like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Too often associated with the Right, so much country music was made for folks who never trusted the establishment and didn't like getting dressed up (leather notwithstanding).

I’d like to suggest that this inclination to shit-kick isn’t incidental, and that country fucks should mobilize, recognize their escape from conservatism and talk about their complicated roots. Juggling the politics of radio play and popular music, the country stars that make music that’s still danceable are heroic to me. In his own way Johnny Cash somehow managed to criticize the prison industrial complex before Angela Davis. Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton spent (and continue to spend) much of their careers speaking directly to women in their kitchens about the male dominance that put them there, giving them a few tools to get out.

I’d also like to encourage everybody who relates to a rural-escapee mentality but feels suburban to look over your family history. How many church-going relatives do you have? Did your parents fail to mention that your great-grandparents were from Louisiana? Are they still in contact with those second cousins in Georgia, or have they “lost touch” since mom n’ dad planted themselves firmly in the middle class? You can get the fuck out of the country, but you can’t get the country…