Scrolling

Kerouac’s masterwork, now owned by one of the billionaires profiting from the CTE industry known as the National Football League, is called “The Scroll”.  Taped together, the pages run 120 feet.  Single-spaced and without paragraph breaks, “The Scroll” became On The Road, novelizing a series of road trips in the jazz infused mid-century era.

Heading west this morning, there will be ample jazz, a yet indeterminate number of roads and a mid-century end point.  But the 2,000+ miles ahead will not end in 120 feet of Beat Generation narrative.  It will end with a vote, some handshakes and a new pair of eyes, ears and hands in Seaside.  Before the hands, head and mouth start to do any official work in January, two December weeks in Seaside will have the eyes and ears open to the cast and stagecraft of the largest city, with the greatest potential, on the Monterey peninsula coast.  Oh, and I need to find somewhere to sleep at night.   

Kerouac had his notebooks.  I’ll have my Macbook, mostly to finish up a final paper for a Johns Hopkins professor to wonder about, edited on roads running through Wichita, Amarillo, Flagstaff and Bakersfield.  Taking the southern route to avoid snow.  And - I hear – there’s a canyon just north of Flagstaff that’s grand.  I’ll be there at dawn Wednesday, and let you know.    

It’s been grand in Davenport, and now life scrolls on.  Edited by others, interpreted by others still, it was curious to read the tea leaves strained by those too quick on the draw to talk face to face or too timid to venture beyond their comfort zone.  Not at all curious was the goodwill of compatriots at Ragged Records.  There’s a metaphor somewhere in fellow vinyl sifters offering thanks for good efforts in Davenport, and railing at the future.  It’s an Apple Music / Spotify world, and we’re flipping through album stacks and looking for sonic gold in the $1 eight-track bin.  Thanks for the kind words.  Go stick it to the man. 

The road beckons as it does. Kerouac viewed each point along it as a completely new beginning, writing “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”  I’m not so sure about that, since each spacetime point has its own universe circling round it.  I prefer the connectedness of everything we know is behind us, and everything we don’t is ahead of us. 

See you out there.