Traveling Music: Day 263

A sort of fairy tale

Adding a reading of this one just for the heck of it.

Every story starts somewhere, at least in the telling.

The trouble with any story worth its salt—one that has a purpose, a reason to be told, one that has a shot at reaching a reader in a way that hits them where they live and then lingers, leaves them with a little something more than they had, something as ephemeral as an image that seeps into consciousness and blurs the line between an overheard story and a memory of one's own, or something as solid and material as the rock I carry in my purse, a gift from a fellow traveler whose path parted ways with mine—any story that is pulled from the morass of life, brushed off, smoothed out, and told becomes a separate thing: it is not life; it is a story about life.

As such, as separate, a story has to begin. And in order for that story to mean something, in order for it to become more than the sum of events, more than the sum of its parts, it has to be extracted from the ceaseless wash of experience, senseless disaster, fortuitous chance. A story cannot be encyclopedic; it has to be selective, and someone has to select that handful of things from what happened, what is happening, what could yet happen, what won't, what will. The teller has to tease the story out of the tangled mess of all that is and set it aside so that it can be seen.

There's a loneliness to stories, then, because of the way they're made. They step outside of the onslaught of experience and become not what you felt but what you hear, what you know, what you remember and see; they become the way we find meaning, make sense, even if not very much.

Once the story steps out of the world, it has no way back in.

Of course, that's true of a story's teller, as well.  

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I'm traveling right now, working on a series of profiles about Americans during the runup to the presidential election. Everywhere I go, everywhere I turn, I am faced with a reminder that any one story is both separate from and hopelessly bound up with all the stories that give rise to it. Every single story—about a place or a person or a moment in time—is inextricably tied to all the stories that precede the one story you're trying to tell.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been tinkering with the second FAQ, which will be—if I ever quit tinkering—about sex. But like everything else, the subject of that piece ties back to another subject, which leads in turn to a whole 'nother subject, and that's the whole trouble with stories: they do not exist in the abstract.

And I've been trying to wrap up that piece about sex—which of course is also about gender, and bodies, and ownership, and autonomy, and safety, and territory, and rights, and perception, and law—in a particular way. I want to tell the story it so it's funny, so it's light.

But it's been kind of a busy week in news of women being tortured and murdered worldwide, and yet another violent global backlash against women is well underway, and while I would ordinarily power through my own unease and sorrow about the way the world is and just post a funny FAQ about hooking up on the road, when I opened the news this morning and read that a woman who was alive and well and competing in the Paris Olympics just a few weeks ago had died of injuries pursuant to having been doused with gasoline and set on fire by her partner, in a dispute over property, I was reduced to tears, not for the first time, not even for the first time this week, and once again there is no way to bridge this gap between those of you who know what I'm talking about all too well and those of you who are starting to mutter not all men other than story, and the stories I have up my sleeve on this subject aren't funny.

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This entire Going Solo project—the micro and the macro, the journey of one person into and over and through a nation of millions, each of whose journey connects and intersects, in so many more ways that we are often aware, with every other one—is about America.

Is about bodies. Is about property, territory, ownership, autonomy, liberty, freedom, accountability, state and nation, other and self. These things, like stories, do not exist in the abstract; they are intricately interconnected.

But there is no way to bridge the divide between what I perceive of the world and what someone else perceives besides story. And story does not close that gap. It does not resolve the distance, or the pain and alienation that distance creates. It allows us, at best, to traverse it, to travel—sometimes, when we are willing, and not always even then—across the chasm that separates one person’s experience from the next, to sit with one another a moment and try to listen, try to hear.

There is no way to disentangle the liberty to which I believe I am entitled from that of the person who believes their liberty includes the right to curtail my own.

There is no way to respond to the man who tells me while I'm sitting in the passenger seat of his truck that women are totally overreacting to the "dangers" they perceive in the world. It's sad, he tells me, that women are so emotional that they let their anxieties get the best of them. He himself has traveled the whole world and never once had a problem.

I could tell him a story. But I don't. I say, We may have different perspectives on this.

And he could acknowledge the obviousness of my statement. But he doesn't. He presses me. What are you even worried about? he asks. This is the safest nation in the world.

I look out at the sunset he's driven me to see—taking a circuitous route, not answering questions, doubling back for no reason, cutting through fields, turning down unmarked roads, trying to get me to put away my phone—and I say, It is a very safe nation for some people, yes.

Who isn't it safe for? he asks, and laughs, and turns off the truck, and drops the keys where I can't reach them. I mean, look at this! It's beautiful. We're here. You're safe with me. What are you so afraid of?

I say, There's a distinction between being afraid and being aware.

Then what's with that? He nods at my belt.

That's for hiking. Bobcats, bears.

Then why don't you put it away? he teases, because it's fucking hilarious when a man tells you to disarm yourself in a remote location on an unmarked road. I mean, suppose you were being assaulted, he adds, moving the console between us out of the way. Hypothetically. You know that'd just be used against you.

Oh, for sure, I say. I wouldn't shoot you at this range. I gesture around the interior of the truck cab. Your brains would be everywhere.

He stops smiling.

So like if I was being assaulted, I continue. Hypothetically, right? I definitely wouldn't shoot you. I'd kill you with my hands.

The dark begins to fall.

Where are we? I finally ask.

Why does it matter?

To me? It doesn't, I say. It matters to my friends who check on me when I tell them I'm going out. I shrug. You know. Women are super emotional and anxious for no reason.

The dashboard light clicks off.

GPS doesn't work out here, he says. They don't have your location.

They don't need my location, I say. They have your plates and home address.

The engine ticks.

I open the door.

Where are you going? he calls. You don't even know where we are.

We're a mile east of the restaurant, I say, stepping onto the running board and jumping down. You drove in a circle.

I shut the door. The truck starts up.

A flurry of bats swoops into the beam of his headlights.

Gravel flies, the truck tears out of the lot, and he's gone.

---

It's late. I'm sitting in the Scamp at a truck stop. I didn't bother to unhitch, so the camper shimmies every time a semi rushes by.

The U.S.—and the world—are in the throes of a painful upheaval that will fundamentally affect us all. But large-scale social and cultural upheaval play out, for the most part, in the microcosm of each life; or at least that is where that change is most immediately felt.

The change at work in this country has been a long time in coming. It’s been building, rumbling beneath our feet, and that seismic shifting has set something in motion that will alter our collective and our private lives for good.

I'm half inclined to go into the truck stop, drop a quarter in the old-school fortune telling machine, and ask what future it foresees. The answer might tell me where this story ends; I honestly don't know.

And I don't know what I'll do once we find out. For me, I suppose, there are only so many choices. Stay or go. Run or hide. Fight or flight.

I mean, let's be honest. Freeze was never an option. I'm no good at holding still.

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