The trip was an 11-day zig-zag across the US in the summer of 2002. I started off in Boston, and picked up Yusuke in Connecticut. We made it to DC by 3 am July 3/4, and left at 3pm (july 4) the next day. "Where do you want to go?" Yusuke asked. We looked at a map and decided on New Orleans. Two days later we watched men sweep the morning trash on Bourbon Street and pulled out the map again. From Louisiana we drove north through parts of Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, etc. and ended up banking a left at Des Moines, Iowa. We headed west through the Badlands, SD until we hit Yellowstone. We busted south again until we hit the Grand Canyon. We hit Vegas on a Saturday night, and the next day we drove up the valley-side of California. All-in-all we set foot in about thirty states, and eight national parks. Between us, we shot over 20 rolls of film and 2 hours of video. I kept a journal throughout the trip, and later cut a short video out of the footage. Here are some of the entries and photos.
7/7/2002
"Locked in this grid like a 2Pac tale," Common just chanted as I speed through the Mississippi night with cotton fields on both sides and the ghosts of my ancestors floating somewhere above. We speed past the town where my father was born as the song, "Stolen Moments" begins and my heart beats in my throat. Even at 2 a.m. (1 a.m. Local time) and just having declared myself sleepy, these fields lining the arrow-straight stretches of highway 61 stir something that will perhaps never settle inside of me, and I'm sure millions of children of Africa who have grown up American (even if my blood is diluted). The fields sit pitch Black to either side, and only far-off lights on factory buildings tell of their size. As cars pass in the opposite direction, their headlamps sometimes give further glimpse into the abyss of American commerce, history, and shame that makes my hands grow tense even as I replay one of my favorite songs, or maybe that's the point. Maybe the soul that stirs my pen is the same that pumps through the less than adequate speakers in my car.
Earlier this night we drove past a country bar named "Renegades," earlier than that even, we drove past another country bar whose full parking lot held not one car, and one minivan. The pickup trucks that crammed the lot and no doubt their owners whose elbows must've crowded the bar inside are part of that same southern soul, that same stirring. In a land where smooth-voiced, trained radio deejays pronounce the "h" in the word 'vehicle,' and homes are sold by the side of the road on the strength of their brand name, and bugstains accumulate on windshields like pickup trucks in the parking lots of roadside bars, I think of everything different that I know.
Driving through a small truck-stop town I saw two young teenage Brothers with nothing to do on a Saturday night, and dressed in the style of someone who might appear in a "dirty south" Rap video. Minutes later we pass a gas station that sells fried chicken, or is it the other way around? The sign simply reads "Fried Chicken" and the marquis reads prices for a 2-piece, 3-piece, and 4-piece instead of prices for Regular, Plus, and Super. Five minutes later, black expanses of cotton float by again. "Locked in this grid like a 2Pac tale," something akin to how Yusuke and I feel reaching for our legs every few seconds trying to figure out how many of these mosquito bites are real. Scratching for an elusive itch, driving past a town called Bobo on a road where passing cars almost never lower their high-beams.
me and sukes in Mississippi two days earlier
