Hollow Tree hits the road

Wednesday, October 25 2006 23:09:54
[10-25-2006][23:10:05]

I'm packing as I write this. My laptop is nestled in a pile of laundered but unfolded clothes. It's cold, I'm tired and my room is too cluttered to operate in. I've got to fold these clothes and get them packed, along with a few other tasks, before the car leaves at 12:00 noon tomorrow. Myself and the personnel of the Eyelash Carpets' exteneded band are headed down to New Orleans to play at the Voodoo Fest on Sunday, at approximately 11:00 am. I just spent the last 7 nights in a row working the midnight shift at my Job, so I haven't really had a chance to prepare. I'm not nearly as exhausted as I expected to be. I definitely wouldn't mind being a little more rested and prepared, though.

In any event, I'm going, along with the rest of the crew. I'll introduce the others when I'm in a better frame of mind. At the moment I just want to get something on the web so that I'll feel committed to blogging during my travels. Here's my plan: I'm going to post at least once a day while we're on the road. We'll be traveling from Oct. 26 until, Nov.2, on which day I will travel on my own to an undisclosed location, at which place I have no firm plans. During that time I will try to write extensively and post the best of it at the Agnostic Jihad website. As usual, I will be applying my experimental design principles to what I write, and what I do: 1.) Incorporate the situation 2.) Try new things 3.) Art as data; Data as art. 4.) Design principle X and of course, everyone's favorite 5.) Subvert.

I expect that many of my posts will be long-winded and digressive. Others will be terse and dry. I will post about anything that interests me, which is why I will be posting to the Agnostic Jihad site. I will try to write as many stories as possible, but I also may write occasinally in an essay style that many will find pompous. It's hard to write an essay that doesn't sound pompous. In fact the very idea of writing an essay itself is pompous. It's easier than writing a narrative, though. And I'm lazy.

Not everything I post will be finished, or make any kind of point. But I tell you, I'll be down in New Orleans with a large group of maladjusted adults from a wide variety of backgrounds. There's seven of us, all told. No one specific is in charge. No of us has any sense of responsibility, as far as I can tell. No, that's harsh. There's a couple of us who have a sense of responsibility, but we disdain it.

All the same, just the fact that we will be in New Orleans will provide endless chances for storytelling. I haven't been down there since before the storm. New Orleans was a mental asylum in the form of a city even then. One of my favorite legends about the town involves one of Bill Clinton's Secret Service agents turning up dead in a housing project down there. The agent had gone into the projects looking for a bag of weed, acording to the story, and someone shot him dead. I don't know whether that story's true, but it could be.

Now, after massive destruction to the city's infrastructure and a radical reorganization of its population, chaos and desperation have been injected into the mental illness. Or so I would assume. The crime staticstics are unknown, because the polltakers keep getting mugged. Newspapers and residents in the city have reported horrific tales of unrestrained slaughter and plundering. However, local newspapers and residents have always had a deserved reputation for magnifying the truth. Survival is a point of pride in New Orleans, because New Orleans is a city of death. And the bigger the death is, the more pride can be taken in not dying.

None of us will probably die. I'm more worried about losing my laptop. I've purchased a lock for the thing, but a lock is no good in an armed robbery. If I stop blogging abruptly, I may have been robbed.

That probably won't happen either. Life never matches up to my anxieties. I can assure you, though, that interesting things will happen to us while we're down there, and I will do my best to relate these situations to you in an entertaining way.

Tune in tomorrow, I suppose. And wish me luck.

Now to pack.