Today I miss the desert. I keep trying to write lyrics about it, but somehow I can't make something so vast and empty and silent and full of tiny sharp movements and smooth hot surfaces fit into a pop song.
(I'll bet Ben Gibbard could do it. Speaking of whom, Death Cab's new EP The Open Door is totally worth a spin.) This must be why it was so difficult to find music that seemed to fit the scenery as we drove further into California and further away from the sweet Pacific. Bob Dylan's Honest With Me is perfect. It was played on repeat for much of the drive between San Diego and Indio. And yes it's true: Joshua Tree National Park is indeed the right setting for, y'know, The Joshua Tree.
Forget pop lyrics, even poetry seems too simple to capture the interplay between your inner self and the outer space that is the desert. Somehow all that pure heat bypasses the usual clutter and burns through the layers of insulation that allow you to avoid the bare bones of yourself most days.
And so you are left in the quiet howling wide-open, having the rare experience of facing your own mind.
And there is nowhere to run.
There is only yourself.
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