Born To Run Or, Whither Goest Thou, America, In Thy Shiny Car in the Night?

When I was eighteen, I conjured up this dream and it’s been rattling away in the recesses of my mind ever since.

You grow up listening to Springsteen and it messes you up. Especially if you’ve got wild horses thrashing around in your blood.

Those ponies make it tough for a girl to sit still and stay in one place for too long.

My dream is simple – I want to climb into an old pick-up truck (faded red, answers to the name ‘Charlie’), drive across the country and document a musical history of the United States.

I would stop in all 48 mainland states, take pictures, talk to people, visit landmarks, eat the food and write about all the music enriching the soil of this great land of ours.

In Mississippi, I go down to the Crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil and I’d spend the night in some smoky bar listening to grizzled old bluesmen leaving bloodstains on their fretboards.

I’d visit Lake Bird Lake in Austin and leave some real fat Ernie Ball strings and a pack of Fender picks for Stevie Ray – the entire excursion fueled by dirty, gritty blues, Tex-Mex food and big-ass margaritas on the rocks.

I fell in love with New York City the first time I visited and part of my heart will always belong to the place where punk and hip hop crash and rumble like runaway subway trains.

I’d spend a couple of weeks in Memphis just wandering around trying to inhale as much as I could because my God, this is the holy land. The Damascus of music where both the blues and rock ‘n roll were born. The home of Sun Studios and Stax Records and Graceland and the Gibson guitar factory. Oh and I would eat the hell out of some barbecue. Sorry, Mom but I can’t be in Memphis writing about music and not house some barbecue – sweet, spicy, sticky fingers, a cold beer and a warm biscuit to mop it all up.

It’s kinda cliched, right? Any teenager who’s read On The Road by Jack Kerouac longs to feel like a million dollars and go adventuring into that crazy American night.

Only, I’ve never read On The Road.

I just got into my car one day and discovered I’d rather be driving in the sunshine than doing anything else.

Logically, it is a terrible idea.

I have an awful sense of direction, I’m entirely too trusting and I know nothing about car maintenance.

For example, last weekend I went to get an oil change. I noticed they were running a special for a fuel injection cleaning, so I inquired about it:

Me: I don’t know if I need an fuel injection cleaning.
Lady at Counter: When was the last time you had one?
Me: I don’t know.
Lady at Counter: How old’s your car?
Me: A 2004? A 2005?
Lady at Counter: Honey, do you know what a fuel injector is?
Me: No…
Lady at Counter (thinking): Dear God, where is your adult? Why are you here unsupervised? Where is the grown-up responsible for you, you idiotic little halfling baby child?
Me (thinking): I might not know what a fuel injector is but I know what a split goddamn infinitive is, so how about you cut me some slack, lady? Just make the Maintenance Required light go away!

Obviously, I am the last girl that should go on a solo cross-country road trip.

But every now and then, I’ll be driving down a straight and lonely road on a warm day – breeze tangling my hair, music turned up entirely loud – and I think how it would be so easy to just keep going.

I even outlined a plan for it:

Reason #4677 it’s a terrible idea for me to embark on this endeavor – who develops a plan with magic markers, photographs from Rolling Stone and glitter? What, kid? You’ve never heard of a map? You can get them for free!

Prince and The Replacements in Minnesota, Stevie Ray and ZZ Top in Texas, Elvis and BB King in Memphis, Motown and Iggy in Detroit, Bruce in Jersey — Anywhere the music I loved happened, I would go…and I love a lot of music so this is going to be a long trip.

I haven’t done it yet (obviously) but I’m always tracing around the periphery of this dream. Every time I get into my car, there’s this tiny splinter of hope. This barely perceptible shiver of a sliver that maybe today is the day I get in, turn up the music, roll down the windows and just keep going.

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road

Baby, We Were Born To Run Or, Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Your mom probably has a nickname for you, right? Something endearing like Munchkin, Pumpkin or Boo Boo.

Yeah, my mom’s nicknames for me aren’t so much adorable as they are uncomfortably honest.

For the most part, she calls me Jemmy — a simple derivation of my given name — but every now and then, she’ll refer to me by one of the following:

- Whoori Gheli
- Rabari

Ah, the joys of having an ethnic mother that can enunciate the shit out of guttural languages.

I’ve been hearing the former for the majority of my life and had no idea what the hell it actually meant until about five years ago when my aunt informed me that it’s basically slang for ‘Escaped Mental Patient with Unkempt Hair.’

Right then.

The latter refers to Indian nomads who were essentially considered outsiders by the rest of society. Wanderers who drifted from pasture to pasture, never really settling down roots or calling any one place home (also, I’m pretty sure Mom considers them to be filthy because they associate with animals. Woe betide you if you bring a mangy cur into that lady’s house).

Obviously, the former is straight-up slander, but Rabari? That’s pretty accurate.

No, not the ‘Jemmy is filth-encrusted’ part, but the wandering bit.

I wandered up the I-95 Corridor because I fell in love with a guy I met on the internet when I was fifteen and I’m hoping to wander clear across the country to Los Angeles — a city I’ve wanted to live in since I was a little kid because that’s the city where movies and television shows are made. The city where stories become real life and real life becomes a story worth telling.

Los Angelenos — I know, I know. Your traffic is atrocious as is your smog. You have no NFL team and your pizza apparently sucks, but I don’t care. Your city is essentially the epitome of manifest destiny and the American Dream.

You go west, young man. You hitch your wagon to the brightest damn star you can find and you go searching for your own personal American Dream. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your ancestors — brave souls who forged ahead in search of a better life, Their blood flows through your veins and if they could do it, so can you.

And damn it, I’m going to. No retreat, baby. No surrender.

P.S. – Seriously, Mom? Seriously? Why do you think I’m like Pigpen from Peanuts? Because I’m not! I smell like roses, lemon and blackcurrant! I have an almost crippling dependence on my flat-iron! I can assure you with resolute certainty that I am not the filth-encrusted street urchin you envision me to be.

Show Me Your Friends and I Tell You Who You Are Or, Put Me On A Plane, Fly Me To Anywhere…

D: I want to go to Paris and eat my weight in bread and creme brulee
J: And this is why you’re one of my best friends. Because you understand what’s truly important in life. Have you seen Amelie? If not, you have to. It’s so cute and will make you lust for Paris even more.
D: I’m afraid if I see that movie, I might go apeshit and buy a ticket.

Life Goal #4678421: Go apeshit and travel with D.