The Electric State

My recent bike trip across America, mostly on Route 66, hit me on several fronts. It left several important impressions. One of the largest was how monstrous, how devouring, how fast and electric is the “modern” world - leaving behind in ruins so much.

I thought about the art of Simon Stalenhag as I cycled through, one after the next, forgotten towns, by-passed by the zooming, humming Interstates. Stalenhag’s art is haunting and captures what I felt well. I composed this poem, narration overlayed on this celebration of his work.

I felt on many days, as if a time-traveler, venturing back in time, cycling through a landscape once full of activity, pride, glory but now lost to a destructive war waged on its soul. Now, all that was left were old, rotting, abandoned buildings. Relics and the wreckage of the “modern” with its speed, silvery steel and electric airs.

Route 66 is both a symbol of our modern world’s disregard for its heritage, its memoryless advance into the polluted haze of an artificial future and its destructive obsession - that of a devouring worm, destroying everything in its path as it turns nature and the natural world into money.

It was sad. Sadder too, the people I talked to, living among the ruins. Proud people. Dignified. But locked out of the modern “progress”, like wild street dogs living in the shadows. Confined to endless stripmalls of fast food places, Dollar stores, gas stations and Walmarts littering the outskirts of towns. Or just neglected, left to rot, not even worthy of attention, concern, care.

As I rode along the interstate (for often in the West, you have to, Route 66 was simply paved over in many parts) - the roadkill was emblematic of the modern I’m describing. I couldn’t cycle more than a mile without fresh roadkill - of all kinds. Deer, dogs, wolves, coyotes, eagles, possums, armadillos, cats, coons, snakes, rabbits …

But the biggest thing being killed by “the modern” was and is our connection to each other as we race into a headless future. A future eating up the natural world which includes our own souls and connection to the organic, the natural, the divine.

Amboy, Calico, Plano, Texola, Tucumcari … I sing your body electric.

The Electric State

Outside, it is always raining
softly, incessantly.

The road into town
is seldom traveled anymore.
Few drive. There's no need.

The old buildings
stubbornly still standing
remind us of a time before
The Electric State
and the Great Reckoning.

Now, we live electric
and don't have to suffer
the solitary, poor, nasty
brutish and short outside.

The outside world has been
tamed, subdued, conquered, cured
and immaculately electrified.

Sure, there are some -
"Hangeroners", we call them,
who hide outside and cause trouble
but the rest of us are happy;
lovingly watched over
by machines of electric grace.

Come on in, out of the rain!
Join us.

Get electrified!