U.S.A.

Hot Springs or Busk: Chapter XII (gear up)

So, i’m about to embark on a 48-state odyssey, a soul-searching safari through the busking back alleys and dive bar stages of this fragmented nation. It’s equal parts Jack Kerouac’s road trip fever dream and John Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl desperation, with a healthy dose of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzoid paranoia thrown in for good measure. But unlike those literary giants, i gotta make this whole operation mobile and self-sufficient. Buckle up, buttercup, because this ain’t your daddy’s garage band tour.

First up, the performance arsenal. Picture a traveling minstrel’s grand-slam menu – a trusty ax (a Martin cutaway dreadnaught) and a simple throne for belting out ballads of pathos. But there’s more to this minstrel show than meets the eye. I’ve got a Fender amp the size of a teacup poodle with built-in effects processing, putting the power of a mini-concert at my fingertips. And for the classier gigs (if such things exist for a homeless troubadour), a JBL PA system that rises like a sonic cobra ready to unleash a shimmering monsoon upon an unsuspecting happy hour.

All this wonderful noise requires some serious behind-the-scenes wrangling. Enter the trusty dude bag, a bottomless pit of cables and connectors that would make MacGyver wink and smile. It’s got enough three-pin grounded XLR to rewire Las Vegas and enough adapters to plug into a Lalapalooza (if those still exist). Rosinante, my trusty Ford Transit decked out with the “Wilma” package (thanks, Wayfarer Vans!), swallows this technological menagerie whole, with room left over for a week’s worth of dirty laundry (hey, not in it for the glamour).

But this ain’t just an earthbound cosmic studio on wheels, loopers. This is a multimedia exploration of the American psyche, a gonzo anthropological expedition into the seat of the heartland. To capture the soul of the unraveling nation, i need a decent computer, a field recording rig worthy of an NPR documentary, and a recording studio sophisticated enough to produce a double-album of social unrest (thanks, ProTools).

Now, the real meat and potatoes of any odyssey – the creature comforts. Forget five-star hotels and room service. Rosinante doubles as a rolling studio apartment, complete with a climate-controlled oasis to keep this digital nomad from succumbing to heatstroke or hallucinations. A two-burner propane stove fueled by those ubiquitous Coleman canisters (bless their portable hearts) takes care of culinary creations, while a power-sipping fridge keeps the cheese from achieving sentience. Let’s not forget the pièce de résistance – an ice chest that doubles as an air conditioner. No freon here, folks, just good old-fashioned heat exchange technology and the sweet embrace of icy breeze (big ups to Icy Breeze, tell ’em Ronnie Hays sent ya). When the nights get frosty, a propane heater with a programmable thermostat (courtesy of Wayfarer Vans, you beautiful bastards) ensures mornings aren’t a teeth-chattering affair.

But the true star of the power show is the Goal Zero unit, a beast of burden that drinks power from the van’s alternator like a thirsty camel on a sugar rush. And for those extended stays, a portable solar array keeps the whole operation humming like a contented hive.

Of course, there’s always more to be added to the gear closet. A rooftop rack and ladder for easy access (gotta check those rooftop fan seals, you know the drill), solar panels to supplement the sun’s generosity, an awning for shade – the list goes on like a Dylan ballad. But that’s the beauty of this nomadic existence, the constant tinkering and improvement.

So, there you have it, loopers. An overview of the arsenal we’re wielding on this quest to find the fibrillating heart of our divided nation, or at least a decent cup of coffee and a hot shower.

Onward through the fog… R.H.!

Hot Springs or Busk: Chapter XI (plotting a course)

Picture this, America: some aging fool and his four-wheeled testament to stubbornness, baptized “Rocinante” for that same delusional optimism. Me? I’m trading academe for the wide-open spaces, tilting at the broadcast towers of mainstream media following a loose spine of favorable climates and college towns across these 48 states.

You see, I’ve got this itch. This notion that the true pulse of America isn’t in corporate board rooms or the marbled halls of power, but in the sticky floors of dive bars, the sun-baked town squares, and the yawning lecture halls of universities. So, Rocinante and i, we’re on a quest.

First things first, a man can’t get to the heart of the American Dream on an empty stomach. In each town, the routine is honed with a survivalist’s focus: hygiene out of the way (gyms, truck stops, even the occasional river bath for that true hobo chic), laundry refreshed, and Rocinante’s belly restocked with fuel and provisions. Local libraries become my sanctum – free internet, musty books, a whiff of intellectualism to ward off the creeping road madness.

Then, the hunt begins. I stalk state facts like a cornered possum, armed with Wikipedia and an unhealthy obsession with the bizarre and overlooked. Then it’s into the fray! I corner unsuspecting locals, less like an intrepid reporter and more like a stray dog sniffing out dinner.

“What’s your state motto?” I’ll ask, eyes gleaming with the zeal of a half-crazed Jeremiah. Then the real fun – listening as they fumble, praise, or outright despise those hallowed words. This, loopers, is raw, unfiltered Americana that no cable pundit can manufacture. It gets distilled into my loopy travel-blog dispatches over whatever questionable Wi-Fi i can scrounge.

College campuses – they’re the petri dishes of society, bubbling with idealism, hormones, and all that youthful angst. If there’s unrest brewing, Ronnie Hays has a front-row seat. Not to incite riots, but to chronicle the messy, beautiful chaos of young minds at war with a world that doesn’t seem to give two spits.

Now, this land, it sings to me. Woody Guthrie’s ghost haunts my guitar case. In each state, i’ll pen my own crooked verse of “This Land is Your Land,” a wind-whipped, low-fi ode to the cracked highways and resilient souls i find. Welcome signs become my stage, YouTube my tin-can amplifier.

Planning ain’t my strong suit. Half the joy is in the detours. But hot springs? Oh, sweet geothermal bliss. i’ll soak these old bones till they’re soft as a boiled noodle, conjuring up the ghosts of grizzled prospectors and bathing beauties while i fend off mosquitoes.

To fund this glorious mess, a little busking. My luting skills ain’t Carnegie Hall material, but it’ll buy a burger, or at least a sympathetic chuckle from passersby.

And so, it begins. A year under the vast American sky, a tin can Don Quixote fueled by French roast and stubborn hope. Expect tales of barroom philosophers, off-grid eccentrics, and everyday folks grappling with the beautiful, broken heart of this country. Expect a whole lotta nonsense, a dash of truth, and maybe, just maybe, a sliver of understanding about this glorious, maddening, never-ending experiment called America.

Onward through the fog… R.H.

Hot Springs or Busk: Chapter IV (arc of the spiral)

In an attempt to illuminate where Loopcircus is coming from, metaphysically speaking, we’ll draw a brief allegory of humankind’s struggle to understand its place in the universe as an ever oscillating battle between those who insist there is a particular source from which all creation springs and those who insist we can observe the universe as the result of billions of years of adaptive (and otherwise) incremental changes. Loopcircus may be tempted to side with one or the other of these conflicting views, but the bare-metal truth is we don’t know… nor do we believe ANYONE truly knows. So… without further adieu, the spiral of puny human metaphysical understanding from Gilgamesh to Sagan.

In the beginning, there was dust, then clay, then Gilgamesh, a king who wrestled gods, chased immortality, and discovered, like a Vegas lounge lizard hungover in a bathtub full of pennies, that life’s a fleeting joke. Fast forward a few millennia, and the frame focuses on the desert of Palestine, where a carpenter’s son strolls in, flips the metaphysical tables, and promises an afterlife juicier than a Lebanese fig. This, my friends, is the Big Bang of Western metaphysics.

Centuries later, Europe enters its Renaissance, a period where deities dance the can-can with da Vinci’s anatomy sketches and Galileo gets poked in the eye by the Vatican for suggesting Earth isn’t the cosmic navel. Science, now a pimply teenager with a telescope, starts flexing its muscles, whispering sweet nothings of reason and logic to the masses. And religion, the aging aristocrat clutching its pearls, declares war.

Enter Darwin, a fellow with a penchant for Galapagos finches, drops an apparent truth bomb making the Colosseum look like a petting zoo. Suddenly, humanity isn’t God’s special snowflake, but a hairy cousin to the orangutan, scrambling up the evolutionary ladder in a desperate bid to avoid becoming monkey chow. Cue the Wagnerian strains of existential angst, thicker than London fog, and the rise of Nietzsche, and his magnificent mustache.

Across the pond, the soon to be U.S.A., a rambunctious toddler all hopped up on Manifest Destiny, is busy carving its own metaphysical niche. The Wild West, a whiskey-soaked fever dream, birthed bootstraps pragmatism, a philosophy as rugged as a cowboy’s chaps, where truth is measured by bullets, dollars, and cents, not divine pronouncements. Meanwhile, in the East Coast salons, Emerson and Thoreau, Transcendentalist proto-hippies on a nature binge, preach a gospel of self-reliance and communion with the cosmos, a far cry from the fire-and-brimstone sermons echoing from the puritan pulpits.

The 20th century, a rollercoaster ride through world wars and atomic bombs, left humanity bruised and questioning. Freud, a psychoanalyst with a penchant for cigars and Electra complexes, peered into the murky depths of the human psyche, revealing a primal soup of desires and neuroses far removed from the squeaky-clean narratives of organized religion. Existentialism, a philosophy as bleak as a Greek Tragedy, became the soundtrack of the disillusioned, while pop culture, a neon-lit funhouse, offered fleeting solace in the form of Elvis’ hips and Marilyn’s pout.

And now, in the 21st century, the stage is split. On one side, the Intelligent Design revival, a troupe of fire-and-brimstone preachers, resurrects the old gods, their voices booming with the righteous fury of a televangelist hawking snake oil. On the other, Carl Sagan’s disciples, hold aloft the flickering torch of reason, their voices laced with the wry humor of a scientist explaining the Big Bang to a five-year-old.

Then there’s we, the ever-curious, popcorn in hand, watching this embarrassing spectacle unfold. Will we turn into pillars of salt? Will fire and brimstone engulf the stage, will the Saganite laughter pierce the darkness? Or will Camus, W.B. Yeats, and George Carlin’s detached amusement save us from the disease of “passionate intensity?” The curtain has yet to fall, and the play, as always, goes on. One thing seems destined to persist: The spiral… ever oscillating between extreme attractions and aversions follows a seemingly eternal arc… each epoch like Groundhog Day… round and round the galaxy we spin… forever… and ever… and ever.