constructions in magical thinking
When I have time, I like to take short breaks at rest stops, especially when the weather is nice. I prefer them to service plazas or actual exits. Your mind stays in travel mode, but it feels like a moment of meditative calm. It is easier to become aware of the tempo of a road trip at a rest stop. It’s a pity they aren’t particularly safe, or I’d sleep at rest stops. If states threw in WiFi, showers and security, they’d be packed ever night, boosting local economies. Rest Stops 2.0?
The last time I was in Memphis, I dutifully went to the Gibson Guitar Factory like everyone else. This time, Airbnb-ing in the midtown Cooper-Young area allowed me to stumble serendipitously onto the Memphis Drum Shop. Much more apropos for Tempo and an ex Tabla player like myself.
Post your comments over on the original post on the Tempo blog.
I am in Memphis, where I plan to meet up with Daniel Pritchett, some local entrepreneurs at a startup incubator, and anyone else who might be around. Next stop, St. Louis on Tuesday. As far as I know, I have no readers there, but I wanted to check out the Billy Goat chip company, maker of my favorite chips. If anybody is out there, it’d be great to meet up. From St. Louis I head to Omaha and after that, the road-trip basically goes into a sights-over-people mode, since my destinations in Nebraska and South Dakota (North Platte for a second visit to Bailey Yard, Alliance for Carhenge and Rapid City for Deadwood) aren’t places I am likely to find any readers. I’d be shocked to find somebody beyond Omaha. After South Dakota, I head to Jackson Hole in the heart of Yellowstone, where oddly enough I do have someone to stay with. After that, depending on how much time I have left, I might dawdle or dash my way to Vegas, the end point for this leg.
Deepak Jois has launched a copy of the Stealth Edition named "Rabble Rouser" on its journeys from Seattle. He writes
The Tempo Tracer Game for the stealth edition is finally seeing some action. It is taking much longer for people to finish and pass on the book than I expected, and a surprising number of people actually want to keep their copy rather than pass it on. But looks like a few people are game for the game.
Terry Smiley writes: "I really enjoyed the book; now I just need to get senior management to read it!" He's named his copy "Lame Name."I am in New Orleans, ironically pretending to be an author in the traditional publishing-industry sense of the word. I am sitting in a seriously cliched writerly cafe, the Rue de la Course near the Tulane University campus. Jazz is playing in the background. Its the sort of coffee shop that conforms to your expectations of an archetypal artsy coffee shop so well, it is surreal. Like The Simpsons’ idea of an artsy coffee shop.
If I grew an instant goatee, slapped a beret on my head and called myself a flâneur, (a self-descriptor preferred by a certain celebrated evil twin of mine), I’d be a perfect parody of a writer. A tres French writer at that. The only way I can continue sitting here (and I want to because it is actually a very nice place and the coffee is good) is to do so ironically.
Jokes aside, being in this coffee shop, doing what I am doing, got me to a serious breakthrough concerning the difference between being a blogger and being an author, a question I’ve been pondering ever since I started out on this road trip to promote Tempo nearly two weeks ago. Though I have now published a book, I view myself (and usually introduce myself/prefer to be introduced) as a blogger, not “author” or “writer.” It isn’t really about what medium you use or how you write. It is about how you view yourself. Author is a profession within the publishing industry. Blogger is a trade practiced by an individual. Professions and trades both wrap around a skilled craft and a specific way of seeing the world (the “art”), but there the similarities end. Blogger and Author are very different archetypes that lead to very different narratives. Specifically, Author leads to a standard redemption narrative, while Blogger leads to a life-as-performance-art narrative.
So here we go; my first serious and long post on this blog. And yes, it may be a bit confusingly self-referential for those who’ve read Tempo, since it i s a book about archetypes and narratives, but I am sure you’ll be able to keep everything straight. If you haven’t read the book, you should probably read this post first.
The drive down the center of America from Detroit to Nashville is fascinating. Among the interesting Tempo-related things I noticed was that the car/truck ratio was much lower than on the coasts. Correlates to the lower population and greater presence of logistics industries, and gives driving here s very distinct feel. It’s like being in a forest of semis instead of an open road.
Post your comments over on the original post on the Tempo blog.
I am in Ann Arbor, MI as I write this, preparing to head south tomorrow. The plan is to wander down to New Orleans over the week, and then start up along the Mississippi next week. For the coming week, I have Atlanta plans nailed down and Nashville and New Orleans plans almost nailed down. According to Google Maps, Dayton, Cincinnati, Lexington, Knoxville, Montgomery and Mobile are along the route. If you suspect you are within a reasonable band off this route, give me a holler.
Here are links to my the posts I liveblogged on the Tempo blog during the first week. Delay-blogged rather.
Some reflections on Week 1 follow, for those interested in the metatext.
A packed first day. Am sitting here in a bar in downtown Philly watching a Salsa lesson and attempting my first non-trivial iPhone post. I am here because I am tagging along with my couchsurfing host, Chuck. More about Chuck later, but let me get caught up on older stuff.
At the Cafe Amouri in Vienna (a DC suburb), I had a mini meetup with three readers: Left to right, we have Julio, Ben and Jared.
We ranged over a whole bunch of topics. Two book recommendations came out of the meeting: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp and Titan by Ron Chernow.
Main topic: The tempo of food. The table agreed that improv cooking beats recipe cooking. Still processing the conversation. Here’s a picture for you though.
A visit to John Boyd’s grave site in Arlington National Cemetary seemed like a good way to start my road-trip. I wrote about Boyd and his contributions to decision-making in an issue of Be Slightly Evil.
