The past week has been a big change for me. From Texas me and Vanessa have decided to take a huge plunge and finalize living in Washington.  This means I have had about a week steady on the road. As I was in her car, I didn’t want to drive much (and she didn’t really want me to drive too much either) simply because the idea of holding that responsibility in my hands is a little bit scary, so, the trip back home took a little longer than we had planned. While I did drive, it wasn’t very much, and we ended up having to get a hotel just about every night, for 5 nights in total. The drive however, was still beautiful almost all the way through.

Pretty close to the route we took, minus some small detours for food, lodging and leisure.

The drive through Texas wasn’t anything to shake a stick at.  I stopped at Roscoe to visit some friends for a few hours and we had lunch.  On the way there I was surprised by the amount of trains carrying whatever is in their endless carriages from place to place.  Even living in Tennessee I’ve never seen so many, and the closer we got to New Mexico, the more trains there were.  This all of course made sense since Texas has been an agricultural and shipping hub for ages now, and ultimately was fun to see.

Travelling through New Mexico was fun.  The highway was capped at a speed limit of about 80 and it’s pretty much just a straight line through the deserts and towns. At night it was beautiful and of course, more trains by the hundreds. However you’d imagined New Mexico, it’s probably like it. It’s definitely an acquired taste but has it’s own charms. The desert is vast and beautiful, but at times relentlessly boring. The art throughout New Mexico was incredible though, and the themes often morbid. Beautiful all the way through though.

Visiting Utah I didn’t have as much fun as I thought I’d have to be honest. It seemed a little superfluous in environment but I probably just went through a bad route. Some lovely scenery regardless and definitely broke up the trip from New Mexico.

Idaho was fantastic as well but my real favorite was Oregon. Oregon was truly fantastic in every way. Towards the end of the trip seeing Mount Rainier was one of the most exhilarating experiences ever… both because of it’s beauty and because it meant we were two hours away from our destination point.  As for the whole of the trip it went incredibly smoothly.  It was enjoyable all the way through. I’m glad to be back in Olympia (I’m currently unpacking to move into my new apartment) and can’t wait to do my presentation the coming week.

My project originally was planned to be based solely around Austin, Texas. However, I have realized that for purposes related to where I am staying, I am going to have to expand my project location to the bigger, common parts of Central Texas (Killeen and Austin).

The airplane ride here was treacherous. I’ve flown over 20 times and have never felt more scared than I have during this trip. At first, it was Seattle to Houston to Killeen. Then, the plane going to Killeen (from Houston) had to divert backwards into Austin because of inclement weather. On the flight from Houston to “Killeen,” I thought my life was going to end because of how heavy the turbulence was. There was so much fog that I don’t think the pilot could see anything. Once we ended up in Austin instead of Killeen, we waited about an hour before we lifted back off to head back to Killeen hoping that the weather would be cleared by then. If it wasn’t the pilot would have had to fly us back into Houston. Luckily the weather had cleared and it was a successful landing into my original destination! It was a pretty stressful start for the trip…when I finally landed into Killeen at midnight, I was incredibly relieved and met up with my significant other, who I’ll be spending most of this trip with. We drove a few miles to her house (I will be staying here for the majority of my trip), and I slept soundly through the night.

I had planned from the beginning to study the music scene in Austin and its connections between the culture and history of Texas. So a few days later, on Monday, April 13, we got a hotel in Austin for two nights to be able to easily access the live shows. It was a vintage hotel with a wide view of the beautiful Lake Charles. The architecture was obviously refurbished and influenced by the Mexican-American style that seems to be prevalent throughout Texas which was interesting to me. This helped to expand my curiosity of Texas’ history, which I’ll definitely be studying heavily during this quarter. The inside of the hotel seemed colonial-styled so it differed from the external aesthetics.
 

The travel time from the hotel to downtown Austin was about 20 to 30 minutes. When we finally arrived downtown on the 14th of April, I’d gone into this thinking that I would spontaneously show up to live concerts. Well, it turned out one of my favorite 80′s bands, Artillery, was set to play at the very moment I was downtown. Artillery, a Danish band, played a particularly fast brand of metal called ”thrash” metal that was a forerunner to modern metal. When we arrived at the concert, a few opening bands had played. They were obviously all thrash mental influenced but were underground local bands. After the second opening band had played, which had a very progressive metal sound to it, there was an interlude of about 30 minutes in between where Artillery was setting up for their main set. During that in-between time, we had walked along 4th street and encountered four different local bands playing inside of the restaurant/bars, all blues, country, or rock. We stopped at an Irish bar to get a bite to eat, in there was another local band playing blues-rock who was able to keep the entire restaurant entertained by their music. After 20 minutes, we walked back to the venue to see Artillery play. Even though they have considerably aged since they released their first slew of albums, they played a fantastic set and once we left, I couldn’t hear anything but a distinct ringing. (My hearing is back to normal now.)

After that, we headed back to the hotel for one more night’s rest. The next morning, we had breakfast and made the hour trek back to Killeen. On the way back, turns out, my mom had won four surprise tickets to see The Who.

On the 27th of April, I will be seeing The Who in Austin after observing some local bands around the same area. During The Who, I plan to interview some old-timers of Austin’s local music scene from the 60′s (or before) to now and hopefully find out some interesting information.

I found Botton’s fascination with wide-open deserts odd. I didn’t understand it when he first stated that he had a partial interest to photographs of the American West, particularly noting his interest in “bits of tumbleweed blowing across a wasteland”. In the immediate sentence after, he mentioned that he had booked a flight to Sinai. I was definitely curious as to his intentions to say the least. I stopped after reading that particular bit and didn’t go any further before I deliberated what I believed his intentions to be, as he can be vague enough to make your own ideas as to what he is thinking. I thought perhaps he wanted to find himself or something of the sort but the last thing I would think was what he actually stated his intention to be, which was to feel small. Reasons such as this are why I would fear travelling to a wide-open wasteland and getting lost. He quoted Pascal with,

“When I consider … the small space I occupy, which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of the spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there; there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here?”

Then to follow that up he stated that “Wordsworth urged us to travel through landscapes in order to feel small, whether by doorman in hotels or by comparison with heroes of great achievement.”

He acknowledges that it is usually unpleasant to feel small as well, citing it as either through your job or through the scope of what is around you.  I understand to some degree now that he may use that same fear as influence. In even large cities, as we have previously studied, a large amount of them are vast, but the scope of them is difficult to truly understand unless on a skyscraper, plane, or on a hilltop.  The vastness is not immediately overwhelming unless you see it in all of it’s glory. Not soon after he goes onto use Van Gogh as an example, citing that one of his inspirations for greatness was that Van Gogh saw that most artists that used France as their subject did not capture all there was to capture. The farmers, the average woman, they ignored the vast and the ordinary.