the big country

Waking up this morning, Studio 360 was on the radio, and the first full story I heard was about an artist/musician named Andrew Bird, who left Chicago to move out to the country for three years and figure his music out. It came out that the place he moved to was his grandfather's 350 acre farm, and it's somewhere near the Mississippi River. He described it as rolling hills and limestone cliffs and corn and soybeans and chickens. (Yes, I thought, except for the limestone cliffs.) Apparently just being out there in his own head, he started slowing down but being, in the end, more productive -- or at least making music that was more interesting and deeper.

The theme of the show today is about being alone, in various forms. And it occurs to me that this musician man was certainly out in the middle of nowhere (not least of all to his friends in Chicago, I reckon), but not wholly alone. On your grandfather's farm, land that you know - or know well enough to go there in a February snowstorm, as he did. The quiet would be immense. There is something insulating and powerful in that removal from things, but in a consequent surrounding by this place. And maybe there is a farmhouse near your barn (maybe there are grandparents in it?). There is certainly a town where you have to go to get gas and food. The mail comes to you, even the UPS truck. You can, like my folks, get satellite broadband and TV and anything else, if you want. Probably no good radio signal, though. Anyone who's taken a long road trip across the part of American between Pennsylvania and Nevada would agree with that. It's spotty.

I am thinking about writing, fast-forwarding through the year of research away which I find quite intimidating right now. I am thinking about how I have a scenario in my head where I am in a nice urban niche, and the day of writing work is punctuated by trips to my grocery store or visits to mid-town or a mind-clearing walk in Riverside Park. This morning, those thoughts have been transplanted, and I am thinking about a quiet apartment, a quiet house, without the noise of taxis and semi trucks air-braking down the hill. I kind of love the wall of the building opposite me - the brickwork is interesting, and reflects the morning light wonderfully. I don't mean this in a pathetic, me-and-my-airshaft kind of way. When my eyes were bothering me during orals, the fan-shaped brickwork was my farther-away counterpoint to the closeness of the written page. It got rid of the nausea.

But then I think about a window that looks out onto green or grey, different texture, longer distance. The view from the central bedroom in my parents' new old place. Or the road past my uncle's house that just goes on and on, with this great tree that sits so well in the view. Driving to town or to Quincy, it has a rhythm we know. The word that comes to mind is balance. That big space, the long view, it gives me balance. New York gives me balance, too (what good my quiet apartment has done me this morning!), but I can foresee that I will have to remember to get out of town, too.