Texas. I never expected to ever go there – at least not after I gave up the thought of becoming an astronaut as a teenager. But all of the sudden there I was with a project in mind and a round trip ahead.
So it goes.
We landed in Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and the place we were aiming at was Lobo, a little ghost town bought by some friends at the very west of the state – right next to the Mexican border. I was planning to make a photography – art – project there and Tony asked me if we could use the chance to make some pictures and video of his newly aquired guitar there too. Also we were in contact with DAH who was trying to see if he could meet us there. So we rented a car and off we drove… to the next motel. It had been a 10, 5 hour flight with 8 hours of time difference between Dallas and Frankfurt and I had not managed to sleep on the plane. After having watched “Star Trek” four times in four different languages on the little seat monitor in front of me, I was now experiencing a massive migraine attack. I took a pain killer, slept for a straight 14 hours and felt a little better afterwards.
So after finally having found our way out of Dallas and onto the correct highway, we were right in Stephen Shore’s La-La Land. Once out of Dallas, things got empty … and deliciously “boring”. Not shortly after that we were to be stopped by our fist police car – many more would follow. I have been driving cars for around twenty years now and was never ever stopped on the open road before – this trip to Texas definitively ruined my beautiful record. So, just to make sure, we asked right at the first time how to best behave when being stopped by the police. After all we just knew the movie versions of that – and they were quite scary – we just did not want to risk reacting wrongly, getting out of the car when not supposed to do so, or staying inside when we should already be laying in the dirt – face down. Of course reality was not that extreme and we had some quite informative conversations with the officers that we were meeting along our way. In Texas police was mostly busy with routine controlling – lots of drug traffic and trespassing was going on due to the close Mexican border. I thought of some essays that were featured on BURN, and I have to admit my stomach did tighten a little …
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