DAY 14
TOWARDS MOBILE
AMERICA LOVES SENTIMENTALISM
I’m on the road to New Orleans. It’s hot and humid. I come cross unsympathetic cities. Poverty clearly has no racial boundaries. Religious and political billboards, as well as trailer parks, are multiplying. But the campers aren’t tourists, they’re poor people.
I have only just arrived in Louisiana, yet I have already heard of haunted places.
I can picture the ghosts. So many people, so much intermingling, so many dramas must have taken place in this intoxicating humidity.
The radio is playing 70s soul, which I love so much, so syrupy, and full of glitz and sex as a velvety painting. By the way! Whatever happened to velvet paintings? It’s funny how things that were ubiquitous one day, no longer exist anywhere the next.
This reminds me of something Robbie’s “electropunk” friend said: “America loves sentimentalism”.
Indeed, given the objective harsh conditions of life, it must take imagination and dreams to survive. At the intersection, a panhandler goes from car to car. The only person that gives is a black lady driving one of the most rotten cars.