There’s a record I play. A Bill Callahan album called Apocalypse. The whole damn thing sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a whiskey bottle at three in the morning. And as I get closer to the finish line, as this idea of Argentina goes from a drunken fantasy to a hard, cold, and beautiful reality, I find myself listening to it over and over again. It’s not background noise; it’s the goddamn countdown clock.
And there’s one song on it, “Riding for the Feeling.”
Christ. That song. It’s not just a piece of music; it’s an X-ray of my own goddamn soul. It’s the quiet, humming machinery of the whole operation. People listen to a song and they think, “Oh, that’s inspiring.” This isn’t inspiration. This is a fucking diagnosis. It’s the quiet, ugly, and beautiful truth of what a man does when he’s finally run out of road.
“Riding for the feeling…”
That’s the whole story right there, isn’t it? That’s the answer to the question they all ask. “Why are you doing this? What are you running to?”
I’m not running to anything. I’m running for the feeling.
What feeling? Not happiness. Happiness is a sucker’s game, a warm, fuzzy lie they sell you between car commercials. No. The feeling I’m riding for is the feeling of erasure. The feeling of the wind in your ears, so loud it drowns out the sound of your own goddamn name. The feeling of the landscape blurring past, a long, beautiful, and completely meaningless smear, until the man in the rearview mirror is just a stranger, a ghost you used to know. It’s the feeling of being in motion, of being untethered from all the beautiful, ugly, and completely necessary wreckage of the past.
It’s the feeling of going.
That’s the only real, honest-to-God church a man like me has left. The Church of the Open Road. The Gospel of the Getaway Car.
The song is a quiet, hypnotic, and completely relentless thing. It just keeps going, a steady, simple rhythm, like the hum of tires on a long, empty highway at night. And that’s what it feels like in my head. This isn’t a rash decision. This is a slow, quiet, and completely inevitable tide that’s been pulling at me for years.
“My apocalypse…” he sings, his voice all calm and cracked and beautiful. And that’s it. That’s the key. This isn’t a vacation. This isn’t a mid-life crisis. This is a personal apocalypse. The quiet, deliberate, and completely necessary act of burning your own world to the goddamn ground so you can see if anything new will grow in the ashes. I’ve had a few of them. The Mormon, the millionaire, the drunk. They were all apocalypses. And this is the last one. The big one. The one for all the marbles.
And then he gives you the punchline, the beautiful, ugly, and completely honest truth of it all.
“It’s not like the movies…”
No. It’s not. There’s no beautiful woman in the passenger seat with the wind in her hair. There’s no triumphant swell of music as you drive off into the sunset. The real escape, the one that matters, it’s a quiet, lonely, and probably a little pathetic affair. It’s a man in a rented room, with a suitcase full of dirty laundry and a head full of bad memories, getting on a plane with a one-way ticket to a place he’s never been. It’s a desperate, beautiful, and completely un-cinematic act of survival.
And why now? Why, after all these years, is the engine finally turning over?
Because it’s easier to go when you have to be.
That’s the line that sticks in your teeth. That’s the part that feels like a confession. The truth is, I’m not running because I’m brave. I’m running because I’m a goddamn coward. I’m running because the quiet, creeping rot of this life, of this country, of my own goddamn history, has finally become more terrifying than the beautiful, ugly, and completely unknown terror of what comes next.
The pain of staying has finally become greater than the fear of leaving.
When the house is on fire, you don’t stand around and debate the architectural merits of the building. You get the fuck out.
And my house is on fire.
So that song, “Riding for the Feeling,” it’s not just a soundtrack anymore. It’s the hum of the engine. It’s the quiet, steady, and completely necessary prayer of a man who has finally, after fifty-six years, put the goddamn car in gear.
And I’m not looking back. Not this time.
I’m just riding for the feeling.
