"He hit me, and it felt like a kiss"

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The song on the radio startled me out of my driving trance. I’d never heard it before—I’d only read about it recently, in a biography of Phil Spector. He didn’t write the song—Carole King, of all people, co-wrote it—but his arrangement and production drained it of any hint of irony. The landscape I drove through showed marks of violence as well: it looked as if glaciers had once plowed through the sandy deserts of the Nevada/Idaho border, leaving jagged canyons. Rivers ripped thorough, cutting gorges, like the one just north of Twin Falls—the one Evel Knievel didn’t quite jump.

That geological violence had left beauty behind. In my mind I saw Knievel jumping and falling and it turned into Homer Simpson’s fall down the gorge—my mind is like that, especially when I have hours in the car for my mind to wander around and get into mischief. Bam! Bam, Bam! He falls and we cringe and we laugh. Or laugh and then cringe?

I spent the afternoon and early evening photographing The Craters of the Moon National Monument. At the top of Inferno Cone, I gave up on keeping my hair out of my face in the 30 mph winds, and just sat down to listen to this vast silence.

But I kept hearing that damn song. And I thought about Lana Clarkson. I wondered if Phil Spector thought a .38 at close range would feel like a kiss.

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Photos

Craters of the Moon
One small step for woman...

Comments

[dave warren]

DOH!
Sounds and silence and the echoes merge. Looks fabulous.