(cont.) "It was probably two in the morning, which to me is the best time of the day, or night, or whatever you want to call the twenty-four hour period that we use to slice up the passage of time and create the illusion that it has some kind of logic when if you step back and think about for five or ten seconds you start to realize that a 'day' is actually pretty arbitrary and meaningless to anyone who's not stuck on earth, but humans have always been self-centered to a fault, as all of the animals going extinct right now could probably attest. But still, two in the morning is kind of amazing, right? Because for me it's not usually -- or at least not since I've been twenty-eight or so -- a time of intense activity, like when I used to go to parties and dance clubs and so forth, but if you're not asleep, it's also often a point of reflection, like you've made it somewhere. You've waded in and you can't touch the bottom, so you're floating, which is always a little magical. There's a reason why you're up at this hour, and so you take a minute to think about what's happened, not only over the previous five or six hours. Maybe you went out and saw some people you haven't seen for many years and might not ever see again (which is something you realize happens when you reach a certain age), or maybe you stayed in and wrote a song or a poem, or maybe you spent the past six hours binge-watching a television show. Or maybe you just did all of the above and you're still too awake to go to sleep and so you watch some music videos on YouTube and it makes you happy and sad at the same time because you can't believe that music that was once so huge and amazing has now settled to the bottom of the digital ocean."
"I don't know why I keep saying 'you', which is something I find annoying when I actually mean 'me.' What's that? Was there a specific song I was thinking about? It changes all the time, but right now I'm thinking about 'French Disko' by Stereolab. I'm not talking about the night on the highway but it was probably not too long before, because I now associate that song with some of these memories, even more than I do memories of the actual band, which I had the pleasure of seeing a few times back in the day. Anyway, I spent like an hour watching that video and I convinced myself that it was the best rock song ever written, which I know is a ridiculous thing to say but that's how it goes when you're alone with your thoughts in the middle of the night. By the way, I'm not trying to convince you about the merits of Stereolab or anything. I hate when people and especially 'critics' talk about music as if it's 'objective' but my point is that I was listening to 'French Disko' over and over and to be honest I was feeling my age, because that song was released almost twenty-five years ago, which made me cringe a little, because I did the math and realized that twenty-five years from now, assuming I make it, would put me pretty close to 'the end' under any scenario. Which the way things are going these days on our planet is probably a good thing? I don't have kids, so I can make morbid jokes like that. But what was more interesting to me was that I also felt proud to have lived through a time when that song meant something to me. And I don't mean that in a nostalgic way, like 'oh, we were all young and life was great' because life wasn't great at all -- for me personally or for society, I think -- but something must have been okay with the world because at least that song was written, right? And listening to it now, I can better see how it reflected something in my own sensibilities in ways that I was blind to at the time. When I was twenty-five I would have said 'oh, that song rocks' or whatever half-ironic bullshit that was pretty much my default assessment of like anything, whereas now I understand that -- when you're talking about a song like 'French Disko' -- there's a political intensity and violence combined with this trembling desire for harmony that is about the best the world has to offer. Or at least the world or art. For me. Just being subjective. I guess it's like a piece of art stops belonging to an artist after a while, or at least exclusively, and it becomes something that larger groups of people -- maybe even a generation -- can use to mark our past. I'm glad a song like that isn't something you hear at Starbucks, because then I would associate it with standing in line waiting for coffee and looking at all of the cookies that never taste that great when you lose control and buy one. Maybe I'm being a snob, but I don't want to feel like my past is the same as everyone else's. Like do I really ever need to hear another song by the Beatles or Madonna or even Prince? I'm not saying these aren't important or great musicians, but to me, art reaches a certain level of commodification and you might as well be eating a cookie from Starbucks. Television is maybe the exception to that rule, because television is implicitly a 'low art', so it's never going to mean that much anyway. Just to be clear, this is just my opinion, I'm not saying it's logical or defensible, but it's how I think, and you asked, so I'm telling you."
"Anyway, I guess we should get back to the highway? [Laughs.] Like I said, it was like two in the morning and if you recall I was driving to the beach in New Jersey but I was probably ninety miles out, which put me smack in the middle of the Pine Barrens. I didn't have anything on the radio, because it was warm out and I liked feeling the air. It smelled good, of course, because I was driving through a forest of pine trees, and -- guess what -- the Pine Barrens are actually pretty barren in terms of human population, which is not something everyone knows, like even New Jersey has these wide-open spaces that feel completely uninhabited, and in terms of human activity are really only marked by these long and slowly undulating roads that traverse the sandy forests."
"What's interesting or maybe even miraculous about those forests, also, is that they're filled with short pine trees -- I think the biological term is 'pygmy' but don't quote me on it -- which makes the whole landscape seem extra-surreal, because it's filled with these very gnarled and twisted pines that in the manner of very old trees exude a gnarled grandeur but are also just very short, relatively speaking, like maybe no more than seven or eight feet tall. If you've never seen one of these forests, I recommend it, even if you're just going for the trees."
"I already told you how I passed something glowing on the side of the road, so I stopped about 100 yards up the road. Maybe this is just my memory talking, but when I got out, I already felt on account of the landscape as though I had arrived in a different world or 'dimension' or whatever you want to say that depicts something out of the ordinary. And again it was two in the morning, which science has shown is when the most implausible things seem the most plausible. A big moon was out and, except for this glowing thing down the road, I was alone in this infinite sea of small pines, intersected by the two-lane, backwoods highway, which was a ravine of silver light. Plus the ground is very sandy in that forest, which made it -- there's no other way to say it -- sparkle or glitter. Words really can't capture that kind of beauty -- if anything, they cheapen it -- but I'm trying to give you an idea."
"Was I afraid? No, I wasn't afraid. I don't believe in ghosts or demons or anything like that, so I wasn't worried about getting dragged to hell or anything along those lines. I mean, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that there's 'intelligent life' somewhere in the universe, but I didn't get the sense that I was seeing an 'alien' or anything like that here. I'm not sure why. Call it intuition, which for me also tends to start humming at two in the morning, like I'm in tune and feel very little of the sadness or desperation I associate with three or -- god forbid -- four or five, when you just can't believe that you're still awake and the world has replaced all of its mystery with cruelty. So no, not afraid."
"I had to see it. It wasn't like a choice, it was just something I had to do. Like I was aware on some level that I was seeing something out of the ordinary, and I wasn't just going to drive away. Like you don't take a trip to the Grand Canyon and not peer over the rim. I wanted to know. And so I walked, not too fast and not too slow, either. It wasn't like I was trying to hide -- I had left the hazards on my car -- and I guess I wanted to savor whatever I was feeling, because it was different, and it was good to feel something different for a change that wasn't induced by caffeine or sugar or some other chemical [laughs]."
"It only took me a minute or so to reach the 'figure' -- which I guess is as good a word as any -- and it was still glowing. But now that I was closer, it was more difficult to look at, like I had the sense that it would hurt my eyes if I wasn't careful, like staring at the sun, and it was definitely too bright to say whether this figure was wearing clothes or was even a man or a woman or something else, but it was definitely a body of some sort and -- I'll say it again -- it was glowing. Like I hate using that word because it's something I've seen in skin-care commercials where people will pay insane amounts of money for some anti-aging cream that will restore your 'youthful glow,' but there are limits in this day and age to how much you can circumvent the advertising-industrial complex."
"Can I be more specific? You mean despite having a brain addled by literally decades of advertising? [Laughs]. Sure, I can try. The hue of the light -- by which I mean the glow -- was more yellow or gold than the pale silver of the moon, just in case you were thinking that maybe the moon was the explanation, because that was something I thought at the time, like was I seeing the moon and the answer is definitely no, I wasn't. And there was a kind of pulsing quality to it, like I might associate with a jellyfish. But there was nothing monstrous about it. It was very beautiful. I felt 'altered' in a way I associate with being high, but I definitely wasn't high. It was serene but intense, because as peaceful as it felt -- like I wasn't afraid at all -- I was aware of what I can only describe as a very intense kind of longing or desire. For what, I had no idea, but it was there."
"I stood maybe ten feet away for a while -- I can't say I was counting the minutes -- not really looking at it, but still seeing, until out of the corner of my eye I saw a hand. Not floating or disembodied or anything like that. It was connected to an arm that seemed to be reaching out of this cloud or patch of light, at least to the extent that I could see it, which was not very well. Yes, it was still glowing, but less intensely than the rest of the body, and its fingers were rolling a little, the way you do when you want someone to follow you but without talking."
"And a few seconds after that, the light -- as in the whole thing -- began to move off the shoulder of the road down into the trees. I followed it. I had to. I wasn't even a debate, really. I guess you could say I was curious, though it was more than that, too. A lot more. It felt like an obligation, but not in a bad way, maybe like an honor or duty, though not in any sense of 'doing something for your country' or whatever. I guess you could say I was closer to spellbound with a sense of purpose, maybe even destiny, which isn't a word I use lightly because I don't really believe in the concept. But here I was. Then again, there was also the novelty of the experience, which was something I was aware of even as it unfolded, which is something that sometimes happens to me now. You reach an age where life doesn't surprise you as much as it once did, so when it does, you remember what it was like to feel young again."
(Words and final picture excerpted from Transcripts of Alleged Encounters with Gods, pp. 24-37, "An interview with 'Robert S."/Remaining photos of Fort Tryon Park by yours truly.)