The Beat Generation Lives On

“You're gonna love your accommodations tonight,” the policeman whispered in my ear, “and there's some folks in that jail gonna love you too, haha.” He kept laughing. “Ha ha ha." I wasn't laughing.

As the policeman led me to the back of the grocery store (I'd stolen a carton of chocolate milk), his sweaty grip loosened on my wrists just enough for me to wrench myself away and sprint for the front doors. Jesus, did I sprint. With Zeus as my witness, I could've won a f*cking Olympic gold. I huddled outside behind a putrid dumpster and considered my options. There I was in Ketchikan, Alaska, a bleak city of alcoholics, out-of-work lumberjacks and chainsaw sculptors where the sun only came out for 1 hour a day. In sum, a little slice of hell.

Ketchikan is reachable only by a once-a-week ferryboat, which was due to arrive in an hour's time. I'd already purchased my ticket out of town with the last of my cash, but if I was to go to the boat dock the grinning sweaty policeman might be waiting. If I didn't get on that boat, I'd have to beat a retreat to the halfway house I'd been staying in the past week. My roommate there was addicted to multiple drugs and was awaiting sentencing for federal prison. He was, as my Mom would put it, a "real keeper." He would talk to me at night about how he'd wasted his life. There wasn't much I could say because I basically agreed with him. I did let him literally cry on my shoulder though.

My other roommate only came to our room every morning at 5am to empty the contents of our garbage can on the floor, grunt loudly, and slam the door. It was less than pleasant.

As I sat there, trembling and scared behind a dumpster in remote Alaska I took stock of myself. My god, what had I done? What led me here? What the hell was I doing?

Rewind a little.

I grew up in a stifling slab of suburbia, surrounded by loving family and friends - but not much inspiration. Books blew open the escape hatch though. Of particular interest were Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. Their books might've been wild exaggerations exploded in weeklong Benzedrine binges, but to my teenage mind they were factual documents. Their worlds didn't seem constrained by the same rules as mine - they lounged around, smoked spliffs and guzzled alcohol, worked bizarre odd jobs, complained humorously, had adventures, forged deep bonds with friends, questioned prevailing social norms, made the art, sang the songs, wrote the books, sought transcendence in the detritus of this bland modern world. They were the embodiment of their dreams. They didn't wait permission to be the creators … they simply were. I wanted to be counted amongst them.

Fast forward slightly. I enrolled at the University of Texas in a highly selective honors program on a prestigious scholarship - college all paid for. The future looked bright! Except, in my newly opened mind, college didn't really make sense. I needed to find the miscreants, the artists, the outsiders, the creators, the originators. Not the people doing what they're told. You don't really learn this stuff in college. I had a great love of words and music but nothing really to say. I needed experience.

So I dropped out against my parents’ wishes and pleas. I'd bought into the mythology of the isolated American loner, adrift in an endless ocean of everyday miracles and spontaneous epiphany. I didn't realize being adrift meant uncertainty, loss, pain, and, yes, boredom. And, yes, it is indeed mythology. A metaphor meant to be interpreted for oneself. Nope, I hadn't figured that out yet.

I had recently totaled a car and cashed in my insurance check for a 1970 Buick GS455 - an incredible old muscle car. I set off on the road for the next three months. Alone. Three months without a cell phone, without an email address, nothing. I was floating, disconnected, open to wherever the currents of life would push me. I hadn't yet seen America, but I would see it. My next 3 months took me driving over 20,000 miles (32,187 km) of North America.

What I saw and felt changed me forever - the epiphanies, the loneliness, the beauty, the insanity. In this era of inescapable connectedness, 3 months alone in parts unknown without a phone or GPS seems, well, impossible. But I did it. It was a different time, I guess.

I drove west from my hometown of San Antonio, staying off main freeways, using a dashboard compass and intuition. I slept on the side of the road, camped in a blizzard, narrowly avoided encounters with roadside bathroom perverts and debated morality with an avowed satanic worshipper. The raw stuff of life.

I would pull out my atlas on occasion, but I really just wanted to revel in being lost. It seems to me this is a luxury rarely afforded to people in our world; to simply allow yourself to get lost. It helps you find yourself later, I guess.

I made it out to the west coast and started doing odd jobs to further the journey. I stayed on a goat farm in Nipomo, California, and shoveled goat shit for a few days. I designed a website for their goat farm. Kept moving. Hiked in to remote mountain hot springs, found shelter wherever I could, stayed for a week in Vancouver with a nudist who made party animal balloons to shield her private parts… she'd pop the balloons, if properly compensated. I stayed with her and her Greek father. He questioned me incessantly.

"What are you doing here?" I had no answers for the man.

I continued on my journey. Got asked to be a church organist, slept in said church basement, went on a "vision quest" with a Native American man in the Black Hills of North Dakota (he had a pet wolf). Every day was something new, something unexpected.

In allowing myself to become lost, I'd found something much more interesting than if I'd planned the journey. I started connecting the dots. Epiphany results from surprise. Surprise means dispelling pre-conceived notions - to allow yourself to "get lost”. To proceed with good faith, but maybe not a plan. I've carried this approach through my life since then. It's gotten me into beautiful situations and huge shit-storms both. I allow myself to get lost.

But I digress. Back to Ketchikan, Alaska. I darted from behind the dumpster and ran to the ferry terminal like a hunted animal.No problems. I breathed a sigh of relief as the boat pulled away and I returned to the mainland where my old car, thousands of miles, the whole rest of my life lay in front of me. It's a journey from which I've never returned. I dipped my toe into the waters of halfway houses and insane alcoholic lumberjacks, with so much more yet to come and still arriving to this day.

Bill Baird plays The Scotch of St. James in London tonight. Tickets are available here.

Earth into Aether Parts I and Part II are out now on Talkshow Records. Order via Amazon, iTunes or Rough Trade