Janonymous from Asheville writes:
“Mo! Why you stupid honkeys talking about “touring” anyway? Touring connotes the nefarious “tourism” and that makes you all sucker as punk mother fuckers like all the rest of those white-bread crackers. [Murat's paraphrase]
Moho Wat responds:
I would have you pickin' switches for sassin' me, but Jacob wrote it, not me. [ed. note- you sheep-eating turncoat monkey!] Therefore I would actually have to agree with you (since we're the ones who set up the issue of semantics, you are pardoned for challenging our choice of words). Beyond the whole distaste of the “tourism” connotation (i.e. whitey on the moon), “touring” is what those fucking showerless, no-account, verminous Deadheads did. Hell, it's what Lance Armstrong does. Somehow, beyond summoning a vision of the consumption treadmill (J.L.) of endless gew gaw and gimcrack which tourism promotes, I see the word almost as having an implicit, yet mild, stench of domination, self-righteous leisure, and bourgeoisie otherness. Hell, most of the lumpen-bumpkins we come across consider us lesser beasts, so we ain't exactly hoity toity. And the gew gaw we can take or leave. It is actually entertaining on the surface, and to be in the midst of it all gives me the feeling of an indifferent god walking on a transcendent plane, my feet at the shoulders and noses of all these silly mortals frantically dispensing of their sacred luchre in capricious paroxysms of consumption. The commodification of their experiences and histories, spoken in the infantile language of trinketry.
I considered instead of “touring” perhaps the phrase “on safari,” but that would only really fit if we had our blunderbusses with us and we were in fact, hunting tourists. I do have my slingshot, I might add, but I've been doing more drinking than I have hunting.
Tourism fleeces the willing with temptations and criteria which have duplicitously congealed into homogenized standards of action or placement constructed to convert experience into some sort of Crappy Meal ™. Still, I want to note that I am aware of the paradoxes which it creates within the locals' lives. I think in many cases they're likely resentful but dependant on the tourists. It does bring money into otherwise depressed areas, and I welcome them to take the tourists for all that they're willing to give. But little of this money goes where I think it would have the most benefit. Pardon then, the “conscientious tourist,” who steals from the rich and trespasses upon their commodified spaces (robbing them of their assumed dominion over our experiences; of their claim to ownership over the endless fascinations out here, physical and otherwise), while spending what money they do choose to spend on the local artisans and owners of small businesses who, as we all do to some degree or another, find themselves chained from birth to this desperate system.
Anyway, we have no true agenda, no real itinerary, and honestly, no true purpose beyond those beautifully subtle ones, which float into the firmament of one's actions as clouds in the boundless skies above the otherwise boring-arse state of Kansas. We be circumspect of purpose, and leave the business of meaning to meaning itself, as often in retrospect one's intentions lay athwart the great chasm which crumbles downward from all sides of meaning's promontory. Semantics, as well, is probably at the bottom of some abyss, buried under the alluvium, but that does not mean one does not necessarily have to traverse these valleys and canyons and debris before finally scaling the walls of purpose and placing one's flag at the crest of understanding. Wait a minute- we're not trying to dominate- forget the flag. Let's just say that one day we'll sleep under the stars on some little hilltop we built for ourselves and then had the will to climb. Hopefully it is on high enough ground that we will not be swept away when it floods (ignore Biblical implications). I think we're building mountains out of mountains, however you choose to define either. We, the engineers of our humble metaphysicalities, ornithologists debunking the myths of reality (J.L.), the Count Rarian and the poly-anomaly sailing the seas of Al-Ameriqaeda, bringing hurricanes and the dead calm waters with us in alternating fits of insight and doubt. The more I know, the more I know I don't know, and wandering aimlessly sometimes reveals the most surprising purposes undreamt of in one's first steps.
It is self-serving. It is privileged. We use too much gas. Everything's been used before; everything has unintended meanings. We're just curious. We're just curious, so we are looking. We are feeding it. We are discovering; we are inventing: there is no difference between the two. We are showerless, nincompoop mickifickies, making shit up as we go along, like the famous song, “I'm a homosexual pastry chef, putting my ding dong in doughnuts holes.” And we are participating with what we see. We are trying to avoid the isolating plexiglass which stands between us and the view, the people, the experience. Maybe the proper term is infiltration . We don't want to just talk, we don't want to rely on a picture painted by Dan Rather Lame on the nightly news to form our understanding of the very land we live in. Its people, be they complete fucking idiot assholes or fellow freedumb rollers inspecting some piece of cultural roadkill for useful bones or visions, are all still relevant tangents of the same big Story.
See the World and Fight the Power! Garrrrrrrrrrrrr!@#!&@#&!@%!@*!&!!!!!!!!