A poem by Kate Freels, written at CUE Rock Star Camp Monterey

If you’re not from the desert

You don’t know the silence

You can’t know the silence

The silence in the desert is empty and barren

No one around to do any carin’

The land is not dead, but it’s inhabitants make little sound

You do not waste noise when the heat and light abound

If you’re not from the desert

You don’t know the silence

If you’re not from the desert

You don’t know the heat

You can’t know the heat

August brings weeks of 115 degree days

A heat so oppressive, the horizon becomes a haze

The pavement so scalding, you could actually fry an egg

The mirage that you looks like a cold, tapped keg

If you’re not from the desert

You don’t know the heat

If you’re not from the desert

You don’t know the night

You can’t know the night

As darkness falls, life emerges

The sun’s retreat brings energy surges

Dusk is time for a changing of the guards

The nocturnal creatures can finally play cards

If you’re not from the desert,

You don’t know the night

“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night” - Jean Baudrillard

“The desert landscape is always at its best in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The sense of distance lacks: a ridge nearby can be a far-off mountain range, each small detail can take on the importance of a major variant on the countryside's repetitious theme. The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day had fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again--the same day he has been living for a long time, over and over, still blindingly bright and untarnished by time.”

― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky