Jordan Swartz-The Rad Times #19

It’s hard to believe it’s already time for another newsletter. The morning after I wrote the last one, I started the 5,500+ mile drive in a giant horseshoe shape through America. I’ve traveled America a lot in my life, one of my early goals was all 50 states by age 25, but this was a special one. The only other time I’d driven across the country alone was to get my sister’s car from Pennsylvania to LA when she moved out there and I did it in three days, this time I took two weeks.
One of the things that most caught me off guard was the random floods of flashback memories. Early on in the trip, I stopped in Knoxville to get lunch. I knew I’d been to Knoxville before but couldn’t have told you anything about it, as soon as I turned on to the main street downtown, I knew exactly where I was; how to get to the venue we had played, where we ate lunch, and what my running route had been; the same thing happened in Tucson and Sacramento. Years of traveling the country in vans and buses tucked neatly in the back recesses of my brain to be ripped forward with the smallest inkling of familiarity. In Alamogordo, I booked a motel that looked fine enough, as my mom and I pulled into the parking lot, I realized it was the same motel I had stayed at almost a decade before when I helped move a friend across the country.
There were rough drives and lots of introspection, and there were days that set me free and made me so stoked for whatever is next, and for now that’s Portland. Go travel, this country is big and has a lot of beauty in it. Go move to a new city and meet new people and learn who you are and what you want from life. Call your friends and ask questions and just let them talk and make sure they know you love them. Often travel isn't for learning about other people and places, but for learning about yourself.

Thanks for hanging!
Be good to each other.

Any time I drive any sort of distance, especially in the American West, I often think about those who came before; families by horse and wagon, ranchers with their herd, those who built the train lines, or even cars on an early Route 66. One of those explorers was Moncacht-Apé, who made the first recorded round-trip transcontinental journey across North America. A French explorer is the one to have recorded the details and map of his journey, starting in his native Mississippi, he went up to Niagara Falls, back down to St. Louis, and then west through Montana and out to the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Northwest. Lewis and Clark are said to have carried a translation of the French explorers journals on their trip, detailing Moncacht-Apé path. Another often overlooked explorer is Ibn Battuta. Born in Tangier, Ibn travelled more than any other explorer in pre-modern history, well surpassing Marco Polo in terms of miles. The maps of his travels are extensive, reaching from much of Africa, across modern Saudi Arabia and Iraq, down through India and into China and Southeast Asia. His travels are recorded in the book written toward the end of his life called A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, which may be the coolest title of all time.

I was shown the work of Doug Aitken early on in art school and it made me excited just to be in that environment. Aitken removed animals from their natural habitats and placed them in roadside motels, pushing against the idea of American expansion and highlighting our effect on the natural world. My work over the years has moved drastically in this direction of nature vs manmade and maybe it all started here, watching Migration on a loop for hours.

The Oceanic pole of inaccessibility, also known as Point Nemo, is the most remote place on the planet. Often the closest humans to Point Nemo are astronauts on the International Space Station when it passes overhead. I’ve been thinking about the sea a lot lately and it still feels like the last unexplored part of this earth.

Originally released in 1995, Adrienne Salinger's book In My Room, the work still resonates today. When you’re a teenager, your room is the only thing that’s yours and even barely so. Salinger’s photos show her subjects on beds, against walls, holding prized objects, in the spaces that are their own. In a time now when our entire lives are forward facing and outwardly projected, these photos of bedrooms from the ‘80s and ‘90s offer a wild glimpse into personalities before they were projected everywhere. This was your space to do with as you pleased.

Any time I go to a book store, I peruse the poetry section and almost always leave empty handed, but on a recent visit to Powell’s, I kept returning to Megan Fernandes I Do Everything I’m Told. With a strikingly bright cover (always judge a book by its cover) I was immediately drawn in. I read a poem and liked it and put it back on the shelf and circled the store looking at other books, I proceeded to do this 3 more times. The poems are honest about life and love, striking a balance between wonder, beauty, and failure. They’re funny and brutally honest, and reek of wanderlust and maybe just lust.

I’ve been shooting again and photographed throughout my entire westward trip. I’m currently editing and sequencing the photos, as well as writing notes and stories to go along side them in a zine that will hopefully be available in the next couple months.
I’ve got a book dummy made for one project and a zine layout for another, so the pieces are moving.
I start an ice cream company rebrand this week. As well as the collateral and signage for the Texas hotel I’ve been working on for a bit.
Also if you’re in Portland and want to hang or know of any good art happenings, music, shows, events, etc, let me know!