AdaRook - "south" + "zsnes" + 2016 greyhound bus story

these are the first two songs off my album "nostopath" which i had originally planned to release today or tomorrow. i've decided to push it back to 2027 so that i can give it the polish it deserves, but i still wanted to do something special for today (oct 25th) since it marks exactly 10 years since i caught a greyhound bus from vancouver - where i lived briefly at the time and where i again live now - to oakland, to visit some friends i'd recently made online. i planned to stay with them for about a week so that i could go to a halloween party they were having at their friend's place.

there were events and people before then that also affected the course of my life, but i really think of that greyhound trip to oakland as being the beginning of what's recognizably my current life and identity.

i was on that bus for 3 days. everything was new to me. i'd caught greyhounds frequently as a teenager and in my early 20s to visit people across canada, but those connections never lasted and i'd never been across the border as an adult. the first night, somewhere south of seattle, trees whipping past in the darkness outside the window, i felt this huge emotion well up inside me. happiness, excitement, real peace like i'd never felt before. it came and went throughout those 3 days.

the bus stopped at a rest stop just after crossing into california. it had a subway. i asked for cheddar on my sandwich and got a confused look as the woman asked me if i meant American Cheese, which somehow made me really happy. if you're the type of person who likes to run away and start over, and you live in canada, it really feels like there's only a few places you can go. visiting america feels kind of like finally entering the "real world".

the cover photo for "ghost towns" (a song currently exclusive to patreon, though it'll also appear on nostopath) was taken out the window of the bus somewhere in california, shortly after crossing into the state as the terrain started to get more arid, which really excited me because it was so different from most places in canada. i guess it reminded me a bit of the okanagan but felt somehow so much more Real, separate from everything i'd seen in a way i couldn't really quantify.https://www.patreon.com/AdaRook/posts/new-song-ghost-58880171?collection=1792747

at that time i was just barely starting to process a lot of things that had happened in my life. i had also just started taking hrt about 15 months before that trip. i really dislike being defined by either of those things now, and i felt that way even back then to a degree, but everything about the world and my life felt new. on the final leg of the trip, a woman sat next to me who must've picked up on that vibe, and she was friendly in a careful kind of way. she didn't ask anything about where i was from. in the sacramento bus depot she bought me fries since i hadn't eaten anything that day and she was worried about me, even though she had to run to make her connection to wherever she was going. i think about her sometimes and how grateful i was that she went out of her way to make me feel comfortable like that. i wish i could remember her name, it might've been anne or anna.

the week i spent staying with my friends in oakland really felt like i'd finally crossed over to some parallel world where everything made more sense. i felt understood and surrounded by people who saw my feelings and personality in a way almost no one had before, and i felt the potential of my own life radiating off me for the first time. i'm still close with both of those people today, though our connections have changed shape a lot over the years.

i also did molly for the first time at the party, though unlike every time since then, it was one of the least memorable moments of that week for me - every day, before and after the party, i felt like my brain was being reconfigured just by my surroundings and company alone. i remember waking up the morning after the party, no hangover and barely a suggestion that i'd ever been someone other than who i was in that moment. it was raining hard outside, something that i hated in vancouver, but somehow even the sound of it felt new there. it was the happiest i'd ever felt at the time.

i also met ash nerve at that halloween party, who was visiting from LA, another person who's remained one of my closest friends. i was pretty skittish and it took me some time to let him in, but after we'd been close for a few years he told me he knew we'd become friends on my own time, that he could see from the first time he met me that there was a world inside me. to this day i think that's one of the kindest things anyone's said to me, and maybe the single time i've felt the most calmly and patiently seen by another person.

the bus ride home was really hard. my ocd was debilitating back then, and it consumed me the whole trip back in a way that made it hard to feel any of the things i'd felt on the way there. i took a pillow from my friends' apartment to make sleeping on the bus easier. i wish i still had it, it was dark green with this kind of weird faintly metallic layered detailing and was honestly kinda uncomfortable but it smelled like my friends' apartment which was important to me. the scent of a city or a home or a person has always really affected me. i drew in a notepad my friend had given me for the trip home, these weird patterns i'd doodled since i was a teenager. it suddenly felt uncomfortable, a ritual belonging to someone else, and i stopped drawing them soon after that.

i'd visit oakland frequently for the next few years, though always by plane: in november of 2016, i tried to catch a greyhound for my second trip there, but they turned me away at the border and refused to tell me whether i'd been permanently banned from the country or not. i hadn't, but they seemed to find some kind of value in making me wait for hours in the weird little building at the border, unable to stop crying and unsure if i'd ever be permitted to feel the things i'd felt on that first trip ever again. thankfully i was able to save up for a plane ticket with the help of some really generous donations (some of which might've been people supporting me here on patreon) and got to oakland without incident.

i feel depressed a lot these days, trapped, unsure where to go, unsure what'll happen, angry at things that have happened and anxious about things that haven't. but i also feel really lucky in a way that's hard for me to articulate. maybe it's just my willingness to throw myself into a new situation, blindly run from wherever and whoever i am, take risks just to feel like maybe someday i'll be able to escape myself completely. either way, it feels important. i'm happy that i get to feel it.

that sense of crossing over into a parallel world the first time i went to oakland eventually faded, and i wondered if the portal had ever been real at all. or maybe i'd been frozen on the threshold, like the event horizon of a black hole, time dilating infinitely as i really believed that i'd finally reached some Other place.

i was overwhelmed by the same feeling of Escaping when i first flew from vancouver to toronto in april of 2018 shortly before moving there, but that city also felt Normal by the time i left, integrated horrifically into mundane reality.

2017 and 2019 were the two happiest years of my life so far. the songs on nostopath are about a lot of different things, but the key moments on the album reflect on those years and what they meant to me. the first track here (and the first on the album), "south", is directly about those 3 days i spent on that greyhound bus bound for oakland. "ghost towns", which shows up later in the tracklist, is about the same thing. i think "south" is more hesitant and mournful, self-consciously sneaking out of a life to find another, and "ghost towns" is more idealized - a fantasy of recklessly throwing that old life away and managing to live forever in the tiny space between it and whatever takes shape, calcifies, and ultimately crumbles in that new and unfamiliar city. a lost kid finally escaping to the fictional place they've always belonged.

the way that feeling fades, the way the brain always adapts to wherever it finds itself, is pure violence to me. i hate it. since i was really young i've always wanted to escape to a different world. my biological family moved a lot, and continuing to run from place to place as an adult, i finally found some of that otherworldliness in reality, in the subtle details of places and people. i wish i could stay in that feeling, those early days of loving a place, but it seems like the world doesn't work that way. i don't think there's any consolation. still, i hope i get to feel it again, even just one more time.