The traffic backed up across fourteen lanes, the lights like warnings of the reactor overload, the system breaking down. Feel the Earth heat beneath your feet, do you acknowledge defeat or wait for implosion complete?

Literally written in the touring van, while stuck in traffic outside of Sacramento, on an acoustic guitar. Fourteen lanes, all backed up, no one moving, it occurred to me that car culture was itself a dead end. Like brake lights warning you that you should slow down, climate science and erratic weather should tell us to change our ways. But will we? Returning to Switzerland to complete the song, a couple of trips to North Africa and the music I encountered there returned to me. I opted to infuse the song with oriental flavors. The myth of the cowboy and the sound of the spaghetti western also crept in, along with the Spanish scale of the old settlers who named the California town in the first place. The bridge mentions a mad caravan, so the oriental music returns to tie the motifs together.