The Tape Collection, Part 1: Bjork, Hunter

About not stopping

One of the most enjoyable parts of writing my memoir has been creating chapter titles — once I decided to make them all song lyrics from the 80s and 90s! I’m a music nerd, and this was my chance to throw in some of my favorites. I’ll be posting this playlist over time, chapter by chapter, with a bit about why I chose each song.

Title: If Travel is Searching

Titles are hard.

If Travel is Searching is divided into sections: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, In the Desert, and Deuteronomy, plus a coda called Joshua (hey, that’s me!). With that Biblical framing, and a first-chapter mention of Abraham — Avram then — leaving Ur for Canaan, I thought for a while about a Biblical title overall: Go Forth for Yourself.

But that’s a little heavy, don’t you think? Hard to say out loud, too.

Instead, I’ve settled on If Travel is Searching, the first words from Bjork’s “Hunter”:

If travel is searching
And home what’s been found
I’m not stopping
I’m going hunting

I like the open-ended quality of a conditional as a title. Well, is travel searching? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s just fucking around. (That’s also a plot point, so stick around for that!)

Also, this was a song and an album that I listened to a lot while on the road in India and Nepal. It had a mystery to it, a strangeness and a yearning that matched my whole situation.

And so, If Travel is Searching.

Oh, and stick with me on this journey, will you? I’ll bring back the goods. But I don’t know when.