I've Got to Get Up, Pack Up, and Roll, Man

I've got to get up, pack up, and roll Away, man. I refuse to be part of the American mindset, nor can I do anything to change it. All I can really do is pack up my tent, roll up my bag, and move Away--maybe I'll record the day, maybe I won't. 1

I only like Away when it has a capital 'A', because that turns a common concept into a tangible city, the Capital of the World. Every living person is trying to get in, kings and queens included, but only the hobos, drifters, and bums are ever allowed through the gates. No matter where I wake up, I need to lay my head on a foreign pillow by the end of the night--Away. Away's always been my destination, but I can hardly ever find it. (When I do, I stop for a few beats to admire it, and it slips away like a mirage.)2

Sure, mom, I'll write home every week. More precisely, I'll write to your home every week, because I've got no home within sight. Of course, there's a town where my friends live, the same one I go to school in. But I can have a friend in every single coffee shop from here to San Fran, if I so choose. On the road, you can choose your friends from anyone in the world, not just the fifteen hundred kids you go to school with. And, can't the dotted yellow line and the countless coffee house conversations teach me as much as an old geezer with a beehive haircut?3

I guess i'm just trying to say that, if you see a man on the shoulder sticking out his thumb and holding a sign that says 'Anywhere But Here,' or a coupla unshaven kids sitting on their packs and reading Jack Kerouac, wave to them. Call them bums if you want--beatnicks, hobos, drifters and deadbeats--but know that they are the real Americans; the ones that try to understand the country by living, not by hearing. They, by travelling the US, are the ones who fully experience it;they show more patriotism than many of the ones willing to die to defend it, and, by God, they know more about this land than those that created it and layed down the foundation.4

I hope that, if you bump into me in a roadside diner, you'll remember to give me a wink, a high-five or, if I need one, a ride. I might call myself Allen, Neal, or Napolean; I might be a dwarf, i could be a giant; black as tar or white as paper; Hell, I could be a woman. Because all 'I' really am is a desire to move a little farther down the line, and anyone else that feels this way might as take my identity. All I know for sure is that I'll be ecstatic, unshaven, and wondering where I'll toss and turn and dream my dreams that night. Just say "Hey, man," or drop a buck to someone with the wanderlove in their eyes--I'll be asking the waitress for a slice of apple pie with ice cream, but all I want is to go Away.5

I've got to get up, pack up, and roll Away, man.