Songs of Ourselves – Americans describe their view of America | James Brega: What I Write Instead of Nothing

James Brega: What I Write Instead of Nothing

Have you ever driven up the California coast from San Luis Obispo to Monterey, knuckles white on the steering wheel as you fight for control of the car through hairpin curves? Have you ever dreamed that you had murdered someone and, upon waking, been unable to shake the conviction that it was true? Have you ever sung onstage to a packed audience, been robbed at gunpoint by a ten-year-old, laughed when it seemed— for a moment—that a famous author had stolen your mojo, wondered why we don’t drive steam-powered automobiles, or confronted your guardian angel at high tide on a gay beach once claimed by Pilgrims ? In What I Say Instead of Nothing, James Brega invites you to explore his real, imagined, and re-imagined experiences through his collected essays and short stories—a journey that will feed your nostalgia for life at the end of the twentieth century and remind you how desperately you wish that a great deal of it had never happened.

Songs of Ourselves – Americans describe their view of America

December 13, 2015

I am privileged to have been selected for inclusion in a new anthology from Blue Heron Press, Songs of Ourselves: America’s Interior Landscape, which was officially published on December 1.

When John and I were moving from New Jersey to San Diego, California in 2008, we gave ourselves a month to accomplish the trip by car, stopping anyplace that looked interesting. I kept a travel diary describing what we saw; my chapter in Songs of Ourselves is made up of excerpts from that diary. Because we are both interested in Frank Lloyd Wright, we ended up visiting a number of his projects, from private residences in Oak Park outside Chicago to the Johnson Wax headquarters building in Racine, Wisconsin and his beloved Taliesin West near Scottsdale, Arizona. The preponderance of Wright’s work in our itinerary suggested the title for my contribution: “The Wright Stuff: Encounters with Frank Lloyd Wright and others on a trip across America.” Other sites we visited along the way include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio; Mount Rushmore in South Dakota; Devil’s tower in Wyoming; and Chaco Canyon near Farmington, New Mexico.

The book is available through Amazon in soft cover or you can read my chapter here. I received my copy yesterday, and am looking forward to reading my fellow contributors’ stories.

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James Brega: What I Write Instead of Nothing