[applause] >> thank you so much for being here.

they q for welcoming me and coming out tonight. my partner and i came in today for there is no fog right now. but we saw as we made our way west i said we are far from the desert here. but that just looks at it one way. it is a metaphysical place and the static and religious and spiritual space. we use the term desert as a metaphor before a lot of things.

this book in particular radios at its heart with several does there's but ultimately the subtitle is boom and bust in the new old west" so i look at the way the economy affects our lives. the way gets into our very bought up -- bodies i wrote the book because my body arrived in the desert under particular circumstances winter 1977 when i was broken and on drugs. i was in mexico city where i was lucky enough to go under a book contract from the york.

i got an advance to write a book. a dream come true in mexico city by november 1997 i had crossed the deadline without one word written per car was broke. i called the only friend i could count on the canvas i had destroyed a lot of relationships and species begin spanish she happened it to be living in joshua tree california. there are circumstances that led her from the tropics of central america prodigy and

up in the desert she said we will take care of you. shortly thereafter i arrived in then the first thing that i saw next to a sign that said 100 miles 29 palms easter joshua tree. you know, negative would treat? he then the album. you know, what the tree looks like? [laughter] crazy arms. i want to to go further out to something existential was driving the further out into the big empty.

and also the rent got cheaper and cheaper so i was paying $275 per month on 5 acres of land on the edge of 29 palms right where the sign said and that is where the book begins with a personal crisis it was no accident i arrived here. the desert was the site of a pilgrimage and at that moment i was not aware that i am in big trouble i must go he'll in the desert but that is the space and tiered. realized later the symbolism was there to begin the

process of healing to get to know the place that included dealing with the fact i was arriving on a landscape add as many problems as mexico city with drugs. coming from addictions and the pain and the struggle that goes with that where meth labs were exploding and young marines were training in doing drugs to escape. five lead after an ancient symbol lonesome i would also enter a place that was the opposite of that. a phantasmagorical plays.

been a few years later i met my partner angela was sitting in the audience also teaching at stanford the talks about the castro clinic about addiction. i fell for immediately about her that she was a desert girl. we meet her from the south valley we ended up living in mexico together what she was doing research four per dissertation as a medical and apologist we have those people here tonight so i

went to another landscape of northern mexico which i have already seen i was there as a tourist but we have all seen northern new mexico whether a postcard as a carousels there's a great colony of painters and how many western have we seen with the open space and a range? the one in particular has a very powerful draw with its enchanted landscapes in the nickname of mexico is the land of the enchantment and

makes a soft and glo we did warm and fuzzy tending to obscure the reality. that is what "desert america" is about. how has been imagined for us how imagery creates this image that is consumed and bought and sold how complicated the actual human geography of the place. i will take you to number mexico briefly. and gillette chose northern

mexico both families haft of issues with addiction as another point* of encounter between us. she chose mexico not to be right next door but close enough so we could visit. there is a place along highway 68 that comes out of santa fe going to towson mexico that has the highest rate of her when addiction and anyplace in the country. and has for a long time. it is not getting better bet

worse. she is day observer at the detox clinic and i am along for the ride even though i knew her work even the danger of it it was not registering for me. and how i would be like d.h. lawrence among the snowcapped peaks shirley after we arrived of what we've encountered get that fuck out of here. for the past our screaming and crying, if list pounding

on a car hood and screen doors slamming and in the midst of the battle the voice of a small boy a talking to himself. i said i want you out of year. these are my neighbors. rose asea and jose marti it -- martinez 23 years old. the boy is five years old. she has black hair that she teases old school style and his peers shaped. every prose is as tense as a hammer she almost always wears t-shirts and flip-flops'. jose is short and wears his bet -- baseball caps backwards and reassurance and tennis shoes. what little hair peeks out

is cut close. are rarely hear his voice although the courtyard access a megaphone so the southern hand of the village can listen. it is almost always rose's screams we here. it is a couple times a week. i am in the attic looking over the trailer of the other neighbor i took an old head the door and propped up on a sawhorse that is now riding desk. she is accusing him of stealing her marijuana. >> i did not take it bitch.

i and chip to the window. i remain in shadow although i doubt they can see me. there to deepen the moment to look across the courtyard up to the tiny window of the neighbors at it. sometimes and to lead joins me where she will system on the floor we stay for as long as the fight will last until he jumps in his car very rarely does she. then it will start up again. muffled shouting, a word, phrase, the door opens coming at us get but fuck out of my life.

she goes back inside and the door slams. now is quiet in the court erred. there is a breeze last night the local weather forecaster wrote to it would be a chamber of commerce day and i could hear the cicadas coming up from the riverside those states gain target practice and we're surrounded by millions of acres of publicly and that once belonged to ancestors of my neighbors. and suddenly heard oasis

builds the ball bad then sit and several different directions. vichy will call off. all lot. i hear that night when she sits on the patio it is quick and sharp everyone's in awhile he responds but he never shouts adds law of the. look at you. you are psycho. they are dealing. we notice the traffic seven cars per day. the customers are men young and old mostly in the work truck some come early some to raise rates job but

there's clearly after finishing work and some in the middle of the day. and it just so happens there prominent in the area. one member of the klan owns a nightclub i am told our old connected family. they passed on the advice of local law enforcement after she suspected he stole the lawn mower. >> we cannot do anything but if you want to take action issue to drag him into your house then

make it look like self-defense. get the fuck out of here, you fuck. look in the mirror. angela and i watch and listen the journalist in me thinks talk to them. get close. but we already are. they are our neighbors after all. rose is aware of our presidents. during the first fight we witnessed at had another woman coming to blows she said i don't need this shit.

i have new nabors. race does not necessarily mean color so over a period of months of adjusting to our arrival we come to an agreement, they will not get it in our shit and we will not get in there is. so we must not feel compassion or loading or fear anything for at each other. but still i go to the window when i other neighbor and i talk across the fence sometimes we will discuss next door. he is young but he talks like he is old and reminds me doing all the way from the highway to the river

there is good snows and could drain yes there were fights but not cocaine 1/2 or heroin. the sun dips below the matter what time a year the sun goes down one hour earlier. rose explodes one last time. now she takes off and he stays behind with her son she returns in a few minutes and screams some more than goes back in-house. with last of the sun might

lead the way i hear her scream again. i go upstairs to the window i can see the dome light in said this today and he is sitting in side listening to music that i cannot hear. little boy is gone. angela is on the graveyard shift on turner classic movies i watch a night to remember. her in a precarious situation. of look out that back window but the dome light is often it comes through the crack of the bottom of the door to

show the white. >> added early narrative of the book which if you drive between santa fight -- santa fe up through taos to see the turtle bailouts in new year's so that shows the conquest and resistance is very much on going and in many of their places. if you go on the road from santa fe through taos will go right through it in do not see it the highway said above the village may be

will catch some 10 rooftops and you will think a quaint village very pastoral but it will look beautiful. it is. "desert america" argues militate speculation has come together in the and holy alliance that began while the conquest of the american manifest destiny was still o occurring. the real but needed paying customers. it hired the greatest painters of the day. the founders of the art

colony they ended up reproduce in train stations and the beautiful landscape which almost always were bereft of human figures. if there was it was a when some native figure. with big ears complete week collapsed this history of conquest to make it a place that seemed in chanted. put the irony is they would consider themselves to be in radical circles but the

residue worked its way into the work. these works and 18 and film and western animate that landscape for us. in the most recent boom and bust cycle the old west tropes were redeployed to sell real-estate subdivisions had names and spanish imagine end of flamenco dancer selling some divisions the old western was selling the new landscape.

and schering those divisions and in the west ultimately is at its most extreme western version devastation of drugs of the drug war and emigration policies and going through deserts even pursued by a mexican americans with border patrol uniform. one looks at the reservation which is the focus of immigration battles native americans tracking from guatemala but don't even speak spanish and

encountering native americans on this side of the border with a deadly landscape. the boom was a bust even at its peak and you can tell the chapter that i just read what do we do with our neighbors? the question comes up again and again. if the house is on fire are to recall the pond to do something? is that the most basic calculation that is obvious? angela and i talked a lot

about what to do with our neighbors for the three years that we live there. there is a child involved. should we have called child protective services? should recall the cops? shoulda rehab opened our door to rose issue was crying? ultimately we just watched in the gilt of that i think will follow me forever. thank you very much for coming here tonight to and listen to me ramble on about the desert. please wait for the microphone.

>> i have a house at 29 palms i bought it 15 years ago as my life fell apart i felt it was the obvious choice to be but i want to know where that sign is by the way but how do you view what is happening there with palm springs renaissance and even desert hot springs that was masthead world 29 palms is general but it could be any of these places. in the interest to preserve their community there dying

because no new life comes end so the desert rats takeover. what do think? >> it sounds like you know, how complicated. 29 palms is to find by its neighbor which is the marine base the combat centers the entire employer and there is a lot of marine families that live that to 29 palms and of course, it is the largest training facility in the united states because our wars have been in the desert that has been the facility of choice.

a lot of hit men and women have gone through their to train. it is defined by the military. the phantasmagoric cold desert has the fault line right there. the highway north is the marine base. a highway south is joshua tree national park. >> read two years ago there was an article that said hot is the new school to saddle up and go live out there. i want to know how you see

extreme poverty and dysfunction amid the new money and wealth do they ever meet up? >> they do land they don't. the "los angeles times" had a spread called in new desert bohemia. they're writing about me. we had no idea. all we knew is that it was cheap we were creative types fleeing the justification of the city and the boom years start to pick up and capital looks for places to go.

from sample of ciskei the need to tell you but i mentioned to with real-estate speculation, the effect is due to store and obscure native populations it is representational and physical. we were low rent but after we arrived in the real money came them. the art in america artist or writer to then joni mitchell then bob dylan and it was a

tornado of speculation driving up the rent and then the old families to go south and cash in. an incredibly destabilizing force. so their arguments to be made. then isn't it like killing in self? but it was a dying town then they arrived in saved it was not ultimately a solution i would argue but thank you for your question. >> how would you envision northern new mexico if not based on revenue?

let say it was the free hand bomb factory instead of tourism. what would it be like in your vision? >> a loss of lowe's national lab is there is the biggest employer decides wal-mart. and we have uranium mining so those lands are compromise is to but all the factors of the landscape beginning with santa fe bring and the marginal as asian.

the casino economy has changed the economic character in recent years but we hear stories of the social cost to local populations. there is more talk of legacy tourism and historical tourism were all the efforts of new western art history have will hold generation of these images and angela and i visited to give me a addition that turn the

future on its head. how is the public doing? they're doing good. i think he said day will run the place in the future. i don't know if that is the case but it is a stirring vision to represent this place from the native pointed view. it would not be called the western anymore. just like san juan pueblo changed its name. history of the southwest has lived and is in our bodies

not to leave you with a completely dark impression but that excerpt is very dark but ultimately and trying to present a situation that to read can gaze upon the other is this the way it will be zero or will we change it? to reach change it word challenge it? >> what do you think further reasons that drive people to drug addiction? is the boredom and the

intersection between crystle meth and heroin? what dynamics drive that other than frustration over board them? >> i am sure you have plenty of ideas yourself. why should defer the question to my wife angela about her book the pastor zero clinic. she publishers before mind but if you look on amazon they say if you like this book you may like this book. we are a couple even on amazon. [laughter] i will borrow from her walk

work situates it into a historical context of vietnam veteran, back with addiction to sow the seeds in a place of disposition. i could interview people who group without electricity but not poor. they grew up in on a subsistence economy. it was tough and hard but it was clean. there are still vestiges of that life but to the '60s and '70s delay and grant had been dismantled often times

people selling out so the dismantling of the economy and the ku degraw then exploding in with the war on drugs the more we wage the war the more we have the problem the great crater week low of tries on a caravan right now going across list bakes to point* this out that northern mexico you will see the tourist signs from mexico

city going north with the trade route to and ended in hispaniola. today that this from the poppy fields of chihuahua from heroin addiction to northern new mexico. it is a cocktail of course, there will be addiction. in july offers psychological , addiction losing the the four beers and what identity you have left. and that ultimately is the painful irony for the native population and by the way i am not claiming anything i

am trying to perform a critique but ultimately i am to. to say he came here for a couple years he is representing us. that says everything. and other drugs? there is more and more prescription drug use. is an epidemic methods in the area and cocaine. the know the wildfires right now the same thing is happening in terms of drugs.

>> you go into how you got clean and sober in the book? i just answered a question about this. the book tries to be part memoir and part criticism. and to balance those three, mia editor she pushed me to cut back on the memoir more and more. sometimes i resisted and a

couple things i went to the mat to. the drug narrative is circumspect but it comes through the book by the end i do not say that i unclean the. according to a i am not. but i am not using cocaine right now. which is what led me to the desert. so that personal process is alluded to but not prescriptive. i am not using it as 1 million little pieces. and i tell the truth. [laughter]

>> are you still trying to research the topic or are you putting it to rest? >> no. the desert is immensity eternal. i talk about my grandparents came prime desert lands my childhood and then they came back i was weaned off and western music and the soundtrack of my childhood. i am a western kid that is like toronto with the lone ranger we just ran into johnny depp i assume he

signed onto the noon western representation which is revisionist somehow. [laughter] i am day total desert rat i just went camping out by myself i don't do that very often because when the sun sets i go crazy paranoid. it is scary as hell. the early christian mystics would write to narrative's how they got to the caves and steel themselves and creatures with heads phantasmagorical visions.

i have a relationship with doug christie who has expertise on the fourth century. i said i was so paranoid that amount to nine yen would come out and bash my head with a rock. is that like the christian mystics? he said that paranoia is part city boy but also embedded with your in the wilderness it is hard wired because there are snakes out there. i don't like snakes. but then of course, i settled then calmed down and

ultimately win the sky cleared the stars came out to on the road to death valley, i just saw god's face and went to a very peaceful sleep. that is the desert also. yes. [speaking spanish] they will bury me out there. >> this is excellent conversation to hear you talk, reid, a look at your book briefly. with a way that you write and think of language with

your performance and attitude to use to represent that? we may have one particular presentation but what fought are you giving to that? >> the languages gave coming in and out to come of their early part of the writing was very organic journals, interviews, but once i knew the material i became alan -- aware of

elements of reportage and criticism and wanted "the reader" to go back and forth and all of the tools that we have with the imagery to play off of stereotyped and want "the reader" not to settle into much because it gives the kaleidoscope. i force myself to try to occupy the point* debut of the other. you age mystics and people who i had more sympathy with two juxtapose and also with

the landscape thinking about the painter's and the art colony is and more recently that is part of the best western of my generation and emitter returns friday against core mack mccarthy. is a revolutionary old four -- art. [laughter] come on. give me a break. but ultimately realized he

is from the borderlands and incredibly powerful. i was tilting my sword battle with the bill. we grudging respect even with the stylistic tricks which is progressive of the border trilogy so that the race is the border and i am sure there was a chicano writer that did it before them but he popularized it.

i had to fight for that so old soleil cannot talk that bad. >> ld soleil cannot talk that bad. >> we have controversy here tonight. >> to talk about the pueblo maybe a save your there is a little bit now but a civil war? americans save to their people because they poured money into the communities but then it got out of control like the animal farm

they are separate now like white men with businesses. about the respect for those places and the balance of power? >> absolutely. sure. anything is possible. i believe miracles can happen and change can come. i argue lot in my own family with political points of view that this is just the way it is. and i said no. we can change this.

is now in charge today. of course, it is possible. there is progressives and social cost. it is a complicated terrain and i had ambitions to write more about the pueblo situation. fe were our neighbors but ultimately right now they don't want to be represented by outsiders and put up the wall. if i was on their land dealing with misrepresentation that would probably do the same thing. but think you.

>> day you have regional reaction to the book? i lived in the east 30 years then i realized how far away was there have been some shows that have been controversial manhattan beach is hardly the west but do you get different reactions? >> we are west of the west here. was angeles is not the west. you say it is to print it from the mexico reading

before a well-heeled audience i think the west can be a canvas upon which the country can look at itself that to the most recent boom and bust what we're still paying added most radical and violent in the west, san bernardino, a denver, phoenix, what happened there with the poor closure crisis was worse than anywhere else in the country. the employment rate so the

way we represent of rests-- the west, i made the argument about the unholy alliance early on with the expansion here we are again today as another crisis point* what does that mean for the rest of the country? it is crucial to our future as americans. that is why it is called "desert america." >> that is a great place to end.