Some songs take you places. Although you planned this trip very well, you don’t always know where you are going. “Girl Girl Girl” starts with a little cowboy trot pulling you toward it. This song may contain a secret message, we really aren’t sure but the obscurity is pretty wonderful.

The song has some connection to the southwest. It’s a theme in our collective lives as Tim is from Arizona and Katie took the kids on a few epic road trips to the valley of the sun. This song sounds like the southwest. The dust jumps off of this record and we even cleaned the record extra!

The first time Kathleen went to the southwest, everyone worried about her. She had a visual disorder called ocular albinism, which gave her skin a translucent glow bordering on light blue. Also the sunshine made it difficult to see even with the darkest of sunglasses. But there were plenty of swimming pools and her beloved Grandparents. Trips to the Southwest, either to Airzona, or Albuquerque, were some of Kathleen’s favorite times.

Most of all of our collective desert experiences have been beautiful. Filled with otherworldly scenery and more vitamin d than you can shake a stick at. Still, the southwest is filled with a variety of ways to die, none of them are very pleasant. From falling into canyons, to rattlesnakes, and long stretches of highway with no one in sight, the desert forces us to grapple with the bigger questions of life.

We thrust ourselves upon nature in unsettling ways. Staying in Scottsdale every year, we see miles of golf courses soaking up water and non-native landscaping so incongruent with the actual landscape. The lack of public transit forces everyone into a car to drive, drive, drive. The air in Phoenix may be full of particulates but it’s hard to tell when you look up at that seemingly clear blue sky.

“Girl, Girl, Girl” is a comforting sadness, like a cow skull in the desert. We look, we wonder, and we come back again.

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