UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO [1995]
Most of the heads that showed up to the Girassol scene had come from straight from the streets of one city or another. They had never lived out of the shadow of a grocery store, if you get my drift. I was the only guy with any real… agricultural experience, and I hadn’t exactly spent my time growing potatoes. Except, now I was.
The first thing I did was to start planting a garden down by the banks of the Garcia, to the south of the big house and most of the construction that was starting to happen in earnest. It was nice to get away from all the banging and cursing as the outbuildings that we became so famous for were slowly taking shape. Some of the larger domes required all-hands-on-deck, but for the most part, I stayed busy turning over the soil and getting ready to plant some staples, as well as some primo smoke. We weren’t hurting in that respect, with Charlie flying between farms come harvest time, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have our own grow to fall back on.
With everyone busy getting their space together, I was alone out there on the edge of the property quite a bit, and let me tell you, the vibes out there were pretty strange. At some point back in the day, the people who lived there had cleared the land south of where all the action was. It wasn’t too much work to get it all cleaned up, I guess I was lucky that the blackberries hadn’t taken hold like they had at the road into the property, I would probably still be bleeding!
From where I was working, I could see straight across the Garcia at what looked like virgin redwood forest. I was taking a break one late afternoon—a pause for the cause if you know what I mean—just watching where the Sun might dip behind the giants and hoping that they wouldn’t shade my plot too much, when I heard the weirdest thing. It sounded like rhythmic drumming and chanting coming from across the river. As far as I knew, there wasn’t anybody else out there. The Garcia itself was running pretty full so there wasn’t anyway I was going to wade across and investigate, so I just filed it away and got back to work.
