Dispatches From the Driftless

Note: In an effort to reduce the amount of crap I spew on Facebook, I'm diversifying this blog a bit. The amount of AI and bot-generated nonsense on that site has become intolerable and if it weren't for the fact that I play in bands that use it for networking, I'd get the hell off it. As it is, hopefully focusing on long-form prose over on this blog that I spend $11/month on will start to justify the expense.

My wife and I just spent 5 days in Southwestern Wisconsin, in the portion of the American Midwest known as the Driftless Region – so named because the glaciers missed this quad-state slice of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota and left the land nice and hilly. Makes for really fun driving, especially at night when you're heading toward Wildcat Mountain State Park to do some evening stargazing and trying to dodge the possums and frogs crossing the road. That's not sarcasm – I genuinely have a fun time swooping around the windy roads of the Driftless (and we really did have to dodge some critters at night).

The area feels like a different state entirely, full of green hills and woods straight out of the Shire. We planted our home base in a Vrbo cabin (a true cabin, mind you – not a single-family house that could be used as an actual living space instead of an investment property) and basically relished being away from Milwaukee and our real lives for a few days.

Aside from the scenery, what appeals to me about the Driftless and inspires fantasies of retiring there someday (assuming retirement will be an option, considering *waves at everything*) is the distinct anarcho-hippie art vibe running deep through the veins of the region. I have no demographic data to base this on, but the Driftless feels like where radical lefty Madison folks end up when they get old and don't wanna party anymore. Granted, this summer we visited in an election year, and so we saw plenty of Tom Tiffany signs that served to remind us that nitwit are everywhere. But still - visit Mount Horeb and find coffee shops with trans flags proudly hanging outside. Pop in at Metaphysical Graffiti in Viroqua and you can wander into a back room separate from the shop called Room For Comics, and strike up a conversation with the affable old hippie who curates what is less of a room and more of a walk-in closet (like, you walk in and suddenly realize "oh, this is literally one room where a dude is hanging out with his for-sale comics collection") and get your fuck-the-man commie vibes on. (It was this rad dude who made sure on our visit last year to peek into Metaphysical Graffiti's "Revolution Room," which had separate shelves on Black Liberation, Queer Revolution, the Zapatistas, Che Guevara, Marx, etc.) Hell, even a visit to New Glarus Brewing Company has a distinctly working class vibe to it, what with the woman-owned brewery's commitment to employee ownership and a resistance to the toxic corporate America principle of infinite growth for the sake of growth. That all being said, my big takeaway from this trip – a bonanza of book, record, and antique shopping that resulted in me buying way more books than I need – was how even an inspiring, recharging haven of radical thinking, outsider art, and revolutionary architecture can come with a conspiratorial, woo-woo underbelly (also found in the Revolution Room? The Real Anthony Fauci, by RFK Jr. Sigh). For every Taliesin, there's a House on the Rock.

Crazy Frank's Flea Market was the first example of this dichotomy we encountered on our trip. There's a lot to love about antiquing/thrifting as a political act; the practice of rehoming or reusing items rather than buying new ones is fun on a purely get-a-load-of-this-crazy-shit level, but also, reducing the consumption of new stuff while circulating money among fellow working-class folks rather than a corporation is an ethical stance and act of resistance! Besides, where else are you going to find a Six Finger Satellite CD in the same loose stack as John Tesh? Need the vinyl soundtrack to Atari's Yars' Revenge? They got you.

On the other hand, the number of booths we came across peddling crafts featuring AI art was downright depressing. That soft, plastic sheen coating most hastily-produced AI slop was easily spotted on chintzy inspirational signs, mugs, and whatever other knickknacks a so-called "artist" could shellac that garish data slurry across. Not really reducing the carbon footprint with those purchases, and extra depressing to think about once we visited the Museum of Unremarkable Objects, a downright bizarre grove of found item outsider art that screams, "stay fucking weird, Driftless!" You have access to this, and you want to make AI slop art? What's wrong with you, anonymous flea market huckster?

This part of the state is teeming with weirdo outsider art, the type of stuff with the backstory of "this old farmer in Central Wisconsin went nuts and started building sculptures on his land in 1855 and then died. Uh, here, look at it!" Aside from The House on the Rock, there's Nick Engelbert's Grandview sculpture yard in Hollandale, and of course, the crown jewel – Dr. Evermor's Forevertron and art park. The Museum of Unremarkable Objects is basically a small shed that pays tribute to ordinary household items by turning them into pieces of "informative" display art. Want to learn about the Unremarkable Straw, the Unremarkable Postage Stamp, or the (fucking seriously) Unremarkable Surveillance Camera? (Someone call the A Frames.)

Next to the Museum is a string of found item sculptures called the Outsider Art Project and, well, I mean, just look at this shit:

AI art is plastic and fake and gross, and the fact that a grotto full of repurposed plastic junk feels more organic and immersed in nature is a real indictment of that crap. We bounced around with glee, took a million photos, and waved at the family that motored by in an ATV, likely grinning with amusement at the two newbs who just discovered the Weird Art Thing. By the way: across from the installation was this Very Good Sign:

We encountered very similar Super Weird Shit outside Driftless Books and Music in Viroqua, in a tribute to someone named Robert Horwich. "In the last several years of his life he had begun creating quirky sculptures out of scavenged materials such as dolls and other found objects, and mounting them on his house, then expanding his art over a few acres on his property, totaling over 300 pieces." Fuck it, that's what I'm going to do in retirement when I'm too frail to play drums at speeds over 180 BPM anymore.

Driftless Books & Music is an absolute treasure of a place to get lost in, but even they make sure to carry something for the wackier elements. Their political science section doesn't discriminate, carrying Naomis Klein and Wolf, and their metaphysics section is a TRIP. I'm reminded of the Act 10 protests in 2011, when several of my friends and I marched around the Madison capitol building to stand up for workers' rights while randos handed us pamphlets about how 9/11 was an inside job. I suppose there's always going to be that element skulking about. In her 2023 book Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein speaks at length about how the more fringe "woo-woo" lunatics become detached from reality first by recognizing real truths about how fucked up the world is, and then overcorrecting by slingshotting deep into the conspiracy zone (is the healthcare industry broken and corrupt? Are pharmaceutical companies profit-driven parasites? Yes! Does that make measles and covid vaccines dangerous? Fuck no, are you insane?). In the Driftless, everyone recognizes that the world has some serious issues. How that knowledge manifests in the Driftless is a hypercolor, high-contrast microcosm of America at large, where freaks of all kinds let their flags fly loudly and boldly – anarchists, commies, and conspiracy theorists alike. Don't you miss Art Bell and the days when you could listen to someone rant about Area 51 or play field recordings from the inter-dimensional hellmouth in their backyard and not have to worry that they might end up running the Department of Defense? Like everywhere in America now, the Driftless has plenty of people who have fallen over the conspiratorial edge into a full bigoted fascism, but also there's plenty of reminders that once it was possible to read about UFOs and the Freemasons and appreciate it on a "for pure entertainment purposes only" level. Or was it really? I guess I'm not sure. To bring some wrestling back into the blog, I struggle with the idea that his wrestling fandom helped enable the rise of the current President, but at the same time, I understand that my life-long obsession with that bizarre performance art also helped me immediately see how much of his routine was kayfabe. That balance is possible with metaphysical literature too, I suppose.

With all this messy grounded leftism and far-out conspiracy theory nonsense swimming around in my head as we returned to Milwaukee, one thing remained true about the Driftless and our time there: sitting on a porch deep among the trees, listening to the ASMR of insects, amphibians, and wind through leaves, is incredibly grounding, as is being able to look up at a universe full of stars. As we spent a dark evening at Wildcat Mountain State Park, using our telescope to focus on the Ring Nebula, Hercules Cluster, and Andromeda Galaxy, a thought struck me. When I can see the universe above me, I naturally feel more connected to it. I feel more of the Universe than apart from it, whereas in Milwaukee, the light pollution serves to make me feel separated from the rest of the Cosmos, sealed away from reality in plastic wrap. In the Driftless, it's much easier to feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves, whether that's reflected in the woods, the stars, or even the co-ops and anarchist bookstores. There's something very metaphysical about that too, and I don't think that's too bad a thing.