The Shadow Catcher

Think of the TV shows that have taken over the ratings since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—shows that put the pieces of the puzzle back together, shows that solve the crime through diligent and thorough science, shows that find the missing, shows that revolve around an active, wise and super-vigilant government agent, shows that feature ghosts and the crime-solvers who cooperate with them to make the world a safer place. Sometimes we get the heroes we deserve but we always get the television shows our fears dictate.

The current top-ranked series for the past several years speaks to our need, as a traumatized nation, to believe that logic and order reign in the world, that crimes leave discernible fingerprints and that nothing — no thing — arises from unpredictable sources. The series takes place in Las Vegas, which is no random choice, because there is something in our national psyche right now that needs Vegas, needs the idea of it, rather than its base reality. Which may be why each segment of the series opens with an aerial view, different each week, glitzy, shimmering, of Sin City and its environs. Thirty seconds, tops, a bird’s-eye view of neon Vegas, Vegas as mirage — then the show leaves all trace of the town behind for the cool and blue interiors of the crime lab. We know that no municipality on these beloved shores could afford a state-of-the-art glass and gizmo graced lab as the set of CSI pretends, but we believe it, anyway, the same way we believed in Lorne Green’s accent in Bonanza and Miss Kitty’s anachronistic foundation garments in Gunsmoke. Because PRINT THE LEGEND is one of the great lines from one of the great Westerns, and because when the daily reality presents itself as uncomprehendable, we fashion our own myths and then hold those phony truths to be inalienable.

The concept of cowboys and Indians, for instance.

The West had both of them, but those iconic scenes of Injuns chasing John Wayne in his Stetson could hardly be more mythic than an extraterrestrial on a flying bicycle silhouetted on a rising moon.

Indians fought Army men, not cowboys.

Cavalry.

Yellow hairs in navy blue wool uniforms. G.I. Joes on Union wages.

But I didn’t grow up watching boys play Custers and Indians. I grew up thinking Indians were on the side of bad. That the cavalry was good.

The power of the entertainment industry to skew our moral compass is older than the industry itself, it’s as old as the first myths. Revelatory and marvelous, these myths sustain us, even when they are promoting points of view that were never true — and all I have to do is look up through my open sunroof at the desert sky to find supporting evidence in all the Greeks up there, storying the constellations.

Cassiopeia and her daughter Andromeda.

Perseus.

Pegasus.

Orion.

Hercules.

Neptune.

The Pleiades, all seven of them.

It seems the first great Greek diaspora was upward — a Greek APOLLO program to people space waaay before the added boost of jet propulsion. It’s a big wide plasma screen of Greeks up there — as many reruns of Greek myths above me as TV Westerns in the 1960s. And once upon a time people believed in them, believed Orion was exiled for eternity into the sky just as people, not so long ago, believed cowboys went with Indians the way pepper pairs with salt. No cowboys, no Indians. But myths are passionate belief systems that have ended up in someone’s attic, mothballed to the sky. They were irrefutable, once. Once, they were sustainable, and the fervor with which they were maintained illuminated the dark reaches of our ancestors’ fears.

Ask yourself what you believe in, and you’ll find out who you are.

Know thyself—the ol’ Socratic oath. (Do normal people start channeling the mad Greek on their way to Vegas?) It’s always HERE, on this leg between Barstow and Baker, that things begin to fray, and by THINGS I mean radio reception, cold reality, and stamina. Even in the dark I know there’s nothing out here but grit, salt pans, deadbrush and mineral deposits on either side of the road — one-horse desert outposts named in honor of the ground. BORON. I stopped there, once, in daylight, shadowing Curtis’s route through the Mojave. There’s a cemetery there, dedicated to men who died laying the railroad through this desert. Their names are bleached away, but the small quadrant of sacred ground near the Union Pacific tracks evokes the labor of their lives with crosses made of railroad ties. Once you leave Barstow, let me tell you, you are out in no-man’s-land — no stops — no recreation — just a long long stretch of straight straight road under godforsaken heat until your first sighting of a billboard promising your first sign of civilization fifty miles ahead.

Souvlaki, friends.

Homemade baklava.

The Mad Greek. A Greek restaurant. In Baker. In the middle of the desert.