Burn, Baby, Burn
by James Roland
(NOTE: Written by James Roland, published from Titus Gee’s account because all the other computers are packed in the car)
I’m sitting here, streaming video from CBS, watching the hills burn around Canyon Country, California (aka, RedFence Central).
One friend spent the day safely in Pasadena. Another left with his girlfriend after we packed his car with clothes, food, computers, and of course all the important components of RedFence Magazine.
The Sheriff’s Department is cruising the streets, announcing voluntary evacuation. But just five blocks away, where the fires are lighting the sky and showering the house with ash, they have ordered mandatory evacuation.
Staff writer Ruth Arnell’s old apartment is likely gone, or at least damaged.
I’m staying until they order me out. The grass is over-watered and I’m standing ready with the hose in case the sparks get too close. I don’t want to leave in case the neighborhood kids decide to go shopping (the crime in this area has been up of late, not very encouraging in a time of emergency).
But don’t worry, the car is loaded and ready to go.
It’s an odd experience, walking through your home and evaluating what is most important. With a good quarter mile of homes between me and the flames there was no reason to panic, so I had time to be selective. Clothes and computers were first into the trunk. Then backpack with toiletries and my secret stash of cash. Then extra food.
Then, various attributes of RedFence, including a fine piece of art – my Dave Veloz, two hundred-year-old shingles which Titus’s mom painted with the RedFence logos, and the “genius box” which holds all of our daydreams and pipe dreams.
I packed no books. I packed no films. This seemed the right thing to do, but the longer I think about it the more it seems . . . odd. Everything we strive to do here at RedFence, all of the films we make and stories we write, even the ethos we cling to as artists, are the first things we abandoned in an emergency.
This seems wrong somehow. But it is also, indisputably, the correct thing to do. I guess art is the only thing you can always take with you, because you don’t carry it with your hands. And it’s also the only thing that can always come back, sometimes stronger than before.
