Two Weeks in the Sonoran Desert

In July 2011, I spent two weeks in jail somewhere in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

Before my visit I was looking forward to the time alone. If I kept to myself, I was looking at two full weeks where I would reflect on my life and turn those experiences in to beautiful poetry, songs, stories - even begin crafting my auto-biography. I was a product of the 90's, I knew that artists and musicians went to jail all the time, and produced some of their best work behind bars.

Nervous, but optimistic I took the Phoenix Metro to the edges of Maricopa County with some cash, my I.D., my phone, a pack of smokes, a lighter, a pencil and a small folding pad of paper. I began jotting down my thoughts, which always helped churn up some creativity so I could really start writing.

A song began to emerge. It began with complex rhymes and I found a hook. I had never felt so "authentic" in writing rhymes as I did on a bus headed to jail.

I arrived at processing. I walked through a metal detector and was patted down. My picture was taken, my belongings were put in a plastic bag and I waited in a crowded cell for four hours before being moved in to a smaller cell with no windows for the next eight hours. My optimism had left. My creativity was stifled for the time being.

I took another bus, this time I didn't have to pay for it. I arrived at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's infamous "Tent City" and was shown where I would sleep. Here is your tent, there is your cot, commissary is through that door, bathrooms over there, showers there; a guard pointed as he spoke. Here I was, this was it. Time to get creative and record my experience.

Time passed, I began talking with the people around me. A lot of "what are you here for's" and no one acted like it was a big deal. photo by Al Macias - KJZZ http://kjzz.org/content/146090/tent-city-diary-part-1-first-48-hours-were-horrible

I sat on my bed and brought my pencil to my pad, without hesitation I began to write. I wrote the date, and I wrote "day one", and that was it. I was void of creativity. I thought about was I should write, and those thoughts quickly turned in to what I should have done to avoid jail. I found a book and began reading. I wanted nothing more to create something unique, something I could only express through the lens of an inmate. But no. I was in the mood to consume, so I picked up a book. The Bible Code. I turned the first page, and the second. Four hours had gone by and I had read the entire book.

I thought about recording my newly formed thoughts on the Hebrew alphabet being both letters and numbers and the possibility of my entire existence being the product of an ancient prophecy that predetermined everything there has been and ever will be. Mind blowing. Surely this was a revelation I could write about. Nope, I needed to consume more. I picked up a lighter read, a magazine. Not sure which one, I don't remember the content. Then, I picked up the actual Bible, a book I had never read, and began consuming.

Several days went by. Several books, magazines, conversations and some eerily relevant passages from the Bible had shown me one important thing. In jail, I have no creativity. I was completely disconnected from that part of myself and replaced the void where spontaneous creation had lived before, with consumption. I was so eager to become a better version of myself that the thought of recording who I was up to that point stopped entering my mind.

I learned this very important lesson in jail: creativity can not be forced, and freedom is a prerequisite to creative thought.