Four lines of philosophy from a different drummer

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Motorists traveling in the westbound land of U.S. 34 during Wednesday's noon hour might have looked twice as they passed a grassy slope two-and-half miles past Galesburg's West Main Street exit.

Truckers hit air horns. Others tapped brakes as they passed, trying for one last, fleeting glimpse of the strange sight.

What the travelers saw on the side of the divided four-lane highway was not a mirage. A shirtless man, skin covered in a sheen of sweat, sat playing the drums.

Eric Ratzel, who uses the name Sun Moriarty, is the 21-year-old who pounded the bass pedal and wielded sticks with abandon on a snare, floor tom and cymbal while traffic roared past at 65 mph.

The license plates on his dirty white Saturn were issued by the state of Kansas.

"Dude, really I'm from California," Moriarty said. "I've been living in Kansas for the last few years, but I have the sun and waves in me, dude."

Moriarty said he is a Knox College student from Kansas.

"Dude, I major in nose-pickin'," he said. "I'm a senior this year. I majored in philosophy, which is really like majoring in nothing."

Moriarty wore a pair of blue shorts, white socks and a pair of tattered suede sneakers. He is a veteran of sweaty sessions on the sides of highways.

"I've played on the side of I-35, which runs north-south through Kansas and Iowa," he said. "I've been on the K-10 quite a bit. That's a rural highway that runs through Kansas. I've even played on Route 66."

The drummer said few people ever stop to ask what he might be doing.

"Dude, cops are my biggest audience. They'll stop and walk up really slowly and ask me if there is something wrong with me. But they usually turn out to be pretty cool. I have a whole album of pictures of me with cops."

A person did stop Wednesday afternoon.

"One guy in a red car even stopped and shot a picture of me with his phone," Moriarty said. "He didn't say anything. He just pointed the phone at me and then he left."

Moriarty struggled to explain if his roadside performance had any meaning.

"I started doing this because I lived in an apartment where I couldn't play my drums," he said. "Too much noise. So I found a place where there was no chance anyone would hear me - I went to the side of a highway."

Moriarty realized the meaning of playing the drums changed when he took his act to the side of the road.

"Dude, the goal is not to be in the context where you are performing for people. I guess it's just about people coming by and discovering me. There is no context and no explanation."

The philosophy major shrugged and started to take down the four-piece drum set.

"Any person who comes by can't be really sure what they really saw existed. They pass by and a few miles later they might ask 'Did I really see that?' "

The drummer said he sums up what he does in a four-line mantra.

"What we do. You and I. See something. Say something.

"Dude, that's it. Those four lines."

Tom Loewy is a reporter for The Register-Mail. Contact him with column ideas at tloewy@register-mail.com or 343-7181, Ext. 256.