Donald Miller Enlightens Us on Flagstaff, Arizona

A well-written travel book is a wonderful escape. Ideally the author should actually set foot in the place he or she is writing about. Some authors don't let the fact that they don't have time to stay in a city stop them from writing about it. This composer gets angry when they do that and, in this case, wrote a four-part choral anthem with piano accompaniment as a result of Mr. Miller's chapter on Flagstaff, Arizona in the book Through Painted Deserts.

Lyrics:

Flagstaff, Arizona:
Cut from different cloth than any other city.
Flagstaff, Arizona:
People living in community.
Filled with desert people who came to live
On this mountainside, thickly forested.
While other people skim earth’s surface as they toil,
In Flagstaff folks are rooted in the soil!

Flagstaff, Arizona:
One out of a hundred visited by UFOs.
Flagstaff, Arizona:
That’s an awful lot of anal probes.
There’s a growing college crowd that’s striving to be
In touch with nature and simplicity.
With khaki pants and fashionable jeeps,
With unwashed hair and paintings by O’Keeffe.

Flagstaff, Arizona:
Never did get out, drove through at ten at night.
Flagstaff, Arizona:
Hardly any cars or folks in sight.
Have I set foot in that city? No.
But I fully grasped it from my car window.
Those ten minutes made me wonder, though,
Could Flagstaff accept me? I don’t know.

© 2007, Daniel C. Meyer