An American Dream Bus
Donation protected
I have a beautiful blue school bus named Lucy that I’ve been renovating for six months. I’ve poured lots of love and labor into Lucy, but after a series of unfortunate events I’m now broke and need a little help to leave my parents’ house and live my dreams on the roads of North America.
My Dream
It all goes back to when I first hitchhiked around the country after my freshman year at Harvard in summer 2017. I had never really travelled before, and after the 2016 election, it was clear that America was having a cultural crisis. I wanted to get to know America, all of it, and I wanted an adventure. Adults told me not to do it, but I saved up $1000 working at a local burrito shop, and I spent two months successfully hitchhiking an 8000 mile loop around America. I met hundreds of different Americans, had interesting conversations, and saw many beautiful things around this enormous country. I had insane adventures that I’ve been using as the basis for a Great American Novel, and I would like to have more adventures on the bus. On long hikes alone that first summer, I realized I always was and always would be a philosopher at heart. That first trip crystallized my dream for me: I want to absorb America more than anybody ever has. I want to embody America, and live my life as a grand experiment. I want to see every state, every big city, every unique region, every ecosystem, every national park; I want to talk to as many different kinds of Americans as I can; I want to spend my free time reading American literature, American philosophy, American poetry, American history, American thought of all kinds. Reading is my favorite thing to do, and besides my summers spent hitchhiking, I’ve spent most of the last three years doing exactly this with my classes at Harvard and with my free time. There are, of course, hundreds more books to read, but already I can feel the essence of what I am after, and I believe without a doubt that it is an essence worth pursuing with my whole life. I want to synthesize America. I want to spend my days thinking about, talking about, and writing about the major themes and problems that run through the American story--- I want to think deeply about democracy, liberty, nature, value, will, language, politics, sociality, and what it is to be a human being. And I want to share what it is I learn with everyone. I want to write so many essays, poems, short stories, summaries, arguments, and manifestos every week. I want to record videos, too. I’d like to become a resource through which people can learn about and think about what democracy could mean, what America could be, using the best resources that previous Americans have left us. America needs to become young again. I would like to catalyze this by absorbing and popularizing what of the American past I feel is worth projecting into a new American future. By absorbing the voices of the past and the experiences of the present, I would like to be a voice for a future America.
What I Want to Do with My Bus
I want the freedom to experience, think, read, and write, every day, anywhere, for a living. I want to spend a month in Alaska exploring nature and solitude, and maybe fighting to save the Tongass National Forest if Biden doesn’t; I want to drive down the Pacific Coast, slowly, and write a short story every day; I want to camp in New England woods for weeks and work my way through everything Emerson ever wrote. After the pandemic is over and our social lives settle into a new normal, I want to throw any number of friends or loved ones into my big bus and go on an adventure to the nearest mountain; I want to park near a small liberal arts college and spend a few days sneaking into lectures by professors whose books I’ve read; I want to spend nights talking political economy with vagabonds while they busk; I want to write character studies of truckers who give me free diesel; I want to park in the driveways or neighborhoods of friends all over the country, and enjoy exploring their worlds as long as they let me. I want to find myself in the middle of a beautiful nowhere with nothing to do all day but write poetry. I want to fulfill and pass along the prophecies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, becoming Emerson’s American Scholar and Whitman’s Greatest Poet, a creator of the democratic literature he believed was necessary for the success of democracy; I want to show people that democracy is more than just a political system--- it is a way of life, an unfulfilled and developing ideal, a metaphysic of human experience, a way of philosophically orienting ourselves to the world through our inherent sociality, the way plural selfhood itself works, a pragmatic model of truth, an evolutionary expedient, and an art to be cultivated. I want to read every philosopher of democracy I can, so that when I eventually return for my final year at Harvard I will be ready to write my Social Studies thesis on a new ideal of neodemocracy. I want to agitate for a culture of democracy; I want to pass around a petition for a new Constitutional Convention; I want to go to a big Baptist church and speak with people over coffee and donuts about the connection between true democracy and true Christianity; I want to demonstrate how democracy can feel like an active religion, something self-cultivated and shared; I want to fill in the gaps that capitalism has hollowed out of our education, and show people that they can educate themselves to be deeply democratic human beings. I want to read Huck Finn by the Mississippi, Beloved by the Ohio, Blood Meridian in East Texas, and the poetry of Mary Oliver while parked anywhere I can see Wild Geese flying overhead. The possibilities unlocked by living in a school bus are endless.
Why GoFundMe?
I want to be owned by the people, not by capital. There is no existing fund for thinkers outside the system, because they naturally threaten the system. I do not want my mind molded by incentives from corporations, nor by colonized graduate schools which make students into small, impotent commodities. I know what I must do, I know my dreams, and I will keep pursuing them no matter what; it would simply make it much faster and easier if I got community support. I believe time is of the essence.
What Your Money Would Go Toward
Your money would go toward getting the bus launched. As of now, the bus is mechanically sound, and it has a refurbished floor, a bed, and a few other things. My friends and I have put hundreds of hours of work into it; my research alone has also taken hundreds of hours. I have most of the components for my electrical and heating systems, which I am setting up soon. I thought I could fully get the bus launched with just the money I made from AmeriCorps last year, but it didn’t pay much, and a few setbacks (popped tires, vandalism, and the discovery that Harvard won’t accept my now-useless $6000 AmeriCorps stipend) have reduced me to broke status. Your money will pay for launching the bus with insurance, insulation, walls and ceiling, electrical upgrades, a water tank, furniture, some gas, some food, some money for emergencies--- basically, depending on how much money I raise, I will be able to fully launch my life in the bus and survive on the road for some or all of 2021. Ideally, I will produce enough quality content during this time period to then keep me going on the road indefinitely, earning a small but sufficient income from publishing content, through Patreon, ads, grants, etc. Worst case, I can always do seasonal work anywhere in the country for a month or so to keep going. I do not need much to live; as a hitchhiker, I learned to live extremely frugally. “None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.” What I need now is launch money to escape my house and be free to write full-time; I’m confident that, once launched, I can keep myself afloat.
What Your Money Would Get You (Besides Joy)
(Disclaimer: tongue somewhat in cheek)
Well, since the bus is democratic, it can’t necessarily be ‘bought’ like shares of a company. Anybody will always be welcome on the bus. However, someone who donates any amount of money to the bus will always know they helped make it happen, and that they’re a part of something beautiful when I publish writings. Time is always limited, and in the early months of the bus I would like to focus on myself. But eventually I will start itching to take friends on adventures; already, many have expressed interest; so, the more money you give the bus, the sooner I will abandon solitude for you.
If you donate $50 or more, then I will additionally promise to use your name in one of my published writings. For $100 or more, I’ll let your character say anything you want in a piece of fiction. For $200, I’ll write anything on a subject of your choice.
When we get up to $300, we’re looking at adventure time. At some point over this new decade, you and I will have a one-on-one adventure of our choosing. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we want. Scaling up from here, the more money you donate, the grander the adventure you’re guaranteed.
Now, for those of you with a bit more disposable income, I’d really like your help. One well-off person’s $1000 would go a long way to someone trying to live in Thoreauvian voluntary poverty. If any of you gave me over $1000, well, I’d have to go all out. My bus, and her bus driver, will be yours to charter for an adventure of any size, anywhere on the North American Continent, and you can bring anybody you like as long as they fit. Grab some of your best friends, take a week off work, and I’ll drop what I’m doing to drive us all somewhere incredible and do something crazy. We would have amazing conversations and a hell of a good time.
What Good Would It Do?
I believe that my work is necessary. For various reasons I can explore more deeply later, the humanistic spirit of America has withered as material success has proliferated, and we see the consequences all around us. We are a nation with no moral identity; we’ve been hollowed out by the rich and powerful for decades. A deep democratic tradition has been replaced with the distractions of daily news. Only with a robust moral identity rooted in the fundamental ideals of democracy, of novelty as good and consensus as truth, can the people of America reclaim our power and change our current trajectory from dystopia to utopia.
My Dream
It all goes back to when I first hitchhiked around the country after my freshman year at Harvard in summer 2017. I had never really travelled before, and after the 2016 election, it was clear that America was having a cultural crisis. I wanted to get to know America, all of it, and I wanted an adventure. Adults told me not to do it, but I saved up $1000 working at a local burrito shop, and I spent two months successfully hitchhiking an 8000 mile loop around America. I met hundreds of different Americans, had interesting conversations, and saw many beautiful things around this enormous country. I had insane adventures that I’ve been using as the basis for a Great American Novel, and I would like to have more adventures on the bus. On long hikes alone that first summer, I realized I always was and always would be a philosopher at heart. That first trip crystallized my dream for me: I want to absorb America more than anybody ever has. I want to embody America, and live my life as a grand experiment. I want to see every state, every big city, every unique region, every ecosystem, every national park; I want to talk to as many different kinds of Americans as I can; I want to spend my free time reading American literature, American philosophy, American poetry, American history, American thought of all kinds. Reading is my favorite thing to do, and besides my summers spent hitchhiking, I’ve spent most of the last three years doing exactly this with my classes at Harvard and with my free time. There are, of course, hundreds more books to read, but already I can feel the essence of what I am after, and I believe without a doubt that it is an essence worth pursuing with my whole life. I want to synthesize America. I want to spend my days thinking about, talking about, and writing about the major themes and problems that run through the American story--- I want to think deeply about democracy, liberty, nature, value, will, language, politics, sociality, and what it is to be a human being. And I want to share what it is I learn with everyone. I want to write so many essays, poems, short stories, summaries, arguments, and manifestos every week. I want to record videos, too. I’d like to become a resource through which people can learn about and think about what democracy could mean, what America could be, using the best resources that previous Americans have left us. America needs to become young again. I would like to catalyze this by absorbing and popularizing what of the American past I feel is worth projecting into a new American future. By absorbing the voices of the past and the experiences of the present, I would like to be a voice for a future America.
What I Want to Do with My Bus
I want the freedom to experience, think, read, and write, every day, anywhere, for a living. I want to spend a month in Alaska exploring nature and solitude, and maybe fighting to save the Tongass National Forest if Biden doesn’t; I want to drive down the Pacific Coast, slowly, and write a short story every day; I want to camp in New England woods for weeks and work my way through everything Emerson ever wrote. After the pandemic is over and our social lives settle into a new normal, I want to throw any number of friends or loved ones into my big bus and go on an adventure to the nearest mountain; I want to park near a small liberal arts college and spend a few days sneaking into lectures by professors whose books I’ve read; I want to spend nights talking political economy with vagabonds while they busk; I want to write character studies of truckers who give me free diesel; I want to park in the driveways or neighborhoods of friends all over the country, and enjoy exploring their worlds as long as they let me. I want to find myself in the middle of a beautiful nowhere with nothing to do all day but write poetry. I want to fulfill and pass along the prophecies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, becoming Emerson’s American Scholar and Whitman’s Greatest Poet, a creator of the democratic literature he believed was necessary for the success of democracy; I want to show people that democracy is more than just a political system--- it is a way of life, an unfulfilled and developing ideal, a metaphysic of human experience, a way of philosophically orienting ourselves to the world through our inherent sociality, the way plural selfhood itself works, a pragmatic model of truth, an evolutionary expedient, and an art to be cultivated. I want to read every philosopher of democracy I can, so that when I eventually return for my final year at Harvard I will be ready to write my Social Studies thesis on a new ideal of neodemocracy. I want to agitate for a culture of democracy; I want to pass around a petition for a new Constitutional Convention; I want to go to a big Baptist church and speak with people over coffee and donuts about the connection between true democracy and true Christianity; I want to demonstrate how democracy can feel like an active religion, something self-cultivated and shared; I want to fill in the gaps that capitalism has hollowed out of our education, and show people that they can educate themselves to be deeply democratic human beings. I want to read Huck Finn by the Mississippi, Beloved by the Ohio, Blood Meridian in East Texas, and the poetry of Mary Oliver while parked anywhere I can see Wild Geese flying overhead. The possibilities unlocked by living in a school bus are endless.
Why GoFundMe?
I want to be owned by the people, not by capital. There is no existing fund for thinkers outside the system, because they naturally threaten the system. I do not want my mind molded by incentives from corporations, nor by colonized graduate schools which make students into small, impotent commodities. I know what I must do, I know my dreams, and I will keep pursuing them no matter what; it would simply make it much faster and easier if I got community support. I believe time is of the essence.
What Your Money Would Go Toward
Your money would go toward getting the bus launched. As of now, the bus is mechanically sound, and it has a refurbished floor, a bed, and a few other things. My friends and I have put hundreds of hours of work into it; my research alone has also taken hundreds of hours. I have most of the components for my electrical and heating systems, which I am setting up soon. I thought I could fully get the bus launched with just the money I made from AmeriCorps last year, but it didn’t pay much, and a few setbacks (popped tires, vandalism, and the discovery that Harvard won’t accept my now-useless $6000 AmeriCorps stipend) have reduced me to broke status. Your money will pay for launching the bus with insurance, insulation, walls and ceiling, electrical upgrades, a water tank, furniture, some gas, some food, some money for emergencies--- basically, depending on how much money I raise, I will be able to fully launch my life in the bus and survive on the road for some or all of 2021. Ideally, I will produce enough quality content during this time period to then keep me going on the road indefinitely, earning a small but sufficient income from publishing content, through Patreon, ads, grants, etc. Worst case, I can always do seasonal work anywhere in the country for a month or so to keep going. I do not need much to live; as a hitchhiker, I learned to live extremely frugally. “None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.” What I need now is launch money to escape my house and be free to write full-time; I’m confident that, once launched, I can keep myself afloat.
What Your Money Would Get You (Besides Joy)
(Disclaimer: tongue somewhat in cheek)
Well, since the bus is democratic, it can’t necessarily be ‘bought’ like shares of a company. Anybody will always be welcome on the bus. However, someone who donates any amount of money to the bus will always know they helped make it happen, and that they’re a part of something beautiful when I publish writings. Time is always limited, and in the early months of the bus I would like to focus on myself. But eventually I will start itching to take friends on adventures; already, many have expressed interest; so, the more money you give the bus, the sooner I will abandon solitude for you.
If you donate $50 or more, then I will additionally promise to use your name in one of my published writings. For $100 or more, I’ll let your character say anything you want in a piece of fiction. For $200, I’ll write anything on a subject of your choice.
When we get up to $300, we’re looking at adventure time. At some point over this new decade, you and I will have a one-on-one adventure of our choosing. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we want. Scaling up from here, the more money you donate, the grander the adventure you’re guaranteed.
Now, for those of you with a bit more disposable income, I’d really like your help. One well-off person’s $1000 would go a long way to someone trying to live in Thoreauvian voluntary poverty. If any of you gave me over $1000, well, I’d have to go all out. My bus, and her bus driver, will be yours to charter for an adventure of any size, anywhere on the North American Continent, and you can bring anybody you like as long as they fit. Grab some of your best friends, take a week off work, and I’ll drop what I’m doing to drive us all somewhere incredible and do something crazy. We would have amazing conversations and a hell of a good time.
What Good Would It Do?
I believe that my work is necessary. For various reasons I can explore more deeply later, the humanistic spirit of America has withered as material success has proliferated, and we see the consequences all around us. We are a nation with no moral identity; we’ve been hollowed out by the rich and powerful for decades. A deep democratic tradition has been replaced with the distractions of daily news. Only with a robust moral identity rooted in the fundamental ideals of democracy, of novelty as good and consensus as truth, can the people of America reclaim our power and change our current trajectory from dystopia to utopia.
Organizer
Aidan Fitzsimons
Organizer
Swansea, MA