Thief River Falls, MN.

The simplicity of the rural midwest wreaks of small tales of urban escape; broken down signs next to rusty tractors, the excitement of deer season, christmas carols at expansively large high schools and the like. On the whole, the Norwegian contingent screams native with the majority, but I sense a general bliss in the ignorance of city affairs.

Leonard Bernstein wrote "On the Town" over half a century ago, the primary musical number "Lonely Town" detailing the below quote by Mark Twain - "whether you're on Main Street or Broadway / if you're alone / they're both the same."

In December of 2007, police discovered the skeletal remains of Christina Copeman, an East Flatbush resident who had been dead in her apartment for well over a year. Oddly enough, the story made her an immediate posthumous quasi-celebrity; a symbol of the dire theoretical (or inevitable?).

Examine the dichotomy: "Unless there's love, the world's an empty place; and every town is a lonely town." - Leonard Bernstein, 1944

"Urban Loneliness is a myth" - The New York Magazine, 2010