Blue Merle
Rumors abound that the top floor of the Austin State Hospital, built in 1861 as the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, is haunted, and it’s easy to see why. Peeling paint covers all surfaces, windows are boarded up, ancient bathroom fixtures lie in disrepair, and the floor feels like it could give way any minute. In short, it’s an ideal spot to shoot the video for a song about America’s crumbling infrastructure, both physical and social. “The song is about the forgotten, and if you’re looking for somewhere indicative of the forgotten, this is the place,” said Austin’s Traci Goudie, taking a brief time-out from directing the clip for Merle Haggard‘s “Rebuild America First” Monday. The Hag, looking dapper in a gray fedora, seemed to take the grim surroundings – glimpsed in Robert Rodriguez‘s The Faculty and Tim McCanlies‘ Secondhand Lions – in stride, but the artists who spent the previous night painting the graffiti mural used in the video were only too happy to see the sun. “They were spooked out,” Goudie said. “I’m pretty sure it’s haunted.”This article appears in Barbara Bush.