"I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token
of a covenant between me and the earth."
Genesis 9:13

Jax is a rock & roll singer from the edge of the world, the place where the sea drops off into outer space.  He grew up watching all manner of sailors meet their end as their ships went careening off the waterfall of stars.  As a young man, Jax saw so many men consumed by the constellations beneath the sea that he didn't even like to go to the beach.  "The beach is dangerous," he told his friends.  "The ocean is a bathtub.  The stars are ravenous, bloodthirsty beasts.  I've seen too much death to 'put on a swimsuit,' and lay around on the edge of the world all day like a suicidal idiot.  You can lay here and die, for all I care; I'm going to the desert to live in an abandoned casino with the aliens."  His friends thought he was crazy.

But he managed to start a band anyway.

Act 1: A Beautiful Place

In Act 1, Jax stops to rest at an abandoned gas station in the desert after freaking out on some undisclosed issues.  While there, he has drama with a chick standing behind a dusty bar.  The girl is ridiculously composed, with perfect hair and makeup, and the cleanest nightgown in the world.  She is holding a vintage microphone in an intentionally-cinematic way, leading us to believe she is the singer in Jax's band, and that they are filming a music video.

Or are they?

Morning comes and the chick looks burned out, so they take a drive into the desert.  The car breaks down, so they take a bunch of drugs and walk back to the gas station to finish the video, at which point we are given a glimpse of Jax's psychedelic freakout.  Or is it part of the video?  Hard to say.  The filmmaker has left it up for us to decide.  The scene cuts abruptly to the show.

In the green room, Jax is combing his hair while the girl is warming up.  Jax has some unpleasant words for his reflection in the mirror, which indicates that he may not have entirely healed from the trauma instilled in him from his childhood at the edge of the world.  He exchanges some unpleasantries with the girl backstage, which leads the audience to wonder what his problem is.  Maybe he's still arguing with the monsters from his youth, the sadistic constellations laughing at the horror of the sailors spinning like rubber duckies to their doom down the whirlpool of stars.  Or maybe he's getting tired of being played by a different actor in every shot.  Whatever the case, a creepy, overweight janitor comes out from behind a curtain to intimidate the audience and dissuade them from asking any more questions.  Whoah, dude, what's up.  What's your problem?  What are you hiding?  Why are you watching Jax argue with his girlfriend just out of frame?  Are you the soundman?  The bouncer?  The director?

An aberrant weirdo?

Again, we are given no clues, and the scene cuts to the performance itself.

The show is a phenomenal success, and Jax and the chick go through actors like guitar picks as the happy ending comes crashing down on them like a deluge of party balloons released from the ceiling.  Applause settles on the band like a million downy, glittered feathers.  Their smiles gleam like polished chrome.

Hooray for Jax and whatshername.

Act 2: Wild Orchid

Act 2 takes a darker turn, as Jax catches feelings for a stripper chick from Reno.  Or perhaps he's remembering an earlier chapter in his life.  The actors are younger than they are in Act 1, and we get the sense that we are watching a flashback, as a young Jax (again played by a different actor in every shot) goes window shopping for wedding rings with Luna, his stripper girlfriend.  The pawn shops are strung like neon Christmas lights along the wet, shiny sidewalks of Reno, and the young couple is strung out on desire, dreams, and love. 

And also probably drugs.

Jax gets a call from Marcus in L.A., and whatever it is, the news is bad.  He looks at Luna (once upon a time, his women had names), and can't believe that she would ever do this to him.  He ages 20 years in a single frame, turns into a white guy, and goes into a bar for a drink.  Luna doesn't even care.

She has to go to work.

While at work, Luna gets an offer for a headlining gig in Vegas.  It's an opportunity she can't refuse.  Her friends are all about it, and encourage her to lose her lovestruck loser boyfriend.  His heart has been broken anyway.  Some things, you can't take back.

Luna breaks up with Jax in a crappy motel room, a room which bursts into flames.  The flames are a metaphor for hell, for love, for unrequited passion and desire.  Or perhaps the place is actually on fire.  Who knows.  In any case, Jax's experiences have beaten the young Asian kid out of him, and he is now a middle-aged white guy, an identity he carries with him for the duration of the film.  He walks out of the hotel in the middle of the day, but has to go back inside to pay off a homeless gangster, presumably for food bank debts.  The gangster is dressed like a torn-up sofa from the thrift store, and is wearing perhaps the worst suit in the whole entire world.  He takes Jax's money anyway, hopefully to buy some new clothes, and Jax walks into the elevator, even though the building is only one story tall.  The elevator door closes on his parting words like a symbol of the end.  Or maybe the scene fades to black.  I can't remember.

Who cares.

Act 3: Dust on a Rainbow

In Act 3, Jax has become a rock & roll burnout, and is living in a junkyard in the desert.  He still dreams about his former loves, perhaps against his will, but his faith in the world is clearly at an end.  Passing his time polishing hubcaps for a car he no longer owns, Jax sits under his ramshackle Mad-Max shelter doing and feeling nothing, as an old guy pulls up in a pickup truck and gives him a guitar.  The old guy stands there like a burn-unit Clint Eastwood and tells Jax to stop feeling sorry for himself and get on with his life.  Burn-unit Clint Eastwood drives away, and a depressed, indifferent Jax leaves the guitar case in the sun, like the bones of a fish that's already been eaten.

A guitar?  Please.  What do I care about the guitar?

But the instrument gnaws at his dreams, and Jax can't sleep.  He walks out to the guitar in the middle of the night, opens the case (unless... it opened itself?), and says a prayer to the stars that ate all his childhood sailors, while having a flashback about some chick he once knew, sitting by the fire.  Or maybe he's praying to God.

Again, we can decide for ourselves.

Way later, like, 20 years or more, Jax is driving through the desert in a badass muscle car, when an EMP goes off.  The invisible blast kills his ignition, his radio, and the neon sign for the casino artfully framed over his shoulder by the filmmaker.  Jax has a moment of fear, but is resigned to his fate.  Power must have been restored pretty much immediately, because the next day Jax is back to cruising.  Suddenly, a rainbow strikes down near the highway like a lightning bolt, kicking up a cloud of dust.  The dust covers the highway like a symbol of Jax's obfuscated purpose.

Jax beholds the rainbow with gratitude and wonder, and for the first time in his life, finds peace.  A handful of dusty memories flash before his eyes, chicks mostly, and Jax goes back to the junkyard to work on his guitar.  Is he thinking of the burn-unit Clint Eastwood, the old man who brought him back to life?  Or are his memories of all the former arguments he had with girls in the middle of the road after breaking down (again) in the desert?  Maybe it's the shows, all that music, all those songs.  What a long, strange trip it's been.  What about the abandoned gas station, and his old band with the chick who wore the psychedelic nightgown, or even, God have mercy, Luna?  Is he thinking about those things?

Or has he moved on to something better?

Jax returns the guitar to a modicum of playability, and hires another phalanx of actors half his age to portray him in his memories.  This time though, the scene is one of peace.  The actors all represent different phases of Jax's life, and they're all smiling into the sunset, strumming their guitars.  One of them is even sitting on the hood of a hot car in the desert while wearing a leather jacket, and thinks nothing of breaking out his notebook to jot down a verse or 2 from a long-forgotten song.  Perhaps one of his classics, such as "Luna The Slut," or "Parked in the Travel Lane To Write One More Song Before I Get Rearended & Die."

It doesn't really matter.

In the end, Jax finds peace.  He turns his face toward the future with all his faith restored, parks his car on the side of the road like a symbol of his weary, rock & roll heart, and walks toward the rainbow under an arch of rolling dust.

The End