Now that I’m on my own I have been forced to assimilate more with the culture around me.
I’ve been wanting to write about hillbillies for a while but it isn’t easy. Because the culture exists on a different plane that I haven’t reached yet. It’s a long slow fall towards the center of the earth.
If I HAD to sum things up with a few symbols I’d choose beer, whiskey, marijuana, beans, potatoes, corn bread, cast iron, dune buggies, family, nature, guns and mason jars. Sound boring? Well it is. It’s a boredom that causes one part of yourself to die while another part opens up.
The best way I can describe it is this…. Imagine you have to spend the next 8 hours listening to your slowest, least talkative friend while sitting on the hillside in a forest. He is going to tell you the story of how he built his house, board by board, brick by brick. You are going to sit there and listen.
Behind you are 48 cans of beer. To your right is a gigantic pipe stuffed with marijuana. You are free to partake but you neither drink nor smoke.
The story begins. You try hard to focus. ‘This will be great. I’m learning something.’ you tell yourself. ‘Maybe one day I’ll want to build a house and this information will be useful.’ For the next forty minutes your brain strains, trying to extract nutrients from the story.
Then you reach a cracking point. A feeling of unbearable restlessness builds up inside you. You panic and reach for a beer.
As you drink the story continues. Nail, board, nail board. It’s as boring as fuck but the beer is starting to relax you. You sink down a little into the boredom. Nail beer, nail beer. Board. House. It’s boring. It’s boring. You will survive. You reach for another beer.
But another hour and you want to get the fuck out of there. Seriously? Oh my fucking God. You know what? Maybe you’ll try that marijuana. You smoke it and start to notice how the leaves sway with the story.
Your mind breaks up like clouds and the story washes all over you. Is he talking about a house or is it a parable for your life? You look at your friend. Was he always this insightful? You’ve known him for many years and only now you’re seeing him for the first time? You lie back on the ground and realize he’s lying there too. You briefly consider making love to him then remember you aren’t gay. The story continues.
Clouds nails boards. Clouds nails boards. The story is more boring than ever but the boredom becomes a brown flood washing over you. Your body is the house. Your friend is rebuilding it. You are rushing away in the brown waters. The past is sweeping over you and forgotten scenes from your life start returning to your mind. How did you forget so much? You’ve lived your life in a daze, haven’t you? Distracting yourself with mental puzzles that ultimately meant nothing.
And now you’re solid. Seeing the world with new eyes. You look at your friend and he seems more real than ever before. He is a potato and you are one too. It’s beautiful.
Another hour passes. Nail, board, hoard, woard. The panic arises again. I can’t take this! And then a thought… WE ARE FREE BEINGS!!!! “We don’t have to sit here Buddy!” you scream. “We are to free to go!” Light flashes in your friend’s eyes and he starts running to the nearby trail where his dune buggy is parked. You run behind him. Exhilaration. You climb in while he drives, going faster and faster than ever before. It feels like bliss until you crash and then you are flying.
When at last you come to, you realize your friend is lying on the ground beside you. He is still telling you the story of how he built his house. Nail, board. Nail, board. Your head hurts and so does your body. But it will be alright. You lie there and listen. It’s a pretty good story after all.
The End.
This is how life in West Virginia feels to an outsider anyway. I don’t know how it feels to insiders and probably never will since ‘Don’t ask don’t tell.’ along with ‘Keep it Nasty!’ are the two mottos of the region. I try to make sense of it all but this world is so dense, dark, compacted and gravitous I sometimes feel I’m being buried alive. I start to panic. Then I reach for my pipe.*
Hi!
But for reals its like I’m learning a new way of thinking. Less speed and more solid. I think its called patience. You just crack open a beer and observe while the people and things around you reveal their true nature.
* I don’t really have a pipe.
The other day a friend pulled out his knife to carve an X on my to go box. What’s that? I asked. Rebel Flag, he said.
A man gave me this old tackle box when I admired it.
A friend of a friend gave me this warm shirt. People are very nice here if you can be accepted but that is a long and tricky process involving nuances I don’t understand. If you are a friend of a friend though you get a free visitors pass.
I ate Thanksgiving in a bikers bar. They had Turkey, stuffing, pie and all the works that you could enjoy for free. You don’t need to be rich or successful to matter here. Only humble, hard working, down to earth & preferably related. I’m none of those.
Slippers and I have been reunited. This has stopped the nighttime panics of hyperventilating with the need to tell her I love her. Her presence is grounding and she makes me feel more at home.
Did you know your Heart has a friend who follows him through life with only one goal- to protect? This friend is called The Heart Protector.
When you get heart broken or betrayed The Heart Protector can sink into depression. Where did he go wrong? How did he let his friend down?
Maybe he learns something, makes sense of his mistakes & goes back to work.
Or maybe he’s not sure what he did wrong. He moves into a state of hyper vigilance to ensure this never happens again. He builds new walls thick and crusty. The Heart lives inside these walls & starts to be deprived of light.
The Heart Protector builds walls in many ways. He may become paranoid & carry a magnifying glass looking for tiny red flags. He may become cynical & tell himself Love doesn’t exist. He may even reach the point of believing that Knights & Unicorns never walked the earth.
He can make you critical. Pointing out flaws in anyone who gets close. He can make you queasy at the thought of one day walking hand and hand with someone wearing matching pajamas.
He gives you reasons to reject people before they reject you. He fills your legs with adrenaline and tells you to run. Run to the river and drown yourself. He has a million ways of protecting his friend.
Recently my Heart Protector has been too tight & its hard to sing. I can’t catch my breath. I don’t want to go out and see people. I do it anyway but a part of me stays inside. I don’t want to write songs because there’s nothing to say. And no one to hear me.
I don’t know what I am supposed to have learned from my experiences or what I did wrong. I don’t know how to not let the same thing happen again. The Heart Protector is in a state of confusion. What to do? What to do?
So like the genius I am I’ve been trying to learn songs to make other people like me. My friend Arthur plays Sweet Home Alabama with me and Country Roads take me home. We play a gig which requires carrying 500 pounds of equipment for miles with the help of a grocery cart, setting up, playing for two hours, taking it down & carrying it back home. We make about 3 dollars each. I’m a bit worried about survival.
I can only hope popularity will help me survive. I want to reflect the culture back to itself so people will like me. Confederate flags are popular here. So are guns, knives, dicks, motorcycles, alcohol, drugs and nature.
Downtown Charleston West VirginiaA West Virginia Birthday cake. Do you see those two round cakes above it? It turns out they were boob cakes and I ate a slice when offered having no idea what I was eating. I am still trying to come to terms with this.The view from a West Virginia bar. If you combined this pic with one of a man driving 100 mph off a cliff in a motorized easy chair while high on mushrooms it would pretty much sum up the area.Giving a redneck hello to a guy(?) in a bar. My Yankee friends always assume the people down here are close minded. They don’t understand they are weirder than fuck.Burning a red candle in a desperate attempt to stave off the cold. The mug is resting on a tin of chewing tobacco.I finally had to decorate my bedroom because it was feeling too much like a prison cell. The theme is Friends. I am now expecting Dinosaurs and Elephants to come into my life.
Sometimes I think men are about changing the outer world while women are about changing on the inside to find the magic in what is.
I feel art is a feminine activity…. it lets people transform by seeing beauty in new things. To step outside the judgments which cage their perceptions. Art that simply caters to current tastes dulls the senses like being hooked up to a masturbation machine. Artists have to follow their own muse oblivious to the taste of the people.
The point is not to please nor to shock. But to deliver a fresh stream of water that people can choose to align their psyche with should they need it. The fresh input allows inner things to reconfigure and helps flush out the gunk.
It’s the same with thoughts. Fresh perspectives have value, even if you don’t happen to need that perspective at the moment. At least it will be there offering you a mental alternative should you ever get stuck in the future.
Whether songs are good or bad and perspectives right or wrong seems besides the point. They are crayons you can add to your crayon box just in case. A color you dislike now may appeal in the future.
I’m saying all this because I want to write about hillbillies and am bracing myself for the backlash. I have yet to recover my nerve from when people attacked me for writing about poor people. It doesn’t matter that I was praising poor people & pointing out that they might be fairies in disguise. In fact people seemed angry that I wasn’t describing the poor as miserable beings leading a pointless existence.
I internalized these attacks to where I became afraid to see my own experience of poverty in a magical light. I wish I could return to that lens though. It made me feel safe and uplifted.
But when autumn came I went into panic mode…. I must figure out how to make a living now or I’m going to die! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! And the more I panic the more I can’t think at all.
So I may just have to accept the possibility that I will end up living under a bridge getting stabbed to death by a mugger because so far no better plan has come to mind.
Maybe if I had the confidence to stay on my own wavelength rather than trying to be Tarzan the Dentist I could think more clearly. Maybe a possibility for how to survive would come to mind, maybe something I could actually do.
Cause the more I try to be a lumberjack the more my brain seizes and my body freezes and I can’t function at all.
All my life I’ve felt this guilt about not being a lumberjack, a gladiator, a professional boxer. I’m never hearty, tough, dirty and hard scrabble enough to please the people around me.
James was the first person to accept me as I was and that caused a lot of my psychological problems to clear up. I stopped needing to match the color of my ice cream to the color of my shoes. I could tolerate a wider range of colors, sounds and smells which let me function more normally.
But none of this happened because he was trying to change me. Its because he accepted me as I was. If I needed white ice cream topped with white sauce and white sprinkles he would help me find it until eventually I didn’t need it anymore. He always told me to trust myself and no matter how far out my preferences were he never tried to force me into conventional ways of being. Paradoxically this made me feel more at peace with conventions until I could see them as sources of comfort. Because I’d become comfortable with myself.
But now that I’m facing annihilation the panic returns that I must become someone else to survive. A gladiator. A lesbian. A mailman. A criminal. I must shut the fuck up and find something heavy to lift at once. Then I’ll be safe.
A baby walrus I found at a flea market. I listed him for sale on eBay like a damn slave. I am wondering if I can become a stuffed animals dealer.
A quilted bear I also found and listed.
A mustard package from biscuit world…. something about this color scheme really blew me away… it looks so warm and grounded yet also inviting adventure…. maybe these are the colors of the future?
I ate a plate of poison mushrooms, projectile vomited them over my whole apartment & ended up in the ER. They were jack o lantern mushrooms & I can only hope I gained some special jack o lantern powers from them.
A stone a man gave me. Is he a keeper?Downtown Charleston WV. I like it. But I’m not certain if it likes me. I feel I don’t have any of the traits that are valued here, like being super tough and down to earth.
Look around you now you see so many new horizons Fallen far into a circle sky of blue. With his body on you like a mountain falls and rises And his mouth become the river rolling through.
But look again- there’s a star that always rises Flying high over an ocean filled with blue. And will you swear cause I heard them say A day will come when he returns for you.
With the shadows falling how his hair curls like an injun And the sweat is burning paths upon his face. But you dread when this will end to leave you in suspension Walking circles in a dark and foreign place.
But look again- there’s a star that always rises Flying high over an ocean filled with blue. And will you swear cause I heard them say A day will come when he returns for you.
Please don’t hurt me. Say you won’t hurt me. Please don’t no matter what I do.
Will you say you won’t hurt me? Never desert me? Although I break you black and blue?
Could you climb up the hill? Could you climb it at night? To the air where it’s higher than stars? That’s where you’ll find a world that’s ours.
But look again- there’s a star that always rises Flying high over an ocean filled with blue. And will you swear that you love me cause A day will come when he returns for you.
Having lost all roots I crave the feeling of security. A taste of home. Home is partially this sense of safety in our minds released by certain colors, smells, sounds and vibrations. Probably ones that remind you of whatever brought you peace in childhood.
For me it is violets, dandelions, buttercups, green grass, clouds and skies. Lace handkerchiefs and tea sets painted with flowers. Stories about bears, knights and frogs setting out on adventures. Candies in glass dishes and cookies with pictures pressed into them.
Safety is walking with my grandmother into a restaurant where we place matching orders for a fish sandwich and glass of chocolate milk. These are brought to us by a waiter in coattails with a sprig of parsley on the side. She gives me little gifts on these outings. A tiny diamond pressed into a golden shell. We discuss scented soaps and bubble baths. Then return to her house to look through her collection of porcelain dogs. She lets me choose one to keep.
Security is sitting on the sofa with my mom as she reads me books. Animals in formal clothing risk everything for friendship. They set off across vast landscapes to chase dreams and fulfill noble ideals. She reads to me in the formal living room where everything is shiny, polish and floral. The piano sits to my left. He listens. Glen the koala bear sits on my lap. The stories go straight to his heart since he is an animal too. I am wearing clothes my mother made me and they are stitched with scenes of animals. The yellow sun is shining through the window.
Security is the heart shaped box painted with violets I kept on my dresser. Everyday I climb a chair to touch its smooth surface and then stroke the cactus who lives next to him. He grows inside a porcelain pot the shape of a cat. I talk to the cactus and fill him with a sense of love and self-worth to face the day ahead. I talk to everything around me to give them strength and encouragement. My animals, my dolls, my knights, my scented soaps. I touch them with my finger while explaining to them how special they are. How important their life is. I do this with plants, worms, and human babies as well. Sometimes it gets exhausting.
The other vibe from childhood was sports. Sports, sports, sports, competitive games & competition. Life was a competitive sport where victory was fleeting and humiliation eternal. I never resonated with this part.
But the female side was all about beauty. All my female relatives loved to decorate and shop for beautiful things. I did too. It filled me with a sense of awe. I spent a week contemplating if I should buy a tiny glass snake. I finally decided I should and took him home to place him on my Cherokee drum so he could dance while I played it. Glass, porcelain, and cotton are soothing to me. When things are clean, prim, old fashioned and expensive I feel safe.
Not that I live this way. But at least in my mind I can return to that porcelain heart box. Then a sense of optimism & power overtakes me. The world cannot change me.
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Saturday night inside a one horse town He’s blowing in like a breeze into a tin roadhouse The game is pretty easy when you choose them right All you need is twenty dollars and a saturday night oh.
Cause you wanna be high oh And you wanna feel free But you dont care about me.
Cause when it’s easy to come you come And when I bleed you go That’s just the way that things are I know.
I’m bleeding bullets like a horse put down For the last three weeks I’ve been popping them out. Blood in the kitchen and blood on the sheets Blood down my neck when I walk in the streets but
It was all just a game yeah Something fun and carefree And you don’t care about me.
Cause when it’s easy to come you come And when I bleed you go That’s just the way that things are I know.
The thing about men is when you let them win They dance around in a circle and come back again. But things is pretty different when someone gotta lose Then theys putting on their shoes.
Cause men need to be high. Men need to feel free. And you don’t care about me.
Cause when it’s easy to come you come And when I bleed you go That’s just the way that things are I know.
