My unhappiness with the
eyes in the blood poem notwithstanding I think the image is of lasting personal
value to me. it helps me articulate something that's at the heart of my
experiences with Folk music, and perhaps even at the heart of what Folk music
is becoming- MAYBE: Folk Music is becoming a music of loneliness, and here I
think is why.
TRUTH:
We are never more alone
than when we ought to be together, and all the folkway culling of the eyes in
my blood sees a ragged and loving history of the passions what came in the
blood of others before me feeling very far away from anything I’ve ever known.
I’m not going to pretend to know the most lonely lonely but I can say with
confidence that I’ve felt the deep ache lonely of amputated heritage.
I was raised in my house, just like everyone else in my town. I don’t
think any of us who grew up in GreaterAmericaVilleSuburbia really grew up in
our towns. Our imaginative worlds we supplied by rapid-child-fire commercial games
and toys crafting fantasy worlds in a planned obsolescence so that the
childhood experiences of my eldest cousins are couched in obsolete brands and
are already largely irrelevant to me. There was no continuity with the past and
I did not grow up with the folk tales of my culture.
HIGHLY SPECULATIVE:
I can’t help but notice that Folk Music has gone from being primarily
communal to primarily lonesome- what began as dance and sing-along
participatory music has evolved into the doleful home of singer-songwriters in
advanced stages of misanthropy- often of course shot through with feelings of
great beauty because, as they say, inside every cynic is a disappointed
romantic. Blah blah… blah blah! But the point is, extremely introverted artists
like the Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell and certain
sides of Bob Dylan were my introduction to the musical form of Folk. I can’t
help but wonder with all the above artists which came first- the lonely or the
sound? Were they simply lonely people trying to express their feelings through
a more traditional form (though the loneliness did away with much of the
traditional chord structures) or were they playing the music and feeling the
same sort of distance I feel when I listen to folk? And that made the form
tragic? All of those artists have non-folk albums with decidedly less lonesome
characters than the folk-body of their individual catalogues.
IRRELEVANCE:
All of the above.
THIS WEEK: I was listening to conspiracy podcasts made by people who
believe that extra-dimensional demons are communing with our world leaders,
resulting in all manner of strange occurrences in celebrity land. While I’m not
gonna comment on the truth of their claims, it did get me thinking again about
my historic infatuation with demons, which here I decided to take to its
furthest logical extent- I.E. fantasy me as Demon Gigolo. This messed nicely
with the Appalachian fear of the flesh- fear- demons- flesh- outlaws- taxes. I don’t know.
Whatever.
Redneck Outlaw Fantasy League Nutball
I’m gonna take my family into
the hills
We’re gonna live off roots and
rocks and dollar bills
Tax collector always tries to
take what’s mine
I’m gonna tax him of his skin
one of these times-
-got rough when my car fell into
the night
Well that was the price I paid
for second sight
Yah I can see right through
dimensions now
And I can see the demons chasing
me down
1-2-3-4-3-5-4 nothing really
matters anymore
Up I go
and then back down again you
know
I wasn’t meant to be
Sedentary
If the hand of god
Has made my shoulders broad
Then the devil’s hand can make
me broad everywhere else
I’d never waste a tax
collector’s skin
I'd sow it into all of my
favorite garment hems
Wear it out to the dives
They’ll all run for their lives!
The women’ll say “what’s he
wearing,
Looks so good, how can he bear
it”
And oh I’m gonna dance that evil
jive
The devil’s horns’ll grow long
and hard when he sees me writhe
Get Devil up against the door
Leave Devil moaning on the floor
"I’ve never been loved like this
before"
He’ll whisper in a hellish roar
(Chorus)
1-2-3-4-3-5-4 nothing really
matters anymore
Up I go
And then back down again you
know
I wasn’t meant to be
Sedentary
If the hand of god
Has made my shoulders broad
Then the devil’s hand can make
me broad everywhere else
