RELIGION AND I

alleghany landscape - bullhead


A book came a couple days ago I discovered at amazon.com, THE SOUND OF THE DOVE: Singing In Appalachian Primitive Baptist Churches, by Beverly Patterson, director, I think, of the NC folklife center in Chapel Hill. It's the singing that draws me into a Primitive Baptist meeting. The churches Patterson studied were in Alleghany County and Grayson County. From what I've read so far, she's got it. She made an awful lot of interviews and recordings. Her book, as far as I can tell after about 25 pages, has to do with the historical origins of the singing as done in the Primitive Baptist churches. The doctrine behind the singing goes back to 17th century England and beyond to Gregorian chants. Patterson also accounts for why the Primitive Baptist way has continued to carry the singing style without changing as all the other protestant churches have changed over time.


I grew up in fundamentalist Baptist church in Kansas, meaning hard core fundamentalist, the preacher a Swede from Minnesota a few generations back, Johnson. The Scandinavians were every bit as hard core protestants, see BABETTE'S FEAST, read about van Gogh's preacher daddy. Kansas hard core fundamentalism was of the same belief system as Scandinavian and English 17th century protestant beliefs. It wasn't just something I was taught, but the preacher beat it into my head, week after week, day after day. Essentially, it was debilitating. It rendered every possibility of living a lifetime in this world defeated before it started.


The Pilgrims were hard core protestants of 16th and 17th century belief systems from the backlash called the Reformation following the Renaissance. This is the belief system at the foundation of our nation, though some of the composers of the Constitution and Declaration were what we call now Unitarians. Like them, I used education to help me crawl up out of the paralyzing morass of a belief system that has no practical application to this world we live in, anyway for me. I understand why the rejection, but we still have to live here. This is our spiritual playing field. Instead of living by an infinitely long list of DON'TS, I prefer to live by what makes the best sense to me, because it's my life. I prefer to live by Do instead of Don't. I was raised on No, Don't, and You Better Not, grew up with no idea it was possible to Do anything, because there was nothing left to Do, the flow of life sealed off with a log jam of Don'ts.


I'd love to be a member at a Primitive Baptist church, but I cannot adhere to a doctrine, whatever it is. I don't believe it's my duty to go to church. I go because I want to, and that is the only reason. I will not go because it's expected of me by anyone. I'd go more often than I do, but at a certain point of familiarity, expectations start arising and I start backing away. Like I'm not going to drive to Boone to go to the liquor store. When I want something from there, a few times a year, I'm going to the Sparta store. I believe in spending my money in the local economy, and I don't care who sees me or who they tell. Connected with a church, that's the big No-No, along with dancing and playing cards, and, of course, fornication. It makes me wonder if they've ever really thought about sin; like men beating wives and children is not a sin, but a sip of wine will send you to hell. Give me a break. So I took my break and live independently of other people's belief systems that are most often enforced the rooster in the chicken house way. I grew up in a chicken house. That was enough. I've paid my dues to the rooster syndrome. Am free of it and not going back.


This is the 21st century, and collective human consciousness has changed quite a lot since the 17th century. First, we've left the system of Patriarchy that governed the last 6,000 years, and have entered the age of Matriarchal and Patriarchal working together. We're moving into a time where women will be a part of decision making up front instead of in the bedroom. Male domination of the female is over. I can't identify myself with a patriarchal system in clear conscience, because I don't believe in it. In the American Indian way, women were a part of the tribe's decision making equal with the men. The male spirit needs the balance of the feminine spirit. The patriarchal time was characterized by war, power, killing, and tilted way out of balance. As we get more female perspective entering collective decision making processes, we might do a bit less killing and have less emphasis on power. The feminine spirit is nurturing. Everybody in the world needs nurturing after 6 millennia of men carried away in warrior mind, a long-standing tradition, a tough nut to crack.


If I could allow myself to join a church in this time of my life, it would be the Primitive Baptist. My connection with God is my own, however. I don't need to have my belief system approved by a board of roosters. It's only approved by me, because I'm the one living my decisions. I don't see God just the Father, but also the Mother. That may not be too acceptable to patriarchalists. It shuts me out of religion, which is a good thing. I'm of the protestant belief that my relationship with God is my own. It isn't available for approval by somebody not living my life. I am my own Calvin in that way. I don't want to lay down laws to my way of seeing for other people to follow, just to embrace it as my own, and live it, fine tuning it as I learn by experience along the way. If somebody else says the Lord commands me to go to church, too bad for his Lord, but mine says it's ok. I'm just living the original American belief system, following my own pursuit of happiness with the freedom of religion.


I don't call what I have religion. Everyday life is my church, my religion. It's in everyday life the Master wants me to work out my own inner logjams, in relation to other people, discovering the spirit in the other, learning by experience to value the people I live among. I can't do that and maintain adherence to a group that doesn't think I ought to know anyone from another group. A little too high school. Like some of my best friends are atheists. It's ok by me. As far as I can tell, it's a thinking man's place at the moment on a long path. Who am I to expect someone else to step off their own path and get on mine? It doesn't work well. Everyone's path is their own. Getting on a cruise ship of a few thousand and going together like that is ok by me.


Whatever anybody wants to do on their own path is what I want them to do. It just happens I'm alone on my path, the only way I can see that it's to be. This is where I temporarily am on my path. I'm engaged with my own flow to some degree and prefer to keep the flow in motion rather than anchor it down with doctrine. I tend to believe it's about seeing the spirit in others to the point where we're living in a heavenly way on earth, the garden, friendly associations with the people we live among. We don't live among just one kind of people. We live among every kind of people. We're like characters in Dickens novels all mixed up together. I think of the East Indian greeting, Namaste, the God in me greets the God in you.



*

ICY MOUNTAIN ROADS

down the hill


In the night we had an inch or two of snow with a film of ice on top of it. The road was scraped yesterday, but in the night received a thin layer of ice and some blown snow. Driving out of here this morning was ice all the way to hwy 18, 4 miles, half of it downhill and curvy. It's a good exercise for staying in the present moment. It will keep you there. I've driven on ice for so many winters I'm used to it. Last year was the first winter with Jr's car. That winter was characterized by quite a lot of snow and ice. Throughout the winter I took the car with new tires and front wheel drive through every kind of winter road surface. I appreciated the variety, because I was wanting to get the feel of the car and see how it did on ice. I'm comfortable with the car now, knowing its limit is a fairly steep uphill grade on ice. An upward inclination is fine until it takes a steeper grade, then the car slides backwards, turns around in the sliding and points down the hill with front right wheels in the ditch. That's ok I know I can drive out of the ditch. That was the only time I've lost it. Wasn't certain it would make it, assessed nothing is lost by trying, even if it doesn't work out.


What I don't want is to lose traction going down hill. Then it's like watching a movie on the windshield I have no control over. How I avoid it--don't lose traction. This applies for uphill too. Lose traction and start sliding sideways into the ditch. It's not as easy to get out of a snowy ditch going uphill as downhill. Once stopped on an uphill grade, it's a bit awkward getting traction trying to start uphill momentum on ice. What do you do? Keep the momentum going and keep it in the road. When I lose traction going uphill, I let up on the gas a bit and give just enough gas for the front tires to get enough grip to go. I gradually pick up speed so the tires won't lose traction from going too slow, keep the foot steady on the gas with no letup or surges.This evening I lost traction coming up the mountain only once, and that for no more than 3 seconds.


Drove to town this morning primarily to go to Selma's coffee shop. By now I have full confidence with the car, even with tires a year old, satisfied I can go anywhere in less than half a foot of snow. I've driven on ice aplenty in 3 4wheel drive pickups and one rear wheel drive before this front wheel drive Buick Century, my old man car. I like 4wheel best on ice and snow, but front wheel is so close to 4wheel in what it will do, the difference doesn't matter. It was a beautiful drive all the way to town, landscape painted white, trees like pencil lines on white paper. I drove slowly over the ice on the level part of the road because I did not want to be out of control for very long if the tires lost traction. Once on the highway the road was clear and there was no ice in the one place there is always ice. There might have been some black ice early this morning, though dumptrucks have been piled high spreading salt on the highways keeping them clear. I have to give it to the county's road crew. They do excellent work year round. In the winter, they're on top of it.


At Selma's it was warm inside. She said it had been a slow morning. I ordered my usual Kenyan coffee, which I find so satisfying when I drink it there or at home, it starts the day right. I want to drink it all day. It has that delicious a flavor for my palate. It's a relaxing flavor. Coffee tasters say it has a muddy taste. I believe I get what they mean. I'd prefer to call it a honey textured coffee without the mild bitterness of grocery store coffee. I don't know how to describe it. I appreciate the reference to a muddy flavor, though that doesn't describe it any more than honey does. It's a flavor I like a lot, and don't care to drink any other, because no other satisfies me. Kenyan does. Ethiopian is close in flavor, and I like it, but it's not Kenyan.


In the picture above you can see that I'm keeping the wheels in those two tracks of black, which is road surface. The white is ice. In this place I'm going is a downhill run, using the black tracks to apply the brakes slowing down enough to take the rest of the hill on ice and not lose traction. It feels good to know the roads here so well after 35 years of driving them. The mountains are good driving instructors. The first Nascar drivers were mountain liquor runners. These cold, icy days are rough, especially today with wind and ice crystals flying over the ground, blasting any exposed skin, like face, neck and ears. I go in weather like this like I go any other time of year. The car starts easily when it's cold, drives well on ice, so no problem. Don't worry, be happy.

LIVING APPALACHIA

by the side of the road


More snow in the night. Maybe 3 inches of powdery soft snow. Forecast for tomorrow is wind. This is good drifting snow. Fog settled on the mountain all day with temperature at 27. It froze to the tree limbs and twigs making them white. In the morning when the sun hits the mountains at a slant, they will glow. This has been an exceptionally long-lasting cold spell for winter. I love the snow, am glad especially for the ground water. A good day to stay at home.


Today's movie was UNDER THE VOLCANO, made by John Huston from the novel by Malcolm Lowry. It's a book I meant to read years ago and never got it read. Glad now I didn't. The story of a drunk self destructing doesn't entertain me. The film was beautifully made, but didn't reach me. I meant to get some painting done when it was over, and set up for painting half way through it and finished the film painting. I could hear it fine. There wasn't anything to see, just a stupid guy being stupid. I don't really enjoy stories of somebody falling through the bottom, like in the movie Drugstore Cowboy. Cold, dark tale of a loser acting out his loser nature until he self destructs.


Listening to some Howard Joines fiddle music today from a reel-to-reel tape by Clifton Evans, who played guitar with Joines. Sometimes a banjo comes in. Might be Ed Atwood on some of them. I don't recognize the bluegrass banjo on some. I'm hearing it from a cd Lucas Pasley made from Clif Evans's tapes. Howard Joines was quite a fiddler at old-time and bluegrass. Old-time was his music, though he loved to play bluegrass too. He was respected all over the county for his fiddling, like every good musician in the county is known all over the county. This music is reminding me of the gulf between the culture of the mountain people and the culture of the people coming into the mountains. The population is now about half and half. There is very little cross-cultural interest. City people bore mountain people. Mountain people bore city people. The mountain people are working class culture. The city people are middle class culture. Very different viewpoints.


My friend Cynthia is teaching an Appalachian history class at WCC in Sparta. I'm wiggling with curiosity to know what it's about. I don't know any history of the region past the lives of the oldest people I've known. Tom Pruitt told me a great deal of history, living history, about relatives, friends, church, preachers, revivals in my house that was then the school house of Air Bellows, sheriffs, murders, catastrophes, rain storms that washed out sides of mountains, working horses, making old-time haystacks and rail fences, fox hunting, making liquor, fox dogs, the ways of what he called the old people, the people who were old when he was young. I heard his brother, Millard, the Regular Baptist preacher talk of his lifetime, how they lived, what they did. It was a living book, better than any book, because it was all told from first hand experience. No interpretation, but their own.


In a way I was a moron for not writing what they told me when I returned home from a visit. But it felt too invasive, too exploiting. It felt too much like I was using them for something quite other than our person-to-person conversation. I didn't want to break the authenticity of a truly real human communication in a time when we're so overwhelmed by television and telephones real communication by sitting and talking, like an old-timer telling a new-comer his life. My rationale back then was this was between us when the conversation took place, about like wearing a "wire" to record him talking. It felt too unreal. I came to the mountains to get away from the unreal and find something real. I couldn't exploit people I respected and admired for any reason. When I write about them it's with high regard to give a picture of who they were, and no need to do any more than that.


I came to the mountains with the conviction that I was here to learn the new culture I was entering, not to teach the culture I'd left. I was all eyes and ears. I knew the people in Millard's church, people they knew. An old friend of Millard's came to mind who drove up the mountain with his wife from Low Gap from time to time to visit Millard and Malissie. Claude Brown. He was always laughing and telling comic tales of something somebody did or said that was especially hilarious. Old-time situational humor, telling something somebody did that was funny, or that self did. Humor now is jokes. Situational comedy is seldom noticed. It has to be on tv to be noticed.


Saw a good commercial for some kind of video screen with a Paula Abdul look alike jerking her long hair and limber body on ultra high heels, the left side of the tv screen, and on the right side the same image gyrating on this particular monitor advertised for better than life. The white guy who has never seen anything but television stares at the image on the screen. Paula Abdul gives up trying to catch his attention and huffs off the stage. The maker of the brief video knew very well what he was saying. Television has become reality.


*

ALLEGHANY BLUEGRASS AND THE NEWS

seen in pine swamp

On the news I just now heard that enemy missiles can reach US aircraft carriers. I figured that was settled back in the 50s. Maybe news is like fashions, retro-news. Poke the off button. Get that noise outta my house. Click. Done. Mmm, quiet. Refrigerator running, fan on the heater going, crickets inside my head. I prefer this trio of the sounds of home to somebody talking about missiles and ships over pretend news. There comes a time it's just a noise. It's come to the place I don't believe any of it I hear and I talk back to it. Like hearing them talk about the tea party a "grass roots movement" makes me gag. It's a Karl Rove creation, the Master Propagandist. I listen less because I believe less every week. Yet I continue to catch a five minute top of the hour news every day to see if the end of the world took place yet, if N Korea has nuked S Korea, or if Pakistan nuked India while I slept.

To get that nonsense out of my head, I put on a cd Lucas Pasley gave me some months ago of Howard Joines playing fiddle and Jr Maxwell on bluegrass banjo. Probably Richard Joines playing bass. Sounds good. Made perhaps in Howard's living room. Now they're playing Sally Goodin. They're making music. It's mountain music from down the road a couple miles. Among the greatest gifts these mountains have given me is the music. I've been trained all my life to believe that only the big recording stars are any good as musicians and anybody that don't play on the radio can't cut the mustard. Au contraire. Now, when I hear the great Eric Clapton pick acoustic guitar, I think there are at least a dozen men and probably women inside a 50 mile radius of my house who can pick circles around Clapton. More than a dozen more than likely.

I've grown into a time of the life when I prefer to hear music of field recordings, recorded at home during practice sessions, jams. That's where mountain music lives, besides at dances. At home practicing is for the dances and fiddlers conventions. Now they're playing the Bill Monroe tune, Just Because, that Elvis recorded around 1955 and made Bill Monroe a pile of royalties. It's refreshing to hear Jr's banjo again and Howard Joines's fiddle, especially them together. I hear a guitar that may be Howard's son Richard. A guess I assess pretty close.

These I'm hearing are ones Lucas Pasley has put into his computer to download them onto cds for a preservation effort. It would have been a serious shame to have no recordings of these people, especially in a time when recording is easy. They were too good as musicians to never be heard again after they've died. While Jr was living, I was only able to find a cassette of his band the Green Mountain Boys and a video tape of the band playing in his basement. When he died, 3 more collections of his picking fell into my lap. One with 2 tunes of Jr with fiddler Cleve Andrews, 15 tunes of Jr with fiddler Art Wooten, and a dozen tracks of Jr with his uncle Howard Joines. This is one of the wonderful treasures of Alleghany County music I want with all my might to be able to put them on several cds to give out to the people who need them. I can name off a list of a hundred easily.

I like being able to preserve what little bit I'm able. My contribution to the whole is small, but an integral part of the whole, a part that belongs, small though it may be. One is plenty. I like having a small part in the world of the traditional music of NW NC and SW VA. I've helped preserve a little bit, and gathered together some of Jr's lost recordings for the archives. Seven years of radio show was satisfying and 4 years of the store Backwoods Beat Music distributing the music to people wanting to hear it. Unfortunately, it's too small a market for any place with any overhead to make a go of it, all the more going into a Depression called an Economic Downturn. It might be an economic downturn on the stock market, but it's a depression in the working class. Big O's allusion to self as FDR replacement didn't work out. He was no FDR. He's not showing much Abe Lincoln, either. There is still plenty of time for the Lincoln likeness to come to the surface if it's in there. Sorry for mixing up the inner world with the outer world, but they do weave together in everyday life.

*