SUDDENLY UNCOOL: WHATEVER

robert mangold

Another day of good weather, sunshine, temperature almost 60, donkeys and calves lolling in the sunlight. This time of year, I cherish every day and night when the floor is not freezing all the way to my knees. Actually, I don't mind, but it is kind of debilitating. Strong need to sit in a chair with a footstool where I read and watch movies, but don't want to do that all the time. Also good time to take naps, get feet up off the floor. It's a good time to stay in bed when the floor is really cold. A day like today, sunny and warm, makes me want to sleep. My productive mind, the mind that cares, reminds of things that need picked up and taken to the dump, a good day for it. Suddenly, I'm overtaken by weariness, need for a nap, didn't get enough sleep the night before. I stumble to the bed, step out of shoes, cover up and fall off into sleep with Caterpillar curled up in her cat bed close by. As I knew I would, I woke just before dark. It's still a nice day. It's not cold. Dark outside, or light, it's the same to me, unless I want to drive someplace and need lights. I carry a one-battery flashlight in a pocket. It's the size of a pocket knife. With dark happening at 5:30 now, a flashlight is the key to getting around. I may leave the house at ten in the morning for the grocery store and drug store, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'll be home by 5:30. It turns out that keeping a flashlight in pocket is every bit as handy as keeping a pocket knife. You don't know it's handy until you have one. Then you use it almost every day. I use the pocketknife so little for cutting, I keep it less than razor sharp to avoid cutting myself. Any of the men in my world would be shocked to feel how dull I keep my knife. They'd offer to sharpen it. I'd decline, they'd shrug a shoulder.

robert mangold

 

The news of the day is that the word determined most annoying of 2013 was whatever. Of course, it acquired comments suggesting twerk, hashtag and others like that. Of the list of possibilities, whatever is the only one that has become a slang term, like cool, overused unconsciously everywhere after 20 or more years of use. It is like a phrase we used in the Navy, You'll get over it. It has the same frustrating annoyance as whatever. It is annoying, to be sure, a nice way of saying, kiss my ass. Everybody knows that the first time they hear it. There comes a time a quarter century later when its overuse becomes annoying. In 1956 a song went to number one immediately, Transfusion, by Nervous Norvus, a novelty song that was funny and told a good story. It was number one for almost a year. At first, the radio stations had the phones ringing all the time with requests for Transfusion. Everybody learned all the words, bought the 45, listened to it over and over. Then the time came when people started calling the ratio stations telling them to stop playing the song. It went away as fast as it came on. Nobody ever wanted to hear it again. Brings to mind another song that was number one almost a year, Bill Doggett's Honky Tonk, soulful tenor sax with a dance band, and there was Ray Charles singing What'd I Say. Elvis, Hound Dog. Dynamic song in its moment. A good one for dance clubs, too. The Rolling Stones, Satisfaction. The Jerk, the Twist, the Peppermint Twist, Oo Poo Pah Doo, the Watusi, what Patti Smith later called The Land of a Thousand Dances. Move around the floor in a loco-motion. Jump up, jump back. Whatever.

 

robert mangold

 

I'm not going to argue with somebody from USA Today or People Magazine pronouncing authority on annoying words of the year. My guess is that whoever made the list grew up with a mother who over-used whatever. I won't stop using it, because it is so right. Like in the Navy, You'll get over it. Somebody starts griping. You'll get over it. It's such a frustration to hear, partly because it's the last word. You will get over it, and you know it, but for now you want to be mad and some yoyo says, You'll get over it. It's a similar feeling that goes with What-evuh. Sometimes it's the right thing to say. My friend Carole has a sweatshirt with whatever written across the front. She's had it probably fifteen years. I don't believe whatever will go away any time soon. It is so flexible it can be made to apply to different tones of voice, irony. And I will go on using it because it's a brief, one word version of You'll get over it. From five syllables to three. Economy of language. An entire nation of coffee shops cannot make me honor politically correct speak, so one writer for a paper calls it annoying. Big deal. It is. That's the point. It's not going away any time soon. So what if it does. About the time I was getting out of high school, "Somethin else" came on at first black slang. It caught on among white kids and spread like wildfire. Then it drifted away, though it continues as understood, acceptable speech unto today. Whatever is too convenient an expression to suddenly be over because somebody thought it annoying. Somebody thought it was annoying twenty years ago. That's why it sticks around so long, because it is annoying. I don't get the sudden annoyance with a word that has been a slang term for a long time. Like saying cool is overused. Duh. Just to say it is redundant. So what.

 

robert mangold

 

This attention on the word whatever brings to mind what a conformist bunch of people Americans have become. We've always had it, but now, after half a century of manipulation through television, the conformity now is incredible to behold. Perhaps it appears more exaggerated the further I remove myself from that world of thinking about money. Talking with Joe at the coffee shop, we talked about whatever, how funny it is we're in a time where somebody declares a word uncool, others fall in line and it's the new banned word, can't say it anymore. Then we get the language underground where we talk any way we like around people who talk that way too. It's where I find my kind of people I like, colorful language and the people who use it. I don't mean all swear words for colorful. I actually find the less literate someone is, the more colorful their language is. When somebody apologizes to me for not having much education, I assure them the education level means nothing to me. In fact, I like people of little education for the way they talk that's not the way we're taught in English class, but the living way of speaking. It's this I loved about my old hillbilly friends who are in their graves now and have been for some time. Their language had music in it. Now we talk like we're taking a verbal grammar test. We are more specific in our language than the old people were. Our society is more detail oriented and so is our school system. Now we have a list of banned words we're expected to have memorized. They didn't have any banned words in the old days. Church used to be the only place where you couldn't say certain words. Now it is a nation full of coffee shops. It might be fun to make a painting of all the banned words I can think of.  

 

robert mangold

 

 

 

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WRITING FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES

pictures from the game-cam

A couple of mornings ago I rose around 4am. Unable to return to sleep, I decided to get at the day's writing. In just a few minutes I was engaged. That almost is never possible. Along about 8am I'd finished the writing and it was time to add some pictures. The sunlight came through the window and lit some rows of cds on shelves against the wall opposite the desk. The titles had spotlights on them. From about 8 feet away I could read them easily. My eyes stopped at GARBAGE, Bleed Like Me. I'd been aiming to listen to Garbage for several days. That was the album I wanted to hear. A very satisfying band to my ears. I put it on and cranked it up, had a rock n roll party first thing in the morning, selecting pictures to go with what I'd just written. It took about as much time as the collection of songs playing out, considering I stopped to listen for long stretches from time to time. It was good to hear them again. Extra good musicians and Shirley Manson's vocals. By the time it was done, I was wide awake and wide open. Music over and the day's entry posted, I went outside to feed the donkeys and calves their morning hay, came back in and called my friend Carole for our morning visit. I must have sounded wired on coke, talking as fast as I could go, wound up. I laughed at myself when I heard me talking like I'd ingested a handful of diet pills. After talking about an hour with Carole, I'd simmered down a good bit, gradually returned to home base.

 

A few weeks ago, Sarah Bryan, editor at Old Time Herald, had sent me a box of several copies of the new issue. I'd asked that I be paid for the article in it with copies instead of money. I wanted to give copies to people whose relatives were in the article, friends, pass them around to people concerned, like Kermit at the barber shop who let me use a photograph hanging on the wall in the barbershop to include with the article. I opened the end of the box and left the magazines in the box, a good place to keep them while I took out one, two or three at a time. Today the stack was down to three yet to be delivered. I took them out of the box to throw the box away. Under the bottom magazine I found a notecard in envelope from Sarah, the editor. If I'd opened the box another way the note would have been on top. Before I say more, I need to interject that my assessment of Sarah Bryan as an editor is way up high. The two pieces of mine she has worked with, she smoothed the rough parts, rearranged some of the information such that it makes better sense in the reading. She is a subtle editor. She pays close attention with a well-trained, quick mind. I had given my friend Lucas Carpenter a copy of the magazine. He read the whole magazine, looked at all the ads and said, "Really good magazine! Good editor!" He went on to praise the lay-out, Steve Terrill's work. Steve is a master at his part of it like Sarah is a master at hers. Lucas has recently had his third book of poetry published. He has worked with several different editors from writing stories and articles as well as his poetry. He appreciates a good editor. I was glad he was able to see it in the product without me saying "Sarah is a great editor." That kind of intro kills what follows. But she is.

 

 

 

In her card she wrote that she "really, really liked" the article and believes OTH readers will too. I, who suffer from the mental illness ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and suffer as well from LSE, Low Self Esteem. An editor I respect as an editor and as a human being saying such as that about something I wrote, makes somebody with LSE double-take and say, "Really?" By this time in the life, I've learned to accept it when somebody says something like that, receive it with gratitude, be encouraged by it, instead of saying to self, she was just being nice--that's her job. It was one of the great joys of my life to write this account of Howard Joines, local fiddler, from other people's memories. I believed writing by "first hand" sources, information from witnesses memories, was the most reliable. Lord have mercy. A few times I had to leave out some information because of contradictory memories. Like some said Howard always played bluegrass, never played old-time. There was no bluegrass before he was 40. A bluegrass banjo player told me he didn't make music with Howard because Howard played old-time. The banjo player I knew in Howard's band played old-time. Another banjo player was in his bluegrass band. Howard had two bands, one old-time and one bluegrass. I had people telling me he only played one or the other. A woman I know said, "I aint never heard Howard Joines play nothin but bluegrass." She was born about the same year Bill Monroe first played on Grand Ole Opry. I attempted to add, but there wasn't any bluegrass before 1939. "I don't care--he aint never played nothin but bluegrass."

 

 

I'd wanted to write about Howard Joines three years ago. Talked with his son Richard on the phone for quite a while and he told me Howard's life and I made notes as he talked. I kept those notes in my desk drawer and looked at them from time to time. I had some memories from other people about Howard. I couldn't find how I wanted to approach writing about him. I wanted to write about him as a fiddler, but had pages and pages of biographical information. The biographical information made a kind of hurdle for me, one to climb over. I felt like the biographical information was important and wanted to tell it too, but then it became the purpose and I couldn't even get started. I continued to look at the notes from time to time, memorizing them, incorporating into my mind every little bit of information I could find about Howard Joines. Lucas Pasley had given me a couple of cds of Howard playing fiddle from some tapes Clifton Evans made. After three years of memorizing the notes of Howard's life, and having a couple hours of his music in the house, I felt like it was time to start. I searched and searched for a way to approach him besides biography. Couldn't find it. I decided to start and see if the writing might take its own course, see what happens. I was visiting with Richard Andrews, who grew up a neighbor to Howard Joines, and asked him to tell me something about Howard. I didn't have anything in mind I was asking for, just wanted to hear what he would say. It would be something memorable. He said, "When both his feet get to going, you're going to hear some music." That one sentence pulled the trigger.

 

 

 

I started the writing as soon as I woke up next morning, wrote all day until after 2am. Slept awhile, up again writing until 2am. Did that three days in a row and the same amount of time the fourth day rewriting, filling in blanks, and grammar editing. Then I took a rest. Didn't even want to look at it for awhile. Needed some distance only time could provide. Soon after introducing him, I started looking at Howard Joines in family context, part of it, but not the way I was looking for. I kept on writing and came to realize I've known several musicians from his generation, people he made music with over a lifetime. There it was. I was looking for the context of his life and it was the music world of this region of the mountains from Roaring River below the mountain to the south, to Galax to the north, Wilkes to the southwest and Mt Airy to the east. That was his music world. And more immediately the musicians of the county. I had been told about that period of time by other musicians I'd know from his time. I started writing about the musicians around him and found his context as a musician among musicians and went with that. It happened. And I saw that during his time as a fiddler everything was changing around him, from the Carter Family on the radio to the Beatles on tv. Everything was changing then. Electricity and plumbing were new to the mountains. Paved highways were new, and really fast cars. The music changed in that time. Howard was one of the musicians that went with the New, which was bluegrass. I surrounded him with the other musicians of his time he knew and made music with, and found the Howard I was looking for. I love it when a writing project takes its own direction and somehow guides the writing, or guides the flow in my head that is transferred to the monitor by fingers that follow thought. Thank you, Sarah, Thank you, Thank you.

The quick way to the OTH website:

www.oldtimeherald.org  

 

 

 

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FAREWELL TO POETRY

jack

It's the middle of the day, the sun is out, temperature up to 50 with some wind that has a bitter edge. The calves are lying on the ground in the sunlight and the donkeys are standing quietly in the sun. I went to bed for a nap, but it didn't happen. Rather than fidget and wait, I got up. Don't have a will to do anything but sit and write to you. I'd like to sit with a book of Louise Gluck poems, but not enough. I saw recently that Robert Bly has a new book of selected poems published last year. I have his earlier books and some of the smaller books. Light Around the Body is the last book of his poems I have. He has published several since then. I put it on my wish list at amazon, a reminder for the future. There came a time I discovered Chinese poetry and Rilke. From then on, the Chinese poets were so totally satisfying I didn't care to read anything else when I wanted to see poetry. And Rilke was unlike anything else. In that time of my life I was interested in writing poetry, published some, came to the mountains with intent to write poems of the mountains. But when I came to the mountains everything changed. My desert island book is Sunflower Splendor, an anthology of Chinese poetry from beginning to mid 20th Century. With it, and the Tao te Ching, I could live minimally without need for other books. Titles start coming to mind I'd like to take along, the poems of John Berryman. Doesn't matter. It's not going to happen. I have my own private desert island library right here. I am curious now to see what Robert Bly has been doing over the last 40 or so years.

 

jack

 

Robert Bly, without knowing it, helped me make the decision to move to the mountains. He came to Charleston to give a reading and a talk, either late 1975 or early 76. I fell into the oppotunity to be his chauffer, pick him up before a reading and drive him to it, get him to where he needed to be on time. Between stops, we talked a good bit. I was wanting to get out of the city. I told him how I was so disappointed by American cities I wanted out. No cultural life, just television. I was thinking living rurally would be less wilderness than a city. Rural life has just television too, so it's the same cultural desert, just less objectionable than the smog of urban busyness. He affirmed my thinking. He agreed that the cities have little to nothing to offer the artist. Rural living has nothing to offer either, but it's a better way to live, not so crowded. I've liked Bly's boldness in his verse. I have appreciated his approach to the political poem. American poets were shy to go with the political poem for good reasons, like they are immediately dated. Bly's trick was to make them in such a way they have their place and time, are universal too. His poem about the Viet Nam war, The Teeth Mother Naked At Last, is quite a powerful piece of writing. Bly made a cassette tape of himself reading it. I played it for an old-time preacher friend, Millard Pruitt. He said, "Who is that? Buck Shaw?" Buck Shaw was a man we knew who preached from time to time, maybe what they call a lay preacher, meaning he's not "called" to preach, but feels it enough to stand in the pulpit now and again. I had not heard Bly's reading of the poem in that light. It cracked me up hearing Robert Bly in the pulpit. I cracked up too, because if I'd mentioned Bly was a liberal, preacher Pruitt could not have listened to it. He hated communist Jane Fonda. One afternoon I dropped in to visit, the tv was on, a movie. In the mountains, it is etiquette to leave the tv on when you have company, they might want to watch it too. I saw Jane Fonda in the movie. I said, "There's Jane Fonda." He turned it off.

jack says, got an eye on you

To get through my second winter in the mountains with a modicum of income, I found a job in the library at a "school" for the wayward kids of alcoholic suburban middle-class parents. It was a money hole for the Presbyterian church to throw money into. They put an old preacher they'd set out to pasture in charge of it, president. About thirty kids, a secretary and a kitchen staff, about ten teachers. They didn't give the kids any slack. Get in trouble, they kick you out. That way they got your non-refundable money and they don't have to fool with you. The energy of the place was in the dead zone. The library amounted to a room full of books people had given the school for the library rather than throw them away. Readers Digest condensed NY Times best-sellers, and popular novels from years past. Essentially, there was nothing useful about the library, but for a place for the kids to hang out. I had no actual work to do, so I busied myself making posters for the kids, individually, with a child's stamp set of alphabet and ink pad. The posters I made were poems by Chinese poet, Han Shan, from his book of one hundred poems, Cold Mountain. He was a Buddhist monk of a Taoist leaning. I picked poems that were fairly straight forward, yet had some mystery in them. I was giving them something to put on their dorm room walls that might inspire thinking about its meaning. The kids loved them. It took a little while, but eventually I made a poster for every one of them. They liked that they got it and it was still a little bit beyond their understanding, just enough to make them curious to search for it. One of the teachers, a YAP, Young American Poet, came into the library one day while I was making a poster. Having heard I was doing something quasi-educational with the kids that might need overseeing, he was sent by the other teachers to see what I was doing, something to do with poetry, something they didn't know anything about and didn't aim to. Ridiculously authoritative, he asked which translation I was using. I said, "Burton Watson." He said, "The Gary Snyder translation is better." I kept to myself, No it's not. I didn't want to argue about something so subjective.

jenny up close

I mention this guy, because he was the one whose influence put the brakes on my pursuit of poetry. He came to the school some weeks after I did. I thought, O Wow, somebody I can talk with about writing, feeling like he was a Godsend. Turned out he drew attention to himself as a beer drinker. He strutted and talked about himself in very impressive terms, his publications, etc. I'd seen his style so many times among other YAPs I'd met, it made me question my own motivations. I saw him chasing a style that was mainstream at the moment, new, the latest. I found him fake in every way. I found his writing fake. I looked at him and thought: this is what I want for myself? He was already a little bit into that world I was heading into. My peeps into that world showed me a lot of people with his particular self-conscious style. I told myself I would never write again until it needed writing so badly it wrote itself. I felt like making a farewell gesture to my own attempts at poetry I had begun to suspect as false in myself. I picked up a National Geographic and randomly cut out two paragraphs, cut out each word from the paragraphs, put the words from each paragraph in separate bowls. I picked up the words, one at a time, wetting the tip of my finger and touching the pile. I wrote down the words that came up in the order I picked them up. I typed each one into a poem form, very loose with words strewn about as if I felt they had meaning, and put them in YAP's mail slot with a note, "I wanted you to see my new poems." He never acknowledged seeing them and never spoke to me again. I don't know if he "made it" as a name in American poetry, because I forgot his name. I believe in retrospect he was indeed a Godsend. The gesture with nonsense poems was my statement to him that I took him for a fraud. It was kinda mean, especially since he got it. Though what he got only helped him see me a dumber asshole than he already thought. Like the nerd's tshirt said, Keeps Em Away.  

jack says, bye

 

 

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ASS-KICKING JENNY

 

jenny's ears back

 

I utilize a lot of time looking out the window at the donkeys and calves grazing in the meadow on hay I spread over the ground for them earlier. I love to look at especially the donkeys, see their movements, and like this moment, seeing Jenny's face while she's chewing hay. I know her as my friend and like looking at her face. Seeing her face I see my friend Jen and think about her personality, how I don't want to control her but to understand her, learn from her instead of attempt to teach her. The only thing I want to teach her is that I love her as my friend, I like feeding her, I like watching her walk. I carry an armload of hay out into the meadow and Jenny walks beside me with her ears back, telling everybody behind her, Jack and the calves, that she is Alpha Donkey and claims the human for her friend and the hay for herself. She's the biggest and keeps the others aware that she can and will kick their ass. Ass-kicking Jenny. She shows a pride Jack does not share. I don't attempt to teach her about sharing. She's a donkey. Her ways are set in ways I don't understand, programed donkey behavior. I know nothing about donkeys but what Jenny and Jack have taught me and go on teaching me. I told them at the beginning I want them to be my teachers, teach me donkey mind. First thing I saw was the humility and that a donkey is drawn to humans with the same innate attraction a dog has. It's a different expression. She has an attitude Jack doesn't have. She keeps her head high and ears straight up. I'm getting impressions that she also sees her role as the herd's protector.

 

jenny soaking up some rays

 

I suspect strongly that the original wild donkey probably has no more disposition toward humans than a wildebeest or giraffe. They have been used as a beast of burden for so many thousands of years, more than likely pre-Egyptian pyramids by some thousands of years. Even if only from Bible times, donkeys have been with humans in close relationships since the time dogs didn't have "owners" and ate garbage people threw out for them. In the slums of India, today, dog packs terrorize the people living in slums who are on foot all the time. Donkeys are the original pickup. They are used, largely as far as I know, to carry things for humans. It takes a very tame animal to carry things for humans. I heard a statistic that in a year, more people around the world are killed by donkeys than in plane crashes. They're not completely tame. They are powerful. Like dogs, if donkeys were not disposed to humans, they'd be the same as a wolf and a zebra, untrainable, and a beast that could overwhelm almost any unarmed human. I wouldn't have a gun any smaller than a 45 if subject to a donkey attack by one that means it. The donkeys of the world have been worked by humans, for so many thousands of years, their by now genetic disposition toward humans has donkeys closer linked to humans than dogs or horses. I like not using my donkeys as beasts of burden. I like giving them a break. They have a big meadow with fence all the way around to keep everything out; humans, cars, dogs. Sometimes deer cross the fence to graze and they are no threat, so they're welcome. From our human perspective, the fence keeps the donkeys in. For the donkeys, it keeps the humans out, except for the one that lives in the barn nearby, brings them hay, carrots, sweet grain and talks to them like they have some sense.

 

jack scratching on a maple

 

The big round bale of hay sits in the meadow ignored. I've tried putting hay down around it, they won't touch it. Yesterday I tore away the soggy wet surface hay that was soggy several inches down. I threw it around on the ground hoping sun will dry it and maybe make it edible. I'd torn away enough of the damp and soggy outer layer exposing some that is dry. Yesterday I left my barn and went to visit friends all day. Came home around eleven, big, almost full moon in the sky, I saw the two white calves were at the hay bale. My feeling was the donkeys would rather be hungry. This morning I carried hay out to spread it around the big bale again. I carried my pocket knife, stuck it into the hay and pulled on it to cut the hay loose from itself. Went all the way across it making cuts about four inches long and maybe three inches deep. That allowed me to pull away quite big chunks of the outer layer to spread on the ground to dry, and exposed the dry hay inside. A couple hours after I'd put down some hay, about half the usual, instead of going after the dry hay in the bale, a calf and both donkeys were lined up at the fence staring at me through the window. They brought to mind my cat Tapo, who would get my attention to open the door by staring at me through the window until I noticed. Caterpillar plucked one wire of the screen with one claw. TarBaby meowed. Tapo stared through the window. Each went with what worked for them. Tapo understood the power of the stare. I could see the intensity in her eyes, consciously sending a telepathic code. It worked for her, every time.

 

jenny nibbling hay

 

 

A wave of love just now flowed over me, an air dragon of the heart, remembering the four cats I have loved and the three dogs that were my soul mates. I think of that song Mr Bo Jangles by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, that Bob Dylan recorded too. His dog up and died. After twenty years he still grieves. Oh how well I know the feeling. I feel like changing that Oh to Woe. It's a sorrowful thing to lose a friend close as a soul mate after a dozen or so years together. Woefully sorrowful. A lot of people I know won't have another after losing one, the sorrow is so powerful. I feel like the grieving is an ongoing expression of my love  When the time of grieving passes, that's when my friend is really gone. Then I miss the grieving. I feel like they have given me so much joy over so many years that a few months of sorrow is hardly even a tax. I've learned the healing power of grief to where I'm not afraid of it anymore. I don't like it, but I embrace it, because I know it's my friend. I recall a moment in Jean Cocteau's film, Beauty and the Beast, the Beast says to Beauty while professing his love, "I am a beast. The only way a beast can show his love is to die of grief." And they do. My prayer is that Caterpillar predecease me because I believe I can handle the grief of losing her better than she can handle losing me. I feel a hesitation about becoming friends with the calves. They will be taken away in a few months to market. That one is not my call. As long as I'm living, the donkeys stay here. Every day I am grateful for the experience of donkey.

 

jack having some hay

 

 

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