SHOULDA BUT DIDN

the seduction the band

Fiddler's convention weekend is here and gone. I kinda wanted to go, but couldn't open the door to leave home. The thought of carrying a portable chair, finding a place to put it, sitting for hours in place is boring already. Somebody appears onstage, plays a traditional tune on an instrument and leaves. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Somebody else goes onstage and does the same thing. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Somebody else does the same thing. Sit and wait. It looks bad to take a book, looks intellectual in an anti-intellectual context, thus pretentious, but if I'd chosen to go, a book would have gone with me. The alternative to sitting and waiting for hours is to walk around in the parking lot among campers and visit different jams going on. This is always emphasized as the best part of the fiddlers conventions. But I don't enjoy this either. I prefer my live music in a program with a band playing several tunes, or a jam at somebody's house, getting into their musical groove and playing the tunes from the groove. I know it is fiddler's convention tradition and I'm supposed to like it, but I've tried it several times and never liked it. Supposed-to means as much to me as should, nothing. 

daniel biggins, guitar, vocals

Have felt minor guilt Friday and Saturday nights over expectation, expectation in self, not coming in from outside. Every year I have to analyze why I don't want to go when I feel like I should. There's the word. Every time should pops up anymore, I delete it. A meaningless word like needta and oughta. I make the decision not to go to the fiddler's convention and hear an imagined voice in my head, a voice presumed from outside self, "Well, you should." Next thing, I'm thinking, "Should? Not necessarily. By what authority?" Next time I talk with somebody in town, I may be asked if I went. I'll say no. Then, You should have. I'll say, Not necessarily. And that sets us off to a bad start. Should have gone, a meaningless word. To say I should have done something in the past other than what I did cannot be correct, because I did something else. What I did is what I should-have done. 

brandon hamby, guitar

My focus on the present, on living the life, has relaxed considerably since realizing the meaningless nature of the word should and it's siblings, needta, oughta, haveta, gotta. There is nothing I needta do that I don't choose for myself. Like somebody says the Stones are gonna be in Atlanta, you needta go. Uh, really? Spend a hundred dollars on gas round trip, at least a hundred on a place to stay overnight and food, and however many hundreds it costs to get in. Uh, I don't think so. I'd rather go to Charlotte to a small club and hear local punk bands for five dollars. Much rather. Big auditoriums and mega-parking lots don't do it for me anymore. It was cool seeing Jane's Addiction  and Siouxsie & the Banshees with 50,000. I could not get to London in 1978 to see Siouxsie, like I couldn't get to LA in 88 to see Jane's Addiction at a small venue. It was a matter of take what I can get. Though a huge mega-concert has its own thrill. I like a small place for the immediacy of sound. Last time I saw Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, when they'd finished their set, people around me talking sounded like they'd inhaled helium. The sign of perfect volume. 

jacob shelton, bass

All my life I've heard and read that rock n roll is ruining the hearing of the young, you shouldn't be listening to it. It's just three chords. Yeah, tell that to Jimmy Page. I've committed the sin of listening to rock n roll since age 12 when Bill Haley's Shake Rattle & Roll was first played on the radio. I remember at age 16 sitting on the floor in my room, holding the speakers of the tin-can stereo to my ears listening to Chuck Berry and Little Richard as loud as it would go. Home alone. Not knowing right from wrong. In late twenties, I sat about ten feet from a wall of speakers at a Grand Funk Railroad show, County Hall in Charleston. My ears rang for three days and nights. I loved it. Bands like Van Halen, The Cars and Kiss, I've heard so loud no ears were needed. The sound waves I felt in my skin. That's a good concert. I let myself be a guinea pig to see if there's anything to losing hearing. Haven't lost it yet. It may not be perfect, according to this study and that, and I know it's not, but I don't care. Hearing Johnny Winter in my head, "I was raised on rock," one of my rock n roll anthems of the mind. Shoulda? I shoulda done exactly what I did, listened  to all the rock n roll I wanted to. After college, I saw people I knew put their rock albums in boxes in the attic or basement and call it a youthful thing---like good grown-ups they're supposeta listen to something less committed, American Idol. Not me.    

the seduction the band

photos by tj worthington

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LEAVE IT TO KARMA

karel appel

I just now saw a picture of somebody who hates my guts so severely that every time I see him, he looks like he wishes his eyes were loaded shotgun barrels and his finger was on the trigger. I laugh within. I reach out and shake his hand, say, "How you doin? Good to see ya," and watch him boil. Just now, when I saw the picture, it put a smile on my face that grew bigger at a steady rate until I let loose an audible laugh. A lawyer said to me several years ago, "We are distinguished by the people that hate us as we are by the ones that like us." I'd never noticed that before, but the moment it was spoken, I saw it. We're raised in school, home, church to want people to like us, not for any rational purpose, just because, the every-parent answer to the question, why? I don't believe anybody really knows why. I came up that way, as did everyone I grew up with all the way along. In America, it is vitally important to be liked. Only a few are popular, though everyone wants to be, with exceptions that prove the rule. I came up with it too. The face in the picture mentioned above is someone I don't want liking me. Hence, I do not worry over being disliked by him, don't even want to know why. We're distinguished by the ones that don't like us, and I like being distinguished by this character. 

karel appel

I've found a sure way to find out who does not like you. Go through the people you know that you don't like. They're the ones that don't like you. It runs both ways. Want to see who likes you, go over the people in your mind you like. They're the ones that like you. It just works that way. I think it has to do with subconsciously reading eyes and body language, tone of voice, seeing those things we don't admit to ourselves we see, feelings. I used to have a friend of several years who moved away. Wanted me to come visit three hundred miles away. I don't go anyplace anymore, certainly not that far. I got a phone call one day of nothing but cussing me, calling me an emeffer over and over. When I put down the phone, that individual fell into the wastebasket of the past. He was drinking, but it's been my experience in self and others that we get away with saying things drunk we don't say sober. To me, drunk or sober, it is the same person, same mind, same intent. It's not the first time I let somebody go for cussing me while drinking. I don't put out disrespect, and don't receive it. Another time was a woman who had a lot more money than I have and thought she was, therefore, in charge of me. I disappoint everybody that takes to such a notion. 

karel appel

I have a friend who used to worry herself until whatever illness took her over to get her mind onto something else. I've talked with her several times over the years, saying things like, "You don't want her to like you. She's toxic. If she likes you, you're really sunk." And, "If you really want her to like you, start liking her." Eventually, she got over the most intense part of her fear of being disliked. Lord have mercy, I've said, be pure sugar sweetness and somebody is not going to like sweet. I either indoctrinated her or gave her enough food for thought she eventually came down out of that mind and doesn't suffer so much from it. I look at self in the past and hang my head in shame over wanting to be liked. Still have it. I don't go about provoking others, intentionally pissing people off. I know some that do. It's a stiff-arm that keeps others from getting too close. I have a few friends of this characteristic. They have a rough life. But they're doing all right, people stay away from them, leave them alone, and they're glad, they already dislike everybody else first. I was told once, "I hate everybody but you." I said, "Only because you don't know me. You'd hate me most of all if you knew me."

karel appel

Inside myself, in this time of the life, I feel like I've come to a fair balance in this regard. I don't feel a need to impress anybody into liking me. Feel like I have a fair understanding of the dynamic, thus can work with it rationally rather than emotionally. I don't have many people I dislike anymore. The ones I do dislike, it's over an issue of character I've experienced and witnessed that I want nothing to do with. Forgiveness is something I've never learned. I've done it once, actually twice. Both times I was rewarded with good friends unto best of friends. The forgiveness opened a metaphorical door, soul to soul. It takes much to get me there. I've seen so many Hong Kong men-with-guns movies that revenge sometimes becomes appealing to think about. They're all based in revenge. I tend to think about what comes next, which stops me from making the first move that will call a counter move, which will call a counter-move, until one ends up dead and the other in prison. I've learned to let karma be my revenge. A few years ago somebody Justin knew pulled some shit on me. Justin asked what I was going to do about it. I said I'd wait and watch and see what comes back to him. I won't have any fingerprints involved, no involvement in it, and I'll get a good laugh. Karma settles scores better than I could ever think of. A return I could think up would be either too much or too little. Karma takes care of it just right. 

karel appel himself

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THE CONFEDERATE FLAG GETS A NEW LIFE

larry rivers

My back goes up and stays up over this new spate of Yankee assaults on working class Southerners for failing to be their intellectual equals, for thinking differently from middle-class white people writing in Boston and New York offices. Insults fly, the air a swarm of arrows, like in a Chinese medieval war movie, arcing over the Mason-Dixon line aimed at cartoon visions of the South, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, unrepentant racists. I see quite a lot of it every day without looking for it. I don't comment or make anything of it, because I don't care what they think about the South. Just stay out of the South, stay up North where you belong, read about the South, write about the South and have opinions all you want, but stay home, please. One of my favorite of the slurs is the picture of a white flag said to be the only true confederate flag. I'd be happy to take that flag for my own, the flag of ultimate peace. As for confederate flag a flag of surrender, this only says whoever thought this one up does not know shit about the South or Southerners. My interpretation is they can't handle it that the South is an actual culture separate from their own absence of culture. 

larry rivers

It's the great American story, Be Like Me, going about believing they know more about other people's lives than the people living their own lives. I feel myself charged up inside over these Yankee assaults of blame on the Southern people over their identity around a flag that pisses Yankees off. Nobody in the South is going to say, Aw, poor Yankee got his feelings hurt. Yankees still don't get it the South does not back down. The civil war was an attack of aggression from the North. It was all fought on Southern land by Southern farm boys defending the homeland from a professional military machine. They were saying, and would have to the last man, Hell No, we will not submit. They'll have to defeat us again to make us give up the flag. There's nothing they can do and every redneck in the South knows it. In simple Southernese, they can go fuck theirselves. Aint nothin a bunch of fellers likes better'n self-righteous Yankees stayin at home. One of many things I embrace about the South is that I can get in my car, drive to Tennessee, Mississippi or Alabama, be comfortable and feel at home. My accent says I'm a friendly, part of the family, share the same belief system of what constitutes decent behavior. 

larry rivers

The South is not just a flag that most people in the South don't care about, anyway. A vast majority of Southerners don't care a lick about the flag, but a great many of them would stand firm against a Yankee assault against it. The most this media feeding frenzy on everything Southern has accomplished has been to recruit young white men to the klan. The klan may be the imaginary new confederate army defending the homeland from Yankee assaults, at least a powerful symbol. Nobody stands up for the South outside the South and Southerners mostly don't stand up for the South either, because they don't care what Yankees think of them, as much as Yankees don't care what Canadians think of them. Down here in the South we don't even think about the North except as an irritant that won't go away. We certainly do not entertain any secret desire to be like the North. Arrogance is the most frowned upon, least tolerated of human characteristics in the South. Yankee arrogance grates all the worse from the perspective of people who don't experience it much, left to themselves. 

larry rivers

First thing I saw when the finger-pointing and blame started piling up was a redneck reaction planned to give the Yankees a fit. Yesterday I saw something about an 8-mile long parade of cars and pickups, bikes too, flying the forbidden flag. I forget where. It doesn't matter where. Could be anywhere in the South. Like a school massacre can pop up anywhere in television viewing America. I saw something about amazon selling twice as many of the flags as before. Only historians know about the early 60s association with the flag in the South. Rebel boys, the only ones that make something of it, don't care about that. It is their rally flag, all the more now, identity as Southern rednecks like Hank Williams III and Larry the Cable Guy. Git-er-done. Our humor may not be as sophisticated as Yankee humor, but we don't care. We got better music. If they want to start taking down Southern monuments, they'd better be ready for unpredictable reaction. It's more corporate media stirring division for control, devoid of moral responsibility. This present round of Yankee efforts to shame Southern identity is just drawing us closer together under the canopy of Southern unity, a great big confederate flag that people are rallying to now, who didn't care anything about it before.    

larry rivers by larry rivers

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AN IMMIGRANT'S GENEALOGY

This morning I learned that my grandfather's grandfather was born in Westphalia, Germany, he in 1823, and his wife, Mary, in 1853. It is the first time I knew my great grandfather's name, who died before I was born, John Henry, Johann Heinrich Brink. His wife, my great grandmother, I knew. She died in my late teens. Both were born in Lawrence, Kansas, where, evidently, both families settled. I remember her in childhood, Kansas City KS, old dark house with big, heavy furniture. A round dining table on a stand in the middle. Pictures around the walls of dogs playing cards. In the late Forties, early Fifties, the pictures were ancient-seeming. Her name was Anna Schmidt Brink (grandma Brink), daughter of George and Johanna Flosser Schmidt. My suspicion is they went to America from someplace other than Westphalia. I vaguely recall being told in childhood that one was from northern Germany and the other from southern Germany. Westphalia is western Germany, bordering on Netherlands and Belgium. My guess is that George and Johanna came from another part of Germany. I thought, before, it was my great grandparents made the crossing, but it was their parents. 

This explains why, when in Germany, everyone I said I don't speak German to, said, "Yes you do," with an annoyed air like I was attempting a prank. The look that says, don't try to fool me. Westphalia fits my missing link in the DNA reading from ancestry.com. It has my physical history, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, England, Ireland and Sweden. I'm white. I knew rumor of all but Netherlands and Belgium. Borders have a way of changing over centuries, people move across borders for work and marry across borders. I'd guess Westphalia has a large population of Dutch and Belgian ancestry that goes centuries back. Possibly even Dutch and Belgian influence in some of the architecture. I vaguely recall possibly a brother of my grandfather, who went by Dutch. I wondered if it meant Netherlands Dutch or German Deutsch. Probably an Americanization of Deutsch. I'd wondered all my life what state in Germany my grandfather's people went to the New World from, to land in the new Kansas territory not long after the Civil War. My other grandfather's people went to Kansas from Ninemile, Tennessee, in the Sequatchie valley of the Cumberland Plateau, where they farmed for several generations on good soil, sixty miles north of Chattanooga.      

This rush of genealogy info came in the mail from my mother. Last week on the phone I asked what she knew about her grandfather, her mother's dad, Milton Forster. I'd only recently learned his first name, which set me to wondering more about him. His name was John Milton Forster. Oh how I  hated Paradise Lost in school. A John Milton on grandmother's side and a John Henry on grandfather's side. The name, John Milton, tells the English origin of the name Forster. He was a brick and stone mason. Mother told me of some houses I remember from childhood that he did the rock work on. He died a decade before I came along. No information on where he was born or his parents, only that he was born in 1869. He married my great grandmother, Ettie Zerilda Mann, in Nevada, Missouri, 1897. I remember her from childhood, her long, thin hair, remember loving her like crazy, grandma Forster, and mourning her death when I was 14. The name, Mann, has a German ring to it, Thomas Mann. Might be some more German blood through her. John Milton Forster is definitely English, and Protestant. Forster would be an English name, going by EM Forster, the early Twentieth Century writer. Must-be English is as far as I can get with the Forsters.  

I learned about a decade ago of my Worthington origins. original multiple-great grandfather left northwestern England, Morley in Cheshire county. He left in exile for being a Quaker. Must have been some seriously divisive religion politics going around at the time. He went to Dublin with his wife, Alice Taylor, worked three years to gather money for the crossing, and went to the new Quaker colony, Pennsylvania, 1714. A month crossing on a sailing ship. He kept an inn in the town and a farm in the country. He applied for and received a land grant of 3,000 acres in what is now Orange county, Virginia, where he died. His heir who carried my line went to Botetourt county, north of Roanoke, and as generations went by, on to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, down to Ninemile, Bledsoe County, Tennessee, where they stayed a few generations. After the Civil War, the whole next generation went west. A few generations later, my parachute landed me in the Central Blue Ridge, the same culture as my Tennessee grandpa grew up in. He passed the culture unknowingly to my dad, who passed it to me. My grandmother's people came from Pulaski county, eastern Kentucky. This explains why I felt like I had come home to my real home as I became acquainted with mountain culture in the people I knew. It was already in me. It felt like I had found my people. And the hillbillies became my people over time. I'm grateful for every step along the path that brought me here.  

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