THE DRUNK MAN AND THE PARROT

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It is a hard time to take anything seriously. The mystery of the obvious stumps a lot of our  politically minded public figures. I like to think, surely they don't "represent" us, but they do. It's like the goal is now the bottom. The latest comedy I've seen several times was a quip from Sarah Palin noting that the new pope is "kinda liberal." Wildman comic Bill Maher's response: Wait til she finds out about Jesus. His jest speaks for the entire time we've had to endure the "Christian Right" harp on taxes. Hearing them makes me laugh. Didn't Jesus say something like, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's? My take on this saying has to do with paying taxes without making a fuss. For me, personally, it has something to do with staying out of politics. The people who claim Christendom for themselves in the realm of politics exhibit little but venality toward others. Compassion among them is a four-letter word. These are people, who, if attending the crucifixion, would say, "Gimme that spear! I wanna stick him too!" I see them in my mind's eye doing this when they pat their own backs calling themselves Christian. It fails to be a bother to me, because they're only fooling themselves. Back in the 1950s I saw this coming when fundamentalist preachers started turning toward the political arena. The belief system does not stand up well to public scrutiny. Inevitably, the belief system, the fog of dogma around "the word," will be picked apart and declared lunatic. This has already happened, and the reaction has been that they're being denied the right to worship.

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Yesterday I spent some of the day with my friend Kathryn. We went by a local diner for pie and coffee, really just a chance to sit face to face and talk for awhile. An old boy we both recognized, but neither of us knew, was sitting at a table nearby. He had the angry white man look of somebody who listens to Limbaugh "religiously." He spoke in our direction asking what we thought of Obamacare. Kathryn said she didn't pay attention to the news. I said I have medicare, it's of no concern to me, and we went on with our conversation. We were not going to jump into that bucket of shit. Just by speaking, he told us where he was coming from. He wanted to gripe out loud. I don't like to be short with somebody, but in a case like this, I can't be short enough. We were not going to let him get started. He's the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving who keeps everybody miserable with his rant. And, by God, he's a Christian. Aint no two ways about it. Kathryn and I talked about him without talking about him, talked about the American white man's mind after a quarter century of Limbaugh mind whipping up artificial anger in white working class men. We spoke of two women we know, both going through divorce, desperate to get away from abusive white men. In both cases, the man was of the Limbaugh rant mind. We felt sorry for the old boy in the restaurant wanting so badly to rant and nobody to listen. At the same time, I felt little to no patience for him, the same as for a Jehovah's Witness at the door interrupting the day pushing their agenda.

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We had just come from visiting a friend of ours who had a white man staying with her at the moment. He was drunk and getting drunker. Neither of us knew him. We both read him for a wild card, no guessing what he might do in the next minute. I took it upon myself to keep him calm by encouraging his talk about himself. It could have gone off into blubbering tears over mama or throwing a fit of rage, anything in between. I didn't feel like it was a dangerous situation. It was a dumb white man drunk. Keep him the center of attention and everybody is happy. Kathryn told me later she didn't know what to do about him, how to talk, anything. I felt at home. Just another white guy in a world of white guys who have issues galore and can only address them drunk. He was tremendously hung up inside, twisted in knots probably in early childhood, needing the liquor to soften the hard edges of guilt and self-loathing. I felt I understood the guy. I can identify with somebody who wants to get shit-faced drunk. It feels great on the inside. It just looks stupid on the outside. I don't ever have a problem with somebody being drunk unless it's a mean drunk. We all have our own issues and issues don't get solved overnight, no matter how fast you go at them. It takes years on the psychiatric couch to really start getting insight into dealing with our issues. Guys growing up in a world where it's an embarrassment to expose that you have issues, or to talk about them, or even own up to them, hold so much emotional turmoil inside they often become time bombs. One unpredictable moment sets them off. Getting good and drunk every now and again acts as a release valve in a pressure cooker. The ones that need to get drunk the most are the ones with the most pressing issues.

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By the time Kathryn and I were having our pie and coffee, we were wondering what kind of day this is. We talked over what we were seeing and how we were feeling about what we were seeing, not with judgment of the particular individuals, but seeing people locked into their minds such that they miss everything going on around them. I'm wanting to pull my own mind away from the old belief that what I think matters beyond myself. We complain an awful lot because we believe what we think matters beyond ourselves. I want to withdraw my mind from "out there" to "in here." I felt like seeing those two men, one after the other, were telling me that wasting my mind on illusions of what is going on "out there" is distracting me from what is important "in here." I take "in here" to mean the heart, living by the heart, thinking by the heart, feeling. "Out there," I take to mean the constructs of the mind, agendas, even beliefs. I see venality comes out of too much emphasis on mind. The self-centered nature of the "Christian Right" is all mind. None of it comes from heart. The Christians operating from heart are not making the news. In both cases of the men we saw, the drunk man and the parrot, I could honestly say to myself: There but for the grace of God go I. Without the grace of God, I would be both those men in one. I don't mean to imply I thought they were bad people. I saw them unfortunate people, as I would see myself without the grace of God. I can't imagine living without the grace of God.

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FRIDAY THE 13TH WITH WILLIE NELSON

 

Mothers don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Willie singing this song during the show pointed out to me what a classic song it is. And several other songs he sang were that kind of classic, a country music standard for all time. I've never been a Willie Nelson fan until this show. NPR interviewed him for his 80th birthday, the beginning of my appreciation of Willie Nelson. He sounded conscious when he talked, a man in touch with himself, in touch with his life, a true human being, not somebody talking pop flash and glitter nonsense. I often thought of Willard Gayheart, now 81, playing guitar probably the best he's ever played and singing the best ever. There is something about the relaxed singing of old men that has an ancient quality, like all the way back to Neolithic. I remember hearing old Regular Baptist preachers singing solo or duo, sounding like American Indians sitting around a drum singing, or some ancient singing from Greece or Turkey. Neither Willard nor Willie have that old-man vibration in their voices, but they have the relaxed ease of someone 80 singing who has sung on stage throughout his adult life. Like Willard, Willie plays his guitar and sings his songs, no cheap thrills, just delivery of the songs they know so well the songs have become part of who they are.

 

 

After four years of going to Woodlawn to hear Willard, Scott Freeman and guest musicians in a very small venue of an audience of twenty or less, I'm appreciating musicianship more than ever before. I have a lot of experience listening to and seeing mountain musicians play acoustic. Willie fell into the groove of what we appreciate in the mountains, a-pickin and a-grinnin. Willie's acoustic was definitely plugged IN. He played it like an electric guitar, which it was. He assaulted his acoustic the way a rocker would assault his electric. Willie didn't play melody so much as notes and chords to accompany the melody that enhance it. His rough guitar banging balanced his smooth singing. Musically, it was Willie's show. The people in his band were his accompanists; they provided the flow his picking rode like a surfboard. Respect  for Willie Nelson began to soar very soon after the music started. I was thinking what a great show it would be at Woodlawn, Willie picking with Willard (rhythm guitar), Scott Freeman (mandolin and fiddle), Steve Lewis (bluegrass banjo) and Josh Scott (bass). They would blow the roof off the place. Every one of them is up to what it takes to make music with someone as experienced with really good musicians as Willie. I like his guitar playing. It gives his music just the right edge. In a whole different way, he approaches the music something like Keith Richards does, dancing around the melody, playing through it, keeping its energy rolling, pushing it.

 

 

 

At times I felt like Willie's rapport with the audience was intimately as familiar as at Woodlawn with an audience of twenty. For him to play at Woodlawn, it would have to be unannounced without a leak. His friendliness with the audience was the same as at a very small place. I recalled a Doc Watson show where I felt like Doc set a circle of love flowing between himself and the audience. He sang with a love for his audience and the audience listened with love for him. It was a steady flow of love in a circle between performer and audience with Willie Nelson, too. By now, his fans are largely grown up, no longer star-struck like they used to be, familiar with Willie's music and his persona to where he's part of their lives all the way along. It seemed like everybody but me knew the words to all the songs. The songs had a living presence about them. His song with the refrain, You were always on my mind, hit me in the heart and set tracks of tears down my cheeks. My ears have heard the song a hundred times, but this was the first time I heard it. I listened to his songs with appreciation for him as songwriter. They are not only significant songs in country music, in American music, they are important songs. Important like Roy Acuff's Wabash Cannonball, like Hank Williams' Mama Tried, like Ralph Stanley's Man of Constant Sorrow. It didn't feel like a big deal, but I knew before the show was over that I was in the presence of the real deal, real music, a truly significant voice in his time, by voice I include his songwriting. He's a pop star whose persona is himself. Doc Watson's persona was himself. Ralph Stanley's persona is himself. It seems like Willie would say of his own talent the same as Ralph Stanley said of his, it's a gift.

 

This was my Friday the Thirteenth good luck day. I lost the car keys just before it was time to leave. I was picking up some trash from inside the car to carry to the house. My sweatpants had no pockets, the tshirt had no pockets. I carried the keys in with the trash. I put trash in two different trash cans. Went through both of them and can't find the keys. Searched everyplace in the house I had tread since returning from the car. All I did was change clothes. After fifteen minutes of searching, I decided to use the spare keys I keep for such moments. Set the GPS in the car for the Roanoke Civic Center and went to Kathryn's place to pick her up. It involved several turns and a few miles off the track the GPS was on. Driving back to the specified route, we were laughing at the poor thing having a nervous breakdown "recalculating." Her daughter Elizabeth was there to take care of mama and give Kathryn a break. This was my purpose for the day, a gift to Kathryn like it's her special day. She put on facebook a few weeks ago a note that she hopes somebody will invite her to the Willie Nelson concert. I saw her note in my newborn appreciation for Willie Nelson as musician, hadn't seen Kathryn in awhile, she hadn't been out of the house in awhile, I have some understanding of what she is going through taking care of her mother whose mind is drifting away. I wanted to do something for her. Automatically, I knew this was it, replied, I volunteer. I wanted Kathryn to have a happy day without flaw, conscious, even, of not frightening her with my driving.

 

We talked a steady streak back and forth like playing catch, catching up on passage of time, becoming the older generation, people with white hair, she in her old-hippie bib "overhauls" and straw hat, me in my Farm Bureau ballcap carrying a hospital cane. I knew we were in for a lot of walking from wherever I found a place to park the car, to the auditorium, to our seats. Steps. My left leg is a bit tender at the hip and I had a pretty good idea I'd be limping. The cane made a difference. It was even a commercial for using a cane. I can feel by empathy the ease a cane gave the pain in Jr Maxwell's knee, whose cane I was using. Getting out of the car to walk to the auditorium, I said, Let's count the senior privileges that come to us from using the cane. I'm getting ahead of myself. Back on the road again. I thought Floyd, Viginia, would be a good place to stop for dinner. I went to a Floyd website and found some restaurant possibilities. We picked the first one we found. It was a somewhat high-end middle class restaurant in the country, what I was looking for. Had art and photography by regional artists, nice tables. It was the worst meal I have ever paid for. Everything tasted exactly the same, soggy cardboard with a tinny edge like licking aluminum foil. I didn't say anything. My first question: am I being poisoned? That really was my first thought after first bite. Next thought, if it were poison, it would not be so obvious. I cannot allow myself to be one of the people that send food back, make a big deal of how sorry it was. A few days ago at the coffee shop, in conversation with Becca, I said, I don't want to make a fuss. She said, TJ, nobody will ever accuse you of making a fuss. Thinking I would have done better, all the way around, eating a McWrap from McDonalds drive-thru, I remembered Becca and laughed at myself. I didn't even tell Kathryn it was the worst meal of my life (no exaggeration). She didn't say anything about hers either, and I didn't ask.    

 

 

We returned to the car, happy to be on the road again to the Willie Nelson show. I turned the car on, the clock on the radio came on. It was 7:30. The show started at 7:30. We were an hour from Roanoke, not from the Roanoke city limit, but from downtown Roanoke obeying speed limits. We both felt a rush of alarm. It came to me right away that every time something like this happened in the past, like hurrying to meet somebody for lunch and have to wait for a road work crew, it always worked out and I made it on time. I said to Kathryn, An opening band will play for an hour, we'll take our seats on time for Willie to start. She agreed that's likely to be the case. By a happy twist of fate, we found a parking spot as soon as I turned into the parking lot. Approaching the auditorium we saw a lot of people milling about. We went in and it was intermission between first band and Willie. We found our seats, spoke with the people around us, found out the first band was "pretty good," meaning we missed nothing, the lights went down and Willie came on. For both Kathryn and me, the feeling seeing Willie Nelson was on the order of seeing Doc Watson, the quiet, country charisma of a performer whose persona is who he is. He just happens to be able to make music real good. Before the show was over, I had a feeling for Willie's heart he puts into his songs.

 

 

At the end, he shook hands with everyone from the front rows, walking the edge of the stage slowly from his left to right, shaking hands, signed autographs with a throng of the desperate holding up items for him to scrawl his name on. I thought, it's no wonder Willie's fans love him so much, he loved them first. He's a little bit country. He's a little bit soul. He's an American voice, in his own right, as much as Robert Lowell, Stanley Kunitz, Theodore Roethke. A different art form, different fans, while American as red, white and blue. Even more. They're coming from the soul of America as it is now. Kathryn had gone into the lobby to buy a tshirt during the show. A little bit later I did too. When the show was over, we laughed that we'd bought the same tshirt. Walking to the car, we counted our senior privileges. I found two overt ones and several subtle ones. Going in the big glass door, a great big black man in a suit with a beautiful dark chocolate round face was taking tickets. He held the glass door open for me. He patted my shoulder when I thanked him. During the show, a man and his wife on our row had to leave. We all had to stand up so they could go by. He saw my cane and patted me on the shoulder, a gesture of thanks for standing. A couple of women in their fifties were working the tshirt tables. They gave me attention like I've never received without a cane. It seemed like the friendly quotient of everyone around me went way up. I received friendly looks everywhere. The cane was signaling I am not a threat. A friendly. Cease fire.

all photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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ON THE ROAD TO THE WILLIE NELSON CONCERT

 

 

It's been a string of lazy days here. I let good days go by that I could have been doing some necessary outdoor chores, and let the time slip away. Got a Willie Nelson show coming up tomorrow night in Roanoke. I'm resting toward the drive. I'll be driving total of six hours probably. I'm not taking the interstate, but the highway from Galax to Woodlawn to Hillsville to Floyd, where I'd like to stop for dinner, then on to Roanoke. It's a beautiful drive. Beautiful country through there. It's the region where the events of the movie LAWLESS took place. None of that will be there, but the landscape. Southwest Virginia is beautiful mountain scenery, mountains you can roll with on the highway, flow this way and that, up and down, fenceposts, cattle, horses, old farmhouses with gingerbread along the edge of the roof. I want to leave in plenty of time to relax in the drive and enjoy the ride. Kathryn, who will be with me, loves this part of the world too. I've driven the highway to Roanoke in the mid 1980s many times, know it well. The road will not have changed much except for through the towns that grow more every year. Thought I'd take the Parkway to 52, 52 to 221, 221 to Roanoke. Interstate would be faster but on interstate we could be anyplace in USA. Interstates and malls are the same all over the country. Might take interstate on the way back when it's dark.

 

 

 

My mind went to work looking at the driving in a time when my energy isn't what it one time was, then walking no guessing how far from parking space to door, then from door to seat no guessing how far. The sciatic nerve in left leg is acting up. It will be as far to walk back to the car as from car to seat. I decided to take a cane, in case my energy gives out inconveniently. I have Jr Maxwell's cane I bought him to replace one he ran over with the car. It is one of those lightweight shiny aluminum canes, adjustable in length with a good rubber tip for grip, and a foam rubber handle. It will look like I just left the hospital. With Kathryn's white hair and my white hair with Farm Bureau ballcap and the hospital cane, we'll get every senior privilege there is. I'll hear "Sir" a dozen times. This is, after all, the South where older people tend to be regarded with respect. That's changing, of course. It's all right. We won't be the oldest ones there. Willie is ten years my senior. I won't be the only one with a cane. A cane makes a good martial arts weapon too. It tears me up that Steve Lewis will be playing in Woodlawn that night. When it comes to my preferences, I'd rather go to a Steve Lewis show than a Willie Nelson show, but the tickets are in hand and it's basically a gift to Kathryn, who has loved Willie Nelson's music about all her grownup life. I never paid any attention to him until I heard an interview with him on NPR about his 80th birthday, and took an interest in him. This show will pump me full of appreciation for Willie Nelson. Gonna see a lotta Jack Daniels and Harley Davidson tshirts. Maybe I'll get Kathryn a Willie Nelson tshirt if she'd like, you know, for been there, done that, bought the tshirt.

 

 

 

It's the kind of place they might ask Vets to stand up and be honored. I'd hate it, but I'd stand and be embarrassed seeing people nearby gaping at me in admiration and clapping like it's participation tv, a white-haired Vet, Lord Have Mercy, and I'd be thinking, Don't ask how much I hated it. At the time. Since, I've come to see it as one of the most valuable times in my life, perhaps it. The draft took me out of my life and provided time to look at my life, look at it with distance and a cold eye. I came out of it very different from when I went in. Looked and acted the same, but something major had changed inside. A change of direction. A change from unconscious to barely conscious.  It was a time of making some major life decisions I've not regretted since. Came out of it a little bit educated in Existentialism after reading so many novels, plays and essays by French Existentialist writers. Their books were like feedbags for me. I had found the philosophy that accorded with who I am. It started with Camus, who pointed me to deBeauvoir, and Sartre. They turned me on to Jean Genet, who could only write in prison. They turned me on to some pretty heady writing. By the end of those two years of reading every spare moment, I was able to read with comprehension, had learned a great deal about WW2 in France, the French Underground, had developed an interest in French writing. From there I started college. Came out of high school a moron, not by IQ test score, but certainly by lack of understanding how to live in this world. I felt like I was in prison the whole time. But I needed it. It was better than land prison. They let me ride the ocean and paid me to do it. The intimacy with the ocean was worth everything that got me there, like intimacy with the mountains in this time of the life is worth every experience that made my path to these beautiful hills that Ralph Stanley calls the hills of home.  

 

 

 

I don't believe they'll ask Vets to stand, but wouldn't bet against it. Don't expect it. But know better than to expect anything. I know better than to expect the concert will even happen. I know better than to think I'll wake in the morning. There are so many hundreds of thousands of variables between here and there, I don't even attempt to think about it. One thing living in this world has taught me, do not expect. Just don't. Expectation never works out. It's always something else. And then I'm so disappointed I miss what's happening. Kathryn has raised four girls, two husbands, and is now taking care of her mother. She's not overrun with expectations either. We're both in a good place in that way. We're free enough of expectation to allow the show to be what it is. It's a legitimate expectation that it will be a really good concert, but it's not certain. No worries. We'll both go open to the moment and receive what it has to offer. For me, it's about being with Kathryn, who I don't see often enough and haven't seen in awhile. I'm looking at, for myself, six hours with Kathryn, Willie Nelson the turn around point. I want to give Kathryn a break from the caregiving responsibility that after awhile becomes something like dragging a cinderblock tied to one ankle. It feels good to let go of that cinderblock for awhile. No problem putting it back on, but it feels so good to simply have a break. Mama will be watched over by granddaughter and great granddaughter. It will be a fun time for all concerned, I expect.

 

 

 

 

 

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