BLUE -- ink on a pen, underneath the skin
I like bluegrass music. It's not just a trend, or following of the Oh, Brother revival, it's in my blood. My roots down in the swamp of the Florida/Georgia line grow deep in the black sand of Spanish moss and aligators, palmettos and panthers, and my people -- of clear Irish decent -- who sing bluegrass. Mama said that the style of music is from the Irish folk who couldn't bring their instruments with them, so they developed ways of singing for imitating things like the bagpipe. I can see that.
When I hear bluegrass music I feel joy in the most primal sense of the word. For anyone who's read C.S. Lewis' "Surprised by Joy" autobiography, you'll remember his introductory explanation of an "usatisfied desire which is more desireable than any other satisfaction," and this is the same yearning I feel when I hear this music.
It's like I remember feeling perfect joy when I was a child, but I don't know what caused the joy. Bluegrass doesn't trigger the joy, it only triggers the memory of it, and thereby creates in me a deep longing for a perfect joy I felt as a child.
Any joy I felt had to be pre-three-years-old, though, because that's when my mother married my father and had my little brother and hard times hit and the lovely girls you see in the photo on my archive page had to end their goodtimes.
I'll never forget the family reunion when I was about fourteen years old and my Uncle Virgil -- mom's older brother -- sang with the bluegrass band that always played the reunions. I remember how still his lanky body stood behind the microphone, and how still everyone watched him -- recently widdowed, and recently charged with ten counts of molesting a minor nearly twenty years earlier, to no one's surprise.
"Then like a blind man who God gave back his sight; PRAISE THE LORD I SAW THE LIGHT." He crooned in his Polk County, Florida southern draw.
Back at my Uncle Carlton's house later that night, and my cousin Randy finally spoke everyone's setiments when he stood up abruptly and shouted, "Virgil ain't never seen no GODDAM light!!" I laughed so hard, and I don't think that Randy realized his own irony, but it's true.
I download bluegrass and listen to it when I'm alone, but it's hard to find the songs I've grown up knowing. Songs that I have no idea where they came from. You know how some kids just always know the words to Itsy Bitsy Spider or Jesus Loves Me, and they don't really remember where they heard it; they just know it? That's how I am with Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee."
I think this is one reason why I like Nirvana, because on the Unplugged album Kurt sings "In the Pines" which is an old bluegrass song.
Speaking of Kurt, I don't like that his journals are being published, but I did enjoy what exerpts I read in Newsweek. Isn't that funny? I'll agree that they are too personal to be published, but I won't stop myself from reading them. See, I love Kurt and understand him and so it's okay for me to read it. But for all the people who think Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Creed are in anyway associated, the journals should remain private.
I'm downloading some Nirvana right now, for nostalgia.
Someone has "Nirvana's" song "Half the Man I Used to Be" from their album "Core" here to be downloaded.
Can someone sign my guest book and tell me why this is a disgrace?
I'm sorry I was too young to really experience Nirvana. I was sixteen when Kurt was killed (yeah, I'm a believer in the murder thing. I think Courtney was so pissed off and fucked up that she gave Kurt the bullet, but my opinion is nonsense); I remeber when he was killed, but I really remember the first time I saw him. I like Bleach and Nevermind now, but I never saw Kurt until In Utero. Heart Shaped Box was on MTV and as I flipped past the channel I knealt down to my knees and stared into the bright eyes that were even brighter in that video. Remember that video? It's color is heightened, and the blue of his eyes and the calmness of his screams were captivating
(captivating: as in binding my hands and taking me away and holding me captive against my will).
See, Eddie Veder is a hippie-gone-hardrock.
Kurt was a punk-gone-hardrock.
If Nirvana had done a Beatles cover for I Am Sam, it would have been "Why Don't We Do It In The Road."
My sister and I used to blast "All Apologies" every time we went to a wedding back in highschool. "Married, Burried..."
She's married now.
I'm the only virgin in my family.
Does anyone have any clue how a twenty-four year old person like me ends up accidentally being a virgin? I don't want to have sex, though, not as much as I want a man to tell my secrets to, and one who tells me his. That probably sounds like bullshit, but I'm sick of the emptiness in my chest where there is supposed to be a second heart. Fuck and run would make me hate myself, and him.
Like Jeff Buckley says, "I'm beat down and hungry for your love, with no way to feed it."
Do you think I'll find a man who takes me "home"?
(that's not for you guys to answer)
Will one of you Lee kids do me a favor and say a dirty word in the PCSU today? Like, "I can't find my damn ethics book!" Or, "Skipping chapel is bullshit, man! You should go." I don't know why I want someone to do this, but sometimes I think everything that happened when I lived in Cleveland has stopped.
As an obvious progression from bluegrass, I am also equipped with a coping mechanism which requires the blues. I cannot overcome a difficulty without listening to the blues.
I found the blues in highschool, at this cute little coffee joint outside Atlanta. It was called Java Blues, but the atmosphere was completely like a bar. The music was local and fluctuated between being incredible and worth killing oneself over.
The night I realized that my parents were divorcing -- again -- I went to this place. I was seventeen, Maggie was with me, (she still is), and this old black man with only his steel-string accustic and a harmonica played a cover of "Have You Even Seen The Rain" of CCR fame.
"Someone told me long ago/ there's a calm before the storm/ I know; it's been coming for some time/ When it's over, so they say/ It'll rain a sunny day/ I know; shining down like water."
It was that night that I realized even when on sunny days you can't expect the sun to shine. I learned a valuable lesson in dissapointment, and a more valuable lesson in finding comfort in music. Ah, what would I do without knowing someone else feels the pain I've felt and they had the graciousness to put thier information in a format that I could easily understand, obtain, and enjoy.
Don't take my music from me; ever.
Go back to where you were and finish reading my entry.
