Twelve Oaks Residency 7

January 31, 2020 in Almighty Mule Mover

The electricity, all of the power & light, buzzing in the wires. You can hear it from the ground. Tizz-tizz-tizz. Fierce & benign together. Night falls out here, truly stumbling it seems, from the ground up. From the roots up it gets dark, the tops of trees last before the sky. If we aren’t out walking by five we will miss it falling up. Our house answers in the darkness, it’s yellow lights warm & prayerfull, our little beacon in the night woods.

i’m out here watching the pollen move in the way the water moves, but on top of it and quietly. Gunshots ring out in succession acrost the bayou. I don’t know what season it is but i assume it’s feathered. That makes it alright. Pop! Pop! Pop! The camera answers in its own quiet succession; snap-snap-snap. Lighting-timing-different birthing-and that’s alright. Grawk! Grawk! Grawk! A heron croaks nearby. Another, different shot, cracks and thunders in the air, from the road. Pow-wow-wow-wow. Thunder in the air buzzing and answering late into the night, holy-holy-holy. Across the grass and all of the reflections of the sky & gentle trees that have seen all of this before - all of it. And that’s alright.

Almighty Mule Movers - 2 - Folklorist Zora Neale Hurston

December 12, 2019 in Almighty Mule Mover

“ Born on Jan. 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was still a toddler. Her writings reveal no recollection of her Alabama beginnings. For Hurston, Eatonville was always home.

Established in 1887, the rural community near Orlando was the nation’s first incorporated black township. It was, as Hurston described it, “a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse.”

In Eatonville, Zora was never indoctrinated in inferiority, and she could see the evidence of black achievement all around her. She could look to town hall and see black men, including her father, John Hurston, formulating the laws that governed Eatonville. She could look to the Sunday Schools of the town’s two churches and see black women, including her mother, Lucy Potts Hurston, directing the Christian curricula. She could look to the porch of the village store and see black men and women passing worlds through their mouths in the form of colorful, engaging stories.
”

— Valerie Boyd

The first introduction to folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston occurred in high school. We read Their Eyes Were Watching God, and tore apart every bit of symbolism, metaphor & theme there was. At the time, as with most of the books we read then, i couldn’t appreciate it. Every symbol brought on a big eye-roll, and it just didn’t make sense why Janie, the main character, was so unhappy. Age brought on understanding, as it does.

Hurston first introduced me to how singular & special each part of the south can be. There is the south as a whole, but south Florida is separate from central Florida from North Florida and so on. Language became a fascination, folklore another, customs and songs and everything else. Her love of the people she was among, her stories, her apparent self-possession and strength continue to inspire. We were always out for adventure growing up, but i think Hurston taught me to really experience a place & to ask questions & to try to know people.

Florida became magical under her lens. We traveled to her grave in Fort Pierce, Florida, that author Alice Walker had installed. It was the very first time i had seen offerings - beads, drinks, coins - on any grave, ever.

My mining of stories must have begun with her. As part of the WPA, she recorded stories and customs, that are still available today. She froze a place in time: the work songs, the children’s games, the night life. She traveled to New Orleans and initiated with several voodoo doctors, went to Haiti, photographed a real-life zombie, and came back with a true understanding of the Voudou culture other Americans breezed over.

“Zora also had a fiery intellect, an infectious sense of humor, and “the gift,” as one friend put it, “of walking into hearts.” Zora used these talents–and dozens more–to elbow her way into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, befriending such luminaries as poet Langston Hughes and popular singer/actress Ethel Waters. Though Hurston rarely drank, fellow writer Sterling Brown recalled, “When Zora was there, she was the party.” Another friend remembered Hurston’s apartment–furnished by donations she solicited from friends–as a spirited “open house” for artists. All this socializing didn’t keep Hurston from her work, though. She would sometimes write in her bedroom while the party went on in the living room.”

— Valerie Boyd

Hurston published several fiction and non-fiction books, an autobiography, and several plays. Recommended reading definitely starts with Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules and Men, & Tell My Horse.

“Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

Almighty Mule Movers - 3 - Place of Inspiration: Clarksdale

June 12, 2019 in Almighty Mule Mover

We’ve been going to Clarksdale since we got within spittin’ distance of it. Since 2015, i think. Blues music has moved me for a mighty long time, and to set bare feet down on that hot delta dirt where it began, it’s a type of transformation. The first trip up we went to see all three of Robert Johnson’s graves. That trip is still memorable, as we crossed railroad tracks and countless sunflower fields, saw cactus next to corn next to a graveyard. It’s shadowed church standing sentry where they still sing some Sundays. Realized that cotton flowers come in different colors, grew accustomed to crop duster daredevils. The delta is a magic place to me, and every chance i have to go is a treasure. Here are some images from various trips i have taken, the most recent trip happened in June 2019. (If you ever plan to go, i’d be glad to send recommendations, please feel free to get in touch.)

William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi.

Almighty Mule Movers - 2 - William Faulkner

March 07, 2019 in Almighty Mule Mover

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
― William C. Faulkner

We read As I Lay Dying in high school. It was an annoying and seemingly Beckett trek through nonsense and ridiculous southern jargon. It was set in a place i did not care for, and the characters were awful folks, each one. We joked about the chapter that simply read, “My mother is a fish.” Eye roll after eye roll, and a dozen pained sighs. May have read The Sound and the Fury also, but don’t remember getting too far into it, it was like climbing through word briers in the dark.

We read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, too, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Never would have expected to ever re-read that annoying symbol-filled nonsense. Yet, in college, i went back in. Turns out Chopin’s Edna was not a horrible selfish mother. Turns out Hurston’s Janie was not an equally selfish rambling woman. So what about Faulkner?

It began with a friend’s copy of Light in August, then Go Down Moses, and The Wild Palms. With time, i thought maybe i understood. In the cold Kentucky winter, it felt like the heat back home. The dust came off the road and the humidity wrapped around me. People talked in a way that reminded me of folks. That was it, i was gone.

The mining of his work began in 2018 at my artist residency, underlining old sayings or particular phrasing that was black-snake vivid home-past-speak. His intensity, his preference for drinking, his scribbling on his walls, his anger, his need to create. They all got me, i imagined i could identify with this ghost. With all of my heroes, i don’t want to ever learn too much - i don’t want my glass castles pebbled down.

His bio can be found here. He lived in New Orleans for a time, he reached modest acclaim, he created his own county, his own people. He hated air-condition, and liked a good drink. He died a little mysteriously, he wrote his most famous book in six weeks, he was 5 1/2 feet tall. He raised mules.

It is worth saying that his language at times, and perspective - obviously - can be thought of as outdated. Having just finished Flags in the Dust, the way Faulkner broaches old southern pride via his chacters to the point of buffoonery says all i could say about it.

So, i’ll leave you with that, now. These photos are from a long ago trip to Oxford and Rowan Oak. In my next two posts i’ll share some of my Faulkner-driven sketchbook pages and a particular passage that is an ode to the southern mule.

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.”
― William Faulkner

A room inside Rowan Oak, where Faulkner had begun to scrawl the timeline of a book he was working on upon his walls.

Faulkner’s grave in Oxford, a pilgrimage spot for writers, artists and southern gothic fans.

HowardFinsterParadiseGardens — Howard Finster

Almighty Mule Movers - 1

Almighty Mule Movers - 1 - Folk Artist Howard Finster

February 20, 2019 in Almighty Mule Mover

There is no way of knowing where the introduction started. He died when i was young. He is a folk art hero, one of those names along with Bill Traylor, Grandma Moses, Clementine Hunter, Henry Darger, John Henry, etc., that folks just know. He is so startlingly his own style, and has made such a mark in folk art, but also in Georgia, that is is strange to think folks do not know who he is. His work is a part of major museum collections and regular folk’s collections. He was out there, lit by his own fire for creation, and lit by God’s word.

New Strange Things Will Happen, Self Portrait1986

So you can google him as easy as me. You might be better off to talk to that aunt or strange neighbor that you used to have, that collected all that weird stuff and had, like, glass globes and concrete animals in their yard. They probably got to see Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden while he was still alive to greet you. Here’s the story they might generally recall to tell you.

He was born in 1916 in Alabama, one of thirteen children. He had his first vision at the age of three, his deceased sister came down from the clouds to declare that he would be a man of visions. He was born again at the age of 13, and commenced to preaching at age 16. He retired in 1965, and in 1976 he got his next big vision. From Paradise Garden Foundation:

“One day I dipped my finger in some white paint and picked it up, and when I picked it up, it formed a face before I ever seen a face, and I turned it around to look and see if I had too much paint and there was two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and everything. A whole face. My finger looked like a face. And there was a feeling just came over me and said, “paint sacred art”. I said “Lord, I can’t paint. I don’t have no education in that”. So I took a dollar bill out of my wallet and started posing on the picture of George Washington. Some kids were around watching me work and that was the first time I felt I was an artist.”

He was told to paint 5,000 works, and by the 1980s he had hit the mark and moved on to the tens of thousands. By the time he passed in 2001, he had done nearly 47,000 paintings. His work is distinctive, it is his own. It is marked by his love and by his style, and deserve an up-close inspection and a faraway read, too. He painted Elvis and Hank, he painted aliens and cows, he painted dinosaurs and angels. This quote fromFinster is a good summation of how i feel about his work, and from the mouth of the man himself, to boot. He is above all, approachable, with more to offer than it might first appear.

“My work has a spirit in it. I write it in a spirit and people read it in a spirit and that’s the spirit that unifies all humans.””

Paradise Garden is still there today. They have an airbnb that allows you to walk the grounds at night and commune with the visions. The foundation that preserves the Garden just received a grant, it will be wonderful to see the space restored. The following are photos from my visit in September 2018. Walking through art environments tells you, if nothing else, that you are totally capable of anything. You just have to begin.