The Jx Farm Residency has opened back up and we’d love to have you out here. Applications are free through December - check it out at jxfarms.com or @jxfarms on instagram.
art residency
Delta Dispatch #7
Thinking so much of it is just weird luck - being up here, being led up here, all the strange crossings that toed to the this particular road, and just the simple drive from here-to-there, signs everywhere saying Go-Go-Go, Yes-this-is-it, and God-Bless-You, and,
He said, ‘well keep your cards close,’ and I done gone and hollered then threw my cards out for all to see, God bless me -
Like - what does God say to you, how does he communicate?
I am not saying I am doing holy work, or even visionary, but I am sitting there painting feeling like I could leave my body at any moment - if you have felt it, you know, - I been stumbling, I been fallin, and at this point it been so long I am glad to sit and paint and if it is a wiser spirit coming through, thank you.
And maybe I ought to quit asking questions, causing folks to worry and weep, but the thing is, it’s a human line to follow, very human,
With everyone I have met so far, falling seems a lesser word,
When it turns to rain out here, I swear the whole sky and earth and land and air turn towards belief, the sky is grey blue brown, the land is so saturated, the puddles reflect the sky, I seen the fog far-off, nearer the river, all upon; imagine,
Somehow the Mississippi River means more out here than it does at home, that old highway 178 life, more than there,
I don’t understand it, I don’t understand much, it is all so terrific, a whole lot,
Dreaming so much up until this point, it seems like a cataclysm, a microscope,
On all these dreams through now
I feel so healed up out here, I don’t know what all it is - felt so good this whole day, walking and painting and singing and loving,
A crossroads of geese passed through the sky, more than a multitude, honking and sincere into the grey rainy sky, I smiled and exclaimed in seeing, ran from mud puddle to mud puddle to follow and witness and holler -
Went for a run the first time in two months, waving to folks out on their cold porches but watching, a dog-parade wherever so we go, they follow -
Went run and back through the brown grey blue dark stormy world, and showered,
What a strange old lucky old life, again, again, again,
Went ran in the strange delta, went showered in this strange camper with mighty fine hot water, left and felt so warm and good and whole and true, three four more hours in the studio, time moves quick but the paintings seem to go so slow,
“well I am so glad, so glad so glad today,”
Out here in this land and so glad, so silly, wondering if I will ever grow up, but knowing and thankful in every angle to be so well loved,
I am so glad salvation is free
Living and acting in mercy,
It will carry with you to the end
Delta Dispatch #6
I do not understand very much, cannot do very much, am mostly afraid most of the time -
There is right and there is wrong, those being right or left but life is still in the mix, this is it - I am - I am so thankful to travel out into the world, to go away - to be gone - to let the soul up to roost with the haints at the crossroads and the saints always in a horse barn, to let the soul pull as a kite, and to follow, string in hand, looking up.
“you better wake up, try to get wise, I done told you,”
Shy folks, happy folks, brimming to the top folks, reserved folks, nervous folks, quiet, talkative, stay at home and always moving folks,
love, loving, loved, all these folks;
The thing is, the thing I am trying to puzzle out is,
Every person is as fascinating as the day in the land, of the everchanging land, and in the same as as the same-old back 30 land, the light is never, will never, be the same, and gilding golden sunsets and cold glowing sunrises move different every day, the plants growing or dying, the sky playing along with it’s on whim and thought,
Every person is as fascinating as the day in the land
And even if we move toward knowing our own souls changing every day, a new ray of light shining and singing, how can we manage the earth-land-soul-sky-other-all of it?
Maybe it is easier to shut down and hate within simple differences -
I watch my own inner world shuffle and tumble and worry.
“Front door shut, back door too, blinds shut, what you gonna do? Gotta step it up and go, yeah, go”
Delta Dispatch #5
It’s a curious hunting. I just want to understand. That’s really it. Why did Smokestack Lightning singe me. Why does Hank Williams haunt me, why can’t I let go of Charley Patton or Robert Johnson’s faces? Out here scouring the land looking for the moment of maybe-knowing or beginning-to-know. Thankful for the kind world of waving strangers, that all seems like a good sign, from Cleveland to Clarksdale to Beulah, yes, I am waving to these world neighbors, who surely know better than I do, holding closer keys to the door of understanding.
“meet me in the middle of the air, if these wings should fail me, meet me with another pair,”
Oh the levee runs from Memphis to Vicksburg, all around New Orleans, where I come from, where I been, a land all full up on bridges and flood walls and rivers, full up of roiling life, and to me it all seems to fit together and likewise make no good sense,
A red fox across black blue road, near Red’s juke joint, against the sunflower river, another following, unworried and probably laughing at my amazement, the two of them playful and slow and living their own fox-lives in a Clarksdale winter, their dens warm and close and they are safe, me with the car running and Wilbur fixing to cut loose into a fit of barking, me up against the fence just watching, amazed and how unamazed the fox is,
The road carries on to a small town and all these places look like islands, islands against the levee, against crops, a whole land organized into infinity, defined by every season: winter, burning, tilling, planting, growing, weeding, growing, harvesting, tearing up, setting out, winter. The land sleeping now but ready when man is ready, when man has done the math and the science, but the land is always ready, just sleeping, waiting, not surrendered to man but not fighting it anymore, still there, providing.
The lights set out different here, the stars seem closer, the people friendlier, the whole land, every plot, every road, every cloud, perfect in it’s time and traveling on, maybe the building goes out at the state line, but the light and stars set out different here. I don’t know my own mind, my own heart, sometimes, and -
A round pen for horses so when they’re in training they can’t quit into the corner. This mind set in it’s own roundpen, tossing it’s head and kicking up dust, travellingtravellingtravelling in circles, until, I guess, eventually, it learns or quits -
All I can say is we go out walking on the roads, driving on the highways, searching. Searching. Looking for them ghosts that used to travel highway 61, wrote and sang about it, before It as new highway 61 and old highway 61.
“She calls it rumbling, I calls it falling down.”
Seen some death out here, seen some strange things, but Lewis Nordan knew when he said “the delta is full up on death,” but I think it’s more than that - the delta is full up, full up near about everything.
Maybe it’s just in the seeing-is-believing but that doesn’t make it science, but - seems like every other cemetery out here has a new grave, or two. Seems death is just outside the circle now and waiting, setting boar-hog traps and waiting, you could walk in - plastic flowers heaped into the woods, new flowers green and loving, crosses set, too sad to talk about too much, the whole world gradient into the ground of who and how soon and too young and - we have always been so lucky - we are still here now -
Twelve Oaks Residency 6
Been reading Lewis Nordan’s “Music of the Swamp.” He made me remember all those times in the woods with my old dog, Tanner, and we used to go all the time. It seemed then as i know now as a levee road, holding in the little Tallahassee lake. I tried to build a deer blind in those slight woods, just to watch. Never seen much. Only ever found. Used to go to them woods, like i do now, if it’s not every day it’s pretty well near. All of the excitement of their shade and stories and hope building up to where we practically running to get there. Used to go - and Lord did i cry when they cut some them trees down. Just a few, here and there, no particular apparent rhyme nor reason. Weren’t enough to make a difference, probably. But i cried. Because it meant, eventually, surely - they’d be gone. Couldn’t fathom i’d be long gone before they was.
They didn’t seem to have bramble out there like they do here. And it doesn’t rain anywhere on earth like it does out here in the bayous. Met my first liar out there. Couldnt - cant - understand. All them walks. All them tadpoles and that little alligator before the 4th of July. Out in these woods in the ouroboros we walk and walk and now we feel like friends, maybe, i might be acting too familiar. All of these beautiful things obscured by the next beautiful thing.
Birds sing, crickets sing, frogs sing, we sing. You might find me out there if you’re walking, i’m wondering. Sometimes i catch Wilbur staring and i begin to stare as well. Between the wind and the branches, the birds, frogs, all of these hidden creatures, we are listening so that we might begin to see. You might hear me saying, often, in the squelch of the marsh, “i believe! i believe i’m sinkin down!” and Robert Johnson rolls his eyes again. Never fallen down on my knees and raised up my right hand in this swamp, just at least not yet.
These waters is gentler waters. (this land is your land) and i been dreamin so good out here. Carrying you on my mind as all of these fern-coated oaks green & dream-misted, “holding patterned” waiting for our storm & it still ain’t stormed. Out wondering and staring and listening in these woods, quiet in the morning, birds shaking dew from their feathers as they sing in the trees, the trees showering us in our dawn and at a night a boy and his boat circle and circle, ripples find us in the grass and we sure-nuff sinking down, squelching, searching, one day these vines will be summer snakes and these logs alligators but i wont know til i know.
The promise of fireflies in March. The promise of spring and threat of summer. Alligator tunnels, nutria, fox, raccoon, rabbit tunnels, all around us, turtles waiting for the turtle hour. Snakes for the snake hour. We will see (eventually.) I am here among my southerners and alone all at once. A man and his motel room. An artist and her tree house. A person and their land. Waiting for blessings.
stories stories stories, the whole world stories. i want to hear all of your stories, all of them. i see what i know now - looking and hunting for stories and i got some but the priority is stories- books books books - all of your stories. Make this world more perfect with your stories; amen, hallelujah, praise God, amen.