This one’s from a couple of years ago, when I worked parking at Churchill Downs. It’s an odd world to be on the edge of; on the edge because when your primary function is to be both seen and unseen. When you’re dealing with a subculture that has its own hierarchy, its deeply rooted sense of self-importance, a complex delusion that it operates with art and dance and beauty, and an ocean of money in its black heart that is the true rhythm it runs to… you either know your place, learn your place, or you don’t stay in the place.
I worked with people, some who were so in love with the “tradition” of horse racing that they were completely blind to the fact that a junkie in an expensive suit is still a junkie. The rest of us kept our heads down.
the clouds tempestuous the sun teasing bob-n-weaving like one more past prime boxer // autumnal clouds paint the light divine fractured one o' them oil paintings it just breaks the heart to try catch a sorry photo
that sweet spot it never lasts that long like dust preserved in amber the story’s only ever partially told like cigarette butts in an old beer bottle the memory’s discarded when it’s too old and nothing’s left of the sweet spot when the stage lights go cold
[Chorus for an unwritten song about the stage (RIP) at Charlie’s II, Mount Carroll IL]
I found out from my friend Dave Cuckler that the stage at Charlie’s II has been taken down. The bar is still there, of course, at least for the time being. Bars and stages all have a time and place in which they exist; although I don’t frequent bars anymore, I do like that they’re around and there are bars I miss. I miss Freddie’s in downtown Louisville; it was the last true dive bar in a city that’s more interested in tourist bucks than in local creature comforts. Freddie’s was a time capsule and when it closed whole decades were erased. History is an odd thing. It’s always happening, always unfolding, but when they eye remembering and the arms accumumating the artifacts is gone when the repository is scrubbed clean — in the case of Freddie’s for a chiropractor — the history is gone. What’s left is conjecture and myth.
In the case of the stage at Charlie’s II in Mount Carroll, Illinois, the stage was pulled out to make room for pool tables. The bar is still there, which means people will still talk about the music played there. There are pictures and sound clips, digitized in social media amber. But it bears pointing out the thing that killed the stage was it’s life.
When I lived there I was amazed at the amount of musical talent in the town. I started an open mic for poetry and music at Brick Street Coffee (also gone, RIP Lou) and the music spilled over. It was glorious. The stage started to attract musicians from the region. Then the music industry turned its eye and saw musicians playing standards along with their own songs. Standards the industry wasn’t getting paid for.
There’s a larger story here, but I don’t know that it’s mine to tell. A story about how corporate greed kills the songs people have been singing for decades. Songs and the singing of songs is one of the ways memory is passed on. But, like the agribusiness corporations that patented the corn seed… one of the oldest seeds in the history of people that’s responsible in part for our proliferation … the money behind the music industry kills small venues they have no interest in sustaining.
Like I said, there’s a larger story here. And a few years ago, I would have chased it. But now, I just want to remember the stage, the place, and the time. I don’t mind writing the chorus. But someone else needs to write the song.
Got my final rejection two days ago. I wasn’t terribly surprised. Other than a few independent publications that don’t have a hangup with publishing work already posted on a blog or in social media, I’ve more or less quit submitting.
There was a time when I took it personally. Younger me took it personally. The press that rejected me this time is one I think highly of. They’ve published great work by friends and I fully expect they will publish more. Wondering about the editorial eye is a pointless exercise. There’s any number of reasons why my chapbook was rejected. The poet whose chapbook was accepted has a slew of awards. One of the young, hungry guns. I’m happy for him. In looking him up I notice he’s taken the route a lot of them take: published in the right journals. He’s not been offering his words up to the ether. He fed it to the machine. There’s comfort in rejections in that they are absolute; there’s a high watermark missed, a community and a pedestal to aspire to. Get enough of the right accolades, get your name listed as headliners in writing conferences. Get more publications.
This writing business isn’t what it was when Jim Harrison came on the scene, when Toni Morrison came on the scene. Kurt Vonnegut said once in an interview that if he had to try and be a novelist in present day he never would have made it. It takes a certain boldness to be a writer, now more than ever.
At some point, reaching back 20 years now, I decided to cast my work out into the ether and into the machine. Rationally and spiritually, I reject the either/or construct that’s buried at the heart of all Western institutions. The ether both obfuscates and forgives because that is it’s nature. The machine is does not forgive because that is the nature built into it. Institutions, worn paths, offer no alternatives. And it’s easier to follow the grooves. That’s the difference between explorers and gold rushers.
So though I reject the either/or I once again find myself embracing and being embraced by the ether. It’s an exploratory path. It’s a wanderer’s path. And like Rilke said, “O wanderer, the path is walking too.”
