Woody Guthrie And Leadbelly

We talked a lot in this class about the experience of travelling across country. The repetitive gas stations, the monochrome highway markers, Main Streets with pedestrian crossings. So much of what we sang about is in those trips, somewhere between the monotony and the vague sense of direction and the cycling back.

The project below, based off of Roll on Columbia attempted to capture this experience. 

For Leadbelly, I focused on Goodnight Irene, and the idea of interaction being confined to dream. The idea of loss permeates the song, the unapproachability of those we've known and now miss haunting the narrator. For this project, I tried to capture this sense of incompleteness.

Guthrie:

We’re pushing west to Uncle Kevin’s and night is settling in. Shimmering shadows run along the car, roadsigns get caught in our headlights, and Dad’s foot hugs the break as illusory dear dart in front of the hood. Mom was reading, but now she’s asleep. The road slips by. Dad doesn’t know I’m awake. I offer an occasional fake snore to indicate I’m following orders. “Sleep on the way there,” as impossible a dictation as “have fun when we’re there.”

                Kevin broke ground along a creek. His house is hyrdro-electric powered. He does not own a TV. Dad says this is a good thing, but Dad watches Bloomberg every morning. Kevin’s kids are spending Christmas with their Mom. She lets them watch Saturday morning cartoons; Ken can sing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme these days.

                Kevin has started cooking. That’s what Dad says. I think about the burger we had at a roadside place with signed college football Jerseys and the wearniness about not being able to sleep sets in.

                Earlier we were playing trivia. “What’s the capitol of Oregon?” “Name five states that get tornados.” “Name three rivers.” “Which two people did Thomas Jefferson send west?” I could answer most of them. We stopped at a farmhouse where some settler did something on account of some ordinance, but all I got was that his wife made butter in a rotting churn and days must have been, for her, as long as the sky. There was a reenactment of his life, but they left out that he was killed by a Cheyenne chief. Time to “push on” Dad said and we pulled off at a gravel road with a wilting chain link fence and saw a mass grave from a massacre, a trench in the ground like at unrenovated men’s room. One car pulled in behind us as we got out, but they stayed in the car and just asked directions.

                It’s been five or six hours since and I’ve run through the States song at least five times completely since the last fake snore.

                “Dad,” I say and he takes a second to respond.

                “What Benny?”

                “When are we stopping next?”

                “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

                “No, I just want to know.”

                “Not until we get there. Now get some sleep.”

                “Dad?”

                “Benny what’d I say?”

                “When will Ken and Sarah get our presents?”

                “Go to sleep.”

                The road keeps coming like toilet paper on a roll, and Wyoming burns by on top of the reflection of my nose which only goes away if I pull back from the window. Someone had to carve this road, I’m thinking, but it’s so endlessly boring. The seat is sticking to my legs and Sophie’s head digs into my shoulder. 

Rolling on west in pursuit of a setting sun, waiting to wake up, lapped.



Leadbelly:

Secret Spot

You sat, picking at your unplucked unibrow, hair knotted in a bun. The first days of summer were starting to occupy Jon and my secret spot, and we watched the shadow of the setting sun creeping away from the stone wall behind us that grandpa had built with his dad. You nestled against the granite shingles and placed an arm around me, forcing my head onto your shoulder. Then you threw the blanket over both of us, pinning it beneath your outstretched feet and draping the other end over your taller head. Submerged, I pulled on a few stems of the few stems of grass that remained amidst the rocky ground. "Hold me, hold me" you mourned. I wanted to say something, anything sweet, but words seemed idol to what I wanted to express. Your hand began to stroke my head. I squinted to see if doing so would permit me to see better in our dark cave. I could see the silhouette of your nose, but, after a few seconds of staring, it saturated with the dark behind it, and it felt like I was alone. The perking dew smelled like cheap cologne, but I did not even know what that even was yet. Jimmy had told me, when he shared my room at the funeral, and had started to tremble beneath my quilt you had put on my bed, which he was borrowing.

I thought of Jonas you carried me back to the old house, finally to be sold, and I always guessed you did too. I couldn't block him from my memories. He hadn't been gone long enough.

 I still see him in my dreams.