The Sociology of Work or Makin' a Livin' (first installment)

This is the blog where I try ideas out, and so I will use this space to continue thinking on one of many questions belonging to my manuscript--Mississippi Wound, Detroit Bound. In that text, I am considering my father's family's migration to Detroit after World War II. One of my angles into answering the question of why the family moved from DeSoto County, Mississippi to Detroit is their philosophy and experience of work.

To answer this question, I have come to Mississippi since this is one of the places where the family would have been socialized to work, which is not to say indoctrinated into an ethic of work, meaning busy-ness, but socialized to ways of valuing or measuring the value of work. In Detroit, this question emerged as an important one for the family as they reorganized their lives. This question is relevant to so many migrating families, yet one of the things that perhaps makes our story different if not unique is that it would seem that my grandfather--who I think of as the sponsor of their migration--did not go to Detroit with the intention of working in an auto factory. He was not pushed into the city by disappearance of farm work from rural areas due to mechanization. He may have been thinking about factory employment, eventually, for his sons, but, for the time being, this is a question that remains open. At the moment, I am fairly certain that he never considered factory employment for himself.

My grandfather was an enterprising man, which, an aging Mississippi cousin instructed me was not uncommon in the past. My Big Daddy did everything from undertaking to running a store to raising bulls. He inherited the family's land from his own father and uncle, which I'm sure helped him get his start. The same cousin reminds me, however, that "Moody 'em" (not sure who's included in the "em or them) "never made no crop." Making a crop was in northwest Mississippi from Reconstruction well into the 1970s a center of life. My great grandfather grew cotton though it is unclear how many acres he himself worked. The aged cousin brags about the family's wealth partly created by the numbers of blacks they had "workin' on half." When I came here, I didn't know if "workin' on half" was a good arrangement for the worker or not. The question comes of a sensitivity gained growing up in the nation's premier union town. I'm still not entirely sure of the answer since I have shied from asking that exact question, because of the way in which it might implicate my ancestors. Whatever the case, it is clear that the family was in a relatively better position for having owned the land they lived on, and that better position allowed their children to choose what work they would do while they were in Mississippi. I am mindful, however, that black, spoiled, and Mississippi do not go together--not in the 1940s--when Big Daddy packed up a truck with the family's belongings and headed north.

I live part-time, which is actually most of the year, in northwest Mississippi, in a small town that is not quite a bedroom community for or a suburb of Memphis. This is not the county my father grew up in but the one to where my earliest Mississippi ancestors were brought as slaves. There is a college in town, (my Big Daddy attended it for a while) which is where I work, and there are the typical black businesses, barbershops and beauty shops, eateries, and funeral homes. Most blacks are employed by the college, others work for the municipality and its auxiliaries, or for retail establishments.

It didn't take me very long to realize that most blacks in this general area of Mississippi have more than one job or source of income. Some work two jobs while others are employed by some entity and also earn money from self-employment, for instance, catering. Lots of people sell various wares. There are some roads where one will find sometimes a half dozen people, not always black, selling mostly clothing, usually procured from auction storage lockers, out of the trunks of their cars. The goods are sold along the roadsides dirt cheap, leaving me to wonder whether the enterprise is profitable. The low prices do keep things moving, which is good, yet I have asked myself if the main purpose is for these vendors to keep up a habit of work more than it is to make good money.

When I first moved here, not knowing how long I would be, I bought lots of household items from a woman, I estimate in her sixties, who has a yard sale at her rural home ten miles from me about once a month. Compared to other sellers, I actually found her prices to be somewhat high, but I bought from her nevertheless because she also delivered and set up the items for me. Eventually, after I had everything I needed I stopped buying from her, but I still see her around from time to time. She may be seventy by now and is thin as a rail but obviously as strong as the day she carried a heavy couch off her truck, brought it through my kitchen door without even having to turn it, and set it down in my living room. She did break a sweat, it was August after all, but she broke nothing else.

Other, more genteel, types, also may have two jobs. For instance, some of my colleagues, who work full-time in higher ed, are ministers and have churches. Others rent out houses around town. This level of industriousness surely unsettles stereotypes of Mississippians as a poor lot, sitting on porches swatting flies, getting little exercise while contributing to their own poor health through sedentary living.

Full disclosure, my own lifestyle may be more sedentary than that of the Mississippians I observe though I bolt out the door every Saturday morning to see what's for sale along my favorite route. The thing is, I wasn't really taught to work. I was the youngest child  in my family and reaped all the benefits thereof. My family, my mother excepted, believed children were to be spoiled, especially pre-adolescent children. The point of childhood was play. This was in Detroit.

Evidence that the family's philosophy of childhood was no different in Mississippi is the fact that all of the blood relatives who remained in Mississippi remember all of my grandparents' children, well, most of them, as spoiled. "They had him spoiled," I hear a cousin say of my Uncle Sonny Man, the youngest son. Of my father, called Lil' Bro though he is older than Uncle Sonny, they say nothing. No one remembers my father. This is perhaps because, as the son a step up from him told me, he didn't do much but sit under a shade tree with his nice shoes on rather than walk around barefooted like the rest of us.

My father did carry those same behaviors into Detroit from age thirteen until his death. The brother who, pun intended, threw shade worked until he died at the age of eighty. The two of them may be in heaven right now arguing about who really worked. You see, my father was employed by Ford Motor Company for at least two decades while his blissfully barefooted brother appears to have shunned such employment. Just a few years before my uncle's death, he showed me a big catfish he had caught. He specialized in river catfish, and he had a ready and steady clientele. As far as I know (only my father might disagree), Uncle was never without money.

These are my own inheritances relative to work; the case is very different on my mother's side, but that is another story for another day. For now, I'll just say her orientation to work is much more in keeping with what I've been observing in northwest Mississippi. As for me, I continue to adjust to the pace of life and the work ethic as I see it at my place of employment. I had not expected to be more oppressed by clock and calendar in Mississippi than in Detroit, but I am, which makes having a writing life exceedingly difficult. The only option is to fit it in within the imposed structure of work rather than to allow it to flow throughout my day, making itself primary. I know that half the time I am being negligent even to think about having a writing life. It is a luxury few can afford and one that few people with whom I have become acquainted believe I can afford. Perhaps not yet. When people poked at my father for taking periodic, unscheduled and unapproved, vacations from Ford, he would respond, "I've worked enough." When he was alive and when I was a kid, I never could wrap my brain around that rejoinder. There were just so many doodads for a kid to have, and the income from Ford was more than enough to buy them. When a paycheck wasn't forthcoming, my Big Daddy stepped in. I'm coming to understand different orientations to work including my father's which is probably most akin to my own. The differences go to a basic question of existence--just how much work is required of us humans.

The Alley Less Traveled

The other day, I read an intriguing article on folk agriculture. The writer suggested that we might return to more sustainable food systems--meaning local food systems. She pointed out that humans used to get their food closer to home. I was introduced through the piece to wildcrafting, a word I immediately fell in love with. I don't know which part of the word I love most--wild--or--craft since both define me pretty well. So, put together, we're talking about a lifestyle right up my alley.

"Food access used to happen in lots of places in our lives, not just at grocery stores and restaurants."  Gordon Smith

Speaking of alleys, on my morning walk I realized that I've not walked through any alleys this summer. I always do so two or three times to capture images of vines growing on garages that haven't been painted in twenty years. I love getting a back alley view of America--a glimpse of the side of ourselves we don't show the world. I also hold out hope that I'll find something really interesting growing back there. Quite purposefully, I keep my nails long enough to have them serve as sheers. This morning, I pinched off a sweet pea in full bloom. It was growing on a beautiful old stone wall that bordered what I suspect may be a carriage house. This morning, I noticed that the neighborhoods in the general vicinity of our house have many properties with carriage houses. This fascinates me. I long to know what life was like in South Bend 100 plus years ago when people still had horses and carriages. And I am amazed that these structures are still standing. There are some pretty "ancient" ones at the back of some Victorian houses along Lincolnway East. This is not a highly sought-after neighborhood. Actually, no neighborhood in South Bend benefits from the rule location, location, location. But, the neighborhoods along Lincolnway are even more ignored, which is fine by me because it means that maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I may for a song own one of these gems.

Perhaps what makes the area even more unappealing to most is that it backs up to a very active railroad. I walked along it this morning as well, picking some weeds, aka wildflowers--some yellow ones I'd not noticed before but which were growing abundantly and the purplish blue ones that grow in every Rust Belt city I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. These foot-high beauties have taken over huge fields in my hometown of Detroit. As I plucked these two varieties up by the root--intent upon planting them in my already wild backyard--I prayed that I wouldn't break out in a rash or, worse, die upon contact. I slightly exaggerate my fears. In fact, I should be more fearful. Most people would agree that walking highways and byways, not to mention urban alleyways, is not smart. Maybe so, but my rebellious spirit against all things others consider smart and not smart naturally makes me go against the grain. I also am curious and growing more so with the passing of each day about the historic functions of all of the weeds that populate cities. If I had another lifetime to investigate, I sure would like to become an herbalist. How wasteful are we to ignore daily plants that for all we know could be tremendously pleasing to our palates or, even better, a panacea for much of what ails us? I'd like this city in which I currently reside much better if on my walks I ran into other wild children out foraging (another word I love). We could share recipes. I could invite such persons to my kitchen, and they'd invite me to theirs. We'd sit on our front or back porches surrounded by trumpet vine and have a lunch of dandelion greens, nasturtium flowers, and marigold heads.

I actually met such a person just a few weeks ago. She lives on a corner on a questionable street with at least one vacant house with a large lot next to it which she plans to buy for a full-fledged garden. Her home is inspired. You can hardly see her front porch what for the growth, and on the facade of the second floor is a huge metal, painted dragonfly. I spotted this urban gardener when I'd gotten done checking out the abandoned house, which, since for rent, may serve as my writer's cottage next summer. As I approached the slender lady, she was bent over, snipping off something with her own fingers. I said something. I forget what, and she told me that she was collecting radish pods, which are great on salads. Right then, I could see that she was going to talk to me and that she had a lot to teach. I view her home, replete with chickens and a shed turned into a coop, as an urban farm. This woman of the house--whom I will call Laura though that is not her real name--can get most of her meals from her yard, and she let me know, after she'd given me a couple dozen basil leaves, that I could stop by with a basket anytime. According to her, many of the plants I saw growing, even the tomato plants, had volunteered, so even though giving one's city lot over to a garden can require a full-day's work, diminishing one's food anxiety--increasing one's food security--may allow one partner of a two-adult household to quit her day job. I dream of this possibility when I walk throughout the city. I wonder what all besides eating I can do with the lush vegetation of South Bend--dried floral arrangements, pretty water colors to be sold at the local farmer's market in winter? I have sold there before. I am not above it even though my Ph.D. suggests I should want more or other for myself and family.

My new friend is just the type who would keep me in this city though I swear every year I will not endure another. She scavenges, and she has told me there is a whole group of urban foragers here who make it their job to know every apple, pear, plum, and peach tree within the city limits and also a few fruit varieties long forgotten or, like mulberry, underappreciated. Laura had completely won my heart when she shared that she traipses onto abandoned lots looking for food. I am similarly drawn, as much for the beauty of decay, a good picture that I might paint to share on Facebook, or to just dream about restoring as I am drawn to potential foodstuff, but I am not closed to the latter. Laura told me to try one of the most plentiful edible greens--lambs quarters. I have Googled it, and she is right. It can be eaten raw or cooked. It's good on salads, and when cooked some say it tastes like chard. The weed is quite plentiful. God's provision I think. There is a warning, however. When it is found in abundance, the ground is likely contaminated, for it is there to restore the soil. This it seems is its other purpose. I have not yet consumed any lambs quarters, but I'm definitely gearing up. Would that the whole world would step outside of the box and live a little on the wild side. Life would be so much more interesting, but then, such radical change should it ever become the norm might lead me to search for the old order.

Where the Ancestors Reside

Margaret Mitchell does not make light of the O'Hara's Irish ancestry. This comes across in the novel in ways that it did not in the film. Irish ancestry is a key aspect of the story; it is how both Gerald O'Hara and Scarlett's determination is explained. In the case of Gerald for certain, his success is at least partly for the ancestors who never could have experienced the good life in Europe. Rhett Butler recognizes Scarlett's "Irish spirit." It is one of the things he likes about her. He notices when she has her Irish up. Scarlett herself hardly recognizes the depth of her heritage while she has but one goal before her--winning Ashley Wilkes. It is not until she figures him dead and perceives herself as abandoned in the world, left by Butler as well, that she acknowledges her ancestors.

"And when they died, they died spent but unquenched. All those shadowy folks whose blood flowed in her veins seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room. And Scarlett was not surprised to see them, these kinsmen who had taken the worst that fate could send them and hammer it into the best. Tara was her fate, her fight, and she must conquer it."

This is what comes to Scarlett as she lay in bed planning her future. She wonders if the ancestors are in fact in the room with her, or if the dimension she has entered is only a dream. "'Whether you are there or not,' she murmured sleepily, 'good night--and thank you'."

The mystical including presence of ancestors can be found throughout the novel. In the same chapter, Mitchell writes, "There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald's shoulders." One can read this figuratively, Gerald seen to be standing on the shoulders of his ancestors. Their perseverance
has led to his. One can read it symbolically, which would be to read it from a symbolic universe in which there is a crowd existing in another dimension and yet ever present as witnesses. I do not think it unintentional that Mitchell places the ancestors behind the shoulders or, perhaps, off to the sides, for it has been suggested by others that this is how, visually, they are attached. Mitchell would seem to know this. Mitchell has undoubtedly acquired such an understanding.

Reading Gone with the Wind

I began reading Gone with the Wind at the beginning of June. I am almost half way through. I'm an incredibly slow reader because I savor and make a study of text. I am amazed at just how much cultural information Mitchell's book contains. I am especially interested in what she suggests throughout her text, about class.

She helps us understand how it is that Gerald has come to be a slave owner and that, despite his success, he will always be confined to a certain class partly because of his Irish heritage. Gerald, she explains while giving the background leading up to his becoming a planter, didn't want to be "in trade" like his brothers. He didn't want a life of endless "bargaining."

I have been studying trade and bargaining. I am fascinated by these terms and their meaning in the context of nineteenth century America and, even more so, in the context of slave society. I first became familiar with this term, however, through my grandfather, a Mississippi expat, who always spoke of "trading" with certain grocers in Detroit. He had been a small grocer himself in both Mississippi and Detroit, but I suspect that he had learned the term in the South, where he had done much business with area whites in both the small town where he lived and in Memphis, where he traveled regularly to buy and sell cotton and cattle. Many times, I've come across historical writings in which trade and bargaining are mentioned. For instance, right now, I'm studying the Southern Claims Commission file of Cato Govan, a former slave who made a good deal of money during the Civil War hauling cotton to Memphis.

What intrigues me about Mitchell's commentary is that she places the planter far above that of the merchant. A good deal of Gone with the Wind is in fact spent telling a story that has this class problematic as its foundation. Gerald is not Ellen's social equal; Scarlett is not Ashley's equal, and Rhett, despite coming from a good family, is not received by any reputable families, so, in the end, he is not Scarlett's equal. I am interested in this issue for many many reasons as I have immersed myself in Southern culture of the twenty-first century, studying at the same time William Crump, who was an attorney but appears on the 1860 census as a grocer despite the fact that he was a relatively prosperous planter. What gives? Why would Crump self-identify as a grocer rather than as a planter, especially if the former was less respectable?

I have my suspicions about Mr. Crump given that I have read more than one account of his character and person. He appears to have been a Unionist of sorts. As I've been reading GWTW, I have compared him to the unforgettable Rhett Butler. Was Crump too all about profit? Was money everything to him? He was attorney for Elizabeth Hull, owner of my ancestors. Hull trusted him both to take care of her business and with her daughter, whom he married. It was apparently an unhappy marriage; Crump was thought to be uncaring. Elizabeth the younger died, it would seem, heartbroken. Neighbor Henry Craft's diary is one source for this view of the marriage.

My guess is that there were layers and dimensions to William Crump. These deserve to be investigated, for to do so would be to provide a more complex view of Southern society than most of us have received. This investigation may have capitalism as its foundation. Why was Crump Unionist? Was he simply the same pragmatist as the fictional Butler? Was he as dead set on survival as even our heroine Scarlett O'Hara Butler would come to be? How well did Crump come through the war?

In 1870, we find him living in a household led by Morris Anderson, a 32-year-old mulatto carpenter born in North Carolina. Crump, now 65, would appear to have a good amount of money relative to his neighbors. Perhaps he eschewed all social convention. This living arrangement would certainly seem to suggest such independence. I look forward to digging deeper to find out.

The Rose Hotel, 1812

Today began my annual trek from Mississippi to Indiana. In my new position, the school year doesn't end as neatly as it did when I was not an administrator, but I have managed to get away still the first week in June. As busy as I was, however, tying up loose ends, I had only a couple of hours to look for a nice play to stay overnight--as I had decided before taking off that I would not drive straight through. I've done it far too many times, and my constitution is not, it seems to me, better for it.

I looked online for a bed and breakfast somewhere between northern Kentucky and Southern Illinois. I must have looked at rooms in at least a dozen, but with the exception of those in Paducah, which seem very interesting, some even exquisite, others seemed too fru fru. I am really not that much into Victorian. It can be sweet but is usually not restrained enough for my taste. I did find one B&B in Harrisburg, Illinois--the Lafayette Inn--but I called them, and their phone just rang and rang. When the time came for me to hit the road, Highway 7 north out of Mississippi, I had not yet found a room. This was a little discomforting. I feel a little less desperately out in the world by myself when I know ahead of time where I'll be laying my head for the night.

So, the plan then was to stop in Paducah, Kentucky--a town whose name I've known for years only because I've seen signs for it off of the interstates I've traveled. I also traveled through Paducah last year although from Highway 45 one does not see the city's downtown, which must be where the snazzy inns are located. Things did not go as planned. I got a phone call while I was driving through Paducah, and then I somehow wound up off 45 and on 60. Despite having navigation, I also carry a road atlas, and my car has a compass, which has saved me many, many times. So, I saw that 60 travels northwesterly, and since I was headed to Indiana... Besides that, 60 also connects to 91, which connects back to 45...

I've forgotten how long I was on 60, but I wasn't the least bit worried since I still had over a half tank of gas, having filled up in Jackson, Tennessee. I'm also not sure how long I was on 91, but somewhere along the way I saw a sign that said that trucks of a certain tonnage could not take the ferry. Ferry? I know what a ferry is, but this water vessel that takes people and vehicles across rivers is not a part of my experience, which is likely the reason why I, despite forewarning, didn't think about what the message to truckers meant.

The next thing I knew, the Blazer and I were in a line of cars and a big truck. A guy at the shore beckoned for me to go around the truck, and that's when the reality that my car and I were about to cross the Ohio River, not on a bridge but on a ferry, began to sink in. I did go around the truck, and the same fellow directed me to get behind another car, very snugly I might add. I was scared, honestly, I was, first of getting too close to the car in front of me and, then, that I was going to suffer some kind of cognitive dissonance from not adjusting my mind quickly enough to the fact that my car was moving without my having to press on the gas. I started to turn the car off but was unsure that that was the proper thing to do, so I left it on and hoped that automatic pilot would not kick in and instruct me to press on the gas pedal. In other words, I was just a few minutes shy of freaking out.

Of course, I managed to remain calm somehow, and on the other side of the river, I landed at Rock-in-the-Cave, which I have since learned is a major tourist site. There is a cave. I drove maybe a couple of blocks--can't really recall how far, could've been more--then saw a sign for a lodge. Yes! I turned a corner, went less than a quarter of a mile and entered a state park whose signage directed me to the cabins. There was a restaurant as well, and I entered there to ask about the cabins. The price was incredibly reasonable, but they were all booked. The clerk could only offer a full house for $165, and I'm glad to say that, not needing a washer and dryer and three bedrooms, I was not tempted to rent it for the night. Still, I regretted that the cabins weren't available; they are situated overlooking the water. I asked the clerk if he could recommend other lodging and he told me that there were two beds and breakfasts in Elizabethtown about thirteen miles away. At that point, I was even more stubbornly committed to not trying to reach Indiana; it was around 3:00, and I wasn't interested in driving in the dark or of arriving in town exhausted.

I got to Elizabethtown in maybe fifteen minutes and found the B&Bs pretty easily. One need only go toward the water. As the clerk had said, there are two right across the street from each other. I had no idea which to choose. I started toward the one and then turned toward the Rose Hotel, founded in 1812. There was a vacancy sign (as there was at the other), and when I entered the front door, with the look of the road on my face--the innkeeper smiled. He showed me the rooms that were available, and I chose the Sarah Room, which is very nice, with a sleigh bed situated in the corner, a lilac chenille spread covering the bed. The room is carpeted and furnished with simple antiques, like a wooden rocker and a wardrobe. There is a nice clawfoot tub as well, equipped with shower.

So, the room is very tranquil, and this of course is not the point of this blog post, but I enjoy telling the whole story because I think how I came to this place is important. After arriving here, actually, before arriving here I began to think about journeys of our ancestors. The thing is I crossed at least two other rivers, and since I haven't checked my atlas I'm actually not sure that I wasn't crossing the same river in different places. I imagine that one of those rivers was the Little Wabash, which if I recall correctly figures in that awful story of the unsuccessful escape attempt by William Still's brother. But, more to the point, how can I stay at the historic Rose Hotel, which was open and running during the era of slavery, and not think about slaves who lived just across the river in Kentucky and hoped against hope one day to be able to cross the river to freedom. I didn't see any literature to this effect when I checked in. Maybe I will find some tomorrow. Breakfast is at 8:30. I will be sure to ask then.

If there is not such history, or if there is, but it has not been told, then I expect I'll be doing some writing on this. All day, I had been thinking about my trip, how eccentric I am to keep taking this annual slow jog through the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. On one level, I am consciously covering the steps of freedomseekers, and yet I struggle greatly to even approximate feeling what they felt. I may have worried about getting loss, having mistakenly gotten off 45, but they worried about being caught and sent back. I felt a little unsafe getting so far off the beaten path, but they must have thought it wise to do just this. As I crossed the Ohio, I was afraid; this is true. The journey seemed to take a long time. I wanted to speed it up. I worried, irrationally, that we might somehow tip into the water. Maybe I had a moment, a visit, an alignment of sorts.

Finally, curious about the Rose Hotel, I of course Googled it when I got a chance, after having a lovely meal at a floating restaurant that can be seen from the hotel. One website was of ghost-trackers. I didn't click on it. The innkeeper had earlier told me to call "if anything happens." Her assurances that nothing would did not erase the suspicion she had already aroused in me. From that point on, I pretty much accepted that the hotel is haunted; how could it not be? It's 200 years old! I decided I would sleep with the bathroom light on. My mother has always said that ghosts cannot harm you; only people who are alive can harm you. I believe she is right, but I have come to accept that there are intersecting spheres, and I have no doubt that there are here at this beautiful hotel remnants of the one-time presence of our ancestors who may very well have taken refuge here.

Blurred Lines II

So, in a previous post--Blurred Lines I--I asked why the song "Got to Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye (1977) came to me in a dream this week, and I implied that its surfacing is directly connected to my having heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" back in June of this year and again a little over a week ago. I didn't say in the previous post that I am not in the habit of dreaming of Marvin Gaye songs. Actually, my father wasn't that crazy about Gaye since he didn't like the sexual (read erotic) aspect of some of the later stuff; my father was a romantic in the more lovely sense of the word. So, either my father, whom I have called my psychic d.j., did not send forth this song, or he did but not merely for my listening pleasure.

What, then, does my subconscious self want me to do with the knowledge that Thicke's song is strongly influenced by Gaye's? Might I add that last night I gave some thought to other influences that I hear in the song and came up with Prince as the main influence on Thicke's falsetto? I went online and learned that not a few people have realized the same. Some think Michael Jackson is an influence as well, but I'm not yet able to discern anything beyond the "Hey," which I guess could be Jackson's "He he!" At a time like this, I need an ethnomusicologist. I know of two, and neither is available to me at the moment. If they were, I'd ask just how common this degree of influence is, which is beside the point of this post, or, well, maybe not. Okay, I know enough to recognize "Blurred Lines" as a pastiche, my term of choice for what others call a mashup. Again, there are in Thicke's recording several influences. It takes either a refined ear, age, or a little peace and quiet to tease them all out. Why bother? Well, one reason I can think of is that one is a fool if he or she thinks that there is anything new under the sun. What does it mean then to have a hit if that hit is a creative collage of old hits? I suppose it means that one has reassembled the old with the new very creatively, and I would admit that one is to be applauded for that. Most old heads would say that the originals were better. I dunno. I don't even know if I am an old head. What I do know is that the old music takes me back to a time, and I know that when I hear music from the past--an experience very much like Proust and the teacup or was it Didion and the teacups?--the essence of that time also comes back. When I first heard Thicke's song, I approached the past but did not become fully immersed in it, maybe because of the puzzle the music placed before me.

For months then, I think I suffered a bit of cognitive dissonance, a condition which may increase with age, but one which I suspect that more and more young people (am I young at 48?) suffer. (Incidentally, my mother, who is in her 70s, experienced such an episode recently, a sort of temporal confusion. She got stuck in her own constructed sense of time, which may actually mean that she's ahead in this game.) My own persistent dissonance has to do with living in, one, a culture that gives me much more to do and much more to consume than I reasonably can (which means I am cognitively overloaded all of the time) and, two, living in a culture in which truly nothing is original. My response to what I take to be postmodern facts of life is not to take on an air or claim of cultural superiority (I suppose Gaye's song wasn't pure either) but to feel disturbed by the possibility that most may not be able to tease out the differences for whatever reason--time poverty or choice to spend time on things that seem to matter more.

Take for instance last year's blockbuster slavery film Django Unchained. Now, I went in so hard on that film last year that I promised myself to give it a rest. Trying to get people to see that film as problematical was definitely a losing battle. Apparently, so long as you're Quentin Tarantino you can treat subject matter however you like, as bloody as you would like. It seems to me that a majority of people whose opinions I heard--that would include more than one man of the cloth--were not bothered very much by the violence, which was made acceptable by the "It's Tarantino" argument. I was surprised that these people did not offer (only a handful did) that slavery was violent every day. Had they done so, I would have countered with the fact that the violence of slavery was contextualized so that even in its barbarity, in the final analysis, one would be able to explain it, which is not the same of course as accepting or approving of it. With DU, the artistic and moral question is whether the violence made sense, as in, did it fit the specific context, or was it simply added for effect or pleasure. The latter possibility would be rightly called pornographic intent. (Decontextualized, obsessive, viewing is what pornography is I think.) About the time that I lost patience with the various ways in which people excused this very troubling film, I had even decided to hit below the belt, offering that Americans don't know enough about slavery to judge a film good or bad. This is a fact that is not in need of an argument, right? So, what have producers in effect done when they offer a historical film which precious few consumers have the knowledge to judge critically? In my opinion, this is an offense almost criminal, a compounding of ignorance. And what are the implications of that!? Worse than a compounding, however, is willy nilly exponential growth, multiple denominators whose only common thread is the refrain "It's just entertainment." Augh! Absent a critical thread, for example, "this film bears no resemblance to real slavery" or "why can't African American lives in film ever be given enough back story to create depth so that they might pass as something close to real?, Hollywood can produce just about anything it likes so long as we find it entertaining in one way or another--it make us mad, it cracks us up, puts us just briefly in touch with the past, in short, titillates rather than moves (us to action?) Amused to death (Postman), we are served up another slavery film this year.

And this folks it seems to me is the state of things and the state of our minds, overwhelmed with information, overloaded, hyper-entertained, which is why the whole idea of the "must see" film does make sense to us, and our friends--who, like us, have few critical bones left in their consenting heads-- tell us every other week that we simply must see movie x,y, or z, as though viewing films has become a life or death matter.

All of this returns me to the other issue at hand--how it is that my and, I suspect, everyone else's, subconscious would pull up for us what has been suppressed. Is it to take to task the information overloaders, the Lords of the Media, who are the ones doing the overloading and to much profit I might add? The answers from Jung are balance and that the subconscious has something to offer all its own. In this case, I think it wants to point me and others to what is real, or more real, which is to say closer to the source of the original experience; Gaye's song is a reminder of a different reality, more deeply sensual I think, closely knitted to a more soulful, less consumeristic time, you know, that Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored? (Taulbert) That was a very modern time, which, as social critics explain, may have laid a foundation for and anticipated this present time in which everything is a mashup and we haven't the time either to discern or to reconnect with the past at deeper levels. But my dream suggests that whether you have the time or not the past is always with us and will pop up when it is good and ready. Now, it is a matter of whether we will hear, see, or recognize it for what it is, which is not simply another layer of reality--but a sensuality and a spirituality that perhaps cannot be experienced richly in the postmodern world of so many things--but within the space or place of dreams and other psychic phenomena. Be that as it may, I have to admit that Thicke's song did stimulate my psyche. This function of "new" music must be worth something. But the lines are in fact blurred, and there is a politics and an economics to various acts of blurring. I am these days constantly reminded of Melville's wisdom--this world pays dividends. This explains so much, but I'm willing to believe that Thicke and Pharrell Williams were as musicians inspired by the artistry of Gaye, which is probably why they should go ahead and admit the influence and pay accordingly. In this case, sampling and, in effect, tweaking black people's experiences of joy and pain is a real money-maker. Worse, are "Blurred Lines," "Django Unchained," or "12 Years a Slave," placebos? Are they vaccinations, periodic inoculations with the pain of the past, in order to stave off real despair, deep reconnections with the various deep pains of inhumanities suffered? The answers to these questions are answerable, yes?

Blurred Lines I

I'm not a Jung scholar, nor am I a psychoanalyst, but I have very slowly been reading Jung for the last two years, and I have come away with more than a few ideas including that Jung thought dreams (and the subconscious) provided a balance for the conscious. He also believed that the world of dreams is as much reality as what we perceive in our waking hours. I have been reading Jung out of an interest in understanding how humans perceive reality and what constitutes it; I have been naturally (it seems to me) led to this interest as I have sought to understand the world(s) of the ancestors. Take for instance this line from a document I came across years ago, which narrates early African American church history in northwest Mississippi. "He was one of our greatest divines." I gave a short talk last spring in which I considered this word "divine," and how it has been lost from our vocabulary including church jargon. Just the other day, in reading another historic document, I saw it used interchangeably with "seer." Divine is both an adjective, a noun, and a verb, and it means to know or to discern. I suspect that right along with the loss of this word we also have lost faith in the plethora of ways that the ancestors sought and found knowledge. The loss has been a result of scientific, "rational," thinking. I'm sure there are those who believe, and I think I would agree with them, that in adjusting to scientific thinking we have in fact limited our ways of knowing and, in so doing, given away power. Knowledge is power, right? I think Jung would say that certain kinds of thinking, primitive thinking, have not however altogether disappeared from modern humans; they have only gone underground so to speak. And I suspect that if too much is left to the underground, it comes bubbling up either because of overcapacity in our personal underworlds or because some piece of information or knowledge needs to surface to balance out something in the conscious. An example may clarify what I mean. Last spring, I was traveling from Mississippi back to Indiana (I live in both places). Because my car is old, I'd decided to take back roads all the way up, and being that I wasn't in any hurry (school being out for the summer)I decided to stop at every antique or junk store on the way. In one particularly junkie one, a radio was on, and I heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" for the first time. Even as I perused the shop, already certain that I wasn't going to buy anything, I was mentally stopped dead in my tracks by the song. It took me back, to the seventies, I felt. I asked the shop owner, a white man who looked to be in his late twenties, if he liked the song, and I cannot remember his answer though I think it was he who said it was Robin Thicke. The shop owner may have said he liked the song just fine, but he didn't seem especially taken with it whereas I was because, well, I could tell it was having an effect on me. I was being played somehow, emotionally. Honestly, I kind of liked the play even while I also knew that someone, Thicke or someone else, was doing some serious sampling and owed some serious credit. In truth, I felt like something had been stolen, but the first time I heard "Blurred Lines" I could not immediately identify who the artists of influence were. Over the next several months, because I seldom turn on the radio to listen to anything other than NPR and use Pandora's pre-selected oldies stations on my phone and computer, I didn't hear "Blurred Lines" again until Rust College's Founder's Week. Then, it was blared all over campus, heard all over the west side of town, and I refamiliarized myself with it and also realized that it was a hit among blacks. Its groove is just so festive; it's perfect, as I read from one critic, for family reunions. Even the old people ask for it. Perhaps the song rekindles something latent in us, again, something we've let go underground. But then... Two nights ago, I awakened to Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." From time to time (once a month?), I dream of music, usually one particular song. A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that this is how my deceased father communicates with me. My father, born in the '30s, was not much for the Blues. Rather, he loved soul music and R&B, and this is the kind of music I dream most often. The first time I dreamed of music (that I can remember), Daddy played for me "Ouuu child, things are gonna get easier." That song and that time were a real affirmation. Now, when I dream of music I'm always trying to figure out what message my father is sending. Whether or not he is in fact the source of my dreamtime music, whether or not my father is my psychic d.j., I still wonder why a certain song will come to mind without it seems my own conscious control of its emergence. Yet, when I dreamed the other night of Gaye's song from 1977 I knew immediately that my subconscious was providing an answer to a question that I had not consciously asked: who the influences were of Thicke's anthem. I was amazed, amazed at how this answer had surfaced so easily without any hard thinking on my part. I was, however, somewhat concerned with the fact that the process had taken almost six months. Still, I was more interested in the why--why my subconscious felt I needed the information. My answer to this question goes back to what I've already stated of Jung's theory of the subconscious as a balance. It is easy enough for me to reason that the six-month period is proof positive that in the very modern life I lead I am entirely too busy. There is just too much going on in my conscious thoughts from day to day. Back in June when I was rambling through the junk shop, overwhelmed by so many dusty gadgets, I might have discerned the influences then had I wanted to take the time, or had I been relaxed enough to think clearly, or taken the time to stop and sit. But I did not feel I had the time, which is usually my evaluation of my life, and add to this the fact that I was crossing both time and space as I headed north. Some things, would-be thoughts, apparently chose to slip through the time/space gap--one made all the more convenient by the hour I gained between Mississippi and Indiana--until later. The question remains whether the surfacing of "the answer"--one that I may have needed without even realizing it--was neutral or whether it surfaced with intention. I think Jung would say whenever what is in the subconscious surfaces it is with intention. More musing on this in the next post.