As I watched his slender fingers slide with ease up and down the neck of my cherry red 1976 Gibson 330, I understood the meaning of life. His shoulder length curls, cut short by a worn to death beanie, were a vision of teenage angst and dreams. Rockstar skinny, he had the look and movement of an age old road dog, wise beyond his makeshift bedroom stage. Notes howled their way out of my Hot Rod Fender Deluxe and passed over me like time spilled from a bottle. In a flash, I was seven and standing too close to the screen of a floor model television. Puzzled by Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstrat, I wondered why a guitar would need all those bandaids. Inspired, I split kicked my guts out along side David Lee Roth, pretending that the multicolored striped utility carpet in the tv room was sizzling under lights and smoke. A blink and I was back, nestled in my son’s giant beanbag, watching him shred on hand-me-down gear while he practiced his solo for the guitar show at his school. He would’ve preferred Panama but Jump was a challenge that he was welcoming and wailing on.
A few days ago, I got an idea that I’m going to build the back half of my life on. While I’m not going to share said idea, I’d like to paint a picture of how I came to this revelation by deconstructing the message behind an unassuming 80’s rock song.
Some days I get up and nothin’ gets me down. Blissful are the mornings when I wake with palpable faith in the path on which I’ve chosen to tread. It’s been paved through my belief in the value and magic of making something from nothing. As a former rural Appalachian, I come by it naturally. If money’s tight, alchemy’s necessary.
When my mamaw’s eight young’uns were wantin’ somethin’ sweet at the end of the month, she’d peel and boil an old potato that was about to rurn’. She’d mash it up and make a dough by mixin’ it with her last little bit of powdered sugar. Then, she’d lay it out flat, spread on some commodity peanut butter, roll it up into a log and slice off a piece for each and ever’ baby. My writing is like Mamaw’s potato candy, born from necessity. Souls hunger for meaning and purpose. Some days, I know that it’s my job to meaningfully and purposefully piece together scraps of human experience with the intent to feed as many of them as I can.
Other days I have no ability whatsoever to ro-o-oll with the punches and get to what’s real. I languish through, fully confident that no one gives a flying shit about what I’m called to write. I tell myself that I’m stupid for not marrying that boy from up on Saltwell who was fixin’ to build me a two story brick house and dig me an inground swimmin’ pool. I look at my body of work and wonder why it even exists. I look at my two babies and wonder how in the world their mama is going to keep putting food on the table with all these useless words. There are stretches of time when I devote all my energy to searching for a way out of a career that feels like walking a tightrope without a net. Having my back against the record machine for twenty some odd years hasn’t been easy. But, when the chips are down, the universe never fails to tap me on the shoulder and tell me that we need to chat. The conversation goes something like this…
Aaa-ohh, hey you!
Who said that?
Baby, how you been?
You say you don’t know
You won’t know until you begin
My experience as someone who has ever been chained to a creative mind is likened to a dirt bike that was passed down to me from my cousin Micheal in 1989. It was a Yamahaw 125, a motorcycle that siphoned enough sweat from dad to drown a world of sorrow. Dirt biking was my family’s weekend leisure activity. I learned how to ride when I was three. The 125 ran like a jewel once it got going, handled better than any of the bunch. But, getting it started was a real bitch. My father, a mild mannered mystic of a man who is as laid back as a field of Mountain Laurels, would cuss and kick and crank and choke and fight that hunk of metal for 30 solid minutes each and every Sunday. Some Sundays he’d win the battle and some Sundays he’d throw it the hell across the yard and tell me to jump on the back of his 250.
Point being, my creativity isn’t the most reliable of machines. But, I know that once it’s revved up, it takes me to glorious places. Beginning is the hard part. I’ve been in a bit of a waning phase. Healing from the trauma of a toxic marriage and divorce has taken up a lot of space. My sense of direction has been a bit muttered. I’m mature in a way that’s made me question how to step forward. How do I honor the scars on this new skin without becoming them? It’s easy to wallow in the what ifs… However, the same way that my dad was determined to send a spark to a corroborator in the name of imprinting the value of feeling wild and free as a bird, I’m determined to keep the flame for my art driven first born. Watching him kill a famously hard guitar solo inspired me to take myself to the woodshed and kickstart the ever living hell out of my artistic side.
With an 80’s Roller Rink playlist roaring in the background, I laid my yoga mat down on my living room floor and exercised until I felt like I was going to die. I knew I had to bulldoze my way to that space where my thoughts smother and my spirit ascends to the plane where my soul connects with that which is bigger than me. Gasping for breath, I thought of nothing. Black, calm, still and silent, my empty mind gave way to a flicker. I began to see everything that I’ve built, I saw who I was and where I came from. As the sweat pooled in the small of my back the flame engulfed me. The engine ignited. The path lit up like the eyes of a poor kid waiting in line for a piece of potato candy. Just like that, I was shown where I’m supposed to go.
Might as well jump
(jump)
Might as well jump
Go ahead and jump
(jump)
Go ahead and jump
For me, making a career from art has required cyclical leaps of faith inspired by the simplest notes of the human experience. It’s terrifying to jump but more so to not jump and spend a life not actualized. So, here, in this silly little blog that I created because the universe told me to, I’m casting the first stone.
I’m jumping and I’m going to land in your speakers.