Simple answer - I don't know.
I have a general, wide idea, but I don't specifically know. It just kinda started, I just kinda like it, it seems that some people out there are kinda reading it and I kinda have an idea where I kinda wanna take it. But these notions, plans and desires are, at best, vague - or at least that's what I'll tell you - the truth - or something like the truth - is that all this effort is a bit like a line in the film Three Kings:
“The way it works is: You do the thing you're scared shitless of, and you get the courage after you do it, not before you do it."
No, I'm not scared of writing. The relevance of that quote, relates to how sometimes in life one does something without payoff or knowing how to correctly conduct oneself throughout the mission or understanding of what, if any, the destination might be. It’s only afterwards, do these rewards appear. So, I'm just gonna sit here under South Kensington station, blare out into my ears some Justin Townes Earle gig recorded in Austin a few nights ago and type until it feels like I've reached a punch line. I'll upload it and wait till tomorrow, when it will become clear why I even spoke about this topic. Then, somewhere further on down the line, perhaps years away, I'll awake to a crystallization of why I bothered with the entire blog itself.
Before I started blogging, I used to write random letters. I'd sit down, hack through some sort of slightly offensive, verbosely rambling, supposedly insightful babble, then pick a random address off my Contacts and send away. All my amusements in life are perverse - I am, after all, completely mental - and the pleasures of the Letters Exercise, is no different. I loved imagining the selected receiver trying to decipher what would be the underlying statement or motivation of someone sending them such an unsolicited email, when in reality, that very confusion was and is the actual point. As I said, perverse. I know. But, it wasn’t like the letters weren't full of genuine emotion or worthwhile statements. I think some of them were wonderfully distracting from a mundane afternoon and some of them were crackers; just great. Now that I have this forum to posture out to a wider audience, the letters have ceased.
Well, I don't know if this audience actually is wider. Is there anyone out there? Hello?
Anyways, the other day I wrote my first letter in a while. I had been thinking about the culture genre called Americana and my affiliation with it's music, films, pictures and stories. I'm sure I wasn't born to it. It’s not in my blood or my history. It is a bag I've picked up from somewhere and carry around subconsciously, yet totally. The letter was with this in mind. Here it is, recycled for your pleasure, right now.
I’m bored. When I’m bored I write letters. Unfortunately today you are one of the recipients of my dribble. You should have never let on your love for Americana.
Many years ago, I grew up in a house without TV. My father decided it loosely fit in with some religious directive to keep the home TV free. Around the corner from us lived my Grandparents. Their particular brand of Orthodox Judaism, did not forbid the Idiot Box from taking up position, or positions, around the house. Their home was our recluse, retreat and repose for the must-watch, live sporting events that are the required, dedicated watching for all young men growing up in Oz. Whenever I was able to secure unsupervised free time, even for just a half hour, I’d climb over their rickety side fence, locate the not-so-secret hidden back door key, plant myself down on their imitation Persian Rug and steal away precious moments of escape from reality.
On Sundays, I had extra-curricular Jewish Studies classes that would run from 10am to 1pm. Every week, at 1.03pm, you could find me on said rug. I don’t run. I don’t like it, I find it somewhat demeaning and am not very good at it, so I almost never run. But, I’d run to my Grandparents’. The motivation of TV would carry me beyond my predilection against exertive exercise and carry my feet, oh so swift. The Sunday Afternoon Movie, would begin at 1pm and I needed to be there for the beginning. I couldn’t miss a scene.
Every week they would show classic Hollywood films. Those great epic, star driven pieces from the 40’s to the early 60’s. The closing period of the Studio Golden Years. Invariably, most of the films would be a Western. Occasionally, they’d be a Nazi/World War II film thrown in for variety, but even these films were essentially Westerns with slightly smaller hats, a few less horses and much worse accents. The very same movie might get shown a few times a year and they’d never show two black and white movies two weeks in a row. I never understood the reasons for this programming decisions, but their actions were at least consistent.
I’m not sure if I just needed the escape and, as such, any genre or style or fantasy or fiction would have sufficed. I suppose it’s possible that The Old West and The Frontier became associated with the freedom from a life I was trying to flee, only because those were the movies being shown. Perhaps, if they had shown Star Trek marathons from week to week, I’d feel a need to run to Science Fiction, rather than an O.K. Corral for retreat. However, regardless of these salient points, Americana, in it’s purest, most naive, optimistic, adventurous, sparse, literal and dusty way became my Dessert Island. My warm comfort blanket. My hidden physiological target. My drug. My vice. My high.
It informs everything; from my dress and my music, to my words and my journey. It’s where I want to live and where I want to adventure. I often feel that many Americans don’t appreciate the richness of the culture, history and struggle that their past infuses their present with. Everybody in the world craves European culture as a backbone. I want it only as window dressing. I want my foundation to be a dusty, hole-ridden, sweat encrusted, tan, suede, cowboy hat and the smell of saddle leather. Crumpled corduroys, thrown over a broken wooden chair, tell a fuller tale, than a still life of a fruit bowl could ever project.
I love Americana and I wonder why more Americans can’t love it so. Everybody needs escape – even it is back towards where they have just come from.
H
