Roots
Music: Immobilized in Parker, Florida
POTLICKER JOURNAL. 57,000 words, 229 pictures. I write ten pamphlets about my career in the
small press scene, mail art, zines, ezines, the online journal (OLJ) and the
weblog (blog) and send them out to my coterie of steadfast readers, the Buzzard
Cult, named after the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a revitalization
movement that swept the Lower Mississippi Valley just before and after European
contact. I studied cargo cults in
college. And I dug at Lake Jackson, a
Buzzard Cult temple mound with a copper breastplate of the long-nose god, who
might have been a female warrior. Some
feminist scholars think so. Then I make
a side trip to Sneads, Florida, where Potterfest is held, comparing hot sauces
and pepper vinegars. Eating
oysters. Saying shit and making
biscuits. Hoecake and tomato gravy. The Cracker Table. All genius is local. 2011 was a productive year for me. I wrote and sent out 40 pamphlets. I posted even more than that at my web site, The Daily Bulletin. I think 2012 is going to be my year. I’m going to occupy it. I can’t do anything about New York or
Hollywood but I can fill my year with daily typewriting. Will I cross over from the underground to the
mainstream? Will POTLICKER JOURNAL be the
book that does it? That’s the drama of
it. The drama of it. A lot of repetition. I’m not a dog returning to his vomit I’m a
cobbler sticking to his last.
SEASIDE BLOG. 26,000 words, 92 pictures. I start writing SNEAKING PAST THE
GATEKEEPER. I have snuck past the
gatekeeper. I am doing it. What’s to stop me if I don’t snooker
myself? I change the name of SNEAKING
PAST THE GATEKEEPER to SEASIDE BLOG. I
see that POTLICKER JOURNAL and SEASIDE BLOG form a pair of books, Roots Music. I am tracing my roots. How did I get here? What does it mean? Am I a Florida
writer? Am I a Wewahitchka, Florida
writer? Am I a vernacular writer? Oh, shit.
I have given myself a web site, The
Daily Bugle. Minor chord. Fate motive in Faust. I make a 16-page
pamphlet called Roots Music and send
it to an agent as a writing sample. I
see that Hardhat Snood is a
pamphlet. I make copies to send
out. I expose myself as a racist. Well, I’m clad in the hardhat of
righteousness. I don’t think I’m a
racist. As Tom Mott says at the end of Cracker Jack, we need more discussion
about this, not less. We need to talk
about it openly, not guardedly. If it
makes you feel better to call me a cracker call me a cracker. I say start at the pointing finger and trace
it back. I apply for a Summer 2012
fellowship at the Mailer Writers Colony and submit a 40-page writing
sample. I make up a pamphlet, Writing Sample. I can send the pamphlet out with query
letters for Roots Music. My book is like a web log. A story, a poem, an interview with
myself. A book or record or movie
review, an art exhibit, a concert, or a play.
A list. Lists. Does it end?
No, it just stops. Charles
Willeford concludes New Forms of Ugly,
“For the moment, man writing about man writing thwarts Armageddon, and there
are enough highly literate readers in the world for the immobilized hero novel
to exist as a sub-literary force in the corpus of modern literature. Will any immobilized hero ever find his way
through the labyrinth of his mind to his perfect, absolute Zero? His white leviathan? One does not think so.” I think I did it. With Roots
Music: Immobilized in Parker, Florida. It takes taut strings to make music. I am humming like a tuning fork. I resonate.
I set up and hum. I have found my
resonant frequency. Ha ha, too high of a
pitch. Dogs can’t hear it. I am talking to myself. Raving like a madman. Send you to Chattahoochee. Jim Woodruff Dam. The woods are full of wardens.
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