Novel

Thursday, March 10

Brew noticed that Balder's front end sounded like it needed wheel bearings, so when they got back from Valdosta, he put it in the shop and let Balder take his truck back to the base. When Balder's car was ready, Brew drove it over to New Orleans and exchanged vehicles with him.

Was Brew on vacation, or did Brew do this before he took the job in Atlanta?

I think Hurricane Opal was before Brew took the Atlanta job. So maybe he didn't drive down to Point and Shoot, maybe he hadn't left yet.

Roger Jackson had commissioned Brew to write a chapbook called Questions About Henry Miller That No One Ever Asked Me--With Answers.

Just before he left, a box of them came in the mail, so he had a book to take to Gerald and Del, and Larry and Hazel. And Balder.

Brew saw the house he was living in, and met his bandmates. Balder would later live with one of them, near the Georgia Tech campus, in Atlanta. Matt Hoops.

Brew must have spent a night in Slidell, with Gerald and Del. They loved having Balder nearby. He would visit them.

He was family-oriented, a story-teller, and a good cook. Make some woman a good husband. Some day.

Brew hung out with Balder, made the vehicle turnover, and spent a night with Larry and Hazel.

Hazel has a bluegrass band Larry plays in. Hazel and the Delta Ramblers. She hosts a radio show on WWOZ-FM, Sunday mornings. Bluegrass and old-time country music.

Larry and Hazel are both readers. They went to St. Johns, in Annapolis. The Great Books school.

They belong to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The last time Brew visited them it was to go and see the Passionate Visions folk art show. Larry said, "You'll get a kick out of the placards beside the paintings, and the program."

Brew did. They were a hoot.

One year Brew took Balder to Jazz Fest. While Balder ran Gerry's ass ragged, going to stage after stage, Brew and Larry sat in the bleachers somewhere and talked about how their anthropology professors 20 years ago had been wrong, on a number of points, and that, in disagreeing with them, they had greased the skids under themselves, as prospective anthropology professors.

They weren't complaining. They were laughing.

You have to get your satisfaction from what you do, not from the approbation of others, and from knowing you are right, not from having committees or panels give you this or that honor or award.

If everybody's crazy and you think you're sane, you're crazy.

But if everybody's crazy and you think you're sane and another person says, "You know, I think you're right and everybody else is wrong," the two of you are sane and everybody else is crazy.

Brew sending his writing to Larry made Larry feel sane, and Larry telling him he liked his books made Brew feel sane.

Here's what Howard Finster had to say about being an outsider.

As far as I'm concerned, ther ain't no outsiders of anything. If you're an artist, you're an artist. If you're a mechanic, you're a mechanic. If you're a farmer, you're a farmer. Ain't no outsider farmers, ain't no outsider mechanics. That's just something that someone's got up to class things. I ignore it.

The next folk art show Brew went to was in Atlanta, in connection with the 1996 Summer Olympics, just after he moved there, to work.

Souls Grown Deep: African-American Vernacular Art of the South.

Brew knew that "Souls grown deep" was from a poem by Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

There were big photomurals of the artists' yards, often with statuary, displays of paintings, and art for sale.

Sam Doyle sold his paintings at a Nationwide Outdoor Art Gallery in Frogmore, South Carolina, on St. Helena Island.

His paintings were of local people and historical events. He was self-taught.

One artist included in the show said neighborhood kids called him "Sanford," after the character Redd Foxx played on television, who owned a junkyard.

They thought his art was junk.

It was art made out of junk.

Brew made art out of junk. Scrap. He called himself a knacker in an abattoir. A bricoleur. He used what he found on the beach, the streets, out in nature.

Brew was self-taught.

The academy didn't know what to make of Brew's books. For the most part, they ignored him. Refused to publish his books. To teach them in schools.

Brew had business cards made up calling himself a vernacular writer.

Art Brew, Vernacular Writer.

Warning: Their shit don't stink.

Brew's shit stank.

He liked the Souls Grown Deep show very much, except that he was puzzled by why it was only black folk artists. Why not black and white folk artists?

White people wouldn't have a folk art show that was only white folk artists. There were some very good black folk artists. It's not like they were overlooked, or not given their due.

Why did whoever put on the show do that?

Well, if Brew thought the program for the Passionate Visions show was a hoot, the coffeetable book published to accompany the Souls Grown Deep show was even more torturous, more twisted. Funnier.

Jane Fonda published it.

Hanoi Jane, the fitness guru.

When she was married to Ted Turner she joined a black church and started collecting black folk artists.

The book sells for $100 a copy, because of all the color pictures.

A similar book, Priceless Florida: Natural Ecosystems and Native Species, sells for $30. The Coastal Plains Institute subsidized the printing costs so Pineapple Press could sell it to the public for that price, and parents could buy a copy for their children.

Brew took a cultural ecology approach to his writing. Like Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Brew was what a cracker child grew into.

A sort of an Ecology of a Cracker Adulthood.

Was he nuts? Everyone knew a cracker was a racist.

Brew wasn't a racist, he was sous rature, or under erasure. Souls Grown Deep was racist.

He couldn't even use the title Erasure. Pervical Everett had beat him to it.