RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,120
(taken up, without merit or meaning)
Walked and walked. Yes.
Lots of places and ambushes
too. My wall map probably
covered well the entire area
of Manhattan, and then later
Ithaca, Elmira, Pisgah, and
varied parcellations of Vermont
and Pennsylvania too. Camden.
Philadelphia. Newark. Where
do I stop? I could'a been a
bluesman hopping the rails.
-
Which leads me to this subject:
Back in my seminary days, long
about '63, etc., there was a movement
afoot with those sem-boys, in line
with the then-prevailing social
climate in coffeehouses, hip places,
parks and fountains, to be, or play
at being, folk-singers. On the quad
at the seminary grounds, we'd have
white-chino-pants boys strumming
guitars and singing innocuous and
seemingly stupidly endless things
like Tom Dooley; If I Had a Hammer;
We Shall Overcome; etc., etc. - all
those Kumbaya type songs. In those
dawning days of social consciousness,
civil rights, Freedom Marches, and
all that, it had somehow gotten
embedded into basic Christian
thinking that the cause was right and
just and all that blind activism was
warranted. I don't know how much
any of them knew about any of that,
or even cared, but to see my buddies
suddenly up their with guitars and
strummings, mouthing old blues songs
slave complaints, and civil-rights
songs, seemed purblind foolish.
-
If you studied the old songs, the ways
in which they were put across - all
that shotgun-shack front-porch guitar
and harmonica stuff, it came across.
First off, it was authentic; all that pain
and grief, hurt and longing, stemmed
from real conditions - betrayal, lost
love, slander and slaying. Slave work,
poor living conditions, poverty, and
the hurt and disillusion that went with
it. That was real stuff : burial mounds,
wooden crosses made at night. Dead
babies, betrayed lovers. These seminary
guys, AND the hordes of young people
in places like Washington Square, etc.,
jumped on a bandwagon already long
and frightfully betrayed itself by the
inauthentic followers proclaiming it.
Schwerner, Cheney, and Goodman
may have died for it, but they were
not folk-singers. The thing about the
old music I'm speaking of is that the
music and the conditions spoke for
themselves. there was no ego involved.
No 'careers' made of that stuff. The
singing and the singers were inauspicious
locals, wailing their sounds, with no
sense of self-established or promotion.
By contrast, all of a sudden white-boy
America' had 15 versions of the fake,
each riding coattails on some totally
inauthentic variant on their humbled
transgression of a falsely-manufactured
American past, and one that was being
used to further their own purposes :
As usual, in America, Fame, Money,
Name and Prestige. Millions to be made
by crawling over the backs of the blacks
of whom their songs wailed. It never
made sense to me, and, within the context
of the 'Church' I soon realized, at age 14,
that it was 'Gay.' That word was only just
then getting used to cover homosexuality,
but the gayness of the Catholic Church, the
solemnities of the priests and brothers, all
that celibacy crap, was merely a cover for
gayness - as was the sudden penny-loafer
crooning of old black-mens' songs. Songs
taken up, without merit or meaning being
imparted except for bringing 'males'
together in an inherent powder-push of
comaraderie and joint cheer. I wanted
out. I was disgusted by that, by their
'theater,' by their play-acting, and by
all their rites and signature services
to celibate untruthfulness.
-
It was a sad thing to say, but it was
true. To this day, if you go to New Hope,
Pennsylvania, there's a church up the hill,
leaving town, westward out, I guess it is,
with a huge, gay, writhing, crucified
Jesus on the front of a church there that's
as exemplary of the same-sex contingent
of men in that town as anywhere else.
As apparent as the nose on my face.
-
It took me years to realize what was
going on. Catholic dogma doesn't tell
you this; it's all disguised and hidden,
concealed in code and practice - but
it's also a real shame and a travesty to
put people through all that the 'Church'
puts people through (Catholic, at least),
for their rather bleak ends. In much
the same way as was the idea of' 'folk'
music unauthenticated and transferred
over to the usual pop-schlock element
unconcealed thrill/garbage, so too was
our 'society' used to advance the cause
of unrighteousness and sham, in the
name of either 'purity,' or religion.
-
I think, at the end, my point is that the
Catholic Church, over all these years,
was taken up as the societal formulation
of what should be. People are only now
realizing how that was untrue, and
unnecessary; BUT, how many lives,
I ask, were twisted and misruled
because of it? In the same manner,
the 'societal formulation' of what
became 'folk music' was equally
off-key, mis-represented, and, by
century's end (year 1999) used to
deaden and destroy the minds of
its own adherents. Too bad.
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