June 2012 – Snopes

When I first saw Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter,” I was fascinated and horrified by the Russian roulette scenes, in which captured G.I. during the Viet Nam War are forced to spin the cylinder and take their chances. It seemed an apt metaphor for the political and military situation of the time, but when I learned that it was pretty much a construct for the purposes of the film, a compressed but artificial expression of the randomness of violence, my enthusiasm cooled. Like many of my friends, I wondered if the grafting of a fictional practice (which the film suggests is widespread in wartime Nam) onto the actual atrocities doesn’t somehow interfere with our moral intelligence, dimming the legitimate response to actual crimes and horrors.

I was drawn to read Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by the blurbs and reviews that praised its historical detail and the excellence of the research behind it. In that respect, I was disappointed, as a high school history text and a few good Britannica articles will supply all the historical review a reasonably well-educated person would need to create the era as G-S has done. What did, however, make a strong impression on me — and sent me back to the roulette question — was the author’s decision to conflate the fictional/mythic spooky gore of vampires with the actual horrors of the American slave system. Slave traders and their sympathizers, the reader learns, are usually vampires, as are many plantation owners, whose cash crop is actually the population of slaves, whom other vampires purchase and feed on.

I know the horror genre is just one of many word games, but I can’t help wondering if G-S’s league of evil doesn’t somehow obscure the fact that the kind of metaphorical vampirism involved in slaveholding and trading is — because it was (is) real and because it can’t be defeated in one fell swoop — a greater horror. Another case of the invented obscuring the actual. I admit that it’s not likely that many adult readers will be confused about the threshold between the fantastic and the factual, but it seems a topic that might merit some serious discussion. Perhaps you know of some reviewer who took on this issue when the hardback was published? Certainly it will be interesting to see how the film (with trailers that present the story it as all martial arts/horror splatter and snicker) manages this question and how viewers and reviewers respond.

When Segovia died, a friend called late at night and said, “Doc Watson’s now the greatest living guitar player.” My response was, “What do you mean ‘now’?”

It’s hard to feel that has changed, despite the passing of that consummate flat-picking, seraph-singing native of Deep Gap, N.C. just last week. Today he was laid to rest, but his music travels on — in recordings and memories, but also in his many followers, imitators, disciples. Last week I was riding up and down Southwest Virginia’s Crooked Road, a series of country/folk/roots/old time music venues and historical sites, and from the Carter Family Fold to the Floyd Country Store Friday Jamboree, nobody could get far into a set without pausing to praise the eighty-none -year-old Arthel Watson, the healer who “cured” homemade music of its worst commercial taints, who arranged old mountain fiddle tunes for the guitar and who made the strings sparkle, feet tap and all our bones resonate in sweet agreement.

Blind at about the age of one year, Doc fell for the harmonica, banjo (with a cat skin head), swing guitar and fiddle, though the acoustic guitar and harnessed blues harp were his trademark. Those and his ever-astonishing ability to exude humility while shimmering with charisma, whether he was rendering a murder ballad, “The Cuckoo Bird” or the devout “Down in the Valley to Pray.”

Tributes already abound for the man who received Grammy Awards for seven albums and, in 2004, a lifetime achievement award, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to start hearing shouts that the Appalachians be renamed the Docalachians. When I listen to the clean, bright sound of him picking “Windy and Warm” or his dark honey voice on “Shady Grove,” I think I’d be happy to sign the petition. But, of course, he’d have none of it.

Doc’s first guitar was a Stella, which seems fitting, and I bet he’ll take to the harp like a swan to water. All this sorrow and admiration is a bit unusual for me, as I’m not much for hero worshiping, but I’m all in favor of recognizing what’s what. It’s as if we had an angel passing among us for a spell, pulsing inside a generous flesh-and-blood man of remarkable taste and timing, erudition and improvisational spark.

If you’re not already a fan, this is a good time to start getting enriched, even if your appetites lean toward blues, gospel, country or traditional. His albums are many and fine. I recommend you begin with the old ones from the seventies and early eighties, cut before his son Merle died in the mid-eighties. As a duo, they were unbeatable, but Doc stands alone as a virtuoso, and he played to the heart’s home.

Vampires and Slave Holders

On the Threshold of the Crooked Road: Doc Watson