You know I love a pilgrimage. When the seed casing feels too tight, it needs to be soaked in a hard rain and it needs to be scratched, given a cut against what won’t give way. One way to do this is a road trip built for touching gravestones, stomping on the grounds of the greats, drinking their water and palming plant cuttings from their homes hoping for a little timetravel sweet skin grafting.
Pilgrimage as a journey inviting propagation. Why not?
I’m in the Mississippi Delta. Birthplace of jook joint blues. Crossroads, I’m smack in the middle of the crossroads, and this very moment I’m headed to where Robert Johnson pushes up dirty riffs from below his last square of land. Tennessee Williams soaked in his bath in Clarksdale, Mississippi for how many hours, mercy, and that’s the starting point on the map this morning. Then after that, Faulkner’s home is down the highway in Oxford.
We’re juking tonight. Tomorrow, there’s more.
I’m soaking it up.
I’m thinking of you, too, especially if you are writing and shooting and making music and posting your stuff online for me. Or if you are wanting to. Or if you’re just happy, so happy like I am, that people do.
Hey, if you want a postcard, tell me your address confidentially here. Update: Sold out, in the mail, we’re headed home.