I’ve always been an inspiration writer—not an inspirational writer, of course, as that’s a different thing. No, whether I was writing songs or academic essays or fiction or this blog, I awaited inspiration to begin or continue or finish a piece. I’m still like that to a large extent, I guess, but I started a new practice near the end of May 2022 when I listened to author Wiley Cash interview my favorite contemporary novelist James Lee Burke.
At the time of the interview, which took place on the 25th of May, when my older granddaughter graduated from high school and I turned 63.5 years old, Burke was promoting the publication of his 40th novel. Cash asked him how he managed to be so consistently productive.
“750 words a day”
I immediately said to myself, “I should try that.” So, I did, starting as soon as Leesa and I returned from the graduation celebration in Durham.
At that time, I was maybe thirty-five thousand words into the first draft of a novel that I’m calling Streets of Nashville. I’d begun serious work on the story in July 2021, and my goal was to try and finish an initial draft of sixty to seventy thousand words by the time the fall semester of 2022 began in the third week of August.
I got started with Burke’s 750-words-a-day plan by Friday, May 27th, and I stuck with it, writing at least that many words daily and often a few more. By the time I hit mid-June, I was feeling good enough about my progress that I thought I could finish the first draft during my writing residency at Wildacres in NC, which was scheduled for July 4-10. I still thought this even when I blew past sixty thousand words and knew that the story was going to demand more than my earlier guesstimated word count.
The draft stood at something over seventy thousand words when I arrived at Wildacres Retreat on the afternoon of July 4th. During my writing time there, from Monday afternoon through Saturday evening the 9th, I finished the first draft—right around ninety thousand words.
Laurel Cabin at Wildacres Retreat. This is how it looked while I was in there writing.
Now that the semester is underway, writing time is limited, so I’m unable to write 750 words a day, but I’ve devised a schedule (of sorts) that is allowing me to write around three thousand words a week (750 X 4), and I’m okay with that. I’m into a fourth draft of Streets and beginning to send it out in search of a publisher, and I’m over sixteen thousand words into the first draft of another novel with the working title Avalon Moon.
Have you ever thought that the devaluing of education is a reflection of the devaluation of the individual — of you and me — and the society in which live?
If it’s even possible anymore, set aside your political hate for the other side, and think about the education of children and adults (young and old). I challenge you to watch this without the rages of indignation, without taking umbrage (see below), no matter from which side your indignation comes.
I have lots to write about this, but it’s morning at ETSU and I have classes to prepare for.
Here’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day for today, 1 September 2022: umbrage
For some years now, we have excelled at umbrage, at taking umbrage. If our education continues to be devalued, we will never recover from this negative mode of interacting with the world around us.
So, I’ve set up a monthly blogging schedule that I’m trying to adhere to as a minimum of activity here at Words & Music by. . . . It goes like this:
Every 1st Wednesday is writing about writing – book reviews and such
Every 2nd Monday is a miscellany – whatever I feel like writing or thinking about
Every 3rd Saturday is for song stories
Every 4th Tuesday is my political musings
Today is the 4th Tuesday, so I’m thinking about this world. . . .
I’ve lived in the United States of America for nearly sixty-four years now, and I’ve been reading and teaching American writing and thinking — particularly from its beginnings through the end of the 19th century — for more than twenty-five of those years.
My American lit surveys–particularly the sophomore-level general education version–begin with indigenous creation stories and trickster tales before moving to the letters of Cristoforo Colombo, i.e., Christopher Columbus. From there, it’s on to the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the American Puritans (including those we typically style as “Pilgrims”). My students and I then read from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, usually winding up with poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Having gone through some portion of these writings–in both undergraduate and graduate courses–every semester for, again, more than twenty-five years, I have come to believe that the one consistent American experience is that of decay.
gradual decline in strength, soundness, or prosperity or in degree of excellence or perfection
destruction, death [Merriam-Webster identifies this meaning as “obsolete,” but I think we have a good shot at bringing it back]
At one point in the first letter of discovery that Columbus sent back to the rulers on Spain in February of 1493, he writes, “Española is a marvel.” “Española” is the island that these days holds the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Then, just over ten years later, again writing to Spain, Columbus writes,
Of Española, Paria, and the other lands, I never think without weeping. I believed that their example would have been to the profit of others; on the contrary, they are in an exhausted state; although they are not dead, the infirmity is incurable or very extensive. . . . in destruction, everyone is an adept.
Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage
Even Thomas Jefferson, one of the central Founding Fathers and whose face is one of those that desecrate sacred Lakota land in the Black Hills of South Dakota, recognized the experience of decay–and recognized it very early on. In 1780-81, in the midst of our fight for independence from England, Jefferson wrote,
From the conclusion of this war [the American Revolution] we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.
Query XVII [on religion] from NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA [composed 1780-81; published 1787]
The United States of America has decayed to the extent that it’s no longer even half of what it thinks itself to be. And if the USA is supposed to be–as it thinks it is–God’s gift to the world, it is now a cheap knock-off of the nation initially imagined, of the nation it might have been if it’d been able to fend off the inevitable decay.
As Emily Dickinson wrote,
I reason we could die– The best Vitality Cannot excel Decay, But, what of that?
On Thursday evening, Leesa and I attended a local literary event. Atlas Books hosts poets and writers once a month at Johnson City’s Dos Gatos, and this month Davis Shoulders of Atlas welcomed poets Thomas Alan Holmes and Susan O’Dell Underwood to the Dos Gatos stage. Alan read from his first collection of poetry, In the Backhoe’s Shadow, published by Iris Press, and Susan — generally known as a poet — read from her first novel, Genesis Road, published by Madville Publishing. And there’s the tie-in to my song, “Genesis Road.”
(l-r) me, Susan, Alan during the new harmonica break in “Genesis Road” (photo by Tamara Baxter)
As is often the case in these modern days, I’d never met Susan in person until Thursday, although we’d been online “friends” for a couple of years. Several months before her novel’s publication, she learned that I had a song with the same title as her upcoming novel. I don’t remember at this point whether Alan told her about it or I did, but Susan and I were joking in a message thread that she should use it as her intro song when she went out for readings to promote her book. While that didn’t happen for her entire book tour, we made it so on Thursday. Alan read from his beautiful and humorous collection to kick things off, and then he and I played “Genesis Road” to welcome Susan to the stage for her reading.
Video by Leesa, who is a dancer and who remained as still as that element of her character would allow!
Song and novel are different in content, but Susan and I got our titles from the same place. If you drive I-40 between Knoxville and Nashville (or vice versa), as you enter (or leave) the vicinity of Crossville, TN, you pass Exit 320 for State Highway 298 / Genesis Rd / Crossville. I don’t know how often Susan has seen that sign in her travels, but I saw it lots in the years when I lived in Nashville and traveled many times between there and my home in Walnut, NC. I’m sure that one of the first sightings of the sign I must have flipped open my notebook and written down the road name.
Genesis Road at Crossville, TN
But I was nearing the end of my time in Nashville before I wrote the song. I began with the title and then scoured my notebook for bits and pieces I might use in writing the lyric. The only bit I remember from this part of the process is coming across these lines that became the beginning of the second verse:
But it’s the same sky here, Painted blue and white, Sequenced traffic lights Sequenced day to night.
I remember writing this in Lexington, KY, where I and my friends Noel and T. Michael had gone to pick up scalper tickets for one of Bruce Springsteen’s ’80s tours–either for Born in the U.S.A. or Tunnel of Love. I remember sitting in the car parked facing the street outside some store or other that Noel and T. Michael had gone in to look for one thing or another. The afternoon sky was blue and dotted with cotton-ball clouds. A Lexington street stretched out in front of me, a line of traffic lights changing from green to yellow to red. And then came the lines. Pretty simple, really.
The main happening that brought my Nashville years to a close was reuniting with Leesa after many years apart. At some point as we moved through reunion toward marriage, I knew that I would leave Nashville and return to the North Carolina mountains, specifically to Asheville, where Leesa lived with her son Lane and worked at a major salon. Again, the idea of such a return wasn’t solely related to our physical reunion. I’d been thinking about it. Even though the writing of “There Was Always a Train” preceded that reunion by two or three years, you can still hear her living in the lyric. And before that, I’d reversed our situations in the lyric of “Dizzy from the Distance.” Then, of course, there’s “Best I’ve Ever Seen” and “Homecoming.”
Musically, “Genesis Road” has a simple four-chord structure: C, F, Am, & G. It begins with a little musical hook in the C to F progression, in which the movement on the D-string is this note pattern: E > D > E > F. The song was one put together by the Cody band in those Nashville days (Mark Chesshir and Gene Ford on guitars, Steve Grossman on drums, and either Danny O’Lannerghty or Mark Burchfield on bass; probably Mark C. and Steve on background vocals). Gene Ford came up with the signature lick sings out over the C > F movement. Mark Chesshir took the lead on the breakdown after the first chorus, and Gene took over the lead from there to the third verse.
We ran the Genesis Road. We ran it hard and fast, Living every day like the last, No questions asked. With the love of the open-hearted, A love that knew no shame, We staked our claim And Eden it was named. But something came creeping Into the garden, Whispering to my soul, Telling me there was a bigger world Than that woman and that lonely road.
But it’s the same sky here, Painted blue and white, Sequenced traffic lights Sequenced day to night. I see a lonesome star. I see a tear-stained moon. And far away somewhere Those two also shine on you. Baby, leave your window And find a picture Of the days when things were clear. The smiling face beside you there Is somber distanced from you here.
In the beginning, We had it all — Same sad story That’s always been told. Rose of Eden, I hear you call, Calling me back Down the Genesis Road.
There are deeper rhythms in life Than these driving my reckless pace, And this mechanical human race Is losing touch with grace. You are a dancer in love With the native rhythms I have left — The rise and fall of your breast — The beat of life itself. Baby, set that rhythm as a beacon I can feel and follow home. I’ve left my winding way unmarked, And there’s no returning on my own.
In the beginning, We had it all — Same sad story That’s always been told. Rose of Eden, I hear you call, Calling me back Down the Genesis Road.
If your church upholds (dare I say, worships?) ideologies that support–even promote–violence like that of the January 6, 2020, insurrection and aggressive, cancerous ignorance like the wicked conspiracy theories of QAnon, then your church probably has less to do with Jesus than with this lunacy: “It’s a dangerous time, and this is a place of refuge and retreat if our community needs it,” Moon said in one of his recent sermons, titled “The King’s Report,” which he typically delivers wearing a crown made of bullets and a golden AR-15 displayed before him.
PASTOR HYUNG JIN “SEAN” MOON, HEAD OF THE SANCTUARY CHURCH, IN 2019. (PHOTO: ROBERTO DAZA/VICE NEWS)
About a month has passed since I encountered a black bear on the Loop Trail at Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina. I keep thinking about it. Sometimes my thoughts are about what a cool moment that was, the two of us on the trail, looking at each other for a few moments, then turning in our opposite directions and continuing on our separate paths through life.
This is roughly what my encounter looked like.
But this morning, the bear visitation came with that sort of breathless, What if . . . ? What if this bear, which I took to be a young adult, decided that it didn’t like having me in its woods? What if, instead of turning and ambling off in the opposite direction, it had turned and come toward me?
Not the attitude or direction I would have welcomed.
Even though these and other What Ifs didn’t happen, those thoughts–those imaginings–still take my breath away, just a little bit. I don’t know what I would have–could have–done in response. No stick. No bear spray. No forest-ranger knowledge about what to do. So, I imagine this . . .
A little good ol’ fashioned bear wrestling
. . . until I tamed it — or not. And then I laugh and go on along my path, hoping that somewhere up on the Wildacres mountain the bear is doing the same.
[This is a repost from June 2017. Since then, “Complaints” has become a favorite amongst the creations from these latter days of my songwriting. I had hoped that it would become less relevant. But it hasn’t.]
Sometime back of this, maybe in 2015 or early 2016, I began being unable to talk myself out of being worried about the world that I live in, the world my sons live in, the world my granddaughters live in. Cliché as it is to say, these are troubling times. We somehow learn to live with the worry.
So I began writing some lyrics. I don’t do that well keeping up with the scraps of paper on which my lyrics often begin, so I can’t remember now which set of words came first. But I’m fairly certain that Psalm 46:10 followed quickly on the heels of the song’s first “worried.”
In the summer of 2016, Leesa and I were in the Czech Republic, and we were each assigned–along with the rest of our group–to come up with a piece of scripture that was particularly important to us. Leesa immediately went to the verse in Psalm before we realized that our assignment specified that we select from the New Testament. But during that moment when Psalm 46:10 was her choice, I played her the snippet I had of this song, then untitled.
Since then? Well, a lot has happened to the world since last summer. During the winter, I pulled out the lyric again and began working on it. I also began working on some rather sparse music music that would stay out of the way of the lyric.
So, here’s the lyric:
Complaints
I toss and turn in the dark of night Then I’m up and turning on the light I’m worried – O Lord, I’m worried Why do I hurt and struggle with pain? Why can’t I shake grief out of my brain? Why are this body and this mind so frail?
No answer comes from the thundering whirlwind Or from a burning bush kindled by a lightning strike But from a still, small voice that says to me, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
I fuss and fret about the Great Unknown I spend these dangerous days afraid and alone I’m worried – O Lord, I’m worried Where is the next monster with a gun? Where will I hide? Where will I run? Where will I land if I’m blown to kingdom come?
No answer comes from a thundering whirlwind Or from a burning bush kindled by a lightning strike But from a still, small voice that says to me, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
When sleep doesn’t come easy When the floor creaks in the hall When the kitchen glows in laptop light And the clock ticks on the wall
And when my heart feels heavy When I breathe only in sighs When my dreams wake to suspicions That my truths might just be lies
No answer comes from the thundering whirlwind Or from a burning bush kindled by a lightning strike But from a still, small voice that says to me, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
I made a little video one night when I was home alone. I’m lit by “laptop light” with the lyric onscreen. I never watch Fox News, but because I blame that organization for a lot of the anxiety people feel these days, I decided to have it playing silently in the background. Completely unplanned, Henry Sanchez, the alleged rapist from Rockville High School, appeared on the screen just when I was singing about “the next monster.” My iPhone filmed the whole thing.
Sometime back in the fall of 2021, I think, I applied for a residency at Wildacres Retreat, near Little Switzerland in North Carolina. When the time came for the announcements of who’d been awarded weeklong residencies, I received a very nice rejection email, in which I was asked if I wanted to be place on a waiting list. I replied sure, why not. Within 2-3 days, I received another message offering me three different weeks to choose from, the first and third of which were during my spring and fall semesters. The middle was July 4-10, and I took it.
Leesa packed a wonderful care bundle for me, and I set off on my adventure at around 1:30 or so on Monday the 4th. A couple of hours later, after a stop at the Ingles in Spruce Pine for some additional groceries, including beer, I checked in at Wildacres and was assigned Laurel Cabin.
Laurel Cabin @ Wildacres
Here’s my edited log entry that I wrote on Sunday morning before checkout:
It’s a Sunday morning of soft light and soft rain, the 10th of July, a couple of hours before time to check out and return to the real world—my version of it, at least. this time at Wildacres was my first such residency, and I’m already looking forward to my next, whenever and wherever that might be—hopefully soon, hopefully here. I came here to try to complete the first draft of my second novel, and I did it! During this wonderful week of quiet and solitude, I wrote 15-20K words and came to a satisfying conclusion on my last afternoon here (Saturday the 9th).
In addition to all the writing, I walked as much as I could and napped when I felt like it. I took a couple of midday trips—to Marion on Wednesday (I think) and to Spruce Pine on Saturday. They were good breaks, all of them—the midday trips, the napping, the journeys up the mountain for a bit of suppertime socialization, and the walking.
On my first morning there, Tuesday the 5th, I got up and wrote early (750-ish words) and then took a break for a hike (on the Loop Trail). As I walked along a fairly open area of one trail, I heard a noise behind me and turned to see a black bear come up onto the pathway. It stopped and looked at me. I looked at it. We looked at each other for another moment or two and then I turned to continue on my way, and it turned and went the way I’d come. Later in the week, that scene made it into my draft!
Thanks to Wendy and all—including fellow writer Han—for the gift of this week (July 4-10)!
P.S. The first draft of the novel has working title “Streets of Nashville”
I give the first half of this book 3 stars and the second half 5. I enjoyed the central narrative line of When Ghosts Come Home, but it could have been more effective and more consistently engaging at maybe two-thirds of its current length. The long backstories on Colleen and Jay in the first half of the novel, for example, seem ultimately unjustified, at least at the length they were left; while they were good backstories for the writer to have in his head and his notes, I found them tedious. I kept hoping that their presence in the text would be justified in the second half, but I didn’t feel that they were—again, not at the length they were left.
Another problem—sticking with the first half—is that much of the writing feels like a first draft. It’s a well proofread first draft, for the most part, but one awaiting a revision that never came. I don’t consider the writing poor. Instead, it’s too often weak. Consider the repetitive “had” structure of Chapter 2; often only a “had” or two is necessary to lead the reader into the realm of completed action, with another “had” or two to lead the reader back out into the simple past. Here and elsewhere I felt almost hammered with “had.”
At other points, the imagery is first-drafty and could use sharpening.
“When Winston pulled Marie’s car into the otherwise empty gravel parking lot at the airport, the only thing he found waiting for him was a two-door white Datsun with North Carolina plates”; in the moment as the narrative describes it, the lot has two vehicles–Marie’s car and the Datsun–and “otherwise empty” becomes confusing.
“. . . the sound of his footsteps falling silently on the ground beneath him”; “sound” and “silently” don’t work together, and the fact that his footsteps fall on “the ground beneath him” needn’t be stated.
Enough grousing! In the end, I enjoyed this novel. But enjoyment was longer coming than it might have been. The turning point was Winston’s confrontation with Vicki in Chapter 9. I’d heard Mr. Cash talk about this scene, and I felt its importance just hearing about it. The potential for smalltown racial tension—particularly as this exists in places like eastern North Carolina—comes to life in When Ghosts Come Home. Relationships are vividly portrayed throughout. While the very long delay of investigation into Rodney Bellamy’s murder was a bit frustrating, the ending twist provided a shot of redemption on that score.
WARNING: The following contains some griping and some sweeping generalization, but these do not negate what I perceive to be true.
Back in the first part of May, Leesa and I visited friends in Nashville, which was fun a usual. We ate and drank with them, hung out in new places and old, had a float (me) and massage (Leesa), and attended my Nashville church West End United Methodist. I did some research for my novel-in-progress.
The only blemish on the trip was that our view of the Nashville skyline was here and there embarrassingly stained by billboards announcing the coming of Trump for a rally on May 24. This isn’t surprising for Tennessee, although I hated to see my beloved Nashville tainted by hints of such baseless adoration.
As always, I wondered and wondered and wondered: “What’s the appeal?” While my wondering has led me to all sorts of speculation and generalization, here’s a simple story that I believe suggests something true about the Trump phenomenon and his adoring base.
When I lived in Nashville back in the 1980s, one job I had for some years was as a clerk in Cat’s Records. During one period, I was assigned to the store on Gallatin Road (or maybe Gallatin Ave. or even Main St.) in east Nashville. I remember this high school girl–I’ll call her Tarah Grump–was shopping in the store one day and told me she was going to see Sammy Hagar in concert (during his pre-Van Halen career). Not a favorite of mine, but hey, if she likes him. . . .
A few days later, she was in the store again, and I remembered to ask her how the concert was.
“It was cool,” she told me. “He said ‘fuck’ like every other word.” Then she said again, “It was cool.”
Nothing about Hagar’s songs or his singing or guitar playing. Nothing about his band or the light show. In a word, nothing of substance.
That’s it, I think — the base appeal of Trump. Like a third-rate stand-up comedian, he just riffs on a bunch of mean phrases and bad jokes that have a base, visceral appeal to his adorers and don’t require any thought or . . . let’s just stop with thought, because if that’s absent or unavailable or checked at the door of the rally or speech or even just an image of DT, then the other things I was going to mention are baseless anyway.
WARNINGREMINDER: The previous contains some griping and some sweeping generalization, but these do not negate what I believe to be true.
