Believin’, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

September 29, 2010 Whitney Farmer 0 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A. She has an M.B.A., and just finished doing all her laundry.

The server ran into my office as I was settling with the band and said that someone was yelling from a stall in the women’s bathroom. Not sure if it was from a fight or not, I grabbed a security guard as we headed in. Looking under the door, I saw a pair of guy’s loafers. It had been a long night and I immediately wasn’t in a good mood. I pounded on the door and ordered him to come out. Instead of complying, he cried out, “Help me! Please! Help!” Pushing the door, I discovered that it was open. I carefully pushed it in trying not to hit the guy with it. But the door was surprisingly heavy. I soon discovered that the pleading boy was attached to the door and that he was swinging with it as I entered. His arm was raised over his head and he almost cried when he said again, “Please save me…” As I looked carefully, I discovered that he was indeed trapped. He had hanging from the coat hook on the back of the door, hopelessly entangled and suspended by his red thread kaballah bracelet. Trying not to laugh at him while he whimpered, I freed him from his torment with sober fingers and released him back into the wild.

Belief can bring freedom or bondage, life or death. The key is to believe in something that is real. My man has moved to San Antonio, Texas for a season. As strange as it seems, he is closer to me now than when he lived in Phoenix, and even closer than when he lived in L.A. and we first met. What I expect – what I believe – is that this will be a season that could lead to something that is worthy of the last chapter of the book I am writing, and could fill another library of stories that I have yet to live. I may be wrong in this faith that I chew on daily, letting the taste and the texture nourish me.

But I am very interested in betting that this is real.

But the South is very mysterious to me. Bugs glow in the dark, and people ‘can’ stuff that has nothing to do with the film industry. After it’s ‘in the can’, their canned stuff wins blue ribbons at county fairs rather than the Palm d’Or at Cannes. My mom who was raised in Texas was laughing once about how they used to make sure that they hung snakes that they had killed from fences until night had completely fallen. Only then did the souls of the serpents finally leave their bodies. She remembers when the Sin Eater would come to town, and most folks were anxious to stuff the plump woman with their best feasts before she left, dragging redemption away behind her like a long train on an opera gown. My mom was bitten by a tarantula when she was about six while she and her brother H.E. were playing in a haystack that was forbidden. After a long conversation, they both decided that it was better if she just died than tell their parents what they had done and get a whippin’. After being horribly sick for a few days, she was left with life and a divot in her arm that remains there almost seven decades later.

There were other experiences that were as distant from picturesque as Hieronymus Bosch from Winslow Homer. Once, a neighbor died of rabies after getting bit by a dog. She remembers looking out their screen door across the field one night and making eye contact with the ravaged dog that was responsible. As it ran straight for the door, she was frozen from terror. The dog pushed past her and ran under one of the beds in the house, becoming entangled and impaled in the springs until Papa came home and put it down. That was tough for Papa who loved animals, but for a family with pet pigs named Salami and Bologna, it was clear that death was inevitable in some form. Their hunting dogs would get bitten by snakes a lot.

They would bury themselves in the cool mud by the lake for a few days until the poison was drawn out, or they would die. Mom remembers a radio announcement declaring that a “homicidal maniac” had escaped and that the sheriff had deputized a posse to hunt him down. That night, home alone, my young uncle hid my mother in a closet while the killer tried to rattle open a door or window before being shot down by the law who had tracked him.

And my mom remembers hateful songs and getting thrown off a bus because she gave a seat to a pregnant black woman. She remembers the family getting together to “make a table walk” as they accidently opened up dark doors while thinking it was just a parlor game. And in their parlors, they would clean and dress their loved ones who had died, putting them on a table to be honored by kin and folks who brought casseroles and comfort. Later, my mother’s mother would be killed in Texas.

Faith is a marvel. After being born, it can be nurtured without the rational ingredients that define but limit areas of our lives which should allow us to sense – see, touch, smell, taste, and hear – the Divine. Artists and poets, musicians and preachers all live this way. To say, “I believe”, can cause one to raise their eyes from the ground that will crush out their lives if they fall, towards the horizon where the sun shines on new lands. Same place, different posture. I look at a map and see that I can take the 10 freeway from Santa Monica and end up in San Antonio. I’ll tell you a miracle: I look forward to seeing Texas.

In L.A., I believe.

Quote of the Blog from Ed Butler, Dude of Light and Fog, while watching a psychobilly band perform with an assortment of props that included shoulder-length mutton chops and oven mitts for the lead guitar player: “It’s hard to find a good coonskin cap these days. It’s the tail that’s so interesting.”