Bound for Glory

--More from Woody. Chapter XII, "Trouble Busting:"

(Leading up to this excerpt, Woody was having people of all kinds come to see him at his shack, because he had the recent reputation of giving good advice, or rather fortune-telling. Many called him a prophet and paid him up to one whole dollar for a visit; but Woody just saw it as talking, and he told them he never claimed to be no prophet or nothin' fancy.
I think it's such a ridiculous and humorous situation, but strangely profound.)

One day a whole crowd of ten or twenty oil field workers and farmers came to see him. As he said, "All kinds of cars were parked around my little old shack. People lost. People sick. People wondering. People hungry. People wanting work. People trying to get together and do something."
Anyway, the leader of the group asks Woody:

' What do you think about this feller, Hitler and Mussolini? Are they out to kill off all of the Jews an' [n-word]? '
I told them, 'Hitler an' Mussolini is out to make a chaingang slave outta you, outta me, an' outta ever'body else! An' kill ever'body that gits in their road! Try ta make us hate each other on accounta what Goddam color our skin is! Bible says ta love yer neighbor! Don't say any certain color! '

[...the men respond] ' This old world's in a bad condition! Comin' to a mighty bad end!'

'Mebbe th' old one is, ' I yelled at the whole bunch, ' but a new one's in th' mail! '

[...] ' Men! Hey! Listen! I know we all see this same thing--like news reels in our mind. Alla th' work that needs ta be done--better highways, better buildin's, better houses. Ever'thing needs ta be fixed up better! But, Goddamit, I ain't no master mind! All I know is we gotta git together an' stick together! This country won't ever git much better as long as it's dog eat dog, ever' man fer his own self, an' ta hell with th' rest of th' world. We gotta all git together, dam it all, an' make somebody give us a job somewhere doin' something'!' "

But the whole crowd walked off down toward Main Street, laughing and talking and throwing their hands. I leaned back up against the side of the shack and watched the gravel and dust cutting down the last of the hollyhocks.

'News reels in my head,' I was looking and thinking to myself. [...] 'News reels in my head. By God, mebbe we all gotta learn how ta see them there news reels in our heads. Mebbe so.'

This land was his land.

Reading Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory. I would love to give a proper introduction, but I really don't know what to say. I think it speaks for itself. But I will say he amazes me. I wish I could be as real as he was.
His words from Chapter XI, "Boy in Search of Something:"

A picture--you buy it once, and it bothers you for forty years; but with a song, you sing it out, and it soaks in people's ears and they all jump up and down and sing it with you, and then when you quit singing it, it's gone, and you get a job singing it again. On top of that, you can sing out what you think. You can tell tales of all kinds to put your idea across to the other fellow.

And there on the Texas plains right in the dead center of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about.

Some people liked me, hated me, walked with me, walked over me, jeered me, cheered me, rooted me and hooted me, and before long I was invited in and booted out of every public place of entertainment in that country. But I decided that songs was a music and a language of all tongues.

I never did make up many songs about the cow trails or the moon skipping through the sky, but at first it was funny songs of what all's wrong, and how it turned out good or bad. Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in that country was thinking.

And this has held me ever since.

-Woody Guthrie

everything green to grow

rigorous rain on a metal roof
sounds resentful.
like the earth if it could speak.
like wide-eyed souls,
shaking in the deepest corners of the world.
or a foaming turquoise sea
whose spine never shies back from the beach,
whose bones just keep breaking,
whose fingers run along the sand
as on the keys of an organ,
roaring towards the land without pausing for a breath.


And yet, what is it that makes you so beautiful?

Is it the thunder that accompanies you?

No, that just makes you irresistible.

Is it your lucid color
or your ancient smell?
Or the parade that you pull behind you,
Like a traveling circus,
packing up and leaving when all the acts have yielded their applause?


Perhaps it is the way you bleed on the earth with your cleansing drops of wisdom

teaching everything rooted to green


and everything green to grow.
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I'm starting to find that I was not made for these times

"Her Eyes Dart 'Round"
The Felice Brothers

O my love is light as a dove
Her skin is fair and dark is her hair
And her eyes dart 'round and fall on the ground
And her lips move along to an old country song

Down south you will find among the high pines
An old liquor store where we danced on the floor
O the light on the wall, it brightens the hall
But the room in the back is quiet and black

What keeps me alive is the green in your eyes
And the sweet distant drone of your voice on the phone
Could I hear, in death, your voice and your breath?
Could I hear them sounds in life underground?

O how likely she walks among the white stalks
And, crane in her neck, she steps 'round the deck
Could I bow in the sand to your lily white hand?
Can my head gently rest in your lily white breast?

O my love is light as a dove
Her skin is fair and dark is her hair
And her eyes dart 'round and fall on the ground
And her lips move along to an old country song