The Thanksgiving holiday is always a mixed-up mashed-up confusion of words, colors, music, and taste. It’s an arrhythmic cacophony chromaticism of atonal colors…
The holiday started several days early as I devoured each word in Hindi at an Indian restaurant. I savored each morsel until they exploded into an arrhythmic cacophony chromaticism of atonal colors.
Vivid colors follow me everywhere – especially at Thanksgiving. I often try to photograph them. They are relatively easy to find.
At times, I feel stalked by them with a hurtling relentlessness. A regular paparazzi, if you will. But the sonorities of colors are my friends. Often they will phase-shift back into words that splash forth into music.
However, loud noises reduce everything into jarring spikes of stark gray tones, white noise and irrational cymbals - and I become worried. “I want the friendly colors back,” I plead.
Then again, on any given day, I rather enjoy reading the cross-eyed cartoons of Pablo Picasso and listening to the random dribbles of Jackson Pollock that drift in and out of my daily consciousness.
It is always fun to see and explore the relationship between abstract art, the daily colors, and music.
Old notes reveal that “Wassily Kandinsky once attended a performance of the grandfather of abstract music, composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951,) in 1911.
Monsieur Kandinsky later wrote to Monsieur Schoenberg and said:
“Please excuse me for simply writing to you without having the pleasure of knowing you personally. I have just heard your concert here and it has given me real pleasure. You do not know me, of course - that is, my works - since I do not exhibit much in general, and have exhibited in Vienna only briefly once and that was years ago.
“However, what we are striving for and our whole manner of thought and feeling have so much in common that I feel completely justified in expressing my empathy. In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music.”
We’ll explore more on that at another time.
Meanwhile, several days later I found myself traveling in the country to attend a family Thanksgiving dinner; an event which is always told in a southern gothic manner; full of fascinating family stories that often involve aspects of unexplained historical events, enigmatic dialogue, and inexplicable characters.
On the way I find myself at Paper Mill Road, MD Route 145, bridge crossing over the Gunpowder Falls at Loch Raven Reservoir. (Click here for a larger image of the bridges at Paper Mill Road:
http://twitpic.com/r74zx or here:
http://kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/post/259790373/paper-mill-rd-bridges-span-gunpowder-falls-loch http://tinyurl.com/yhhkb3n)
The new – December 2000 – steel arch bridge juxtaposed side-by-side with the historic old 1922 rare arch truss bridge is the perfect metaphor for the occasion, especially since a tragic family accident with a bridge in the mid-1940s, is part of the family folklore.
One published account relates that the 1922 bridge is “one of a limited number of examples of steel bridges modeled after the Hell’s Gate Arch in New York City…”
It always reminds me of forty years ago in the late summer of 1967 when we first learned from “Mama” that the nice young preacher, Brother Taylor “said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge. And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
I first heard the song, “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobbie Gentry on WCAO on the AM dial of the car radio. It was in this time period that I became firmly hooked on the existential - “Southern Gothic” genre of storytelling. To refresh your memory, the song can be found on the web at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc.
Of course you remember “Ode to Billy Joe.” Who can forget: It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day… And mama hollered at the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet." And then she said she got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge. Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Yes, the Paper Mill Bridge is located in Baltimore County, MD. Ms. Gentry’s tale took place in “Carroll County.”
Ms. Gentry has to this day remained circumspect about the haunting and mysterious tale of Mr. MacAllister, but one thing we have learned is that the “Carroll County” she is referring to in the song is “Carroll County Mississippi.” Come to find out, there are approximately 13 places in the United States called “Carroll County.”
Thanksgiving always make me think of southern gothic storytelling – and Jimi Hendrix, who was born on November 27, 1942.
Other examples of authors of the Southern gothic genre of writing include William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, and Harper Lee. Tennessee Williams is said to have described the genre as stories that reflect “an intuition of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience.”
As for Thanksgiving itself; instead of reading a Thanksgiving story, you eat it and enjoy the colors.
Fortunately much of Thanksgiving is written by the American composer Aaron Copland (Nov. 14, 1900 – Dec. 2, 1990 and painted by Norman Rockwell (Feb. 3, 1894 —Nov. 8, 1978.)
It was Mr. Copeland who actually won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Appalachian Spring. Nothing says Thanksgiving dinner better than Mr. Copeland’s ballets Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944, Fanfare for the Common Man (1943) and the music for the films Our Town (1940.)
Over the years, I have become much more enamored with Southern gothic storytelling, which is frequently more creative – and often more disturbing in the manner it which it peels away the layers of a community or society; yet does not tell a reader what to think, but causes them to think.
More often than not, the tale is told by way of dialogue as with “Ode to Billy Joe” where the story in the song creates many more questions than answers and this invites a ‘participation’ on the part of listener. Moreover, often you never get a firm grasp on the primary narrator.
Just as with Thanksgiving stories, the song’s plot makes known several themes. The first of which is obvious in that just like many popular Thanksgiving holiday stories, it reveals a snapshot of life in a particular period in history.
But it is the other prominent theme that is particularly disturbing as it peels away the layers of indifference that contemporary society shows towards our fellow human beings – or in the case of “Ode to Billy Joe,” the loss of life.
It is at this point that the narrator of this story from “Ode to Billy Joe” says: “Child, what's happened to your appetite? I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite,” and changes your channel back to the reality of the Thanksgiving dinner table.
You smile knowingly without giving away any of the plot and in the words of Jamie Kelly, “spare a thought for the millions of sweet potatoes, cut down in their prime.”
Over the years Thanksgiving has become synonymous with color-graphemic gustatory synesthesia. This piece is best read with the colors orange and beige and accompanied by the music of pumpkin pie with a whipped cream topping.
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