How James Dickey Thinks the Same Things I Do, Only Before Me and Better

I am rereading what may have been my first great read. It was around 1979 or 1980. I was in an English class, and it was taught by a woman who may well have been the first true love of my life. She was young, gorgeous, and just passionate about reading and ideas. She taught me to read. She was unaware of it at the time, but that is exactly what she did.

She would come in on a Monday and talk about whatever she read over the weekend in this cool, hipster way. I wanted that world--that mindset. I would go out and find whatever she mentioned and try to read it, AND I would try to read it with the goal of having something to say. She opened my head wide. Now true, it was all mixed up with my adolescent sexuality, but that wonderful woman largely affected the way I feel about the two most important things in this world, women and books. To this day I have never been attracted to a woman since that was not brilliant.

One book she lent me was a book by James Dickey. I had seen Deliverance and had read a few poems, but I had no idea what was in store. She lent me Sorties. It is a collection of his Journal entries. It touched on everything--art, books, ideas, guitar, poetry. I was most attracted to the guitar sections. He had such a great way of describing guitar playing.

Anyway, I just picked up another copy of it, and started reading and ran across this passage where Dickey describes the death of his father. Having just gone through that myself, it struck me.

Check this out:

Long deathwatch with my father. Nothing in his wasted and loveable life has ever become him so much as when he moved close to death. It is astonishing to understand that one's father is a brave man: very brave. The only thing he worried about was me seeing him in that condition. he cannot ever understand, whether he lives or whether he dies, how much better he looked with his arms full of tubes, with one of those plastic hospital things in his nose, and the rest of it, than at any time I have ever seen him before. He was a man up against an absolute limit, and he was giving as well as he got and he was not afraid of nothing in this world or out of it. God bless that man. No matter how I came from him, I hope that it was in joy. For the end is courage.

Nice bit of writing.

Here is the cover:



And here is an amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Sorties-James-Dickey/dp/0807111406/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223667325&sr=8-15

How My Dead Father is a Strange Meadowlark

My pop died a few months ago. Hit me pretty hard. Though he was a fairly unashamed racist, it never dominated his personality. You thought of him as just a good guy. He was a hard drinking man, and just the best kind. Never maudlin, always loving and friendly(unless you lived with him). Anyway he and I were very close. He loved my music and went to great pains to let me know that he got it. When I would play at family gatherings, he alone would listen to all of it. Everyone else would listen and appreciate and then drift into conversation, but he just had a . . . thirst for it all. He wanted all he could get of that.

I would bring him albums and cd's I thought he would like. One day I played a song for him. It was the second cut on Brubeck's Time Out. I told him that it just reminded me of his personality. He was really interested. I started the song. It starts with this extended solo intro. Just Dave playing all romantically. The old man looks at me--he likes it ok but it certainly is not him. But then Dave wraps up and descends in these block chords and the drums come in to back Paul Desmond's lush sax solo. Tears are in my pop's eyes. He gets it. It's cool, relaxed, smooth, knowing. It's my dad the way he wants to see himself. It was a great moment for us.

I never really knew the name of that tune although I could probably play the melody by memory. A few days ago, I downloaded that album into my I-Tunes. The tune is called Strange Meadowlark. Apparently the first phrase of notes are based on the call of the Meadowlarks Dave grew up listening to in California. It struck me as funny, and a bit ironic. One of the only black celebrities that I remember my dad just unreservedly loving was Meadowlark Lemon of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Here's "Strange Meadow Lark" by Dave Brubeck.