Motorboating through our lives, only gradually gaining rudimentary navigational skills

Untitled, Pulaski, Virginia

RIP VIC Chesnutt

Chesnutt on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts

Singer Kristin Hersch, a close friend of Vic's, set up this page to remember him and collect money for his family to cover the cost of medical bills, funeral, etc.

Some of Vic's friends (from the Constellation Records website):

"The most important story to report now is not Vic’s death but a life and work overflowing with insight, humor, and yes, resilience. This, after all, was the man who wrote:'I thought I had a calling, anyway, I just kept dialing.' Sixteen extraordinary albums, five in the last couple of years; countless live shows so powerful and sublime they deeply altered the lives of those on the stage with Vic and those looking up, yes up, at him...Vic’s death, just so you all know, did not come at the end of some cliché downward spiral. He was battling deep depression but also at the peak of his powers, and with the help of friends and family he was in the middle of a desperate search for help. The system failed to provide it. I miss him terribly."

Jem Cohen-filmmaker/photographer/North Star Deserter producer

“We have lost one of our great ones. His songs and his story remain.”

Michael Stipe

"'I flew around a little room once.' A line from Supernatural.
He was just that. He possessed an unearthly energy and
yet was humanistic with the common man in mind. He was
entirely present and entirely somewhere else. A mystical
somewhere else. A child and an old guy as he called himself.
Before he made an album he said he was a bum. Now he
is in flight bumming round beyond the little room. With his
angel voice."

Patti Smith

"in 1991 i moved to athens georgia in search of god, but what I discovered instead was vic chesnutt. hearing his music completely transformed the way i thought about writing songs, and i will forever be in his debt."

Jeff Mangum
Neutral Milk Hotel

"Years ago upon discovery, West of Rome consoled me when I was going under. A life saver with the straight story. I followed since then from a distance. Vic was a unique being, mind, voice. No one spoke or made music like that, with that particular timbre, vocabulary and perception. Fierce and direct or levitated, whimsical and ornamental, he always cut to the bone. And past that, to the soul. Its a shame. A national tragedy, when you look at the issues being faced."

Mark McElhattan
Film curator, New York Film Festival

~3 Chesnutt songs

Bakersfield

the souvenirs
on my dusty shelf
I get out the Tarn-X,
and I polish them myself
yes, posters are falling,
but who needs them at my age?
I've learned to smile,
when all I feel is rage

so I think I will go to Bakersfield
with Gabriel and Paul
and I will hide behind the garbage cans
while the holy platitudes fall
and blow the gates,
I am coming through
with my albatrosses and all

and it's strategy not protocol
yes, it's strategy, not protocol,
that brings me here.


Lucinda Williams

imports and altercations
my faculties on a shoe-string vacation
I settle down on a hurt as big as Robert Mitchum
and listen to Lucinda Williams

oh, convenient lies, rubber knives
I'm a dastardly villain, doing belly dives
I before E except after me
I'm dowsing my vitals at break-neck speed

you and your little entourage
playing amazing little parlor games in the garage
like a jury of my peers triangulating
my pretty point of exasperation
yes we gather for some of that Catholic juice
and hide behind the shower curtain, i watch the virgin spruce
I'm soaking wet and feeling funny
the mirror's a mirage, no wonder I always look so crummy

my heroes are all off in the great beyond
England is old but Atlantis is gone
feathers are floating down, and I can't dodge them
the tar is oozing from my little noggin
it's ugly ancient residue
there ain't no mistaking what's been abused

feathers are floating down and I can't dodge them
the tar is oozing from my little noggin
it's ugly ancient residue
there ain't no mistaking who's been accused

Gluefoot

cross my heart and cross my eyes
stick a needle in my thigh
drop kick my unscrewed lid
and fiddle fiddle fiddle fiddle fiddle with what's inside

a rusty mass of mechinations
still i'm vying for the right vaccination

I make a masterful selection like louis pasteur
certain i've found at least a temporary cure
if there's one thing i've learned in this chemical world
it's very very very very very little is pure

my gluefoot sticks, i wrestle with it
I try to skedaddle but my gluefoot is fixed

if they'd give me a shovel in this communication age
maybe i'd have kept my mouth shut and done something today
I want to blame democracy and it's inherent lies
I want to blame my heritage for my leisurely demise

everybody wants to wear the cleats
everbody wants to be Dominique
I want to be someone separate from me
I want to have a sustained feeling

my gluefoot sticks, i wrestle with it
I try to skidaddle but my gluefoot is fixed

Time will break the world

Time-Warner, Brooklyn, NY

We've been reading Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in the American Lit. class I teach. Here's a poem of his I shared with the class a few days ago.

Mystery Train
~Sherman Alexie

I boarded the Amtrak in Portland on my way
To Seattle and searched for an empty seat—
Hopefully an empty row. In Coach Car C,
I saw a seat next to a teen. The train swayed

As I approached him and asked, "Can I sit here?"
He wouldn’t look at me. His face was blank.
Asberger’s, I thought. "I must warn you I’m weird,"
The kid said. "I’m weird, too," I said and thanked

Him for his kindness. I worried he would talk
Too much, and he did, but he was charming and rude.
He said, "You’ve got a big head and face, dude."
He said, "I like rap music more than I like rock

Because I like blacks more than whites,
Especially when I play the royal game, chess."
With Asberger’s, I knew the kid might obsess
Over certain objects or ideas, like

The boy I know who collects Matchbox cars
And recites the manufacturing history
Of thousands of them. "It’s not too far,"
The Train Kid said, "We are on a train journey,

But I take it twice a month, on weekends.
I’m sorry I’m weird. I don’t have many friends.
My mother and father love me, but they
Got divorced when I was ten. You could say

They hate each other as much they love me."
He told me his father lived in Portland
And his mother in Seattle. "It’s kind of fun
To ride the train," he said. "I like to see

The landscape out the window. Pretty soon,
There will be a yellow truck parked outside
A blue and red house." Of course, he was right.
As we traveled north, the kid always knew

What was coming next. I asked, "What’s your name?"
He ignored me and said, "There used to be
A dog that lived in that junkyard. It’s a shame,
But I think he’s dead now." Then he looked at me,

Made eye contact for the first time, and said,
"In seven years, I have taken this trip
One hundred and nine times. I have only missed
Two trains because I had the flu in my head."

Jesus, the kid had become a nomad
Riding rails through the ruins of a marriage,
And, at first, I was eager to disparage
His parents, but then I realized that

His folks must love him as obsessively
As he loves them. They put him on the train
Because they need to see him. It was lovely
And strange. I wanted to ask this kid about pain

And what that word meant to him. I guessed
He could teach me a new vocabulary—
I was vain and wanted to be blessed—
But then he asked, "Are you old and married?"

"Yes," I said. "I’ve been married for ten years."
He nodded his head and looked out the window
At the sunlight flashing between tree rows,
Then whispered, "I have cried a lot of tears."

I was breathless. Stunned. I wanted to take
The kid into my arms, but I knew he’d hate
The contact, so I could only smile
When the kid said, "In a little while,

We are going to see the Mima Mounds."
And there were thousands of those things, six
To eight feet tall, dotting the South Sound.
Created with gravel, rocks, dirt, and sticks,

Those mounds escape explanation. They’re not
Indian burial sites. They’re not homes
For gophers or insects. They don’t contain bones
Or fossils or UFOs. They’re just odd

Geologic formations that will keep
Their secrets no matter how hard we try
To reveal them. When our train arrived
In Seattle, the kid walked beside me—

I had quickly become a habit, I guess—
Until he saw his Mom, short and pretty,
And pulled her tightly against his chest.
He said something to her, pointed at me,

And she smiled and waved. I walked home,
Chanted the first lines of this poem,
And committed them to memory.
And if a few strangers thought me crazy

For writing poetry, aloud, in public,
Like another homeless schizophrenic,

Then fuck them for wanting clarity
And fuck them for fearing mystery.

I'm afraid I got more in common with who I was than who I am becoming

Plymouth, Pulaski, Virginia

Godzilla in Mexico
~Roberto Bolano

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You'd just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.

Self Portrait At Twenty Years
~Roberto Bolano

I set off, I took up the march and never knew
where it might take me. I went full of fear,
my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:
I think it was the icy wind of the dead.
I don't know. I set off, I thought it was a shame
to leave so soon, but at the same time
I heard that mysterious and convincing call.
You either listen or you don't, and I listened
and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,
born on the air and in the sea.
A sword and shield. And then,
despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek
against death's cheek.
And it was impossible to close my eyes and miss seeing
that strange spectacle, slow and strange,
though fixed in such a swift reality:
thousands of guys like me, baby-faced
or bearded, but Latin American, all of us,
brushing cheeks with death.

Now I Understand
~Linda Gregg

Something was pouring out. Filling the field
and making it vacant. A wind blowing them
sideways as they moved forward. The crying
as before. Suddenly I understood why they left
the empty bowls on the table, in the empty hut
overlooking the sea. And knew the meaning
of the heron breaking branches, spreading
his wings in order to rise up out of the dark
woods into the night sky. I understood about
the lovers and the river in January.
Heard the crying out as a battlement,
of greatness, and then the dying began.
The height of passion. Saw the breaking
of the moon and the shattering of the sun.
Believed in the miracle because of the half heard
and the other half seen. How they ranged
and how they fed. Let loose their cries.
One could call it the agony in the garden,
or the paradise, depending on whether
the joy was at the beginning, or after.

The Weight
~Linda Gregg

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.
Night and day. In the night and in the day
wet from heat and the chill of the wind
on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging
and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.
The dignity of being. They slept that way,
knowing each other always.
Withers quivering for a moment,
fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,
width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.
Fences were nothing compared to that.
People were nothing. They slept standing,
their throats curved against the other's rump.
They breathed against each other,
whinnied and stomped.
There are things they did that I do not know.
The privacy of them had a river in it.
Had our universe in it. And the way
its border looks back at us with its light.
This was finally their freedom.
The freedom an oak tree knows.
That is built at night by stars.

If you're unhappy with your silhouette, plenty of dreams on your pillow yet

Flea-Market, Cana, VA
Burger King Parking Lot, Hillsville, VA
3rd Street, Pulaski, VA

GIANT SAND. WONDER.

It's almost dawn, and the cops are gone, let's all get Dixie Fried!

Erwin, Tennessee

Carl Perkins "Dixie Fried"


Jim Jarmusch "Mystery Train"