Revival

To DS: I wrote to you over the past couple of days about how central music is to my identity. I told you that I trace this to my mother. My mother’s cultural identity was a confusing tangle, even to my youngest self when “identity” is yet inchoate—a Jew for Jesus, a conservative authoritarian who rejected her parents’ location and station, a sun-kissed and breezy young mother eating instant grits on stormy swampland infested with palmetto bugs.

But she built Floridian community fiercely, forever, and that, like her parasocial bonding with her musical heroes, is what I carry forward as her legacy. She built community within a culture that was optimal for her sinewy knot of values, yet it’s a culture of the past now—the uniquely 1970s Redneck Hippie.

I come from Redneck Hippies. My mother took me as a tyke to ecstatic celebrations of community through live music, tent shrouds thrown up in dreary parking lots and trailer parks and magically vivified in the darkness with sparklers and sweat and the thrum of fellow feeling.

My fellow feeling: Herein, I honor the intersection of my musical and cultural identity. One caveat: I write as if all are eternally present, though all but two are dead like the culture itself.

Another: The idiosyncrasies of identity are often idiotic and myopic, and the narrow altar in this space reflects that terribly—I recognize Redneck Hippies when they are white men. Others, not yet, but I’ll keep striving. Maybe my Hero among Heroes, Sarah, Texas-born and tremendously loving and generous and collaborative. Maybe the brightest star, Tay, who adopted Nashville and wishes she could be adopted by Joni. But I can’t yet say for sure. These Redneck Hippies herein, I can confidently see.

My first ever update to a blog entry, spurred by the extraordinary experiences of attending Echoes of the Canyon at The Gorge and beginning Broken Horses—an update vitally necessary to broaden this narrow celebration with the vigor of queer feminism.