Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0508120344170.19453@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Johnny Cash
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 03:44:28 -0400 (EDT)
Johnny Cash Johnny Cash died a while ago. I'm not sure when. I grew up pretty much with him. I listened to his music on the radio and from records. I remember he wore black, sang in prisons, said he'd never change the color of his clothes until the prisoners were freed. I think that was what he said. He had that deeper sound, not that high lonesome sound, but that edgy sound, at the lip of a cave or abandoned shack somewhere in the desert. At least that's how I read it. Three hundred years ago there was a style called country music I think. There was a man called Johnny Cash. The records are pretty clear on that. He was a singer or songwriter or played a wooden instrument called a guitar. I read something about that. There's not much information left about anything. He's probably one of a million players back then. There were more people back then. I'm not sure of anything else about him. He lived in the 1900s I think. Things seemed a lot simpler then but maybe everyone says that all the time. I haven't a clue about the music. I think he played the instrument himself but I'm not sure. My children won't remember Cash. He'll be on some disks around the house, that's all. Like everyone else in this culture, he'll recede quickly. He's had his day at the prison. Maybe sometime in twenty years or so he'll be rediscovered but for who? At that point we'll have moved on so far, and with population increase, global warming, it will be a miracle if anything at all is left. When we go, with our memories, Cash goes with us. It's as simple as that. We don't know anything at all about that period. It seems an entirely different world. Most of the artifacts are pretty much decomposed, charred, whatever. It must have been something, though. The whole planet took on a face-lift. Johnny Cash is the greatest. I'll follow him from concert to concert, I've got a dozen autographs. He's so sexy and committed, I can't believe how lucky I am. Years from now they'll still be singing his songs. Country music wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for him and his Carter Family wife. I wish I was her! It's all gone, all gone. It never meant anything. For a moment folks enjoyed it. They expected more though, I'm not sure what. That things wouldn't change so fast, that the world would hold back a little. That Johnny would hold it back. And the prisons are still full, fuller than ever. Those prisoners, they're the ones should be in charge, and the ones out there, the free ones, lock them up and throw away the key. the related, http://www.asondheim.org/sonata.mov http://www.asondheim.org/pavanne.mo