keeping it real

this is mostly personal, not much to do with music, so if you’re just here for the music you can safely skip it. i just need to work some stuff through in my head and writing is my favorite way to do it so here goes…

i’ve been thinking about realness, what it means, why it’s important, if it’s important…. lots of things. part of it is that my grandfather died just before christmas, i got too see him one last time, played him a couple of my newer songs. he was too weak too talk but he gave me a thumbs up and smiled, still had that twinkle in his eyes. i suddenly realized, all at once, how much i’ve missed out growing up so far away from him, (he lived in LA, i grew up in the bay area) and how much i was going to miss him. it’s strange, sometimes you can go years without seeing someone you love and it’s ok because you know they’re there and you CAN see them when you need too, but as soon as they’ve gone where you can’t follow the seperation hurts in a way it never did before.

my grandfather, my fathers father, grew up in oaklahoma and the family tree stretches back from there into texas, kentucky, all through the south, and eventually of course back across the atlantic. his folks were sharecroppers – slaves in everything but name – and he escaped as soon as he was old enough by joining the military, spent most of his life in the army air corps and then the Air Force when it was split off into a seperat branch; fought in WWII and Korea, and by all accounts loved it and hated it passionately. he was a boxer, rode brahma bulls in a rodeo, raised 6 boys and 1 girl and a whole army of grandchildren, drank like a sailor until he joined the mormon church and gave it up, and liked to boast that he could beat any two men he ever met in a fight. there’s a song that he learned from his father, who learned it from his father, who learned it from his father who learned it… well you get the idea. it goes like this:

well i’m so goddamn tough,
i dine on shingled nails,
ran the sherrif up a tree
and tore down the county jail
i played poker with a grizzly bear,
wrestled a mountain cat
and every time i pass me a rattlesnake,
he takes a bow and tips his hat -
howdy mr. wheeler!

that was my grandfather, larger then life in every way, a man so completely himself you couldn’t possibly imagine him being any other way; and one of the realest most genuine people I’ve ever known.

the strange-but-totally-not-strange part is that all of the larger-then-life and the hype just accentuated that realness, made him more himself. i know all my hip hop heads will understand what i’m talking about here, that song my grandfather passed down to me,- if it was written today with modern points of reference – would be a battle rap. all my celts should recognize it too – as the hero’s boast out of our mythology. The ancient Celts placed great stock in words, and Bards were held in great respect then the same way MC’s are in hip hop today, and for the same reason – the words and the stories they carry tell us who we are, where we come from, where we’re going.

I was lucky enough to be able to get that knowledge from the source – to know who i am because I know who my father is, who my grandfather was, who my people are, what it means to be a part of a clan. not that i always agree on every point with every member of my extended family, of course…

grampa’s funeral was held in the mormon church he attended every sunday, ane the entire clan was in attendance. with just family and a few close friends in attendance we almost filled the hall. the service was (as is typical with mormons) more a sermon about why it’s important to live according to their gospel then a memorial to the man we had all come to mourn, which was… strange. honestly i figure the church was probably at least a mostly positive influence on my grandfather, for one thing it made him stop drinking. at the same time, what’s the point of turning a funeral into a sermon? the christians in attendance are all already thinking about god and the afterlife they believe is waiting for them – and thus don’t need to hear someone tell them all the things they already believe – and the rest of us are trying to deal with the reality that someone we love is gone forever. why do they feel the need to take our grief and turn it into an excuse to preach?

for the people who wondered why my last post was on such a hard anti-christian tip, this is part of the reason.

realness. that’s what I’m looking for here, something solid that I can grab on too, a way to ground myself. it’s that realness, that solidity, that seems to be most conspicuously missing in the life i find myself living in this industrial wasteland we call america.

I don’t have any answers tonight, just questions. and this, one last thing.

I miss you grampa.

Posted: January 21st, 2007 under gods & religion, personal.
Comments: 1

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