“If you got a choice between faith and nothin’, you’ll choose faith. You know you’re alive when you’re sad. If you’re not sad, how do you know you’re alive?”
– Jim White, in Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Recently, while watching (and listening to) the weird and wonderful documentary, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003), I was reminded of my mother, of her side of the family, and of their love for sad, traditional country songs. The more people who suffered and died and the more low-down their circumstances, the better she (and they) liked it. It’s the deeply ingrained belief, sustained by poor people everywhere, that someone else always has it worse than you do.
There is a lot of tragic music in Wrong-Eyed Jesus but that’s just one reason why I’m so attracted to its themes and visual poetry. ‘Wrong-Eyed’ presents a bizarre yet beautiful portrayal of the agony and ecstasy of being poor, white, Southern, and Christian. Of poverty, madness, sin and murder - classic Southern Gothic themes - as expressed in the stories and music of the hard-living, strong-believing, souls encountered by alt.country musician Jim White, during a road trip to the South.
As I watched this film, I enjoyed a mix of nostalgia and gentle happiness, recalling a time when my mother sang such songs to me. The lyrics were moral lessons, set to music: tales of sorrow, tragedy, and loss. Each song was like a capsule filled with the medicine of Universal Truth and it had to be swallowed in order to work. Mother sang them to me at her favorite time of the day, in the hours after lunch, before it was time to start dinner, when we were alone together. That’s when she let herself go, her voice echoing through the empty house.
Although my mother didn’t have anything close to a Patsy Cline voice, I loved hearing her sing. I remember the sensation of her rocking me, and the sound of her voice as it broke over the saddest of the lyrics. I remember her singing about the trials and travails of the dog named, Old Shep, and me trying not to cry when Shep got so old that he had to be put down. It was her way of teaching me that nothing lasts forever, especially childhood innocence, and that grief and loss touches everybody. Mostly, she wanted me to understand that, no matter how good you think you have it, something bad is just around the corner. My mother’s life lessons.
Then there was the Hugh Cross song, sung by Roy Acuff, about a mischievous little boy who begged to stay up past his bedtime but his father sent him anyway, as punishment for misbehaving (Don’t make me go to bed and I’ll be good). The boy fell ill and died in his sleep, of course. Lesson being - cherish your children and forgive them their youthful follies. For none of us can know if God will take them some long, dark night. My mother forgave me a lot of youthful folly. (Bless her.)
In the Johnny Cash song, Wreck of the Old ‘97, a railroad engineer was told to push the speed of his engine to get to the depot on time. He did what he was told and died at the throttle, ’scalded to death by the steam.’ The song’s final verse contained a message that was, for my mother, quite personal:
So now all you ladies you better take a warnin’
From this time on and learn
Never speak harsh words to your true lovin’ husband
He may leave you and never return
My mother told me that once, when she was first married, she had argued bitterly with my father before he went to work. They were both so angry, they didn’t kiss each other good-bye when he left for his construction job. Later that day, Mother got word that Dad was rushed to the hospital due to a perforated ulcer and was in critical condition. Dad survived, and Mother learned another Life Lesson, the hard way.
Now that I’m well past my mother’s age at the time she sang to me, I think back, from time to time, about those songs. Their moral lessons were preciously imparted, and taught me things I would otherwise never know or understand. The stories my mother told, through the vehicle of those sad songs, helped me to make meaning of our strange family, and the complicated, often painful aspects, of my childhood.
Well, that’s the end of this little memoir, except for a recommendation.
If you get a chance, rent, In Search of the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, an ethnographic film directed by Andrew Douglas. Wrong-Eyed offers a deep slice of Southern culture, served up on a real-life sized platter, by people and in places most Northerners will never see or know about. It is realized during the odyssey of singer and songwriter Jim White, who travels in a borrowed car with a statue of Jesus in the trunk.
View clip of Jim White HERE.
View movie trailer HERE.
View BBC Four Documentary site HERE.
Visit official site: Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (Arena Films 2003).
