A few days ago, the afternoon DJ on the Current played an Al Green song. To my surprise I found myself singing along. When I got to my studio I plugged in my iPhone, booted up Pandora and set up 70’s soul as a new station. All afternoon, I left it on, as I slip cast elements for a new sculpture. It took a few hours - I go into a creative trance when I work, so I’m not consciously paying attention - before I realized that I knew all of this music. During the 70’s, I didn’t think I listened to it. Didn’t listen to it consciously at least. I never bought a single Soul record. Because in South Carolina, Soul was the music played at high school dances, the background on the radio, drifting across bars in Myrtle Beach, wafting from frat houses on summer afternoons. It was the music favored by white cheerleaders and crew-cut boys in chinos and alligator shirts, and it was everything I was trying to avoid.
I listened to Cream and the Stones and later Acid Rock and early Heavy Metal. I played Led Zeppelin II until I had not only memorized the words to every song, I could sing them in order. I banded together with all the long-haired outsiders marooned in Clemson - a small community even in the early seventies. We’d wander past the frat houses late on a Saturday night, certain we were superior to those drunken boys risking their lives balancing on window ledges in their liquor haze. To the strains of the Supremes and the Temptations.
As I trimmed excess clay, an image from a spend-the-night party circa 1969 popped into my head. Three of my classmates - well-behaved 15 year-old white girls whose parents had deep roots in the South - sitting on the floor, deep in the night, playing a new record. Who was it? Otis Redding? Lou Rawls? One was holding the album cover - I remember a sexy black man portrayed on a white background - cradling it in her freckled arms, gushing over the music, the voice, ultimately the man. The other two looking on enthralled.
The memory is crisp. I must have retained this image because of my confusion. The girls were clearly crushing on this man the way I thrilled to the bad boys of Rock. I couldn’t square what I saw with the rules of racial politics I’d pieced together by painstaking observation. What I saw sensed was lush and sticky, forbidden. There, in the studio, 45 years later, I got it. In the South of 1969, no other music could touch the level of danger and rebellion of Soul.
While I was in Clemson, I made a pilgrimage to see my friend Ellen in Six Mile. What drove me there was curiosity. Ellen has just undergone a life transition from successful artist ( her art quilts are in private and corporate collections everywhere) and married woman, to single and learning how to organize and run a non-profit devoted to the intersection or creativity, economy, and sustainability. You can read more about her organization, the Rensing Center here.
She has just moved into a new house, designed for one, as green and sustainable as possible. I love it - every square inch holds beauty. The dishes are all handmade. Some of the interior walls are recycled roof tin. Every detail is fresh and thoughtful. Her porch looks out over a cow pasture. She tells me that nearby Greenville is booming. Free plays in the park, galleries and restaurants, a thriving farmer’s market.
We roam the property, meeting the Rensing Center pig, inspecting the guest houses that will host artists in residence, and finally stopping to see Ellen’s mom at her house. Her depression era survival skills (she is 93), are the inspiration for the center’s mission. She was also a good friend of my mother’s. I haven’t heard anyone talk about missing my mom for a while. It brings her back to me from a fresh angle - I can hear her laugh, catch a glimpse of her dimple.
I am surprised that Ellen has made a life here. When she arrived in Clemson, a few years before I left, I couldn’t have imagined it. She had a degree in costume design from Syracuse University, and had just returned with her husband from two years in Hamburg. We bonded over Germany, our love of fabric, and our liberal politics. Now we talk about marketing, how to make a living selling art, how to navigate our shifts in life direction.
When I have to leave, we are not even close to finished with out conversation. The last thing Ellen says to me as I back out of her driveway is: “Keep asking yourself what you care about. The rest will follow.” I am grateful for the reminder. I am asking myself every day.
