The Donor Wall

 Sometimes I feel like I've lived too long, like I've seen too much, like I've passed by too much.  

Today I went to the Two Mississippi Museums to attend a lecture on a book by Carolyn Brown and Carla Wall about the life of Thalia Mara.  

On the way in, I noticed the Donor Wall for the museum.  Anytime you see a non-profit structure, there's usually one of these.  I was early, so I scanned the names.  As you can see in the photo, it's a pretty wide wall.  I knew every name.  Some I haven't seen in a while because it says "foundation" after their name, and they've been dead for thirty years, but I knew them, Horatio, every one. 

About half were Millsaps people, either graduates or board members, or both.  If you ever question the influence Millsaps has had, look at the names on pretty much any donor wall in Mississippi.   A good portion of the were from Galloway too.  

Mississippi is like a big heavy barge trying to make its way up a slow river.  It takes an awful lot of people pushing on one side to make it change direction just a little.  That's what signs like these are.  They're a whole bunch of people pushing in one direction, trying to make things a little better.

Sometimes, it takes just one person to show a bigger bunch where to push.  Thalia Mara was a tiny lady, the daughter of Russian Immigrants, who showed up in Mississippi out of the blue like the Circus of Dr. Lao, and she taught us we could do better.  Because of her, we've been doing better since 1975, next week, we begin the twelfth iteration of the US International Ballet Competition right here in Jackson because of her.  

Jackson and Austin

Austin, Texas, is a progressive, arts-intensive enclave in the middle of one of the most conservative states in America.  It sounds like they'd be under siege, but it works for them, and it has worked for as long as I can remember.  That might be a model we can use in Jackson.  I think it's a model we're already using, even if it's not consciously so.

I'm aware that most of the city government looks at the whole Capitol Police and HB1020 thing as a bunch of peckerwoods trying to make them look bad.  There might even be something to that philosophy.  

Here's me out, though.  They're not gonna stop.  Getting mad about it is just gonna make them do it more because, to them, there are political points to be made by making Jackson progressives angry.  

Instead of fighting it, what I would do is I would lean into it.  I'd play up how the state of Mississippi has sent us all these shiny new police cars and all the shiny new policemen (that we don't have to pay for) and then really, really sell the idea that they're going to make our high profile areas, mainly the Fondren Entertainment District, The Downtown Entertainment and Museum District and the LeFleurs Bluff entertainment district as safe as your momma's pantry--and then hold them to that.  

In an area with a reputation for crime, having a bunch of new police, even if they were forced on you by people who hate you, is an absolute selling point, and a big selling point that we don't have to pay for can be a genius plan if you sell it right.

Of course, if you act like you appreciate what the white, conservative legislature is doing, they may quit doing it because they hate us and their constituents hate us, but there are ways around that.  It might even be a step toward making it so they don't score points by beating up on Jackson.

Squaring off against the governor and the speaker and whatever yay-who's are in the legislature isn't a sustainable plan.  Jackson ends up losing every time, and they win points with their people by beating up on us, even though it's hardly a fair fight since they have all the power.

If you finesse these people, though, if you can manage to maybe not show your entire hand and act like you really want to work with them, then Jackson can work its way into more control of these efforts, which will help assuage some of the legitimate concerns there are about over-policing.  

The current mayor comes from a culture of radical protests and combative cultural language.  His father was a master of that.  Radicalism works best when you have no power.  Radicalism becomes your power.  It gives you a voice that you otherwise wouldn't have.  Once you're in positions of power and shared power, radicalism starts to work against you because it makes other people not want to work with you.

I think it's possible for the Mayor to honor the work his father did and honor the alliances that come with that but really push forward with the idea that this is a new day.   Push forward the idea that a Black Jackson now shares power with their white neighbors, and as a good neighbor, wants to work with all the programs that come with being neighbors, including things like the Capitol Police, but also forge better and stronger relationships between all the metro police departments so you don't have this conflict that you see now between Jackson and Pearl, Brandon and Madison police.

We're so close to having the best of both worlds.  All we have to do is grab it.  Until we learn to grasp the concept of and live with the idea of our being a new, conjoined community, then we're gonna suffer a lot of the things we've been suffering.  

Working with somebody doesn't have to make you look subservient to them.  Think about Thalia Mara.  She was this tiny little woman with a weird accent and a whole bunch of gay friends who somehow figured out a way to make all these backwoods sons-a-bitches do exactly what she wanted, and she made it look like it was their idea.  I think that can happen again.  It just takes a change of perspective.

The Morning

When I was very little, I was always the first one awake, the first one out of bed and out of my room.  I got to turn the coffee pot on and hear the morning farm report that came on at six and started the broadcast day.  Sometimes I saw the static that preceded it and the national anthem tape that was probably made in the fifties.  

Then things started to change.  My father didn't have time for breakfast anymore.  Once I was introduced to the concept of homework, I was also introduced to the idea that if it involved reading, writing, or math, mine was probably wrong.  Eventually, if I couldn't get somebody to check my homework before school, I just didn't turn it in.  I'd rather have a zero for not trying than to be told all the places I was wrong.  

Eventually, my brother down the hall began to change into something very different from what he was before.  One of the reasons I write about him, and try to be really very honest about it, is because there are lots of people who never knew him before he became ill.  I'd like for there to be more to his legacy than what became of him.

Before I learned how broken I was, how broken the world around me could be, how people who don't mean any harm to anyone can suffer for no reason, before all that, I was the first one to get up in the morning.  I loved the morning.  I loved the rising sun and the opportunity of a new day.  

Sometimes, I get all that back.  Sometimes feist-dog pulls the covers off me, and I'm out of bed before the alarm goes off.  Sometimes, I go into the sun thinking, "Boy, I'm lucky!"  But not every day.  Not anymore.  

The world wore on me pretty roughly.  If it was just on me, I think it'd be ok, but when I look around, a lot of people who never did anyone any harm got it a lot worse.  Somedays, the world is a blank canvas ready for opportunity.  Some days the world is a gauntlet testing how much you can take.  

I was a pretty timid boy.  Especially when it came to talking to strangers.  It wasn't so bad with grownups.  I think I was expecting them to understand that I stuttered, maybe even be amused by it.  I always loved the world though, and loved getting out in it.  There are days when I get all that back, and then there are days when I just want to keep the door closed and the lights out as long as I can.  

Mississippi is full of wonders when you're little.  It's full of doubts and fears when you're old enough to see the world as it is.  That glimmer of childhood optimism never really dies, though.  If it didn't die after all the things I did to it, then it's immortal.

The world starts when you turn on the lights and open the door.  The world is filled with challenges but even more opportunities.  There's an imaginary dog that tells me this when I remember to listen to him.

Sunflowers: Ted Lasso in Amsterdam

Two pilgrims together are a pilgrimage.  There are spoilers ahead.

Everybody finds love in Amsterdam, or almost.  Rebecca connects with the best guy for her yet, but I'm pretty sure she'll fuck it up because it's Rebecca.  After five thousand product placement shots, her iPhone 14 gets dropped to the bottom of a Dutch canal.  Maybe that's a sign.

Sunflowers are the state flower of Kansas.  They're also the subject of one of Van Gough's most famous paintings.  Van Gough suffered his entire life.  He was never understood or appreciated when he was alive and died penniless at his own hand.  His last words were, "The sadness will last forever," in Dutch, of course.

Season three, episode six of Ted Lasso, reached me on so many levels.  Seeking new levels of inspiration and relief from his crushing depression and self-doubt, Van Gough chased the green fairy with passion.  Like many artists of his generation, he drinks absinthe with abandon.  Most men of his generation credited the tincture of wormwood with absinthe's legendary explorative properties, but it was probably just its extremely high alcohol content.  

AFC Richmond is in a terrible rut.  Everybody's life is in ruins except Keely, who is in love with one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.  Coach Beard, reinforcing my thesis that he represents Merlin in this round table, provides Coach Lasso with a tea made with psilocybin mushrooms, a considerable step up from absinthe.  Because Ted is reluctant to drink the tea (because he hates tea) they separate.

What makes Ted Lasso different is it's a show written by actors, an actor from Virginia especially.  One of us.  A Southern boy.  His mother's brother: his uncle, is George Wendt, Norm from Cheers.  If you didn't know that, it's probably something of a revelation.  If you're a theater people, most of the people who read me are theater people, or at least are allies; if you're a theater person, you no doubt have picked up by now that there's a musical theater reference in every episode of Ted Lasso.  That's what happens when you let actors have a pen.  Tonight's musical theater reference was "Chicago" by Kander and Ebb.  A musical about love's betrayal, crime, booze, and Jazz.  

There are a number of thematic reasons why Jason Sudeikis wanted to locate this episode in Amsterdam.  Because he has a lot of interaction with his cast on an actor-to-actor level, he incorporates their stories as artists into the plot.  Sudeikis is twelve years younger than me.  Jeremy Swift is two years older.  When actors make out their resumes, they list "other skills."  It's usually something like dancing or fencing or singing, but for Swift, he listed that he played the double bass.  This resonated with Sudeikis, and Jazz became a driving force behind Higgin's character.  

In the Sunflowers episode, Higgins takes Will the Kitman on an expedition in the Red Light District.  Will thinks it's for the famous prostitutes, but Higgins takes him to the Prins Hendrik Hotel, where Chet Baker, at the height of his musical career, flung himself out of a window to his death.  Higgins tries to suggest that he might have been pushed, but I think people who make that case are just being generous to Baker.  Baker spent most of his life trying to kill himself.  Kill himself and make fundamentally different and brilliant music.  In 1988, in Amsterdam, he made the final choice between the two.

Suicide is something of a theme in Ted Lasso.  The death of Ted's father, we're told, is the seat of his problems.  It's the dragon he must fight and the source of his panic attacks.  Famous suicides are mentioned throughout the series; tonight, it was Van Gough and Baker.  The night in Amsterdam ends for Higgins and Kitt in a jazz bar, with Higgins getting to show off his skills.  The episode was shot so that there's no way Swift was faking it on the bass.  That's absolutely him playing, and it's brilliant.

Coach Lasso reluctantly tries the psilocybin tea after Coach Beard launches his own adventure.  If you've ever tried psilocybin, and I've tried psilocybin, I've tried it with some of you; if you've tried psilocybin, you know it doesn't hit you right away.  Thinking the drug didn't work, Ted makes his way to an American restaurant where a Bulls game and a tower of onion rings launch his mushroom vision quest.  A quest that gives him a divinely inspired offense pattern from the Richmond AFC Grayhounds.

Four men expose their souls and find solace in each other.  Roy forces Jamie to train rather than party in Amsterdam like the rest of the team.  In an argument about whether windmills are real, Roy confesses that he can't fuckin' ride a fuckin' bicycle.  He can't because his grandfather tried to teach him, but his grandfather died, and now he feels guilty for not having ever learned.  This is the most vulnerable Roy has ever been, and he does it with Jamie, who he has hated the entire show.  Maybe realizing that Keeley wasn't going to be with either of them provided the breakthrough.  In an unlikely montage, Jamie teaches Roy Kent to ride a bicycle, and together they see a windmill.  In literature, windmills represent many things; To Miguel de Cervantes, they represent the giants that Don Quixote de la Mancha must battle to claim his humanity.  To dream the impossible dream.

For the whole series so far, Colin has hidden his sexuality and fought to believe in himself.  We're never really told what sort of athlete he is.  He struggles to benchpress a single set of forty-five-pound plates, but we can assume he's good enough at football to play first-string in the premier league.  Separating from the group, Colin finds a gay bar, thinking he's alone.  He's not.  Trent Crimm walks in after him.  Colin panics and claims he's in the wrong bar.  Running after him, Trent confesses that he's seen Colin kiss a boy but hasn't reported it, and there must be a reason for that.  The two sit in the Dutch night air and bare their souls.  Trent was married to a woman when he came to grips with his sexuality.  This is a scenario that played out a lot in my generation.  Guys I knew from childhood who struggled and struggled to be what they are.  Together they discuss the pain Colin feels for having two separate lives and how much he wishes he could kiss his fella after a game like the other players kissed their girl.

When I was twenty-one, I grew tired of everyone, and everything I knew and everyone I knew was tired of me, so instead of Scrooges or CS's, I went to George Street.   I'd been there before.  Part of my job was to be an earwig to members of the legislature about bills that benefited education, which in turn benefited Millsaps and Mississippi School Supply.  It wasn't really lobbying, but that's what I was being groomed for, at least until I told my Dad I hated it.  I wasn't horrible at it; I just felt really manipulative.

Cotton was bartending.  Cotton was something of a legend in Jackson, starting with the bar at Sun 'n Sand but also George Street, The University Club, and Tico's.  I sat with a man twice my age who was in the House of Representatives.  We discussed Dave Brubeck, Steely Dan, and Chicago.  He was one of the few men I've met who loved Maxfield Parish as much as I do.  We talked, just the two of us, for at least two hours.  In a moment, he looked deeply into my eyes and put his hand on top of my hand.  It was subtle; in the darkness of the bar's corner, no one would see.    I tried really hard not to look shocked or hurt, or angry.  This wasn't the first time this had happened to me.  I really liked the guy and didn't want to hurt him or offend him or put him on the spot for anything.  After a moment, he moved his hand up to grip my shoulder in a very manly, coach-to-player sort of way.  He insisted on paying for my drinks and left into the night.

I stopped at a gas station across from the Baptist hospital for cigarettes and called a girl I knew to see if she was awake and see if she was alone.  There's a 50/50 chance she's reading this now.  I went to her apartment and watched her sleep with my hand under her shirt on the small of her back.  A lot of my friends knew I liked this girl.  She supposedly had a boyfriend somewhere, but it didn't seem to change anything.  I thought that--I could take this girl anywhere I wanted.  I could hold her hand anywhere I wanted.  I could introduce her to my father, my fraternity brothers, my bartender; nobody would ever think a thing.  We could spend all night talking about music and art, and she could put her hand on top of my hand, and nobody would ever think a thing.  They might even be happy that I found somebody, even if she supposedly had a boyfriend somewhere. 

It occurred to me how profoundly unfair that was.  I could do all these things with this girl or any girl who I could get to sit with me, but this guy, who I enjoyed so much, never could.  Even if I was as devoted to him as I was to this tiny sleeping creature, we'd never be able to have the same kind of life because I'm a man, and he's a man, and in Mississippi in the eighties, that made a difference. 

He ended up getting voted out of office as part of the great Republican Revolution in the Mississippi House of Representatives whereupon he retired to his little farm in East Mississippi, and in ten years, he was dying of liver failure, allegedly from drinking.  What Colin and Trent were going through resonated with me.  I'd seen it many times before.  Knowing that so many members of my tribe are gay always came with a fair amount of guilt for me.  I had opportunities that I didn't really deserve that they never could, just because I'm one way and they're another.  It's better for guys in the generation after mine, but it's still not good enough, and there are righteous pricks, mostly in Florida, trying to reverse whatever gains have been made.  The girl married somebody else, and I married somebody else, and none of us ever had to hide who we liked from anybody.  

I know that the end of Ted Lasso is coming.  I'm getting to the point where I need to start slowing down on the episodes and savor it some.  I'll miss it when it's over.  Ted Lasso is a very positive man in a world filled with quiet personal tragedies.  I'm trying to learn from that.  My entire life has been a quiet personal tragedy but one I've never been able to completely deal with because so many people around me have it too, or have it worse.  I guess maybe the point is that there isn't justice in our lives, but there might be hope if we believe.

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