John Prine, you wrote my life - day 3

Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me.  I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."

In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).

I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences.  These are mine.

Chapter 3

Picture Show©

---The Missing Years

A mocha man in a wigwam sitting on a Reservation
With a big black hole in the belly of his soul
Waiting on an explanation
While the white man sits on his fat can
And takes pictures of the Navajo
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul

"I write stuff. Things like: if the world was a ball of dirt, I'd sweep it up and throw it in the garbage. Just stuff. But wouldn't you?"

This was the conversation I'd been looking for since I lost my best friend and lover, and it took on sterling proportions. What is depth without perception?

"Ten years ago I was on my way from Phoenix to New York City and my van broke down here. I met some people."

"What was in New York?" I asked, as I tried to focus my thoughts in an area not so near the ankle he was tattooing. With my leg bent in a position only babies can tolerate without complaint, and needles piercing my flesh, even if he hadn't been bent over his work so as to obscure my view of his art, I probably would have continued the conversation. Not only to circumvent fully registering the pain, but because he was the most interesting peson I had encountered in this town in the five years I'd been here.

"My career. My fortune and fame," Spider responded as though it were a question I didn't already know the answer to.

I'd already ascertained that, besides skin-paintings, he worked in water color, charcoal, pen and ink and oils. And that he was Navajo.

"I went back to Phoenix once to visit some friends," he continued, "and I was sleeping on the floor with a wierd movie playing on their TV. I was half asleep and could hear all these chicken noises coming from the TV. And at the same time, I could hear other wierd chewing and cracking sounds. When I woke up, their cat had brought in a pigeon and was eating it alive right by my head. Feathers were everywhere."

"Have you seen the movie, Gummo?" I asked.

"I own that movie. The greatest thing about it is the opening song." And he began to sing the song about the little rooster going cock-a-doodle-doo. "I stay right in town here. I think that movie took place in Ohio, didn't it?"

"Well," I said, "if you go ten miles anywhere outside of town here, you're in Ohio."

"In Gummo," he corrected me.