The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

Albert Jones
Brendina Algiacomo, Ph.D.
Folklore and Fairytales (MS602)
July 6, 1997

The Greenman: Futility and Hope

My presentation of a poem based upon the song “The Trees” by the band Rush is not hopeful despite what anybody thinks. The poem tells of inevitable destruction. This is the pain in the eyes of the Greenman. I tried to embody that pain even as I attempted to reverse it. While the poem is not hopeful it is also not hopeless. Death and the cycle of re-birth within the vegetable world is a metaphor for our own existence. We like to believe that we too will live on, but I’m here to say that we don’t. Like the Maples and the Oaks who fought ruthlessly for the sunlight in the song, we too fight and end the lives of our brothers. There is no denying that. Those blood stained thickets of wars immemorial contained pain. They contained ending. They contained lost sight and finally rotting limbs. It is only metaphorical that they contained the key to life. No more personality came out of those hearts bled through or out of those yellowing, rotting, poets brains.
But the trees are hopeful. The greenman is hopeful. He stays alive for us and watches the world regenerate. He feels bliss in his growing outward, his leaves stretching, and especially the dropping of his seed. We men are like the Greenman in that we hope past all futility that we too will be immortal through our mortal spending of our seeds. Ernest Becker believed that we deny death through creation of “vehicles of immortality.” Any poetic thought is such a vehicle. If I concern myself with my entire being about the personality of the Greenman then I am dreaming my way out of an existentialist predicament. I once knew a woman who I now call the “kind” existentialist. She kicked me out of her house with only five days to do it in which was completely illegal. I trudged myself out of there quickly, getting lucky and finding a place in two days. Her story was that she now believed after getting a Ph.D. in existentialism and becoming a family counselor that the greatest and worthiest thing we can aspire to is kindness. She told me that and then she did what she did. Last time I saw her she flipped me off. She still hates me because I tried to tell her that what she did was illegal and wrong and unkind. Do you see? This is the story of the trees. When I cannot get along with a brother or a sister and she or he cannot get along with me we must find a way to at least communicate so that war does not ensue. After this woman flipped me off I got very angry, but I stopped myself and asked myself whether or not living in hate was what I really wanted to do. I decided it wasn’t and swallowed my anger. My question to you now is this: when we swallow our anger is this not the most likely time that we become for all intents and purposes the most tree-like?
The Greenman is eternal because he refuses to kill. He can only grow. I was the Greenman when I did not return the insult to this woman and perhaps even forgave her then. Jesus Christ was the Greenman when he told people to “turn the other cheek.” Kiea Miala, came up to me after the presentation and said to me that my Greenman was the kind of masculinity that she wanted to foster as a woman! My presentation felt good to me because of the sheer numbers of women at the CC. Somehow, I was healed of their shadow side’s anger. I was brave enough to walk into the forest of trees to fight for my right to be a man. I became a man by becoming a tree. I did not shoot back when all of guykind was blasted unknowingly by women who didn’t really

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consider whether or not a man was in the room. I was able to speak of the man’s ability to shoot forth seed, to let those women in my class know that without me there is no sapling. And I think it made a difference. Women must know that they need men and without men there is no life. Modern culture does not require this of all women anymore, however. Some women, by nature, are not meant to be with men, only other women. But for those women who just feel a little slighted by the unfairness of the war with men, so like that of the war between Rush’s Oaks and Maples in the song, I wanted to make peace. I wanted to talk to them and show them WHY the maples wanted more sunlight and why the oaks ignored their pleas. Neil Peart, the drummer of Rush wrote the lyrics to the song so I am only working off of his poem now. The trees wanted simply to survive. The greenman is both hospitable host to the living and the obvious example of passing time and death. Caskets are usually made of wood. Roots go down deep. A tree is a place to enter a shamanic space. A tree is a place of worship. Blood on a tree is one of the most powerful symbols. It is the symbol of the cross among many others I won’t go into here. The greenman is the savior, the quiet carrier of new life, the undertaker and nonexistent.
There is no Greenman except for in stone in Europe and various other places. He doesn’t exist. Even what he means doesn’t exist to those who truly find out what he means. At that point it is too late because you are already dead. Would you trade your life so a strange child could live. Mostly, the answer to that is no. Look at the starving in Ethiopia. Look at the way we ignore the political prisoners, people in so much pain that way over here safe within our suburbs we can only think of them in terms of what they were like as children, for we never want to know what it feels like to be so completely forgotten. We strive to give these “people” something in the way of sympathy but we go directly back into mythology. It is when you cast off mythology that you

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finally understand it. It is not a delving into the language of psychological manifesto. Hillman will not save us from our moment of blackness. Hillman has a butt just like the rest of us and out of that butt comes fertilizer for the trees. No hero will save us here, perhaps generations from now some hero will be remembered and help us understand along the way, but no hero will take away our pain. This was the message of the Greenman as it was the message of Christ who wanted the pain taken away, but could not have it done. So we are left ultimately in a quandary. Are we to believe in anything?
When they chopped down the trees in the song who decided? Mankind decided for only mankind can use “hatchet, axe and saw.” We cut down those branches that are weak. Darwin was right about natural selection. If we bicker we become weak and are eventually chopped down. A victorious war means simply that one side knows for a fact that it will not be demolished by the other side. It does not mean it is strong or healthy. That only comes in peace although many think that because wars spur the economy a war will bring things around economically. Not true. One interpretation by a fan of Rush, Davey O’flaherty of Washington, England, said that Peart wrote the song about the U.S.A. and Canada. Is it possible that we are on the verge of a war with Canada? Or is that just a dream that Peart had? Obviously, we are not about to fight Canada. We are the closest of allies, supposedly.

I cannot say without more research exactly what Peart had in mind when he wrote this fairy tale of a song. All I can say is that I found a spokesman for the song in the Greenman. There are no guarantees of any wisdom at all to come from this exercise. We ultimately all die, but it is for the living to assume that there is a hope of a chance that we might live somehow too. That is the Greenman. Belief in hope.

Oh, I’m so happy. Albert said that Jed’s eyes were bright. I’ve never seen Jed’s eyes bright except when he was a baby boy toddling around with his daddy. Albert told me all about it and I had to sit down when he told me what happened on that cliff. I was always waiting to hear that Jed was dead. Always, but never did. Albert just got angry the more people said that he probably was. But there was no body in that car found in the river. I sometimes wonder about the strength that it took for Moxy to hide Jed all those years of his doing drugs. Some people would say that it was stupidity and weakness, that she was an ennabler. No, Helen was always a searcher just like Jed, just as wild as Jed was. To have let Jed go and love him at the same time just wasn’t possible to her because she knew his wild heart better than anybody and that includes me and Albert. Jed is Moxy’s lifemate. It was bonded in steel somewhere in the heavens apparently because she just would not let my son go. She knew what it would have meant. I guess she knew that if she let him go she wouldn’t ever, ever find anyone to replace him. Yeah, that had to be the case. Was the case with Tom. If Tom had fallen into heroin addiction, I would have nursed him forever just because there was no other Toms out there. I’d found my man and that was it. Come hell or high water that was it. Done. Me and Tom. Helen’s got that same thing. That stand by your man quality that’s become so outdated, but you don’t see those women yelling about freedom with men half as good and strong as Jed with Moxy or I was with Tom. These relationships stop on a dime these days. I guess maybe in some ways though I am old fashioned. Moxy did get rid of Jed, for several months. She told me she had to, that she was carrying Minnie inside of her and suddenly Jed wasn’t all important anymore. She wouldn’t stand for a man to be half a man, she could deal with it because there was enough man in half a Jed to last her, but not for Minnie. Minnie wouldn’t be strong. She would need to be made strong and for that she knew she needed a whole man. So she kicked Jed out and he went and got stoned for months until out of sheer force of will he pulled himself out of it and then he drove the car into the river and then came back home and was clean for two years until Albert found him and punched him in the nose for doing what he did to us, leaving us like that. I laughed when Albert came trudging in from New York City, his duffle bag dirty and stinking on his back and he said “found him, mom. Kicked his (I don’t like to curse, but Albert said it) kicked his “fucking” ass. I said “what?” and he told me what happened and I just laughed. It had all become so ridiculous. To think my boy was still alive, had been alive for ten years and he’d forgotten us completely, ignored us or feared us simply. I could forgive him for fearing us because fearing us, he really just feared himself. But that was a gift from heaven. Albert trudging off to find a ghost and finding him and then me sitting in the kitchen waiting to see Jed again. Albert just said he’d punched him, that was all. He’d just punched him. Enough said. But I expected Jed then. I waited for a phone call or for him to just show up at the door. Then he did. He and Moxy and little Minnie, almost two by then and suddenly I had my family back and more, oh so much more and I cried right there and kissed Jed over and over and over and then Moxy and then little Minnie and then Albert came out and he gave his brother a hug and they cried in each other’s arms. Then Minnie saw Teardrop. Teardrop used to live with us on the side of the house. I’d go to Teardrop sometimes and ask Teardrop questions. If Jed was alive I’d say twitch one ear or I’d make it easy and say don’t say nothing at all. Minnie screamed. She’d never seen a mule. Don’t think she’d ever seen an animal other than maybe a dog or a cat. She loved Teardrop so much right away. And we had a few chickens and Albert kept some rabbits and of courtse his hamster and Albert took little Minnie up and they walked over to the mule and right away I saw Minnie’s education begin. Albert read more books than anybody else in Millsville, but he wasn’t stuffy and he started telling Minnie all about Teardrop’s history. I’m not even sure Minnie understood people by then. She just seemed to point a lot, but that didn’t matter to Albert. I brought Jed and Helen inside and told Albert to come in and he said he would and he did a minute later and Minnie was so happy and we all sat down at the kitchen table. Albert brought a chair in from the living room and I made some coffee and some sandwiches and we sat there and I swear to God not a word spoken for over a minute. Nobody knew what to say.

I don’t say much anymore. What’s to say? This world is a merry-go-round and you better not fall off. I met Jed back, oh, back a long time. I admit I’ve been something of a mother hen to him for the last ten years. He couldn’t get off the shit. The rock and roll wasn’t what it was. Hell no. It was the drug. If I knew that Jed had been taking heroin when I met him I would have slipped away. I would have so Moxy Priestessed him he wouldn’t have known what it was that happened to him. But he had a car and I’d taken a clunker down to Nashville, thinking there was something big in music going on there, but was really looking for Hollywood. I was always a showgirl, not a city girl and I wanted to prove that there was nothing wrong with that. I could kick up my heels better than most of those girls on the ballet stage, but I didn’t want to. I’d listened to Elvis when I was girl because that’s who my father liked and he was a composer for the Broadway stage. It’s funny how things happen.

Now I’ve got my husband back from the drug, but I picked up a family along the way. Sometimes I don’t know what to make of the fact that I live on a mountain near Millsville in Tennessee. Realistically it’s ideal for a person. I’ve got a nice home in the country, my husband is near his family. I’ve got a beautiful little girl. But I’m bored. Simply put, I’m bored and I don’t want to drag Jed back to the city. He’s not ready. He may never be ready and I love Jed. I’ve loved him from that first day we met in McDonalds, I think. It’s just been a strange transition, that’s all.

To think that I’m trading in my city girl status by staying here is hard, it’s like losing perspective on who I am and sometimes I take it to mean that I want to go to temple again. I deny this to Jed, but I do miss it sometimes, that firm grounding in the Jewish faith that I grew up with. I take Minnie to a Methodist church, but I’m thinking of telling Jed that we’re going to start going the little synagogue over on Maple Street. I think that If my Minnie has a little bit of that then maybe I could keep a little bit of home near me and then I’ll want to stay and me and Jed won’t get in a stupid fight and break up. I can feel it in the air sometimes. Oddly enough, it seems that this request I’m going to make to Jed today isn’t all that’s out there working in our favor. Albert’s little play about Princess Diana is making Jed pick up his guitar again. He even had me come up with the feel for a song Albert called Coconut Jerk Chicken. It was fun, we had Minnie dancing around the house and when we were done me and Jed had written the first song by Moxy Priestess that was ever written without a trace of heroin in Jed’s veins. That little victory felt good.

Overall I’m happy here on Annabelle Mountain. The mountain is beautiful. We’re near the top. We can afford to do this since neither one of us has to go into town and work. We still get some royalties. Jed spent most of his big money, but I invested wisely and we are well to do now. They say there is an angel who lives on this mountain, the spirit of a young girl who died here. I don’t like to think about that story. I don’t much like the subjects of angels because that means that God does have need. I sometimes wish that God would just dismiss all of the angels because the angels are always made up of the spirits of those who didn’t deserve to die. I guess Albert would say that Diana is an angel. On our mountain, the little girl from the civil war era, Annnabelle, is an angel. The trouble with angels is that we want more and more of them, but nobody wants to volunteer to be one.

That is, I think, the predicament that Jed’s brother finds himself in. He thinks that if he can pay tribute to Princess Diana then he is saving her soul. But I wish his tribute could have been written while she had been living. That way she too would be able to believe in angels. It’s not easy to see the realities of coping with this life. Albert is coping, that’s plain to see. Jed said that he would cry when the music stopped playing sometimes when they were alone in his room. Jed loves his brother. That’s another reason why I can’t insist on moving. We’ve been here over a year and each day is feeling a little bit longer, but Jed’s not ready. He needs as much time here at home as he had away from home. My parents always loved me and made it clear to me that they did, so I must be the stronger one. I will take Minnie to the synagogue and turn her into a little Jewish princess like I was and it appears that Jed will spearhead the return of Moxy Priestess, something I thought would never happen in a million years.

I always thought that if I could write I would write a novel about the tears that my mule couldn’t shed simply because mules don’t shed tears. Albert wrote a story once with a line in it and he showed it to me and he described something as being “sadness beyond sadness beyond sadness, the subtleties of sadness squared.” I thought that line was mature beyond Albert’s years because it seems I’ve known it, lived it rather.

I’ve finished Coconut Jerk Chicken, Moxy helped. Actually, Moxy did most of it. She did the words and then gave me the beat. I just came up with the melody. I don’t know where Albert came up with that one, probably stole it off of a drunken friend. He’s like that. He’ll sit around at the coffee house in Millsville where all the other fated artists meet to be around fated artists and he’ll listen to people. Albert’s the coolest hippie in town, but he doesn’t think of himself like that. When he was seven years old he would come into my room and listen to me play guitar. I never once told him to get out. I wasn’t thinking I was giving him a musical education during the most impressionable years of his life. I was thinking it was good to have my little brother there beside me when the whole world has gone to shit. Those drugs I took back then, they messed up my head. I was one of those guys who got mean when he took drugs, not mellow, although sometimes I got mellow too. I shouldn’t say mean. I never wanted to hurt anybody, not really, in my life. It’s just I got to a place where I didn’t take shit from anybody, nobody and nobody gave my family shit either. That’s why I beat that kid up at the roller rink. Nobody did violence to my family, not after what happened to my father. Nobody. That’s all.

Anyway, Albert. Little Albert. He’s over six feet tall now. I look up to the kid, but he’s not a kid anymore. The kind of kid whose got to have his day, his fifteen minutes of fame, but the kind of kid who you think sort of shouldn’t get it if you know what I mean. Over in North Carolina was a writer Albert told me about named Thomas Wolfe. He called Wolfe a pantheist, that’s somebody, Albert says, who believes God is in everything. I’d call that a schizophrenic myself, but Albert calls it a pantheist belief. He tried to explain to me the levels of Petals and I just couldn’t get it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think it should go on, it will. What it means to me, though, more is that, somehow, if somebody says there are different levels that you can’t see in a work and the work espouses nothing but love, logic has it that love has many levels and therefore it takes time to get to those levels and if I don’t do his rock opera on a level of musicianship even higher than what I achieved with the Priestess, then I’m selling short love itself.

So since being back there’s no real rhyme or reason behind my life. I don’t do anything and that’s okay. Or I haven’t anyway. But now I will. I’ll write the music, or rather, I’ve been writing the music to Petals.

Petals, A Rock Scenario. Fifty-one pages of pure Diana Tribute. Enough Diana tribute to have Albert hung up on the stake by all those people out there who think just the mere mention of her name is Di-ploitation. Jed Jones of Moxy Priestess, disappeared for ten years off the music scene and here he is. Who would have thought, washed up, beat, a nobody now, trying to exploit the Princess for all he can before he completely becomes an old man and everybody forgets his name. So where do I begin:

Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead. Albert wants me to replace this so I will. He gave me the CD, OK Computer and I’ll listen to it. I tuned my guitar this morning. I have a different manner in which I write songs. It’s not the same thing as other people do. I hear the song in my head for a while before I know it’s complete. I put it down on my strings only, everything else is in my head. I’m writing the song in my head right now.

There’s no way to relay what it is that music does. I’m lost to trying. It’s better to give in and acknowledge there’s no way to explain anything to anybody, especially the idea that we all die, including Princess Diana, especially Princess Diana who you’ve got to admit seems like a person you didn’t expect to die or ever want to. This piece, well, I’ve heard it before. I’m going to listen to it again now and then try to explain to you what it says to me so maybe when you hear it you’ll understand, taking into consideration that Albert chose it and Albert’s gone through a lot of pain, being the man of the house for so long and yet being the baby, no dad, no brother, being the baby and then being all alone except for a woman who is really sad inside for being alone. One moment and then I’ll explain to you how my song will go since we can’t use Radiohead’s song in the Scenario although it’s worthy, truly worthy, and that’s why Albert picked it. Albert’s gave me the lyrics to help me to put together the music. His working title is Go.

Go: Wait. Don’t go home. Sleep. Time will let you know if you’re going to go. Don’t sleep without your pillow fluffed. Dreams are too important. Give away all that you know. Seek your own soul. Hey, you, don’t cry. Don’t sink down. Live into the night’s embrace, lean there and sigh. Go. Go. Don’t cry! Don’t sing a song and then say goodbye. Spy her there, Dodi, live for her breath that so slowly seeps away. Go. Go. Dream away. Go. Go. I hope you go.

The following song, Let Down is also by Radiohead sung by Camilla Parker Bowles: Albert’s is called I Love You which is really the second part of Go.

I Love You: Go home to sew the love in your coat and your torn up sleeve, bring it back to me with you inside and I will inspect your wounded pride and give to you all the love that you need and nobody will make you cry and I will sing a song for you then, my love, because the night it deems itself, deems itself better than goodbye, sounds off like sudden hits on tubular bells. I love you. Go. Go. Go. Don’t cry Charles. But Go, oh King, oh Go. I Love You. So Go. And let the lovers win. And come home to me.

There’s definitely some spirituality involved in this work. I don’t know if Albert is a good writer, but I’m starting to think he’s not pulling all of our chains. If you listen to the idea that Radiohead sparked in him then it seems that you’ve found somebody who can hear a work of genius. It makes sense. Albert, and I’m not saying this to be conceited, but Albert listened to my most accomplished works when he was a kid. I mean I formed songs such as Labyrinth and Tuesday Schooling under this kid’s nose. The opening of Pianissimo came out of me one day because I was staring at the calm in Albert’s eye while he listened to me, and it seemed so quiet. How can there not be a correlation between what Albert is doing and what I’m doing?

I find it impossible to think, now that I’m working on this play, that my musical shelf life has expired. Despite all of the shit and horror that I’ve seen, despite all the pain I’ve caused my family, I have to admit that with the reunion of my brother and I there has been a heightening of my own creative powers. Where I understand the physicality of the music only as I play, Albert understands the meaning and the physicality’s effects so he can hardly function, so he has to put the music in his head to words. Albert tells me he sings too now. He wants to play Trevor in the Scenario. He’s the man on the mountain, my brother, and finally, finally, I have somebody who I can call my friend, a peer, a musical peer finally, one who understands the music that I was reaching for in a way that even I couldn’t.