The Holly King, Part 12

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In which Humphrey describes his experiments in squalor, the priest who helped lead him out of it, and what their relationship led to.

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“We can stop....”

Humphrey raises his hand, peaceably – he doesn’t mind. He resumes.

“There had to be ... I had to put myself through..." he searches for the words. "Public excoriations. Standing up and cutting myself, or just walking over to a wall and with great intensity smashing my head against it. Never when I was alone – I would commit these things when I knew others were watching. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. It didn’t interest me. I was on a lot of amphetamines, I was on early forms of meth, but the clarity of the decision to do something to myself at a given moment ... I can still achieve that. So I don't think the drugs ... they probably only speeded up the decisiveness."

“For example, this person, this young guy who had just shown up, was telling this story, showing off his bona fides to the others, made eye contact me. And I grabbed a fork and holding that eye contact, into the palm of my hand it went.“

“You did that.”

Humphrey nods, dispassionately. “He got weirded out. Stepped back. Laughed. I held up my hand and flicked the fork at him with my fingers. It was ... dumb."

Over a closeup to his right palm, searching for the scars, Humphrey continues. "Except for the response it generated in me. I realized later, was: that wasn’t very pure. That wasn't real. It was affect, then effect. And I was really pleased with that epiphany. I felt as though I actually owned something. For the first time.

“They must have thought you were crazy. Dangerous crazy.”

“Some were scared. A few wanted me to fuck off. Some decided I was just the evening’s entertainment. But there was a visceral understanding among the group of what I was, just a fucked up creature who didn’t threaten anyone. I didn’t steal or break any other social bond, so I was tolerated.

“But from then on, I wanted to find that purity. A physical structure of hate. I turned it into a trial.” He raises his large, unshaking hand like a pointed wedge. “Find that narrow line between hate for society of any level, groups, people, and still maintain a passive disconnection for those around you. And be vigilant about it. I wanted to be alive with execration. But not alone. And the drugs – they were getting in the way.

“As for the others – if they wanted to act against me, or use me, that was their prerogative. But the engagement wouldn’t come from me. I wanted to see how long that would last. And not go away by myself. If I did, I always knew it would be to kill myself.

“After awhile, this fragile, blank composure took over,” Humphrey says.

photo © by eschlabach

Quiet images of industrial despair: a dead bird on the floor of a wide sad room with a broom dropped and abandoned nearby; shears of white plaster peeling from the brick wall of a hallway; gray-white matted pigeon poop on a railing; water lapping against a knuckled pier. The dead, empty spaces of abandoned buildings that look busier with destitution than when they were working and swept everyday.

“I took this alcove, a closet really, and I would sit at the edge of this place, at the edge of my own murk and just watch. The place was always in twilight, echoing. I placed this mental shroud over myself: I wanted to feel dead – pretend that I was gone and see what the world, this space, would be without me. This went on for days and was pretty thrilling.

"I watched these two men – boys – stoke up a rivalry, work each other up. I liked watching it develop. It had a featureless, undisciplined feel to it. Wandering in the air between them like electricity and carrying them with it until they eventually collided. 

“I’d watch them over days, even weeks, months. They would go through loud, unbelievable announcements like ‘I’ll do anything for you.’ ‘You’re my bro.' My this or that. And they would compete with put downs and the number of others who would agree or join in on the put downs. They were the center of the group that way, the passion of the group. Nothing happened that didn’t circulate around them. And a few times a year, it would explode. A terrible bloody very intimate, carnal fight. Pounding, wrenching, kicking. Broken faces and hands. Head wounds. I remember the sound of it, the crunching and thudding and actually enjoying it. It was like theater.

“Then one would win and yet some how the other one would be the leader. The other one, the winner, would be shunned, especially by the girls. In their inverted world, that was order. The boys didn’t care. Their excitability was exhausted for a while, and then they’d just begin it all over again. The rise and fall of the seasons.

While Humphrey tells this, the images of industrial decay return, their emphasis shifting. A patient drip from a pipe that feeds a thin line of mildew on the floor. Dowels of weeds poke through cement. A hallway steadily being reabsorbed by vines jamming through a partially closed door, mold on the ceiling, wisteria easing itself down from high broken windows, moss in the wall cracks, tree branches reaching in.

“Finally, there was this time, it was late summer, when a few of the boys decided they were going to make a bomb or some such. They went to find and steal the ingredients. Some of the girls headed out on their own excursion. Heading to a concert in the desert, I think. I stayed. No one asked me to come, which was fine.

“A girl who came and went, a small girl, dirty, and probably not mentally sound came back where we were after months of being away. Everyone was gone, I was alone, for whatever reason. It might have been raining. Sitting inside this alcove, this indentation in a wall, part closet, part cave. She seemed even more lost than before, in bad shape. Cuts on her forehead, bruises on her neck and jaw, and, I found later, her forearm was swollen, with a bit of bone poking through the skin, as if she tried to protect herself.

“She had climbed the stairs to our floor, crossed this enormous space we had taken over with a shuffling light step, as if she were moving only to keep from falling over and made her way to this small filthy alcove where I was sitting. She didn’t really acknowledge me, but I got the feeling she knew I was in there.

Other photos come up while Humphrey continues, different in scope and feel. Not documenting a brother's squalor, but perfunctory. Evidence. Sad, flash-lit police photos of the girl's body in Humphrey's alcove.

“I sat there the whole time, even when she laid down next to me. I sensed right away what was going on and it seemed perfectly reasonable to let her die like that. I even allowed myself to get up and pull over some cardboard and a crappy blanket no one was using to cover her up because – and I was very rational about it – she was using me as a vigil. To help her on out of here.

"When it was over and I knew it was over, I walked down and went to the police."

Carson, off camera. "That's how I found you."

"That's how you found me."

Carson over a walking shot of a city sidewalk, broken and bursting from tree roots: "That's not the complete story. Humphrey actually first approached two priests who had been working in the area recently with a shelter, Peter Giles and Max Lincoln. And together they went to the police, who later found a huge amount of heroin in her system. And the injuries she sustained were days old. The police sealed up the warehouse, and the kids, Humphrey included, moved elsewhere."

Meanwhile, a picture of a man in jeans and black sweater among a sidewalk encampment of street kids. Like a teacher forgiven for his attempts at hipness, the man lays on the sidewalk, propped on an elbow, his back against a wall papered with torn bills, petting one of the kids’ pit bulls. He is surrounded by filthy clothes, and a farrago of debris and personal items, camped in their camp. The only one standing, shielding a match from the wind, a little outside the camp, is pierced and filthy Humphrey.

Carson zooms patiently on the man visiting the streetkids. “By the time I met Peter, then Father Peter,” Humphrey says, “I was ... aglow ... in this perfect kiln I made for myself. I was convinced I'd achieved that perfect, narrow line of hate, poised with hate. I had seen and relished what life would be like after I was dead. He didn’t try to soften it or dilute any of it. I remember congratulating myself that this handsome, interesting man was actually impressed with this state I made for myself. Maybe he was.

“But inch by inch he led me somewhere else, where ...” he pauses, retreating with a stiff, restrictive pull of his lips and a slight thrust of a wettening tongue, easing the words out one by one, “I was so vain with what I thought I’d done on my own and so eager to show this man what I could do with it. I stayed out on the street, longer even than I wanted to. And every time I'd see him, that resolve just chipped away. Rather than being this body without any kind of sentience, Peter led me to grab a hold of that fire with both hands. And pat it down, like ....” his face loosens slightly, a self-conscious raise of the eyebrows, “.... in his words, Prometheus."

A short video image, slowed to a mesmerizing crawl, in the poor, orangey candle light of a sanctuary somewhere. Peter and Humphrey, side by side. Peter looking watchfully as Humphrey, short hair mushrooming from his head, leans forward, head down, arms triangulated on his knees. Peter runs his fingers over Humphrey’s head in a single petting motion. The touch sends Humphrey out of his crouch, back against the pew they are sitting in, a smile opening on his face.

Carson narrates: “This is one of the few images he’s shown me. He probably thinks it says what he wants said about their relationship. It goes without saying that Peter figures prominently, intimately, in my brother’s life. Not the least being a guide wire to where he is right now. I only found this one that I took.”

“I don’t have much else at my disposal to describe Humphrey’s relationship with Peter. He declines over and over again, and I’m often left to my imagination. This may seem like self-censorship on his part, but I think it’s more like preservation. He likes to hold on to things. Participate in their weight.”

A quiet moment of monastical light in Humphrey’s Mashipan room. Then a slow pan to four crosswise photographs on the wall: two of Humphrey and Peter together, top and bottom. And to the left and right, two pictures of men not Humphrey or Peter.

“Despite my brother’s circumspection, though, I should be more clear here. Especially since I met Peter and visited the two of them occasionally.

“To me, Humphrey and Peter enjoyed one of those rare charismatic relationships you find in a book or a movie. At the time, Peter was a Jesuit priest, though an openly gay one at that. And involved in a long time relationship with Father Max Lincoln. While Peter was working his way into Humphrey, Humphrey was doing the same to Peter.”

Carson slides the camera across the wall to a photo of Father Max: dark, sharp and kind like Anthony Perkins. “Together, Max and Peter had started the outreach that led them into the lives of Seattle runaways and squatters which eventually led Peter to Humphrey. And away from Max.

We slide across to the fourth photo, an older, goldenbrown, shiny headed man with thick eyelashes and glasses. “And from there, it led Humphrey to Father Archibald Solano, the founder of Mashipan."

The bottom photo on Humphrey’s wall is a photograph of Peter relaxing on a tidy midcentury mustard couch, his legs on a glass coffee table, reading. Behind is a wall of books. Humphrey, his head on Peter’s lap, sleeps with a book on his chest.

“As with any new relationship, Humphrey was dazzled by anything associated with Peter. Especially his faith. For a little while he enjoyed, even accepted I think, the pageantry of the liturgy. He never missed a mass Peter led. The depth of Catholic theology amazed him. But just as quickly, he developed a preference for early Christian apocrypha, Gnostic writings, Neoplatonism. Anything which challenged or was banished from Roman orthodoxy.

“Which may have just been a way not to lose himself entirely. He was vigorously devoted to whatever ideas Peter had for ministry. Organic soup kitchens. Bedside readings in prison hospitals. Difficult return visits to the anarchists. But as Peter pulled Humphrey toward engagement, Humprhey led Peter to renunciation.”

Carson lingers on the top photo of Humphrey and Peter sitting on a rock, shirts off, vividly talking. Humphrey picks up where he left off.

“One of our favorite pasttimes was fine-tuning a plan, our mission. Waiting for a train, going up an elevator, one of us would say ‘convert derelict buildings into housing’, or ‘organic farm for shelters.’ “

“Did anything come out of this?”

For the first time, Humphrey grins, sentimentally. “One of us would get excited. And then usually it was me who’d look a little more closely into it.” And then reasserts himself. “And inevitably I’d find that these were being done already, or someone tried and it didn’t work. Maybe not in the church. Which usually was Peter’s point. To work them through the church. Which was not something I wanted to do. To do on behalf of the church. Any church.

“For one, the bureaucracy is monumental. And the church itself is prone to siphon for other purposes. But clearly, the church – his Church – would never allow the kind of partnership we had in mind, let alone enjoying in our home. And I didn’t particularly want to join Catholicism.

“He had gotten very good at accepting what he could from his church. And ignoring the rest. To me, the Catholic church was – “ he leans back into his chair. This is Humphrey’s favorite act of mischief, unveiled:  “I assigned my own anathema to the Catholic church.”

Carson waits to hear more – this is one of Humphrey’s thoughtful pauses – but has to ask, “Which was ...?”

“That for whatever ideals it professes, the church is antithetical to them by its structure. That it exists as an institution is eternally contrary to itself and thereby abominable.”

Another wayward grin, more self-conscious, reflective. “Peter could tolerate a lot.”

“Whatever their plans were," Carson says, turning back again to the four photos on Humphrey’s wall, moving in with long steady zoom, "they never had a chance to enact them. Peter died five years or so after my brother left the street. He had been a voracious smoker and died of emphysema.

“The passage of time muddles things even further. On this trip I learned Father Max eventually made the move to Mashipan himself, a few years ago, with Humphrey’s urging. Humphrey maintains this has been a platonic, working relationship. But together they started Mashipan’s juvenile mission. Which opened and expanded Mashipan for the first time down to the valley. On a wide, easily accessible meadow they built a retreat and sanctuary which has since become Mashipan's face to the world. They also work in prisons, established health and pregnancy clinics, worked in city shelters and delinquency halls, police gang units and provide pro bono legal help. Almost everything Peter and Humphrey talked to each other about."

Down in the valley, a shot first of an unassuming sign on the road: New Mashipan. Then, the gently rolling community of buildings and grounds under snow. Many more people are down here, just not in robes, many of them young, excited, gathered in small groups with backpacks and dufflelbags on the ground near a line of buses, as if they'd just been dropped off. Some of them wear red Santa hats. Two girls walk past Carson. Both smile and wave.

“It’s sad, but also a little reassuring to think that all this sprouted from Peter's death. Though how Mashipan got to this point is really where we're going here. In the meantime, I asked my brother if I could meet Father Max.”

Cut to Humphrey, listening to the request, demurring, nodding as if he should have known Carson would ask. “He’s not well. We’ll see.”



/continued

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Next: Christmas at Mashipan and the end.

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"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 11

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which Carson climbs to the Mashipan monastery to visit and film his brother Humphrey, who used to live in self-imposed seediness

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From above, Carson’s copper Volvo winds along the glittering black asphalt of a mountain road. It looks like the Rockies or the Sierra mountains, though it could be the Alps or the Cascades or the White Mountains for all I know.

A title card, in pointy gothic lettering: Christmas With My Brother.

“Like my sister, my brother Humphrey left the house after high school and really never looked back. And like my sister, he went through a period of shaking off every last remaining pedigree of my family. We didn’t hear from or see him for years.”

A few photographs of Humphrey, a lanky, blonde-haired boy, delicate, a little feminine with his arms crossed. But on his face a cold loathing.

“For all of Shannon’s excesses, Humphrey far exceed her. Addictions, lots of questionable sex, a plethora of drugs, riding herd with anarchists. This is a picture of Humphrey I took almost fourteen years ago, when I was in college and I tracked him down to a squatters camp in an abandoned warehouse in Seattle. He'd already spent about six years like this.”

The picture is blurry, but there’s Humphrey: leaner, tatted and pierced, no hair, waving a bottle of something, the only person standing in a graffitied, derelict structure. Surrounded by squatters indistinguishable from piles of clothes. Humphrey’s giving Carson the finger. He has a Rasputin-Manson mad ferociousness, with black little eyes and a gaunt, torn t-shirted nihilism.

“He told me he wasn't interested in what passed for a political structure, even among the anarchists. He was their untouchable Lord of Misrule, in charge of nothing, letting anyone screw him if they wanted but fighting with razor blades if prodded. Their wicker man. The most fucked up member in the group, willing to do anything if it meant cracking a bottle over his own head to prove it.

“I tracked him down because of a postcard he mailed, out of the blue, delivered to my dorm one year, for my birthday. It came from Seattle. I didn’t tell my parents. Instead, I got in touch with the Seattle police and with city social workers. After a few months, they had a pretty good idea which camp he was in.

“Strangely, right after this photograph, he and I started to become friends. But that’s another story.”

Back to the copper Volvo, pulling into a gravel turnout of the winding road, carved into the side of a mountain. A man in a long brown coat, like a friar’s cape, sits on a log, waiting. When Carson emerges alone from the car, putting the still-running camera on the roof, you can barely hear “No, not long,” before the two of them hug. Sasha, or anyone else for that matter, did not come along.

Carson grabs a bag and up a path they go. A last camera glance to his Volvo almost looks like an advertisement for a slacker car brand: shot low, his wreck sits against sky and wind and other snowy peaks in the distance, condemned to afterthought.

“Today, I’m visiting him in the mountaintop monastery he's lived in for nine years, Mashipan. It’s not the first time I’ve been here, just the second or third. There’s no parking up there. They usually bring guests up by shuttle but the driver wasn’t around so I drove up. We’re up so high that when I make a final check on my car, it feels like saying goodbye to the world.”

Carson carries his camera with him on the walk, occasionally swinging it toward Humphrey. The pupil-less eyes are gone. He has a weathered, handsome face with eye wrinkles that expand into a sympathetic sorrow like El Greco’s, wide ripples from a happy kerplunk of his eyes. This gaze is what he was hiding in the other photos. It seems it’s all he needs now, a scrutiny both pitiful and wildly awake.

Humphrey shakes off his younger brother’s inquisitive camera, stops talking in mid-sentence, making Carson drop the camera down to dangle over their boots. He keeps the sound going so that we get pieces of their conversation over the crunch of gravel: “ ... not going to be like some heartrending family confessional.” “No, god no,” Carson says. “At least I hope not.”

Over inserts of great granite peaks and his brother’s long-legged sturdy gait, accustomed to long hikes up a mountain, Carson explains: “My relationship with my brother, actually, is pretty good, better I think than the one I have with my sister.

“But Humphrey is determined to steer his involvement in this project himself. He will do anything to avoid being a part of memoirs, confessionals, or autobiographies because, he says, they are inherently narcissistic. Mendacious. Diversionary. From the truth, he means. He is not strictly an ascetic. Though I know it sounds that way.

“We’ve covered all this before, but now that he sees my camera, he reiterates his position on the long walk up. It’s his ideology he wants to share, not his personality. I tell him I’ll do my best, but as a person, he’s hard to avoid.”

Several boot steps up a pebbly and snow strewn route, around ice dusted boulders. A previous snow storm seems like old news. The path is often narrow and the way Carson keeps the camera by his leg, you expect a misstep any second: an out of balance scuffle and a pitch over the edge.

Where they’re going you’re not sure, until Carson raises the camera for a glimpse of a large, white stone complex dug into a shoulder of the mountain up ahead. Frosty blue sky shines above it.

“This is my brother’s home, Mashipan. A community on a rock at the top of the world.”

Letting his brother walk ahead, Carson pans slowly over the grounds: a three story main building, a few smaller stone buildings, a large fenced area with uniform snowed-over bumps: a sleeping garden. Black trellis archways, a snow cloaked statuary, and a shoveled walkway cuts across the grounds and heads to a boxwood patio with stone benches. The benches sit at the cusp of a slight fall off to another flat terrace that widens, then abruptly drops to the valley far below. On that terrace stands a huge graystone obelisk mounted with a wooden cross. The whole sculpture is latticed with scaffolding.

Up ahead, Humphrey greets a fellow Mashipanite with hands in prayer and a perfunctory bow. As Carson catches up, he passes faces: nodding, acknowledging, round and pink, long and withdrawn, white-haired or bald, smiling, indifferent, male and female.

“Having been here before, it’s good to see people I know. Most of them don’t seem to mind a kid with a camera. I already accept there are times and places for it. They have rules.”

We cut to an echoing arcade, following behind Humphrey. He climbs up narrow wooden stairs past two or three closed arched doors, then at the top swings his door open as we move past him into a small room with a bed, a table, a window. Carson carries us to the window, pushes it open with his hand, and there is the green and white mottling of pine forested mountains beyond. He tilts the camera down to where we just walked: the compound of Mashipan with its snow cleared walkways, benches, scaffolded cross, and robed people.

“The trick is working within the rules. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been allowed to bring my camera without Abbot Keating, Abbess Lamarcke and the prior Father Wilhelm agreeing to it.” The three of them stand together, robed in white or in the case of the prior, in beige, as solemn and weighty in their silence as a Greek chorus. “I’m allowed here in return for images of Mashipan for their website.”

“It’s not a trivial arrangement. They have never allowed a camera to visit before, but the changes underway at Mashipan, they tell me, make having one here for a few days worth the trouble. It turns out that my timing is pretty good, in more ways than one.”

Two workmen inch their way out of a side door of the main building carrying between them a wooden crate with “UGANDA” stenciled in red on one side. A third man squeezes past, balancing a rolled up carpet on his shoulder.

“Of course, I wouldn’t even be here, or even heard about Mashipan if my older brother didn’t live here.”

Humphrey in his cell, pulling off the long friar’s robe, hanging it up meticulously and pulling on a sooty wool sweater.  It’s a small room, big enough only for the bed, desk, a comfortable looking reading chair, a bookshelf. On the wall are the smears of color from drawings, I guess, by their nephews.

Carson also shows us, individually, a small collection of medieval icons inlaid with gold, hanging on another wall. And a little white ipod on a shelf. “Like my agreement with the abbot, I defer to my brother’s ground rules.”

“Over there,” Humphrey points, painting his finger along the floor and against the wall. With one hand, Carson dutifully unrolls his sleeping bag where Humphrey points. “And every morning, you can roll it up and keep it in the corner.”

“For instance,” Carson says, “I thought a cot was waiting for me, but Humphrey decided it would take up too much room.”

“You’ll be all right,” Humphrey says. “You’ll see.”

“Living arrangements aside, most of the rules basically involve his speaking and my listening. His answers to my questions are often on other topics he has in mind. Many hours were spent arguing about this.”

Unlike the footage of his mother and sister, Carson goes for more formal shooting styles with his brother. He cuts between one set up, a two shot, Frost-Nixon style, with the camera placed to the side and a second camera, trained just on Humphrey.

“I’d really like, Hump, to talk about – “

“Humphrey.”

“Ok, sorry. I think going back a little into your experience in Seattle helps give context to all this.”

Humphrey sits in his chair, sipping tea from a wide glazed cup.

“This,” Carson narrates, his taped self sitting still watching his brother sip tea, “is a Humphrey-sized pause. They occur frequently, coinciding purposefully with his breath, a generous period he gives himself to tend to his thoughts before dispensing them.”

Humphrey, concluding his sip, nods reflectively.

“This is just an example,” Carson adds. “I’ll edit most of them out, so don’t worry.”

“What I’ve learned here,” Humphrey offers, “is more to the point of your documentary.”

“Whatever you want to say,” Carson says on the tape. “Where ever you want to go.”

Another studious pause, over which Carson concludes himself: “Like the abbots, Humphrey has an ulterior motive other than acquiescing to his little brother’s documentary dreams. He has a formulated point of view and is deliberate about it. Fortunately for me, this point of view does in fact coincide with the points I want to make in my movie.”

From his chair, Humphrey nods, this time consenting. Contrary to Carson’s gentle insights about his brother’s pauses, Humphrey seems very much like a serious man suffocating impulses. Every moment a conquest.

Humphrey says, “I will say this – about coming to Mashipan....”

He holds up a finger, redirecting himself in mid-sentence. “I’ll summarize, so we can move on: What I was doing in Seattle could be construed as personally and socially destructive. Without question. I was outside of society on the one hand. But I was also constantly looking back at it, referencing it, regarding it. Involved in it from a distance.“

They don’t move on. Carson asks, “When did this start, with you?”

Humphrey answers over images of a protest march, circa late ‘80s, early ‘90s. Anti-capitalism, pro-environment, anti-globalism. The marchers, dressed up in apocalyptic costumes, carrying signs, are loud and angry, all denouncing one thing or another. But nevertheless engaged in a political system.

“I think about this. With little to offer. But my earliest memories were not – cheerful. Even or perhaps because of the comfort our parents provided. Though that’s no reason, being born into the bourgeoisie. I’m just satisfied my thoughts then were real.”

Suddenly the video careens off, followed by a shaky, tumbling series of clips of the march that turns into a riot at the hands of anarchists who descend like monkeys. Bottle bombs are lit and thrown, glass windows broken, black hooded Converse sneaker-wearing bodies jump up and down on cars, newspaper boxes thrown into the street.

Carson runs a clip of one of the monkey car jumpers, at first throwing blocks of concrete, then kicking awkwardly, prancingly at someone trying to pull him down. Then freezes. He doesn’t outright say it, but it looks like Humphrey.

“Thoughts such as?” Carson asks.

Though he’s off screen, you can hear Humphrey's willingness stretch thin. “Distress, disassociation. An intense aggravation against everything around me. Smells, colors, the way the world came at me. It was very instinctive, my reactions. Not rational. Like the reaction you have if you land in boiling water.” A unsentimental pause. “Except in my case, it was not, ‘Get out!’ It was – ‘hate!’ And it felt correct to extend that to myself. It felt like a kind of bravery.

A few more pictures of Humphrey and the squalor he lived in, assumedly taken by Carson after tracking him down. You wonder what Carson thought of discovering his brother in a trash strewn, lunarscaped warehouse, but the smudgy blacks and piercing silvery light from empty windows is all he offers: Humphrey barking at a chained pit bull, someone’s unhinged pet; a moment of repose: Humphrey carefully carving under his nipple with a pen knife; close up of Humphrey and his thin, tired, derisive face partly obscured by his large menacing hand grabbing the camera. Getting friendly with him, as Carson said he did, must not have been easy.

“I liked playing with it, that hate," Humphrey says. "It was electric and elastic. I could, I believed, remain in charge of my own destruction. It felt like a gift. Delivering my own destruction. A power I could deploy any time I liked.

“Which was often,” Carson suggests.

photo © by eschlabach

“.... Yes ... as often as I liked.” A pause, initially recriminating, then forgiving. “You’ve got me talking about this after all."

/continued

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Next: Squalor, love

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 10

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which bonfires, fireworks, the arrival of Beiwe and the battle between the Oak King and the Holly King are better than other Christmas parties.

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Out in the driveway, a hairy delivery man in white coveralls and rainbow knit cap pulls a keg from his truck and stages it among eight or nine others as Ken hoists another onto his shoulders.

Shannon and Ken, with experienced help from the kids, prepare for the party: moving tables, signing for deliveries of slabs of meat, chipping ice into buckets, placing candles just so. They cook sugar to pour into the candy cane molds, trim the trees outside with popcorn, cranberries and the homemade canes, roll logs into theatrical seating in front of the bower, and place luminarias every three feet along a path from the house out to the logs.

Shannon answers a question from Carson: “We began having solstice parties I think right away, maybe that first Christmas I moved in. And that was only because I wanted to have a big bad ass Christmas party in the country, make a lot of noise and ruckus. But no one up here in this neck of the woods wants anything to do with something as bourgie or mainstream as Christmas, so we threw a solstice party. For whatever reason, people prefer the idea of a solstice party up here. And ever since.”

“What do you think about Christmas? Generally?”

“Generally?” Shannon dwells heavily on the question. “It’s – “ she looks at her kids, deciding. She lowers her voice. “The way it is out there – " her hand pushes away from her, over the trees. " – In Mainstream AmericaLand – my first reaction is: are you kidding? I mean, from here, off the grid, it seems loud, noisy, stressful. Too busy, too bright. A mess, really. A complete mess. Something to be avoided at all costs." She glances to her kids, sure they haven't been following the conversation. "But my second reaction is, well ... it has its plusses and minuses.”

Shannon continues while images of the solstice party crank up, first with people arriving, friends and neighbors hugging and laughing, the potluck chefs unveiling dishes on the oak table, kids playing in the snow, Ken lighting the luminarias, kegs being tapped. Four or five people watch a huge pig, maybe it’s a boar, roast on a spindle over a fire outside.

“On the one hand people find a way to be charitable and use the, I guess you’d call it, spirit of the season for some good. For some unknown-mystery-of-the-universe reason, this time of year really ignites humans. Don't you think? We’re engaged. With the world, the cosmos, each other. I mean, there is such a thing as kindness, and people do strive to show some. At right about this time of year.

“But on the other hand. Most of what we call Christmas, really isn’t supportable. Not the money, not the insistence of gifts, the wretched traveling. It’s the capitalist mandate, on steroids.

"And the overriding social message that’s sent out,” Shannon continues, “is: this is expected of you now. To participate in it and contribute. Accept it. The messages are loud and clear and reiterate over and over. You should be out, spending money, gathering, collecting, spending again. Because the kids, members of your family, friends, they will think better of you if succeed at this, and on top of that, the economy needs you. If the cash registers are singing, then all is well with the world

The house quickly fills. Among the conventional minglers in puffy down quilted coats and wool caps with ear flaps, many are in costumes: 19th century Victorian carolers with bonnets and muttonchops; Renaissance Fair wenches and Henry VIIIs drinking from goblets; lots of Father Christmases; Wiccans in luxurious black velvet long coats with fox fur cuffs and collars holding hands with little wiccan tots dressed as ponies and wolves; a lordly but very anomalous Klingon male with his lion-maned Klingon female consort.

“That’s a crazy message," she adds. "No wonder the Christian fundamentalists go haywire over it.”

“The ‘Where’s the Jesus?’ crowd,” Carson suggests.

She chortles. “Exactly! It becomes a sort of cultural in-joke: 'isn’t it funny how we’re all crazy doing this? Getting on line for the toy of the season in a blizzard? Gosh, hope it ends soon! Ha ha!' Society expects you to absolutely burst at the seams with consumption and to spread it around and not really have a great time doing it. Happy holidays!" She winds up making herself laugh.

“I can see why you want to avoid that,” Carson says.

“Right? Well, thing is, we're just like them in our own fucked up way. That's the irony. Neither one of us is a model parent. We're ... we just want our kids to grow up smart, strong and caring, engaged with nature and the universe and not cowed by the expectations of others. That’s what we tell each other. Like anyone else, we make things up as we go along, including having a party at a time of year when the urge is really strong to throw a big party. When it’s dark and cold out.

“The solstice party, I hope, is a little antidote to all that. I told Ken the other day: this is actually a kind of karmic corrective. A little creative craziness in the distant forest.”

Four women in white gowns embroidered with moons and stars, powdered faces, each with the same long blood-red hair, walk in mysterious, four cornered unison; lots of teenagers wearing wool caps with little ears on them, sometimes cat or fox or donkey; a tall and courtly Papageno and Papagena fit bottles of local brew under their beaks; otherwise ordinary-dressed folks, like Ken, shooting rifles in the air; a snowman playing a pan flute; a little girl serenely nibbling a cookie whose crumbs flake down onto her penguin costume.

Not one but five bonfires are lit and burn in a large pentagonal area beyond the alidade, melting the snow, summoning the mud. It compels the biggest bellied men to take off their shirts in the toasty middle and wrestle.

Later, there’s a bareback equestrian barrel race and a kind of nomadic capture-the-flag on horse back starring a fluttering red banner with a real skull (human? really real?) on top; a stilt-walker performance with fire (juggling, eating); a well-attended children’s magic show; a huge snowball rolling race; and the hippy equivalent of Andean pipe players: the ever-present drum circle. One of the drummers is dressed like the Abominable Snowman.

We see Ken conferring with Shannon and a few others, notably a small elegant elderly woman in a green and black robe with a tall white collar. She’s the celebrant. They’re looking at the sky, which is black and oblivious with impenetrable cloud cover. They also look at their watches.

“Well, it’s almost ten thirty,” the celebrant says.

Ken inhales with a wet sniff. “We should just do this any way.”

“The fireworks will help,” someone says.

“The solstice will still happen,” Shannon adds, briefly placing her hand on Ken’s arm, reminding but comforting. The small group nods collaboratively.

Carson: “Ken’s plan, from the very beginning was to start this year’s party at midnight and last until dawn, having pointed his sculpture on the exact latitude the first rays of the new, solsticial sun will appear and train them onto the apple tree. He gave up on that, Shannon told me, for practical reasons like no one would stay up that late, least of all the kids. Plan B was using a laser borrowed from the nearby university for the same affect, which Shannon and the fire department [cut to the drum circle] also scuttled. Plan C was the way to go: a huge mercury-vapor lamp used at a local timber camp. Except that his contact for the lamp never arrived. This council is the result.”

“Ok, let’s go,” Ken says. He looks to the celebrant. “When does it happen, again? Officially?”

“Eleven thirty eight.”

“Maybe I can aim some kind of beam ....”

He tugs at his lip thoughtfully, turns, and is gone. Leaving the others to fend for themselves. The council look at each other and then in Ken's direction and then at each other: what’s going on?

“I’ll get us started,” the celebrant eventually announces.

“Despite the behind the scenes weather problems, the ceremony they’ve planned, like Broadway, still must go on. And what that is is a series of rituals taken from ancient lore, mostly northern European. Beginning with the arrival of Beiwe.”

That would be the lady, in a long white leather and fur coat, with a little girl in white fur and leather at her side, who is led around the grounds of the farm in what appears to be a wicker sleigh, lit by swinging lanterns. The little girl tosses small evergreen tips behind them.

“That’s Mary Anne Klieg, as Beiwe, and her daughter Dakota. They’re local. She teaches chemistry at the university. Tradition has it that Beiwe’s carriage is made out of reindeer bones. Her husband Bob is a hunter and he and their friends spent most of the year carefully building this out of deer and moose bones. Gruesome and awesome, all at the same time.

“About Beiwe: according to Professor Wolfstram, to the early Iron Age tribes of Finland, the arrival of Beiwe, and her daughter Bewei-Neia, means a return of green grass for the reindeer to eat. Not only is she a fertility goddess, but is also, given the long winter nights, the bringer of sanity. That’s her job as a deity, bringing sanity.

“There are other performances,” Carson says, over corresponding imagery. “Fire dancing. And a mock sword fight between the Oak King and the Holly King."

By the light of bonfires, two large men, dressed like Druids, wield large swords against one another, with great heaving clouds of exhale and body heat. “It lasts until the Oak King, the bringer of the new year, protector of light and warmth, flowers and red robins, vanquishes the Holly King. Who will have his rematch in June. He is the bringer of darkness, contemplation, rejuvenation and wrens. Rudy and Jake here own a bar nearby and hit the Renaissance fair circuit pretty hard each year.”

The winning Oak King, big Jake, then walks to a little boy in a white cape and kneels offering his sword. The boy touches the Oak King’s head and walks to the celebrant standing in Ken’s bower. He gives her an offering of little cakes. Pleased with himself, he runs over to his mother, Mrs. Pappagena, who has taken off her bird head and left it inside. Her son buries himself among her feathers.

The celebrant speaks to big Jake, the Oak King who kneels before her: “Holly King, lord of the waxing year, I name you the victor. Now is the time you take up the scepter and rule the land of the Goddess until the time of the summer solstice, when once again you will do battle with your brother.”

Big Jake:  “As it is with the universe, so it is with man. We also journey throughout our time, from birth until death and to rebirth upon our way."

Through this enactment, I kept hearing something on the soundtrack and played it over and over. It’s hard to pick up the first time, but it’s there: a diesel engine running, like from a tractor, coming closer.

“All over the world,” the celebrant continues, to the assembled, “we wait eagerly for the arrival of the sun, the long sun, the sun that brings light, warmth and life. Birth, life, decay and death proceed just as the sun makes its way across the universe, bringing birth life decay and death with it. As it goes, we go. So let us give time to our thoughts of loved ones past.

The party descends to a quiet reflection, though the sound of the tractor nearby is now unavoidable and some in the crowd notice it. When Sasha’s camera swings to the celebrant, you can tell she hears it too. But she marches on.

“The cycles of life are the only truth the universe provides. We find simplicity and truth in these cycles for they teach us love, compassion, courage. To honor the neverending circle and to welcome the return of the light, we light a candle –” as many in the audience do. The celebrant dips her candle into the iron bowl which ignites with a small exciting whoosh. “And we proclaim, return sun, welcome sun, abide with us, sun!”

That appears to be it, but the celebrant looks in a direction as if ‘abide with us’ was a cue to something. Sasha’s camera finds some commotion in the crowd. People stir, look behind them and with minor confusion and awkwardness, separate themselves down the middle of the audience. A few stranded stragglers leap across the empty middle that Shannon is trying to keep clear with a wave of her arms: one side or the other, please.

The celebrant appears to get what’s going on, so she says, loudly, over the sound of a nearby engine, “Ok, well, from the top! Again, we proclaim; Return sun, welcome sun, abide with us, sun!” Hundreds of heads look behind them, to the side, up at the sky, but nothing comes.

The celebrant cocks a May West hip. “Don’t you just hate when you ask for something ... ” she says, and then it comes. Somehow, from a Ken-rigged contrivance with tractor, work lights, and metal sheeting, a fierce light is cast through the bower and poof! The fey little apple tree is lit with a narrow beam of light. It’s actually pretty cool. People hurrah and say “welcome sun!”

And then come the fireworks overhead, from who knows where.

“The party lasted all night,” Carson says. “And it ranks as one of the coolest, most fun nights I’ve ever had. Despite the obvious let down at dawn, when there was no sun. Just a white disk glowing behind the gray cloud cover of midwinter."

More scenes of partying, late into the night. There is music, passed out little kids in animal costumes sleeping over their parent’s shoulders, the roast pig is passed around. 

“Is their solstice party any closer to the primal truth of the holiday than my parents’ choir albums, cocktails and aluminum tree? Many of the ancient rituals around the winter solstice, Professor Wolfstram says, involved carnal sacrifice. Bewei, for instance, was celebrated by killing and skinning little white animals. Human sacrifice was not a rarity either and considering the plight of humans in a little understood universe, plunged in darkness, a ritual killing makes sense. You might be willing to appease anyone or anything, in every manner available just to bring the light, and warmth, and food, back.

“Today, though, it just seems ... nostalgic ... to invite Bewei to your solstice party, especially if your guests dig a veneer of bloodsport.”

A Thousand Stars for Company © Julianna Swaney

People stagger home in the snow, arm in arm, carrying sleeping children, riding off in fishtailing snowmobiles, while two holdouts, a barechested guy and a girl wearing a pink hat with pointy cat ears try to keep a smoldering bonfire going, one knee-snapped branch at a time.

/continued

  ◊      ◊     ◊

Next: Christmas with Humphrey, prodigal son.

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 9

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which Ken takes Carson on a tour of his post-Iron Age, proto-medieval celestial sculpture.

 ◊      ◊     ◊

Architectural drawings are spread across a wooden table under yellow afterhours tungsten. “You’re staying for the party, right?” Ken is big, with tiny green eyes and a well kept red beard. He has a wide, aquiline nose. When Carson responds yes, Ken continues his tour.

The drawing is for something key shaped. But with dozens of surveyor’s symbols, cross-sectional grade illustrations and other unreadable engineering subtleties.

“I cut through the woods a year ago. The cutting runs here [along the length of the key]. There's a 3.3° grade from this spot here all the way down here.” His thick finger points to one end of the key to the far end. “It diverges maybe .2 -.3° the whole time. You’d never notice it. Unless you had the largest carpenter’s leveler in the world.” His mustache parts with a tiny grin. Ken’s dry humor. “To the eye, it looks flat. To water, it's a straight smooth decline.”

Seeing for ourselves, Ken leads Carson (and Sasha, on camera) over the snow to the woods' edge behind the house. Ken starts indicating with his arms like a real estate agent.

"The base of the key is somewhere out here," Carson narrates over the footage of Ken silently pointing, counting steps, describing measurements with both hands and finger. He's totally animated now. "Ken can't hide his excitement and so winds up describing his project to us in pieces. We struggled to put it together.

"But now that I've seen it, I think I can say it's pretty amazing."

We see a long corridor of white snow through tall pine. It's not cut parallel but gradually V-shaped, with a thin black line running up the middle. Your eye, guided by the white of snow, the black line, and the forest boundary, runs the walled convergence to an ankh-shaped stanchion hundreds of yards away. And what do you know: it's the pole on the little island pricked with trees. Behind the island is an empty field tilting down to the lake, a humpbacked rolling hill, and beyond that, the gray ceiling of winter.

"Ken’s project, I realized, is a kind of North American Stonehenge. He calls it a Solstice Alidade."

Back to the pine corridor, over a fuzz-folk, Neutral Milk Hotel-like version of Syd Barrett’s “She Took a Long Cold Look.” Little loafs of sandstone line the forest edges. Down the middle, more sandstone bricks create an unswerving, heterologous sluice in the ground, three inches wide: the black line. It is unnervingly straight, regardless of earth’s bumps and twists. The sluice runs down Ken’s invisible grade and then, coming closer, divides into two streams which encircle an arcaded bower or grotto in the center of large stone slabs. A little tornado of smoke twists upwards from the center of the bower.

After a few seconds, the precise placement of the large erect stones suddenly reveals itself. They’re like sentinels. Inside the bower, also made of stone and entwining ivy, oak beams cross the top with a gnarly overgrowth of grape vines. A shallow but wide iron bowl hangs from a beam. Inside of which roils a small but steady fire. Hanging from the bowl like an ancient Japanese bell is an iron cylinder.

Beneath the cylinder and firebowl there’s a labyrinth formed by little pebbles on the floor. Ken walks the tightening circle of the labyriinth’s center until he can reach up and place two logs into the bowl, feeding the fire. Then he follows the labyrinth out.

In the rear, cut into the stone a perfectly smoothed hole. The camera, sensing a companion iris, peeks through.

“With Druidic precision," Carson explains, "the circular opening on top of the pole on the island lines up exactly with the circumfrence of the firebowl cylinder and this hole at the rear of his bower.” The camera turns then to a blacklimbed, leafless apple tree behind the bower, waiting for spring.

Back in the bower, and excited himself, Carson describes what happens next. “The earliest sunbeam on the morning of the solstice will rise right over there, poking through the ankh, through this bower, through that hole and onto the apple tree. Ken says it should be ready by tomorrow, just in time for the sun’s rebound, and the party.” He then moves closer to the camera, confidentially. "But the forecast doesn't look too good."

Another image of Ken dragging several logs by tractor. He hoists and leans them into a triangular pile. It looks like the preperation for a bonfire.

“This is amazing,” Sasha says.

Over images of burly, yellow coveralled Ken striding across his winter acreage, tinkering, riding his tractor, Carson says, “She’s right. Regardless of the weather, we’re both awed by Ken’s project. So is my sister. She's  fallen in love with someone who can match her grandiosity and redirect it into the world around him.

“Which, I learn, is a fairly recent accomplishment. His life before Shannon was doing odd jobs, drinking, hunting, fighting, fixing cars. Making prosciutto was a lark. The movements of the stars literally went over his head, indifferently. 

"Somehow, just having something like Shannon in his life, he is now a post-medieval enviro-cosmic landscape sculptor. ”

He cuts to a computer screen of Ken’s website, Black Cauldron dot com.

“That’s how his agent describes him in the artist profile on his website and artist catalog. And he’s already moving onto another Neo-Iron Age project. It’s working title is Ecclesiastic Orrery. It’s not far from the Alidade.”

In a nearby clearing, an enormous structure of several orbital iron cages mounted on staffs. Large wicker wheels bound by leather straps lie on a sandstone mater dug into the ground. In the center of this is a tall octogonal obelisk with what looks like a solar panel on top. A sundial garden, of various sizes, shapes and registers lift from the snow nearby.

“The idea here being that the sun hits the panel, which drives the motion not only of these planets [the iron cages] but also comets and meteors in a way even Ken admits he hasn’t figured out.”

Tilting up from a copper disk blooming with oxidation, we see Sasha, in the sundial garden, looking upwards at pallid winter sky.

Later, more hushed confidentiality in their bed room at night. “Having seen what we saw today, the proto-medieval cosmic sculptures, and the sundials everywhere,  Sasha and I are wondering if the solstice party will even be a party. We’re kind of thinking it will be .... "

He turns to Sasha, petting a big Newfoundland on the bed. "How did you put it?"

"Sort of a reverential observance. Something holy. In the holiday/holy day sort of way." She pats the dog with a big playful whoompf. "Which could also be cool."

Back to Carson, nodding, kind of. Not too sure. "Yeah ... maybe."

Fade to black and Carson's voice over.

“Except then the beer truck pulls up.”



/continued

  ◊      ◊     ◊

Next: The arrival of Bewei and how the solstice is really saved

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 8

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which Carson visits his sister and the fans of Tillie Harm get a rare glimpse of her new domestic life.

 ◊      ◊     ◊

The next title card rises with clean, Euro-smooth sans serif: Christmas With My Sister.

We are in a car driving though foothills of pine, heavy with snow. Music jangles from the car radio. Judging by the cracked beige interior and the smudged stitching of the vinyl seats, we’re in a Volvo-like station wagon on its 200,000 mile.

It looks cold outside, the gauzy dead of winter.

Carson is driving. He drives like an old man, hands at 10 and 2. Sasha's voice behind the camera makes up a song. “We’re going to a party .... “ 

Carson nods carefully. She asks, “Tell us about it.”

Carson blinks, cautiously choosing a moment to swing his attention from the road to the camera. “I guess they hold these ever year. It’s pagan. In tone.”

“With bonfires.”

Carson shrugs, tries to nod. He isn't really sure.

“What’s your sister like?” Keeping a two handed grip on the wheel, he shrugs his elbows.

“I haven’t seen her in years.”

With intense concentration, he slowly releases the wheel with his right hand and starts calmly fishing in his jacket for something. Out comes a sleek red palm-sized camera. He points it to us like a badge.

And then we’re looking at Sasha with her camera in the passenger seat. Because Carson is focussed more on the road than his camera, Sasha is in accidental Dutch angle. She has on a bright blue and white striped, hand-knit ski cap with Pippi Longstocking drawstrings dangling. They film each other. Soon her camera pans right, straight down a rippling two lane road which, with compression and the whiteness of plowed snow vibrates with a hovering blue cast. You have to guess where we are – Montana? Michigan? Maine? There are no houses around.

“I hope I like her.” She turns the camera back to Carson. “I hope I don’t feel like I’m visiting the goddess Kali.”

Embroidery © by Anne Aube

“She may want to bathe in your blood.”

“That’s fine. I just don’t want to spend Christmas vacation in constant awe.”

Carson visibly draws a breath, darts his gaze perilously to the dashboard, then exhales. Squirms a bit in his seat. You can tell he hates driving. Or is just plain nervous about visiting the sister.

We're outside the car on the snow, at first watching the road. The formerly copper Volvo scoots past. And then slowly, a bit mysteriously, we zoom in on a field across the road that bottoms out to a flat, frozen white, lake disk. In the center of which rises a petite island with three bristling trees sprouting crookedly and a tall straight pole, unconnected to utility lines or anything else, a branchless single pole stuck among the trees. Apparently the zoom's subject.

Cut again, outside the car, in snow near a black, cleared driveway. You can see Carson's track marks in the snow. With practiced speed, the car drives into frame and turns up the driveway.

And then a quick wipe to a delighted sister, arms wide, walking out of the house, each step a swaying organic combination of mother and lover. Shannon’s beaming, all grown up and glad to see her younger brother on her doorstep. You wonder if she was watching this scrupulous attention to filmmaking from her window or was told to wait just a minute and recreate her greeting. Still, another quick wipe of the camera reveals two children peeking out from the doorway, under a tall redbearded man in winter coveralls. Their house is sort of a single story lodge that looks hand-built, not prefab. In the yard nearby, a large stone disk, a sundial, stands shadowless.

“I think it’s been like seven years?” Shannon asks. She has dark eyes and an abashed, plum lipped smile. Carson, also a little embarrassed, nods. “Something like that.”

Later, a smudgy winter sundown over a lake, the same lake with the trees we saw earlier. From here, the pole looks like it's got a hood on top, like a needle's eye. Curious. With the crunching of snow underfoot, the camera turns completely around: there’s his sister’s home in the gloaming, lit inside like an ember.

A quick collage of eating and talking and the crack sounds of silverware on ceramic. Little hands grappling with bread and butter. Profile of Shannon leaning with her shoulders across the table, hands below, making a flamboyant point. Hefty, sweatered Ken, guardedly raising his eyes from his plate, either listening or scrutinizing Carson. A shy glance from nervous Sasha. A toothy, mashed food grin from one of the boys.

Then dinner plates clear, led by Ken. The table is an enormous slice of clear varnished oak with a black burl just off center. Shannon stays put, still wearing an apron over her white turtleneck. The children, who call Carson “Uncle Brother Carson” are sent away. She takes over much of the length of her side of the table. Carson sits around the corner, perpendicular to her, arms on the table, the eager interviewer.

“So which is it?" He asks. "Shannon or Tillie?”

A brief shiver of annoyance in Shannon gives way to charity: “Doesn’t matter. I’ll answer to Hey you.”

“Shannon,” adds Ken from the kitchen. The camera swings belatedly in his direction and rockily zooms in as he scrapes child-mashed scraps and ketchup into a little bucket. “She was Shannon when we met.”

“Whether I knew it or not,” she concedes. “Tillie is just a professional nom de guerre. Nom de photo,” Shannon offers, achieving a brisk, fully enunciated Parisian accent. A vocal curl amid her flat West Coast contralto.

With help from inserts of photographs and clips, a scrapbook pulled out of a drawer, newspaper headlines and ambiguous reactions from Ken, Carson leads Shannon through a brief summation of her life so far.

Leaving home for a small rural college, she renames herself Tillie Harm, partly due to an impetuous affinity for indie queen Jennifer Tillie, and partly as a rock and roll warning to the quiet preciousness of a liberal arts campus. It doesn’t take long for her to realize she was just yelling in the woods. She quits school, heads to Boston with her new identity intact and almost magically becomes the growling front woman of The Meesels.

[a clip shows her striding a little ungainly in black high heel boots, black leotard and frilly pink bustier.]

For those unfamiliar, the Meesels careened around the style of bands like Hole and Babes in Toyland, a musical path that culminated years later with The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. I don't think the Meesels were ever better than any of them, although, in retrospect, they meet the requirements of a successful band: some celebrity, tours, videos, two albums and disintegration after four years. “We all hated each other," Shannon says. "It was a race to be the one who left first.”

(Side note: it's hard to find any Tillie Harm retrospective interviews anywhere. Granted he has built-in access, but Carson's interview of his sister is, for some of us, a total coup.)

First husband, Travis Rex, guitarist of Killholler, kisses her in a handheld wedding video. She leers drunkenly for the camera. They’re on an ocean beach somewhere far from family. Images and references to Travis disappear soon after. “He was boring and a jerk and the band sucked. I almost want those years back.”

Modeling, artistic and otherwise, turns from a lark into a career. We see books by photographers like Harris Lord and his updates on Vegas red leather banquette glamor and Willa Schoendorf with her women as plastic architecture series. But mostly there is Danton Khoudry who in retrospect seems to have invented the sooty dawn-of-industry look absurdly popular back then, with sawdust pallor, ruddy eyes, spindles and needles in the mouth, ears and eyebrows, flour dust halos, sweaty flat hair and torn cotton or canvas apparel. Tillie was his muse.

In fact, Shannon clarifies this, saying she was the one fascinated with spindles, pinions and needles and what she calls “the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire look, with burn marks in billowy sleeves, grubby fingers and tears running down black powder. “Meant to be political and winding up tragically, depressingly hot and sexy,” she says. “Really, it's our ability to sexualize anything that separates us from other animals.”

Any way, after the success of Mill/Child, Danton Khoudry takes over not so much as husband but as sunglassed game warden. Following with camera behind Tillie, they become fixtures in the rarified, cross pollinating worlds of the European art scene, international conceptual fashion, and the rise of pornographic gangsterism in Eastern Europe, circa 1992.

Image of Tillie backstage in Milan straddling, barelegged, the smooth bald head of a blank-eyed runway model, her feet on the model’s upper arms like her head was an ostrich egg or Tillie, a living Versailles bird’s nest hat. At a cocktail party, kissing Croatian president and demagogue Franjo Tudjman on the mouth for Rolling Stone. Lying seductive as a ripe-hipped Venus on a spring-punctured mattress among neighborhood rubble, just as a landmine explodes in the background.

Partying and shopping with Dita Von Teese. Partying with Brazilian soccer star Lucien. Red carpets. Lounging in the white shambles of a loft in St. Petersburg where the only movement is the pluming smoke of her cigarette: the muse-star, pale enigma at rest. 

You will know, if you look on-line, there is more to come. Cameos in risky independent movies, music videos, British lad and tattoo magazine covers, more modeling, appearances at awards shows on the arms of actors and musicians looking for an edgy bump to their image. Ken arrives after all that, much later, long after Tillie Harm quits Danton Khoudry and resumes her life as Shannon Hancock, a couple years after her father dies.

Outside, the delicate screeching light of predawn. Shannon, in wool and wellies, makes her way around mud puddles into a small barn. From a discreet distance, we see Ken driving a backhoe. We can barely make out the engine chugging, but a small work lamp bouncing on top of his rollcage breaks the dark with a wobbling yellow light.

Shannon is inside the barn, milking a goat with a trans-species murmur. Carson narrates: “It’s a small farm my sister and Ken have – if that’s what you want to call it. It’s more like maintaining a small engine of sustenance. The grass feeds the goats and sheep, and the milk either goes into bowls of granola for her kids or over the hill to a couple who make cheese.

“It’s some of the best cheese I’ve ever had. Actually, it’s the only great cheese I’ve ever had. But Shannon is not one to be outdone and is trying her hand at cheese." Row upon dark-caverned row of little tuffets of cheese in the barn. "She welcomes the arrival of mold with motherly joy.

“That’s why I ask my sister if she’s turning into a survivalist.”

Inside the root cellar with the green and white pillows of cheese in the background, Shannon pauses, cut short by Carson’s question. Not that she’s angry – just containing a patience bordering on condescension.

“That sounds different than what I’m doing here,” Shannon says. “What we’re doing. I think it’s more working inside life, keeping it going. But there are definitely people around here, people we do business with who are you know hunkered down inside four windowless walls. Mr. and Mrs. Ted Kaczynksi types. We’re definitely more in the ‘isn’t nature wonderful?’ camp.”

A hand pulls open the heavy wooden door of a stone house. Black and ruddy clubs of meat dangle from rafters. “As if to show me, we visit another building, Ken’s smokehouse. This is the turbine of the family engine, capable of bringing in a steady source of income. I'm told by others that this smokehouse is the reason my sister fell in love with Ken.”

Outside, sitting on the flat wheel of a treestump, she begins formally: “We met when I was in this very expensive, very trendy, very organic restaurant way after lunch, when the staff was in between shifts, cleaning, getting ready for dinner. Clearly in the way, clearly being the guests who take advantage of being famous or rich. Or both. Famous-rich. Obnoxious.

“Me and four other people I didn’t really like, but I’d spent all night with them in this huge ... well I didn’t know why I was with them. But any way, there I was, still. Feeling sad, empty, withered, down to the wick. And just to get away from them and their eighth espresso I totter into the kitchen in my crazy heels and tell the chef who I am. I don’t really think he knows me, but either he smells money or fame or its his nature and he starts to show me around the kitchen when this delivery comes in. And it’s Ken. Bringing prosciutto. Swinging it over his shoulder like he just hunted it, bagged it, brought it home. And I thought, I want a home. I want someone like him to come home to me, with some kind of provision.”

She hasn’t really looked at the camera the whole time, pensively avoiding contact. The memory gives her a crooked, silly smile. “I forgot the chef, forgot my friends and followed him out to his truck and sort of made him take me with him.”

“I never dreamed my sister would marry a farmer,” Carson says to her.

Now she looks at Carson. “Nothing’s impossible. What about your mother as a born again? Or your brother as, whatever it is he’s doing? Compared to them, marrying a farmer is pretty sedate. Besides, I don’t think Ken’d know the difference between a seed and a pod. You can’t really call him a farmer.”

Carson adds, “He was up on a tractor this morning.”

A wry smile from Shannon. “He’s up to other things.”


/continued

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Next: What Ken's up to

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"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 7

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which evangelocalism is examined, and Mike Battle hosts the Hosanna Hills Christmas Eve talent show.

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Images of Hosanna Hills: the cross at the fifty yard line of the high school football field, the fully lit Life of Jesus diorama, people in prayer waiting for the Messenger shuttle bus.

“Hosanna Hills almost guarantees no bad eulogies,” Carson narrates. “The idea is  to have Christian people living and working together in a kind of all-hands, all-sharing way. Something usually found on communes.

"Only, as an unincorporated community with huge upfront costs but levies no taxes, it costs a lot of money to live here. And rich people tend not to want to form quilting circles. But that doesn't keep the idea from being very popular.”

We’re on scrabbly, yellow dirt hilltop over looking the tree and house stuffed community of Hosanna Hills. Carson, with jeans, a long sleeved shirt and sunglasses sits on a white rock that looks pretty uncomfortable, truth be told.

He says, “If you don't already know what I mean by evangelocalism ... .”

He turns to the development, contrasted by the barren desert hills surrounding it. “It's that. A newfangled flavor of American evangelism. Evangelism 2.0, if you will. Though if you look carefully, American history is full of places like this. Where likeminded people live together and preach to one another with safety and certainty.”

Cut to a table with magazines, books, DVDs, the word evangelocal on all. Carson narrates, “Until my mother moved here, I didn’t know that evangelocalism is kind of a hot topic, not only among evangelicals, but on the left, too. The secular left.

“There's been an article in Mother Jones by Carrie Midway called "Jesus at the Gates," in which she lives with her father in a community a lot like Hosanna Hills. There’s Inside Crossroads, a documentary about life in Crossroads Estates in Florida which played at Sundance. And there’s How Do You Want Your Jesus? a book by Daniel Fleischsinger, about the evangelocal movement in general.

 “And they all hit a central point: evangelocalism appropriates progressive impulses to buy local, trust your local craftsfolks, share in the costs of raising food, clothing and shelter in CSAs and other arrangements known elsewhere as dues or annual fees. To them, evangelocalism provides that satisfying veneer of commitment.”

Carson’s now walking down a sunny, Hosanna Hills sidewalk. It’s narrow, the color of sand, alongside a white gutter running dry and the freshly black asphalt roadbed. “I can’t really argue with that insight much. People who can afford to live in, say, Hosanna Hills don’t have to knit hats for a living, but they do so when the mood strikes. And then they put them in a box and take them to a store or supermarket for sale. That’s the new wrinkle in the old American evangelical communal inspiration: the Amana colonies meet Whole Foods.”

Shots of aisles and hat racks in a supermarket and other stores with signs saying, Pray and Buy Local! and Local Handcrafts Spread the Word of God, Too! And then little boxes of beads and bits of turquoise, scattered and left on a table somewhere in Dianne’s home.

“Even my mom tries her hand at jewelry, but not all that much.”

“But you have to admit,” Carson continues on the sidewalk, “that evangelocalism does pretty well. It succeeds because it gives evangelicals a wider berth than just a mega-church, even a franchised one. It gives them a town, the pride of community, where the rest of the secular world can’t interfere with your personal ministry. You don’t have to worry your florist is a closet pagan or homosexual or your kid’s teacher is a closet humanist. Or relativist. Or just a regular bumming sinner.”

More images of Hosanna Hills, kids playing soccer, neighbors waving at the camera in the parking lot, bake sales, the gated community entrance and lots of paperwork. “You’re also not worrying that other evangelicals might interfere with your ministry. Or stir things up into heresies because evangelocalism, like other gated communities is ruled with by-laws. Everyone signs a contract that says Jesus is your personal savior, that you are not a Muslim or Jew, that you are not homosexual. Or have a lousy credit report. And, most importantly, that you believe He will find you in the tumult of the apocalypse. Falter on any of these and you’re gone.”

Carson sits on the hillside lawn of Promontory Ministry. Behind him is the welcome sign for Promontory Ministry that reads, Jesus Saves You. Every day.
“What people who live here like the best is that two thousand years of argumentative Christian canon has been pressure cooked to diamond-strength theology, a single branded message: Jesus is your savior. That’s it. Everything else: work, money, success, grief, frustration, that’s all gravy. Even his teachings. Not really necessary. The apocrypha, the crazy Jesus-purists, cranky brimstoners  like James Dobson and difficult movies like The Passion of the Christ, or even the Bible: all pesky intellectualism. They have bookstores here, but probably because that’s where they sell coffee.

“The win for evangelocalism is its ‘we all agree Jesus is tops so don’t bother me’ anti-academicism. I know that sounds harsh and my mother will vehemently disagree. But I asked her if I could join her in a bible reading class, thinking there had to be a lot available. And she said there weren’t any. No one went because no one did the reading. Bible meetings, apparently, are not where it's happening in places like Hosanna Hills.

“What they love is to put on talent shows.”

A young, sullenly longhaired band concentrating on their playing under a pulsing red and white lightshow. A large woman in blue floor-length dress singing. A skit of vaudeville tramps peeking into the Bethlehem manger. Five girls trampolining for Jesus. The Ministry is in full swing under Mike Battle and his Christmas Eve service. It looks, in fact, like a polished, well-produced variety show, the kind that used to be on television Sunday nights. Preacher-in-Chief Battle, the master of ceremonies, is always the first to applaud as he makes way across the stage to thank and interview the performers.

Carson narrates: “In a way I’m glad my mother found a place like Hosanna Hills, although it does take some recalibration to see her as a Christian. Before this, I mostly knew her as a modern upper middle class mother and housewife. Like my father – interested in Hollywood gossip, running her business and drinking martinis.

“Now, she has a place to belong to and is, I think, happy. Which makes me happy. It even seems like quibbling when I think how much money she spends just to ensure her eulogy won’t be a downer.”

The Rev. Dr. Mike Battle, in handsome flannel business suit and "Happy Jesus' Birthday" tie during Christmas services at the Ministry, preaching to his congregation in very comfortable looking stadium seats with cup holders. He prowls the proscenium, wireless mic in hand.

“Jesus, I told him – and remember, I’m in the DMV – a godless place if there ever was one [great laughter] – I tell that young man behind the counter, Jesus never needed to take an eye test. He can see for miles and miles and miles and he sees you and me right now. He sees everything. [He looks up at the cross behind him] Don’t you, Sir? Yes, you do. And thank you. Thank you for helping me see those tiny little letters on the DMV eye test. I owe you one.”

[turning back to tickled audience] “And you owe him one too, don’t you? Who’s going to deny that we all owe Jesus one? Maybe more than one? Maybe something for real? Like your heart. The young people call that giving ‘props.’ You’ve heard them use that. Your sons and daughters and grandkids. ‘Props.’ Well, I give props to Jesus. Props to Jesus! [woot-woots and applause] That’s right. Woo-hoo! Props to Jesus!”

[later] “So when I say, did you get the memo? Let me tell you what that memo says. [lifting a piece of paper, adjusting glasses, reading] The Christmas memo, dated December 25th, signed by Jesus Our Lord and Savior. Drafted in three parts. And it sounds a lot like what the angel said to the shepherds. A long time ago.

“One – Celebration. There’s an invasion underway. I am coming down to earth and nothing will ever be the same again. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I bring you news of hope and joy. You all have heard that, right? Well it’s time to celebrate that. He's already come once. This memo says, 'Be ready.'

“Two – Salvation. He whomsoever believeth in me will be my friend tonight and every night and will sitteth with me in heaven on the right handed side of God. Need I say more? I didn’t think so.

“Three – Community. Christmas is a time of coming together, just like we’re doing now. All of us. Give yourselves a hand, for coming out on this night. Go on [lots of sustained applause]. There may be sadness and there may be heartache, out there and in here. We’re only human. But today, none of that matters, because Jesus is here and so are you.

“So say hello to that person you’re sitting behind. Go ahead, they won’t bite. [squeaky sounds of people turning in their leather seats, getting up and saying hello]. You may not agree with them. You may not even like them. But Jesus wants you to love them. Goodwill towards men. And women. And children. And dogs and cats and birds and fish and hamsters. Merry Christmas, everyone! Merry Christmas!”

In Mike Battle’s executive-styled office. His broad desk is in the background, the room’s power spot. He sits in a comfortable arm chair, in his purple shirt and white collar. A fabulous hilltop view of a beautiful sunny day in Hosanna Hills stretches behind him.

“I’ve thought long and hard on what you’re asking,” Mike Battle says. “In the best, general sense, Christmas is a time of encouragement. At the end of the year, you may have plenty to look back upon, and plenty to look forward to. That’s an indispensable mission of Christmas.

“The reindeer – and you didn’t mention the Santa parade, but you could have. Were you here for that?"

"We were sorry to miss it," Carson says off camera.

"I am too, son. A whole lot of heart and love went into that. And that's the important thing. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Truth be told, at first, that took a lot of soul searching for a preacherly heart like mine. There was no argument, no opposition on the board of governors. But when you’re a shepherd, in a leadership position like mine, you have to be remarkably sensitive to the swells of emotion in your flock. In my case, 19,316 people. 

“We decided that the Santa parade and the reindeer are for the children. In all of us. You can’t just say – and I know a lot of ministries that do – that reindeer and Santa are blasphemous. I'm sorry. That just doesn’t fly. And God understands that. And you have to think Jesus probably kinda likes it, too. A lot.

“Christmas is the day Jesus was born. You just have to celebrate that. It has to be the greatest day of the year and the greatest day of your life. You can’t wish Him happy birthday enough, in thanks and praise. And if everyone celebrates that, then wonderful. That’s better than I or any other poor wretch of a preacher could hope for. It’s only a good thing that Jews, bless their souls, celebrate it. And Asians, and Indians, and Africans. The entire world celebrates the birth of Jesus, because Jesus loves the world, and the world loves him back.”

Slow fade to black on Mike Battle’s buoyant smile.

/continued

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Next: Solstice festivities with Carson's sister, Shannon

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011