There is a surprising number of people who ignore heinous behavior.  Take, for example, the well-known “in-laws” phenomenon. Families of people who otherwise wouldn’t piss on each other if they were on fire quietly trudge through tense Thanksgiving dinners and reunions in the name of keeping the peace, preferring to suffer the company of their insufferable in-laws rather than screw up the courage to just say, “Y’know what Bob? You

The Silent Sufferers Give Thanks

do this every year, and I’m sick of it. Get it together or get out.”  Sure, there are fantasies of telling old Uncle Bob off, but more often than not, the terrible behavior is dismissed with a sigh and a resolution to just soldier on. The occasional passive-aggressive barb might slip out whilst tersely clearing the dishes, but typically, folks just won’t say the difficult thing to their relatives and in-laws because they’re afraid what might happen.

I’m all-too familiar with what might happen because, as it turns out, both Jen and I aren’t wired to tacitly accept terrible behavior. We discovered this when Jen became pregnant with Max and we were in the position of having to confront Jen’s mother to protect our child. Jen’s mother sexually abused Jen growing up and we were wrought up trying to figure out how we were going to protect Max from her while still not confronting the problem.  As it is with most families who suffer this kind of hidden abuse, the victim is the one who is cast in the role of protector to the abuser. So for years, Jen had protected the mother through her silence because she was shamed and manipulated to do so. But faced with the need to protect her own child, the Mother Bear instinct kicked in and gave Jen the courage to confront what seemed an insurmountable taboo. As a result, Jen was able to heal herself from this childhood trauma. She also lost all capacity to tolerate other people’s bullshit behavior. If you  have no choice but to confront your own mother for crimes on this scale, suddenly, generating the huevos to tell off old Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving ain’t nothing but a thing.

For those who haven’t been through it, here’s what happens when you confront someone’s terrible behavior: They throw a tantrum. Because they expect you to put up with their bullshit, they see you as the one in the wrong. They accuse you of all manner of wrong-doing; cast you as the Most Unreasonable Person Ever. They throw everything at you that they can think to throw, and when their accusations fail to turn your resolve, they storm off in an indignant huff. They do this so that they can avoid any accountability for their own bullshit behavior. Jen’s mother hasn’t spoken to us since, which is better, probably. We certainly won’t have to suffer any creepy Thanksgiving dinners with her.

This trait is not unique to sociopathic pedophiles, however. Garden-variety assholes will pitch the exact same fit when you confront their taboos. I have recently re-discovered that my brother is one such asshole. A little background is in order: Both my parents passed away at young ages, and as the eldest of four, I felt, mistakenly, that the parental torch had been passed to me. The brother in question was sharing an apartment with my dad when he died, and so, because I owned a house and felt the need, I moved him in with me. Jen felt a particular affinity for him because he was cast adrift at a young age much like her. She adopted him as her own brother.

Fast-forward past a horrible marriage which we warned him not to enter into: Jen and I were cast as The Most Unreasonable People Ever and earned the title “The Analyzers” for this. When he finally started talking to us again, I prepared the divorce papers for him for free, we helped him find a place down the street from us, and Jen re-adopted him.  All’s well that ends well, right? Not so much.

To protect the innocent, I won’t go into detail, but recently our son Max asked Jen and I to  confront some bad behavior involving the brother’s household. It was causing a fair amount of stress on our little boy so we knew we had to say something. At first, the brother was agreeable, receptive, and we seemed to be on the same page. However, that didn’t last long. Apparently, the guy has two faces, because even though he will take full advantage of our hospitality, he has been “warning” people about the “Analyzers” (his words). Soon, I began receiving totally aggro texts from the fellow, and ultimately a screaming drunken phone call which I couldn’t even understand enough to be insulted by.

His accusations this time illustrate my point beautifully. I’ll put it here in his words:

 The Analyzers have Proclomated [sic] again!…..Everyone who has the privelege [sic] of being friends or family w you must stay in line or we may run the risk of  ’Behaving Badly’ and be reprimanded. Who do you all think you are?

Here’s who we think we are: We’re kind, loving, sensitive people who are accountable for our own bad behavior, and we’re raising our son to be the same. We’re also raising him NEVER to suffer quietly when someone does him wrong. So to a certain degree, he’s right: If you do want to be our friend, or if you are in our family, we will call out your bad behavior rather than sweep it under the rug. We won’t be shamed into silence when someone behaves badly: we’re just not wired that way. That’s the example we will set for our son.  So, take or leave that. And if you don’t like it, I guess we probably won’t be seeing you at Thanksgiving.

This sums it up nicely:

One of D. Ray’s sons is Jesco White, the Dancin’ Outlaw. He’s the subject of several documentaries, the first of which was The Dancin’ Outlaw and the most recent of which is the Wild Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. 

If you haven’t seen The Dancin’ Outlaw, this will give you the general idea:

Jesco’s movies travelled with me to Arizona where I met Jen. Being a California girl—and being Jen—she was so fascinated by Jesco, she adopted many of his sayings into her vernacular, like referring to her sunglasses as her “costly shades,” or referring to having a few drinks as “huffing gasoline.”  She even wrote a song about Jesco’s adventure in Dancin’ Outlaw II - Jesco Goes To Hollywood. (Standby for a late March 2013 release!)

So naturally, when we went to visit my old stomping grounds in WV one winter, she wanted to meet Jesco, and she was insistent. I wasn’t sure it could happen, but we asked my Dad about it and he dialed up an attorney friend in Boone County who gave us a pretty good description of where Jesco could be found. We borrowed my grandmother’s Buick, and off we went.

The bartender at the Pioneer Inn told us more or less which dirt road to follow to Jesco’s but we actually had to knock on a few neighbor’s doors and ask around to get an exact location (only in the back hollers of West Virginia can you really do this). Finally, we got some reliable information, drove across a creek (in my grandmother’s Buick!) and arrived at a gate with this sign:

The Point of No Return

At this point, though we’d come a long way and gone to a lot more trouble than I expected, I was genuinely considering giving up the ghost. I did not want to get either or both of us shot or killed for trespassing, and I knew that Jesco would  have guns, and he would be wary of visitors. I also knew that he had a history of violence. Jen waved this off with a bravado worthy of Steve McQueen. She argued that if we ARE going to get killed, wouldn’t this be the way to go? I had no effective rebuttle for that air-tight logic, so we abandoned the Buick and continued on foot to Jesco’s trailer.

We traipsed through the snow for a while until we arrived at this trailer. The neighbors we had pestered must’ve tipped Jesco off because he came outside while we were quite a distance off and, predictably, he had a rifle with him. I yelled across the expanse at him, fervently hoping he would hear and understand.

 

 

“Is that you, Jesco?”

“Yeah! Who is it?”

“My name’s Ikner. My daddy knew your daddy.”

That was all it took. He welcomed us like long lost family.

Jen and Jesco at Jesco’s trailer

We hung around his trailer a bit, gave him the Christmas present we brought (a yard-sign that says “How Bad can I Be And Still Get to Heaven?”) and called his sister, Mamie. Mamie suggested we pick up their mom, Birty, and come over to her place in Gordon to party. So, Jesco, Jen and I piled into the Buick, stopped off at a gas station to pick up some booze, and headed for Van, WV where Birty lived, then on to Mamie’s.

Jen and Mamie

Jesco approaches peak weirdness

At Mamie’s, we sat and visited, drank too damn much Smirnoff Ice, and Jesco started dancing right there on the linoleum. Jen’s head nearly exploded at the excitement of it all. Naturally, she threw up in the driveway. Birty, The Miracle Woman, comforted her: “Oh honey, we’re mountain folk, we all do that from time to time.” At this point, Jen was ready to move in and stay forever. They would have let her too. But, being from Boone county I knew that, under circumstances like these, it’s wise to get out of the holler before dark. You don’t want to stick around so long that things reach peak weirdness back there. So, I convinced Jen to leave her new-found family, though not without a fight. They sent us off with a signed Jesco T-shirt and a couple of joints of “Black African” and we exchanged numbers with promises to stay in touch. Which we did. The White family were all quite hospitable and genuinely lovely folks, and though it’s been a few years since we’ve seen them, we still think of them like family.

Jen, by contrast, has pleaded with me for years (usually at the height of some band-related fiasco or another) to just change my mind about that and get with the duo thing. After all, whether we have a band or not, Dutch Holly is a duo.

But ever since the Mayan Calendar ended, the poles have apparently shifted. This was breathlessly predicted by a slew of well-intentioned folks to whom I was utterly disinclined to pay the slightest bit of attention. Woe is me. For the past few weeks I have been resisting involving other players, and Jen has been lobbying for guest players at our upcoming show.

However, due to the “Joaquinian” incident described below, I am happy to report that we have reached accord on the issue for what I believe is the very first time. Ever. But first, “what is Joaquinian?” you might ask. A little history:

Years ago, as we are wont to do, Jen  and I accepted a headlining gig in L.A. without A.) having a band or B.) having any kind of cogent set rehearsed. We figured we had enough lead-time, and it would serve to get us into gear to put something together. Soon, we picked up a guitarist who said that he had a percussionist/DJ-type friend, we’ll call him Tom Joaquin (not his real name), and since we were doing an electronic thing back then, we said sure, let’s give him a try. Jen and I had programmed some beats on a drum machine and worked out a few parts which we recorded and sent over to Mr. Joaquin who was going to familiarize himself with our sound, and come up with something complimentary.

The Coconut Teaszer gig: Note Joaquin in the gas mask. No idea who the fellow in the coat is! That kind of night.

The day of the first Joaquin/Guitarist/Dutch Holly collaboration rehearsal arrived. We arrived at the Joaquin residence which turned out to be his parents’ house. We should’ve known something was up when Tom’s mother greeted us all-a-twitter that her Tommy finally had some friends to play with. Tom rolled out his innovations: A large concert bass-drum and a DAT recording of several tracks of television news comentary overlapped on top of one another and run through an echo pedal.  We struggled through a few tunes while Tom banged away on the bass drum (with mallets) and we strained to hear each other over the weird news chatter. It was later revealed that Joaquin was highly agorophobic and had been heavily medicated for years. We felt too sorry for him to dismiss him entirely so we played the gig with Joaquin anyway. We figured it would be good for him. (We did insist that he leave the bass drum out of it). Somewhere, there is some classic video footage of a horrified crowd at the Coconut Teaszer being bombarded with weird electronica over a burbling bed of Fox and CNN maunderings. Joaquin did three things: Press the “Play” and “Stop” buttons on the DAT, skulk around the stage in a gas-mask, and snap pictures of the crowd as they struggled to find meaning in it all. Also, Jen was wearing bat wings and a tutu.

Nick

Had it not been for our dear friend and long-suffering bandmate, Nick Steadnitz, Jen wouldn’t have been there at all. She would have been living the romantic life of a bohemian expatriot in London or possibly Paris. However, Nick assisted her in getting summarily deported from both England and Ireland in the same week.  Also, had it not been for Nick, we probably would have still been bickering about whether to involve other players.

Although I was reluctant to allow it, Nick is an exception to almost every rule, so he was over at the house the other day sitting in on stand-up bass. He’s a great musician so it seemed that the see-saw was tilted firmly in the direction of involving other players for the upcoming show. He began talking about his friend, I’ll call him Michael Scarn (not his real name), sitting in on percussion. We arranged for a rehearsal. A few days later at that rehearsal, Scarn looked a little out of his element. He arrived with some animal-skin drums, several gourd shakers, and a flute. We started playing and we could tell right away that the Ghost of Joaquin was among us. Later, Scarn explained that he was not in fact — nor had he ever been — a percussionist. In fact, the animal-skin drums and gourd shakers were decorations that had been kind of lying around Nick’s house. Since Scarn’s mother was not there with a heartbreaking gleam in her misty eyes, and since we had learned our lesson from Joaquin, we reached a decision that day: A duo it is. (For this show).

I’m not sure when this started, but as I look back over the past few months, I suppose the signs have been clear enough. Perhaps it started when Jen struck up an extra-marital Facebook affair with L. Royston Patrick, whom I’ll grant you, is quite the dandy fellow.

Jen Toasts L. Royston Patrick

Can’t say as I blame her, the cultural shift in our household has been nothing short of grand. We haven’t indulged in the idiocy of mainstream television for longer than I remember, but Jen’s FB dalliances have become the content of our television screen. Now, I can watch her carrying on with Royston, a variety of world-class (street)visual artists whom she has managed to befriend,  and any number of International Men of Mystery in real time. She toasts them with whiskey. She makes me take pictures.

The current Center of the Universe

Now, our living room, which used to be an accommodating area for the entertainment of guests, has become the rehearsal area. I have been summarily fired as Dutch Holly’s Human Resources Manager (after the Great Band Debacle of 2011), and Jen is calling the shots on who gets to play with us now.

Now that I’ve got it all down in black and white, I can’t say it’s entirely a bad thing. As I sat down to write this, she told me: “You’re the writer, so just get to work. You’ve got a video to make next.” I sigh under the weight of it. “Don’t sigh at me in that tone of voice. I’m making it happen and you are too. It’s not like you’re a servant, look I’m doing the housework while you’re typing that. I’ll be your servant as long as you’ll do my bidding.”

Fair enough. Standby for the forthcoming video that I have been assigned.

Here’s the most recent effort from Dutch Holly headquarters. This is the single from an upcoming full-length we’re calling “Tanglewood” which we expect to release in the fall of 2012.

Track credits:

Jen Juniper: Vocals, hand claps

Tres Ikner: Vocals, hand claps, drums/percussion, keys, bass, guitar

Akaya Lee: Cello

Steph Griffin: Trumpet

I have come to believe that before we are born into this world, and forget most of what we really are, we are cognizant beings who longingly press our noses against the glass of Earth’s atmosphere and say to ourselves “Doesn’t that look fun?”

It’s strange to think that not only did we want to be born into a war-torn country or a third-world nation, or even a stilted picket-fence neighborhood in a stuffy white-bread suburb, but that we affirmatively chose this world. Why would we do that?

I believe it’s all about contrast. War-heroes come from war-torn countries. Ghandi and Mandela rose from humble beginnings. Brilliant artists, authors, speakers and scientists too numerous to mention had their origins in the suburbs. The way I see it, if you’ve been floating around in the non-physical ether long enough – possessing the ability to go, do, see, have or be anything anywhere at any time – you’ll probably start to think “man, this is too easy.”

It’s like eating only mashed-potatoes. Sure, you could spice up your spuds a little with chives, bacon bits, what have you, but it’s all ultimately cosmic, outside-of-time, 5D mashed potatoes. So when we saddle up to go Earthbound, I imagine we’re good and ready for something different on the menu. A spirit swaggers in to the restaurant of its choice, and orders up a heaping serving of whatever looks fun. Some go to McLife and order from the dollar menu. Others go to Tavern on the Guff and order the most expensive thing they’ve got (“I’ll have the Oil-Baron-Fillet with your finest bottle of Inherited Wealth.”) Seems like a lot of us go into a mid-level chain like Outback Life House and order something popular, telling them to go easy on the contrast.

Jen’s spirit didn’t do that. Her soul is the adventurous type. I’m pretty sure it sidled up to some chic cosmic sushi-bar where they give you the itemized menu-slip with checkboxes and a little pencil, and you start checking off the items and quantities you want. She was in a wicked mood when she placed her order, and she picked some of the spiciest stuff they had.

“Hmm, let’s see, I think I’ll take a couple of parental-betrayal-rolls with some wasabi-creepy-incestuous-family on the side. Ooh, some media-driven-body-shame-sashimi should go nicely with that. Of course, I have to have a few black-bean-childhood-traumas (I always get those when I come here), and I’ll wash it down with a carafe of artistic-temperament-sake. ”

I imagine my soul was there with her, feeling intimidated, knowing that it couldn’t possibly hang. It probably said something like “I’ll just have the teriyaki-untimely-parental-death with a side of tempura-eldest-child-paternalistic-guilt” in a lame attempt to impress her. Certainly, my spirit partook in a shot or two of artistic-temperament-sake, but didn’t get wasted.

So as we brave the hardships of this life together, we find immense comfort in the idea that the greater parts of us actually chose this. Even under the worst circumstances we can have a laugh at the thought of our swaggering mashed-potato-worn spirits bellying up to the bar and slapping down the cash for an unforgettable meal. Unforgettable, that is, until next time. (I’m personally hoping for a reservation at Tavern on the Guff).

]]> http://dutchholly.com/petition-to-save-the-prescott-community-bench/feed 0 http://dutchholly.com/dutch-holly-interviewed-on-the-folk-sessions http://dutchholly.com/dutch-holly-interviewed-on-the-folk-sessions#comments Sun, 11 Sep 2011 05:54:58 +0000 Tres http://dutchholly.com/?p=1831 We recently had the rare pleasure of joining Tom Agostino in his Chino Valley studio for the full hour of the September 10th edition of The Folk Sessions. It aired on September 10, 2011.