VERSE CHORUS VERSE

The Delta and its endless stories and songs

There is a privilege in aging, a quiet joy to be allowed to see a pattern in this world, or repeat certain actions enough to perceive a pattern or even create one. And I am old enough now to know that there are endless infinities to Mississippi, an unending story which wanders generally in the same place but has different details, colors, characters, looping back on itself over and again.

In Natchez, one of the oldest stories still standing in the State, Polaroid SX-70 (all photos 2023)

So last weekend I looked for some of the old stories again, and tried to echo some of the old songs in playing new tunes. The Friday night before I had gotten to hear Sally Mann and Maude Schuyler Clay in conversation at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Everyone was there—Mule, Sansone, McCabe, ABC, actually several photographers who just work in instant or incorporate it a lot, plus a whole section of painters—you were there, too, but I was in the back and darted off during the Q&A because it makes me nervous, I’m sorry for not speaking.

Obviously then you drive up Highway 1 and make you a “Sally Mann Deep South photo” while listening to Muddy Waters! That story never gets old, does it? Maybe it does, but it feels good to read it, to speak it, to write it again.

This was a beautiful and sunny day, so it’s a little bit of a fraud, Polaroid SX-70

On the banks of Lake Washington there’s all sorts of stories, and even though there were blue skies, a couple of houses exerted the gravitic power of decay. Did I walk up in here? Absolutely not, I’m not messing with any ghosts if I can avoid it.

House of Mystery, Washington County, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70

Mount Holly’s story ended, more or less, during a summer’s fire less than a decade ago. Now its story is just the little songbirds hopping in the bushes, the sun glinting off the crushed cans of Busch Light strewn in the ruins. Such is the end for all great houses.

Both the Frostop and the Pasquale’s are long gone from Greenville (as is the SteinMart they shared a parking lot with), but this giant mug of root beer remains. The world needs more giant painted mugs of root beer, not less!!

The story of the Chinese people of the Mississippi Delta is rich and often obscured by other currents in the State. I had never before visited the cemetery in Greenville, and only accidentally stumbled upon it while looking for a different place of memories.

As I wandered through the well-maintained grounds, I realized with dawning horror that the lovely, formal photographs carefully attached to some of the markers had been defaced. Can the details of these stories be recreated? Can one restore a manuscript that someone tried to erase?

And elsewhere in Greenville, time itself was eating old stories, the inexorable grip of entropy turning down the volume knob. (I know that’s a lot of metaphors, but that’s just how I talk, I know it’s a lot to deal with before noon on a Sunday).

FRENCH FRIES, Polaroid SX-70

I am not the first to tell many of these stories, and some I only share to point y’all towards first person sources. Some of them may barely be words at all anymore, just emotion and feeling. Stories do not stay the same. Like songs, every new singer tells them differently, no matter how much they try to stay faithful.

Leland, Mississippi, I think Polaroid 600

I don’t really have an ending to this story about stories. I caught a flash of purple out of the corner of my eye while walking through the house a few minutes ago, and have been in the backyard making photos of the Japanese magnolia since then. It’s beautiful outside, clear and blue, and what with all the rain the azaleas are beginning to bloom. They really ought not to, since there’s plenty of frost left to come this year. But it will be beautiful until then, and maybe I will remember it one day, and it will conjure a smile.

“VERSE CHORUS VERSE” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.