Some days are for looking and some days are for thinking. Last Sunday was a looking day.1 So I headed to the Mississippi River to see what was different now.
Tallulah, Louisiana, Polaroid SX-70 (all photos 2021 unless noted)
My first stop was down on the banks of Vicksburg. The River was quiet that day, barely burbling. Thick dark mud sucking at my heels, I leaned over carefully and patted the surface, the same way I would the neck of a gnarled old German shepherd with patchy fur, trying to communicate both respect and affection.
Like an old song played by new hands, Vickburg had changed. This was in part due to some physical alteration—painters were laying thick bright primary colors over the Hotel Asam, née Motel Dixiana. Bright reds and whites, cheerful greens and yellows. Down the street, the palmist had scrubbed the peering pyramid from her window, replaced by a new vinyl sign in the front yard.
Vicksburg, Polaroid SX-70
View of the inn from Louisiana Circle, ca. 2020, via Holga and expired Ilford HP5
But the palimpsest of the South is ever scraped clean and painted again. I was delighted to see things in the hot winter light I had never seen before—a Bull Durham tobacco advertisement here, a titantic bough of flowering holly there. The sign was probably older than my parents by decades, just quietly fading off a wall on Speed Street for the past century. Scattered in the street before it was an empty bottle of Faygo creme soda and bright red Izod boxer briefs with a stray mask. Friday night must have been something.
Vicksburg, Polaroid SX-70
Vicksburg, Polaroid SX-70
I wandered over the River bridge and around the middle tried as best I could to lean over the passenger seat and stick my 600 out the window. I wonder how many wrecks have been on the bridges over the Mississippi by artists jobbing their cameras out the window to try to make a photograph at fifty miles an hour? Fine, it was probably only 45 mph, sorry to the 18 wheelers behind me who were roaring West like they were hunting for gold.
Technically Maybe Louisiana, Polaroid 600
I spent the rest of the day looking at walls and signs in Tallulah. It was so quiet. After I made the Polaroid of the nail salon, I got back into the car and turned on the radio. I knew but didn’t know the song, which my phone told me was “Poison” by Alice Cooper. I texted my Pop how does Siri work so bad but Shazam works so well, as we both like to marvel at how quickly it can figure out a song, nearly any song. A train screamed by, whistle blaring. The Western Auto next door had Jesus Is the Reason painted on the window over a red cross, and the sky was a bright blue.
Tallulah, Polaroid SX-70
Tallulah, Polaroid SX-70
I’ve been sitting here scanning and writing from dark until right now, when a golden glow has suffused the tall, tall trees in the backyard, listening to The Band grin their way through “Atlantic City.” Has anyone ever sang “Everything dies baby, that’s a fact,” with greater acceptance than Levon Helm? I think Bruce wrote it sad, sang it so danged sad, and just to hear it could make me drop my head with heartbreak, missing the past, missing the warmth of the summer, missing yesterday. That one lyric would just crack me open, and my old friend from New Jersey didn’t seem very confident that anything would ever get better. The world is ending, he seemed to say, so let’s spend it together, one last time.
But that’s not how The Band does it. Levon leans hard into the next line—not the nihlistic comfort of the original, but as a fact; he just jams on it, reminding us that there’s no real ending, just something larger. Of course everything dies, he sings with that lopsided Arkansas smile.
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
“WORSHIP SERVICE” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life and 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.
Alabama had a bye week, which didn’t hurt.