This post is first and foremost a tribute to John Prine, an incredible songwriter and musician taken too soon. Experts and professionals in the industry have much more in depth and accurate analysis of this music, but for me, the rawness and truth behind all of his songs speaks to the larger underlying core of the diversity but similarity that creates southerness.
For better tributes see John Huey’s in Gun and Garden, Yola’s on instagram, or Natalie Hemby’s on instagram.
In Spite of Ourselves
The witty, tongue-in-cheek, and real nature of this song is a embodiment of a traditional southern approach of owning your flaws and being proud of them, if not also turning them into a joke.It is a sweet lighthearted song (loosely based of two characters in a movie Prine acted in) that reminds us we are no better than anyone else and to not take ourselves too seriously. This is by no means Prine’s most critically acclaimed or most famous song, it is just a personal favorite.
Untitled, c. 1983-1986
Pigment print
William Eggleston, native southerner, captures the beauty and mystery of everyday life in all his works. Most famous for being the catalyst behind the new southern color photography movement: his photographs always have a sentiment of classic but modern all at once.
The Virus
Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown is a southern Poet who’s formal style but deep understanding of human emotion places him as one of the best poets of our generation.
This poem is not necessarily speaking to anything exclusively southern, but things that are at the core of the regions issues: hatred and racism. However, given our current climate as a global population, it is also interesting to read and think about it in the literal meaning and definition of ‘virus,’ and where the complexities Brown is expressing also have a crossover into the physical world.
Dubbed undetectable, I can’t kill
The people you touch, and I can’t
Blur your view
Of the pansies you’ve planted
Outside the window, meaning
I can’t kill the pansies, but I want to.
I want them dying, and I want
To do the killing. I want you
To heed that I’m still here
Just beneath your skin and in
Each organ
The way anger dwells in a man
Who studies the history of his nation.
If I can’t leave you
Dead, I’ll have
You vexed. Look. Look
Again: show me the color
Of your flowers now.
From The Tradition. Copyright © 2019 by Jericho Brown.
A Good Man is Hard to Find, but a Good Place is Not 
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