Cumberland Blues

– Or otherwise known as “The Overly Satirical Ballad of the Broke Southern Writer.” (Kid safe version)

Yeah, sue me; I’m going to rant for a bit on this one. I know you don’t want to hear me griping about my existence, but sometimes you have to get things off your chest. So what’s the deal? Try being out of work, out of luck and almost out on the street for the first time in your life. No wait, don’t try it. Let me just give you some insight into my life for a moment so you’ll know how to avoid getting here by way of the short bus.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m flat broke and to be honest, I’ve never been this poor in my entire life. People are coming up to me now going, “Oh Will, looks like you lost a little weight there buddy, great!” Well, yeah, we call it the new “Starvation Diet Program” down here in the South, it’s the new fad. I bet your going to ask me how you can get on it, right? Well that’s simple, go to one of the finest colleges in the United States, rack up some serious student loans, try to do the right thing by your friends and don’t pay any real attention to what is going on around you. Worked great from me, and here I am! However, I’m not alone on this one and others are joining the ranks everyday. We’re part of the new growing, contingent of American society known as “The Over-Educated and Under Paid” crowd. Yep, I’m guilty of being an intelligent, decent and honest human being during a crashing economy. Not something that you want to be during a time like this, trust me.

Couple that with the fact that I’m a Southern, mostly Caucasian male and you get instant unemployment now a-days. I’ve tried to explain the situation to a few of my friends, but I really don’t think that they are getting it. The whole mess nearly drove me to get out a bullhorn the other night so that I could pound my point home for those that don’t have an ear. They just don’t seem to understand that trying to be a writer during this stretch of human history is pretty darn hard. Now add, if you would, the fact that I took the whole honest journalism thing to heart, ran with it and started speaking my mind. That has made me instantly unemployable by most standards. You pretty much have to be a darn good liar these days to get and keep a job. Not only do they want you to lie, they encourage it. Ever take one of those Human Resources ethics tests? Well, if you haven’t, let me tell you about it. First, they pull you into a room and ask you a lot of questions about how you’d handle this or that, you know, to see if they can get you to reveal a little more about your ‘state of mind’. Most of the questions sound like malarkey, but they are serious about how you answer each one. Take this example:

“If your relative had been late to work one day, for instance, your mother, would you report her to your immediate supervisor?”

Now, how would YOU answer that? Seriously.

Think about it. Don’t burn that mental rubber too long. Could you really bust the woman that wiped your butt for the first years of your life, fought like heck to feed and clothe you, then turn her into your boss? Heck no, not in a million years. So what would you do? Well, on those tests they want you say that you would, but you know in your heart you wouldn’t be caught dead ratting out your mom. They know that too, they’re not stupid and they spend millions of dollars on research each year just for these tests. To be honest with you, Corporate America or the government (take your pick since they are both the same), want to know if you can lie well. Better yet, they want to know if you are willing to do it for the company and take one for the ‘home team’ when the time comes. They truly want liars to fill the ranks and apparently they want a boatload of them. The situation makes you wonder if they actually believe that without dishonest people, corporate operations would come to a halt and the nation would go down the tubes in a New York minute. Corporations and governmental entities need people who lack serious moral integrity because it’s good for business.

If you’re going to be a cop, they want you to be young, stupid and aggressive. If you were thinking about management; then they would want you to be ruthless, cutthroat and dishonest. Flipping burgers, heck they’ll take anyone now (unless your educated, then you’re a threat to management and there is no way in heck your going to get that job.) No, don’t label me as being an uncompassionate bastard, this is how the world works now and that’s the truth. Just don’t tell anyone, or else you’ll be out of work too.

So what’s wrong with a little white lie?

Well, a lot actually. Took my mother years to break me of the habit of lying to get out of trouble. Years. When I came back from the military and then later, from the government, I had gotten worse. Heck, I was really good at it, top notch one could say. Nashville got a hold of me as well, and soon after the corporate music industry was through, I knew how to lie my way out of biker bar while wearing a pink tutu. Still, my mother knew that I had been piling it on deep and hard during that period of my life and she cornered me on it one day. She would ask me about my friends, and I’d make up a story or two. When she questioned me about money and my job, heck I lied about that as well. Problem was, she is my mother, knows everything about me and she was quick to ascertain that I was full of crap. So, she called me on it.

“Son, if you keep lying to people, then that’s all you’ll ever have out of life. You don’t really keep any serious friends and you’ll never be happy. Besides, your better than that.”

She’s right, and over the past few years, I’ve straightened up my act. What I’ve learned from the whole mess can be summed up in a few lines, so I’ll share.

Brutal honesty is a rare gem in today’s world and there are but a few people left that appreciate seeing it in the wild. When you start to live a life that is more honest to yourself and those around you, you’ll find out that most of your good timing buddies as my grandparents would call them, don’t want to be around you any more. Honesty is like that because it takes our foolish fancies by the throat, chunks them against the rocks and gives us a well-needed, swift kick in the butt. Add a dash of integrity to your conversations and you’ll soon discover that most people don’t want to listen to what you have to say anymore. Take this common human exchange for example. You may be walking down the street or coming into work one morning. Sometime during the course of your day, they might even throw out a greeting or two. They’ll ask you something like this, “Hey, how are you?” Right after that, they might shake your hand, smile real big and expect you to come back with the classical array of canned social responses. God help you if you really tell them what is on your mind, people just don’t want to hear it. But my friends, for Bob’s sake, don’t bring that newfound attitude of honesty into your work place. You’ll find out that it’s not welcome there, and if you keep at it, soon you won’t be either.

Let’s ratchet that bolt a little tighter.

Here’s a great example of what happened to me when I ran into a pastor recently that worked on cars. Now, you’d think that a pastor of all people would at least ‘try’ to be honest since they’re ‘folk of the Lord.’ That’s not always the case. I’ve been without at car now going on six months since this preacher that I ran into took over $700 bucks to fix my engine and transmission. Want to know where he is now? Don’t ask me, I couldn’t tell you jack about his current twenty. Nada. He’s gone, the car’s gone and so is my money. Each time that I dealt with him, I tried to be honest, but it didn’t work. While he was in town, he would constantly lie to me about when the car would be done and how much more money he needed to fix it. I’d fork over the cash, and he’d go buy the parts to work on the car. He’d stop in every few weeks to let me know how it had been going, but he was offering me no true proof of progress. When I’d tried to corner him on it, he’d bring up God and patience or something to do with his health, just to make me feel guilty. At one point, too much was ‘too much’, and I went after him. I about sued him, but he rushed through the project and told me to come get my car. By that time, I was just happy as heck to be getting my ride back. So, I got my neighbor to take me over to his shop to pick up the vehicle. Want to know what happened on the way home? Yep, you guessed it; the engine broke down. I took it back that time and demanded that he finally fix my Honda. Big mistake. I haven’t seen him but one other time. He’s left the state and from what I hear, he’s not coming back.

Yeah, he’s got a ride, I’ve got crap to show for it and there you go.

So why tell the truth? Well, to be honest (no pun intended again), your actually injecting a little much needed medicine into our failing society when you use the truth. You would be surprised how many folk out there in the bushes are ready to take the shot. People are starving for the truth, they are begging for it on the street corners and screaming for it on the rooftops. Folks are sick and tired of being lied to constantly. TV lies to them, the government is telling big whoppers every night on the tube and their companies are pretty much saying the same stuff as the G-men, just with a ‘politically correct’ icing layered in-between the mounds of bullcrap that they all throw at you on a regular basis. Heck, they just busted the New York Times for making up the news and our last three presidents have been nothing more than a bunch of lying sacks of crap regardless of how you turn the bag. Those executive level crooks knew something that the public doesn’t know, or even cares to know. If people actually knew the truth, or really gave a darn about the fact that there is a ‘truth’ out there, then there would be riots in the streets.

Lying, it appears, is the ultimate tool of societal control and manipulation. Is that the politician’s fault? No, not really because people DO want to be lied to and they want to be hoodwinked daily as it appears. Voltaire knew it, the Machiavellians know it and so does every pyramid-worshipping bureaucrat that sucks the public dry while they vacation up there in Washington. Gobels, you know the Nazi propoganda guy, said that if tell the public a lie long enough and loud enough, they’ll darn near believe anything. That holds especially true for social interactions here in Babylon. They like the whole little fantasy that we’ve collectively made up about America being a free country and that all our founding fathers were great guys that just ran around doing noble deeds. People need to be told that kind of crap during the course of their lives to keep them going, and the leaders need the populace to take the pill of ignorance as well. Truth is, we’re heading towards a global dictatorship and a police state when you logically piece together all of the facts. Think your broke now? Wait a few more years. Just don’t tell that to your neighbor, trust me, he doesn’t want to hear it either.

So here’s my test question for you. If your friend walks out of the house and sits down in the middle of the road, are you going to tell her that a truck is coming? Heck yeah you are, you’d probably go over and even pull her out of the way. Take that up a level, macroscopically speaking that is. If you know your nation is in trouble, big darn semi of doom bearing down on us, then why wouldn’t you want to tell the truth and get everyone out of the way. Most of you would more than jump at the chance to help, I know, but I’m preaching to the choir here. However, people are asleep at the wheel and they don’t want to wake up from their Prozac induced state of bliss.

Want to way them up, eh? Well, prophets become quick martyrs during times like these and unless you’re serious about being honest, I wouldn’t recommend trying it. But, if you really want to make a difference in this world, you need to start by telling the ‘truth’ about life whenever you can.

So here I am, broke and out of work. You’d think that somewhere out there, I would be able to find a little paper that would want to hire an honest journalist. Well, it ain’t happening anytime soon folks. Got two commissioned articles sitting on my desk that Relix (i.e. Jambands.com) reneged on because their editor is slack and doesn’t want to pay for them. Besides, they take the Dawg mentality when it comes to North Carolina music, that being that it’s just a bunch of hill-billy static that the rest of the nation doesn’t want to hear about. So, I just sit here, every day, wishing that one of my friends realized that I’m serious about needing a job or hoping that an editor finally decides to pay me for my work. Meantime, the rents been due, I need my car back and keeping food on the table has proven impossible. I even tried to farm out myself for just room and board recently too. That didn’t pan because the person I spoke with thought I was ‘lying’ about working, literally, for free. When I realized I was getting depressed over the issue, I went to the church to ask about volunteering for a few social projects to take my mind of things. They never called me back, believe it or not. Got to love them churches. They can plan to add another ‘Billy Graham Auditorium’ for a few million and beg you for the money to build it, but they can’t hold to their original mission of helping out the family or the public. Sometimes I wonder what the Lord thinks about those folks.

Still, I promised my mom that I would change my ways, and I have. This new life of honesty has brought me to level of understanding about the world that I never knew before. Yes, the truth is truly an unprofitable venture for one like myself. The good thing is that I do have honest friends and they make life a little easier. Plus, I can sleep well at night knowing that I have done everything in my power to treat people right.

Just this week, my friend forgot that I had change left over from an errand that he asked me to perform for him. When I handed him his cash, he was stunned and admitted that he didn’t remember giving me the money. Now, I really needed cash and at that point, I hadn’t eaten all day. Heck, I even took a trip up to Asheville with another friend to cover a gig and still didn’t spend the guy’s money. I knew that he had forgotten about it, because this kid normally bugs the heck out of people if they don’t return books to his house on time. But, you have to be mature when it comes to life and I brought him his money anyway. So, why not keep the cash? Because what I had in my pocket wasn’t my money and that wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. Guess what though, we are still friends. I may be broke, but at least I’m not a thief. Besides, if it all went down tomorrow, I’d want that type of friend on my side and he does as well. I knew I could have taken advantage of him and didn’t. No, I guess you could say I’m not CEO material either.

So here I sit, typing away about my troubles, just God and me. I’m hoping that the Big Man finds it in His heart to cut me a break soon and it’s not beneath me to pray about it. No one ever told me that the price of honesty was going to be abject poverty. Guess I missed the memo on that one. We now live in a world where right and wrong are intentionally blurred to obscure the focus of reality, thus holding on to the truth can send you sky rocketing to the poor house. Hopefully, when I’m ‘truthful’ with my landlord this week about my situation, he might have a little mercy on me and not throw me out into the streets.

Yeah, it’s looking a little bleak out here on the home front. Still, I’m darn glad to be here, thankful that God has given me this gift and I wouldn’t trade this life’s experiences for anything. And that, my friends, is the honest truth.

See you during the meantime. Will C.