Weekly Top Ten (9/7/18): For Hazel Motes
After a week of BBQ and College Football’s opening weekend — as well as slogging through leftover emotions — it’s time to jump back into memorable tunes. Teaching and re-reading Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood — one of the ten greatest novels ever written — I feel like Hazel Motes needs some cheering. Of course he’s dead (and even more of course, he’s fictional); nevertheless, I’d love to console him if I could.
I refrained from listing overly optimistic and uplifting Jesus songs like Ocean’s “Put Your Hand in the Hand…” and The Edwin Hawkins’ Singers’ “O Happy Day,” as well as Brewer and Shipley’s stoner anthem, “One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus.” Hazel maybe could have used a toke or two, but maybe doing so would have caused even worse visions. So Hazel, wherever you reside in our minds and hearts, these are the gifts that I bear (and bare) unto you.
10. “If You Wanna Get to Heaven (You Got to Raise a Little Hell),” Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Did Hazel raise hell? Well, he did kill a fella, sure, a false prophet, but the poor guy. “I always gave my parents trouble. I was never any thing but trouble to them,” he says to Hazel in a sort of confession. And Hazel also tried to seduce Sabbath which might tell us something more symbolic than necessary. Did he want to get to Heaven? O’Connor thought so.
9. “Sympathy for the Devil,” Rolling Stones. This one might have allowed Hazel the chance to compare his “Church Without Christ” to Mick Jagger’s preening pulpit. Can you imagine their dialogue: “But how can someone be a bastard if their daddy’s a preacher?” “I’m a man of wealth and fame!” I’m sure things would have gotten even prettier from there. Maybe Hazel would have had sympathy for someone who is just as “Christ-haunted” as he is. Once I used that phrase and someone from the League of the South pursued me through the circles and cantos of email. So remember, I’m only quoting, and perhaps not even exactly.
8. “Long Black Limousine,” O.C. Smith. My grandmother bought me this record when I was twelve— an album that featured the southern classic, “Little Green Apples,” which my grandmother loved. But I kept playing this song, which might have been a dirge, but filled me with a longing spirit. Hazel doesn’t get such a vehicle; he has an Essex that gets him only a few miles out of town and then it stops. “A man with a good car don’t need to be justified,” he claims. Still, we’ll never really know, will we, given the fate of that Essex.
7. “Jesus is Just All Right (with me),” The Byrds. Sure, The Doobies popularized this one in the early 70’s, but Roger MacGuinn and the boys, turned country, brought it to us first. I was afraid of liking the tune when I was a rebellious high schooler, because I didn’t know if Jesus was all right, or, if I thought he was, what might happen to my “cool.” Of course, heard one way, He is good and enough, but the “just” kind of qualifies things: just all right instead of super groovy or the best? “Doo doo do doo do doo doo do.”
6. “Plastic Flowers on the Highway,” Drive-By Truckers. There are a few places on that road out of town where we might commemorate Hazel: where he sees the “Jesus Saves” sign painted on a rock; where he parks so that he and Sabbath can commune in a field under a tree; and where the policeman stops him because he “just don’t like the look of yore face.” Nothing says “I remember” like Plastic flowers by the roadside, and even though Hazel dies in a police car, he’s found dying by the roadside. Blind, and perhaps seeing for the first time.
5. “Spirit in the Dark,” Aretha Franklin. Now that she’s gone, too, I wonder what Aretha would say to Hazel in the afterlife: “You better think?” “Don’t Play That Song for Me?” She could be of such consolation, but I suppose Hazel is past that now. He wasn’t a fan of the other races either, or of foreigners. You know if he were alive and with us today, he might find some work in DC.
4. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” The Charlie Daniels Band. I guess this is a predictable choice. I don’t claim to like the song very much, but God knows I heard it often enough when I was a teenager. I even saw Daniels perform in Birmingham. I was the designated driver that night, before such a term existed. One of the guys riding with me constructed a “jelly roll,” and I received what they used to term a “contact high.” That didn’t make me love the CDB any more, but I could appreciate the way Charlie fiddled. And of course, Wise Blood is set in Georgia. “He was looking for a soul to steal,” right Hazel?
3. “The Angels Laid Him Away,” Rhiannon Giddens. She’s likely too sweet and soulful for Hazel, but maybe she’s the way to redemption, too. In any case, I know it wouldn’t hurt for this voice to sing him to sleep. I’d want her in my ear at the end. The South doesn’t have to be haunted if we can hear the truer voices. From what I hear, though, we like to be scared — something about an adrenaline rush.
2. “When Will I See You Again?” The Three Degrees. Another song I would have been ashamed as a teenager to say I liked. I am so glad to put any form of shame behind me. What good does it do to be ashamed of what you love? That’s the main thing I’d say to Hazel if I could. It’s not a shame to love in the abstract, but I think the only way to do that is to love in the tangible “real.’ And I love this song, tangible, intangible. Beautiful.
It’s hard to end (partly because George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” is playing on my system right now) and partly because I feel like I am omitting something powerful. But end I must because I’m late for yoga. Coming Haze?
NUMBER ONE
- “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” Hank Williams (SR). I don’t cotton to JR. But that’s enough on that. This plaintive cry is pure Hazel, for he is, though he doesn’t. I cry for him, though, because he’s so lost, so abused, so abusive. It’s a hard lesson, and one I seem to have to re-learn every so often, or day. I love that Alabama gave us Hank (sorry Georgia), and as Ray Charles once said, “I Can’t Stop Loving You!” There. Done. Enjoy listening.
