Soundtrack Album Challenge

Tiny Hands and Wrong-Eyed Jesus’s

Searching through the weeds and back roads

If you drive or walk along enough country back roads, you’ll see hauntingly familiar sights: rusted out and abandoned old structures (were they grocery store stop-in’s; storage sheds?); machinery abandoned to Johnson grass and other varying forms of wild weed; rutted dirt roads leading to places we might imagine or wish that we didn’t.

But sometimes, if you travel long enough or if you’re really lucky and hit it on your first go, you’ll walk by a still-in-use station wagon and find a young woman sitting on the edge of the opened trunk door, and she’ll be fine tuning an old saw, using her bow, and the other-worldly sound you’ll hear is “Amazing Grace,” and how she achieved this masterwork is as unknowable as that rutted road’s beginning and end.

If this were the only revelation on artist Jim White’s semi-spiritual journey, the film and soundtrack of his 2003 Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, it would be enough for me. Thankfully, there’s so much more.

I had never heard of the film or of Jim White until my colleague, Phillip Perdue, advised that if I wanted a film for my Southern Film class that defied and exceeded all expectations, this was the one. It had to be.

Man, was he right.

Not exactly a narrative, and not exactly experimental, the film invites us to wander the southern landscape — a bit of Appalachia, a bit of the accompanying foothills and plains — not exactly searching for any right or wrong-eyed Jesus, but really, just looking at all there is to see about people and the ways they live and believe and sing (for instance, you can both testify and get soused in old country dive-bars, but you already knew that, right?). Sure, a statue of Jesus is uncovered at either a roadside flea market or someone’s abandoned refuse, and White carts the man-sized painted being with him, trying to fit it into his trunk and mainly succeeding. Wouldn’t you do the same? Wouldn’t you want to, and wouldn’t you know that there’s more to the story — that this is not even close to being all we’re searching for or finding?

I’m sure I’m getting some of the details wrong, which maybe just reinforces the kind of wrong-eyed memories that we live with — and the ones we think we know after seeing a film only once or twice. And by the way, a few of my students loved this piece, which shows that college people are yearning, too, for what usually escapes us.

After viewing the film, whatever else I thought about it visually was subsumed in and by the eerie music that at first seems mere accompaniment, but eventually emerge as the film’s true star.

The soundtrack is available wherever fine music is sold, but let me tease you here with the song that kills me — the one I can’t quit hearing in my insomnia:

That’s The Handsome Family and their song “My Sister’s Tiny Hands.” It originally appeared on their 1998 album Through the Trees. They’re married and according to their own legend, they record these tunes in their own living room. They also added a song that became the theme for the first season of True Detective. I’ve downloaded everything I can find that they are associated with.

So, if you go searching, you find things that others have discarded, or things you and others never knew had been lost, much less found. Tiny hands, beyond heartbreaking, and listen to the background sounds on the tune — other stories embedded and surely worth pondering and drawing out like all those other loose threads.

One other song from the soundtrack still holds me tightly, and that’s Johnny Dowd’s “First There Was.” In the film, this tune shifts from a men’s barbershop to a ladies’ version. The singing is off, especially his. Who cares, though? If we quit singing just because our key eludes us, or we can’t sing anything but Flat, how many artists would we have lost in one of those abandoned shacks, the home of former loves (I’m thinking poor old Neil Young here, but countless others, too)?

And that woman with the saw? That’s Melissa Swingle. I want to look up all of these amazing grace singers, but I also don’t want to spoil the effect of making known the unknowable. I already know Cat Power, and her tune “Crossbones Style” is pretty damn killing.

I also won’t tell you what White finds at the end, though if you take a stab, rightly/wrongly, you might be tempted to say,

“us.”

He finds us, allowing us to re-examine the grasses that sway in the wind, hoping not to find the snakes writhing there, waiting for whatever tiny hand, unfortunately, reaches out for something less or more than salvation. Or that infamous apple.

Thanks to Songstories and The Riff (sisters of mercy) who have taken up this soundtrack album challenge. Let’s name them because the wrong-eyed Jesus wants to hear: Samantha Drobac, Christopher Robin, Vince Coliam, Noah Levy, Rob Janicke, Kevin Alexander, Reuben Salsa, Jessica Lee McMillan, TheWellSeasonedLibrarian, Sarah Paris, Steven Hale, Kathryn Dillon, S.W. Lauden, Hope Silverman, Frank Mastropolo, If Ever You’re Listening, MDSHall, Harry Male, Gary Chapin, Aimée Gramblin, Carol Banks Weber, and Kathy Gerstorff.

Hope to see you all Sunday night at 7:00 for my virtual reading. If you need the link, please email me at [email protected].

Here’s another Songstories soundtrack:

https://readmedium.com/your-eyes-shine-like-the-sun-3e41f0134b44?sk=45debc3362f8979486ab90bbcb7fe872