Kentucky Writer

Recently, I went on a road trip to Wilmington, North Carolina, with my girlfriend Melanie and one goal in mind: fall in love with the city and leave Kentucky behind. And, it almost worked until I remembered something a girl I took to junior prom said to me some time afterwards. Nicole told me that I reminded her of a character played by Tom Hanks's son in a crappy movie (one I will not name simply not to cite it), a character who believes he should skip out on an opportunity to study writing at a prominent west coast university to stay home and write about his experiences in the OC. The kid is obviously disillusioned because he's 18 and compares himself to William Faulkner, but in the process, he declares that Faulkner would not have been able to write about the South so authentically if he had left Yoknapatawpha County (metaphorically, as thanks to Dr. Kathryn West I know not only how to spell Yoknapatawpha but also know it is not a real place). I always considered this idea, how do I put it lightly?, bullshit because I am certain Faulkner was able to be authoritative about anything he wrote, but during my amazing six days and five nights in beautiful Wilmington, North Carolina, I felt something I never thought I would: homesick. I missed Kentucky, and I know that I am not ready to live anywhere else (yet).
The problem with leaving Kentucky compounds itself when I begin to rationalize things, things such as the distance between myself and my niece would stretch nearly 700 miles and 10 plus hours in a car, things such as living in a state which houses museums to the confederacy, things such as being subjected to country bars that do not play rock music the way Louisville plays rock music (insanely loud), things such as having to come to terms with people actually being Duke fans. Obviously, these are important concerns, but the one that continues to interfere with my already fucked sleeping habits is that I would no longer be a Kentucky writer. And although I believe I have only lived a very short twenty-six years in Kentucky, it would devastate my psyche to forgo such a distinction. And while I trick myself into thinking I am above the need to categorize and label things (after all, ecocriticism tells us it is man who transforms "space" into "place" with those pesky "names"), I cannot overlook my obsessive desire to alphabetically arrange my bookshelf by genre and author, the careful selections of my DVD collection, or the unending desire to provide "genre" information to my unending digital music library. Nevertheless, a name is something we make our own.
I do not think of myself as an author (an author writes books and scholarly articles about 18th century Irish travel literature), and I certainly am hesitant to classify myself as a poet at this age (honestly, ever met someone at a party, introduced yourself as a poet, and had them respond, "oh I write poems too"? Those people are assholes.), but I do consider myself a Kentucky writer. It is the most basic yet informative banner I can happily carry. I live in Kentucky, and I write words. And throughout the years of growing up lower middle-class and white in Kentucky, I certainly endured plenty of identity crises (athlete, artist, punk, slacker, college student, drunkard, christian, etc.), but it took a long time to accept poetry as my fate. As a young child, I wrote haikus. In high school, I wrote horrendous rhyming song lyrics. In college, I wrote abominable love poems to girlfriends while simultaneously slouching through semi-autobiographical short stories (could I be more generic?). Now, though, I write poems, and most of the time they have a tree or a bird in them (and sometimes Mark Rothko but more often other people's song lyrics), and while I guess some people would consider what I do to be "nature writing," I do not. That is not to say I do not enjoy, glorify, or support the voice of nature in my work whenever I get the chance (I suffer from significant amounts of liberal guilt), but really the nature I discuss is the state of Kentucky. I want people to experience the magic still left in the bluegrass, and I want them to do it carefully, solemnly, and with as much reverence as possible, and that is why I want to be recognized as a Kentucky writier. Kentucky is beautiful in its landscapes, historic in its past, but also rife with injustice, poverty, racism, and tragedy. To me, leaving Kentucky would be to change jackets without finishing my shift, but to employ a tired trope, I am blue and not gray. I am as southern (I mix my corn and mashed potatoes) as I am a damned Yankee (I like Neil Young), but I am a Kentucky boy down to my complete distaste for "shoes." Fuck shoes (and Dane Cook, too).
My life is lived in a constant state of compromise and mediation between two polar opposites, much like the good Pixies songs, and I am constantly reminded of an episode of The West Wing where Donna (Janel Moloney) says something about compromise (obviously, it affected me deeply). However, I currently am watching an episode of Aaron Sorkin's shortlived masterpiece Sports Night when Jeremy (played by Joshua Malina who also played Will on The West Wing; I know, right?) states that the reason anyone (meaning “white male” in the socio-economic sense) wants to write in the first place is to impress women. I could not agree more. It always starts with a girl.
And for me, because it was a pretty girl, I certainly could not talk to her...

To be continued...